WW2 Evacuation of Gibraltar: an alternative view.

 

 I hesitate to start this article knowing it may cause offence amongst some of the older generation. However, history is written by the winners and they are frequently not very particular with the truth; especially when it is our history, as revealed by our colonial masters.

My father in law, God bless him, belonged to a generation who believed in England as the Mother Country and who were consequently blind to many of the things that the military and the Colonial Office inflicted on Gibraltar. The various harms suffered by his generation were supposedly necessary for the well being of Gibraltar and the Empire, so they suffered in silence for the greater good. It was, of course, utter nonsense promulgated by a privileged minority whose sense of superiority was not generally supported by any evidence.

 From the end of the Great War, attempts to reinstate pre-war subservience were succeeding; the populace were at last being persuaded to once again acknowledge their betters and tug their forelocks appropriately. Then all of a sudden - BANG - along came WW2. The whole social order was about to be overturned; like a ploughed field. 

At the start of the war, events were led by the old upper-crust officer class; it would be some time before middle and even working class men (God forbid) would achieve commissioned status. However, amongst this cadre were some genuine humanitarians - people who cared - and one of those was General Ironsides, Governor of Gibraltar. As the war approached the Governor and our own City Council embarked on an ambitious plan to build a number of air raid shelters, most of which still exist, for the protection of the population. It turned out to be a step too far, for the Colonial Office labelled him as gone native and recalled him to the UK where he was tasked with, guess what, building air raid shelters; a sort of make-the-punishment-fit-the-crime.

 

                                                      Construction of the Commercial Square (Piazza) air raid shelter.

 

What he had nearly compromised was a military plan, supported by the Colonial Office, to permanently remove the civilian population of the Rock and turn it into an exclusively military garrison. This plan had been under consideration since long before WW1. At the turn of the 20th century relations between Gibraltar and Spain had been excellent. Goods and services were readily available and the military and privileged Gibraltarians spent much of their leisure time, many owning homes, across the way. By way of example the railway up to Ronda was built, by the British, for garrison officers to enjoy outings in Spain... that's how enchufau they were. The merchants and dealers who had fed, clothed and bankrolled the garrison for over two hundred years were no longer needed and their demands for a say in how Gibraltar was run were, to say the least, a nuisance - the upstarts! So the plan was hatched to get rid of civilians and have a nice orderly military garrison fed by Spain.

But how to achieve it, that was the problem that vexed many a governor, several of whom had the will and the means to do it but insufficient political clout. Gibraltar merchants had successfully dethroned a governor some years earlier by using the good offices of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce who represented the largest industrial and commercial moneybags in Europe and consequently had a lot of pull in Parliament.

So WW2 offered an unparalleled opportunity to make this plan a reality. The actual turning point was the fall of France and the return of Gibraltarians from Morocco. Ironsides’ replacement, Sir Clive Liddell, justified the removal of civilians by describing them as useless mouths, at once enveloping the need to save all available food and water for fighting troops with a demonstration of his contempt for the local population.

 

Then some quick thinking military strategists came up with the idea of shipping the Gibraltar refugees across the Atlantic to Jamaica, with the expectation that perhaps the Germans would unwittingly oblige by sinking the transports en-route. Why not? This was the period of the war known by U-boats commanders as the happy time, during which they were virtually untouchable. Air defences were still in their infancy and left a massive mid-Atlantic gap that was beyond the allies reach. However, the Germans failed to oblige. So to make it easier for them, the remaining refugees were shipped to Madeira and the UK, once again in slow, old fashioned (and unprotected) transports.

To the chagrin of the planners, the ships all reached their destinations safely and the same trains delivering Gibraltarians to inner London were carrying Londoners out of range of the blitz... nice one Colonial Office.

 

 

                    Devastation around St Paul’s; was it divine intervention that saved this cathedral and the Llanitos?

 

In fact the Gibraltarians in London survived the worst of the blitz. Los Llanitos shared the hardships of the ordinary folks of the capital, who had little choice but to sit there and be bombed. However, they were at least organised; Dr Patron and his team did their best to improve the lot of the Llanitos, eventually reaching agreement to transfer the evacuees to a safer part of the country. Unfortunately, the same malicious intent that had launched the transports to Jamaica must have thought: “This Mediterranean rabble are used to the heat and dry, so let’s pick an appropriate place to put them.”  They picked the coldest and wettest part of the UK; Northern Ireland. We all know the rest.

 At the end of the war the Llanitos reasonably expected to return to The Rock, but the UK authorities weren’t beaten yet. Despite having to sort out the UK (rationing was to become more severe after the war with no more American help) rebuilding Germany with UK funds and dealing with the French, who had not yet forgiven the Allies for liberating France; they managed to come up with a whole variety of delaying tactics. Fortunately, we had Joshua Hassan and largely due to his efforts most Llanitos regained their homeland in the late forties and early fifties. This was a reputation Hassan traded on for the rest of his political career.

 What next? Well first I have to explain a little about the Foreign & Colonial Office, an instrument concocted by unifying the previously separate departments, at the end of Empire. Although the F&CO is headed by a minister, with a number of MPs to assist him, it is actually run by the civil servants. All the senior officers will have been products of the public school system and will have generally right wing views and the ones with a penchant for Latino rent boys are unlikely to sympathise with our point of view. Governments come and go but the F&CO is there forever and knows what is best for the country… and other countries, come to think of it. So when a government is in place whose views align with the F&CO, things get done and when the converse is true, incessant delaying tactics are employed until the next general election resolves the issue by focussing MPs’ and ministers’ attention on retaining their seats. Think of the BBC series Yes Minister, although presented as a comedy, it was so close to reality that it made many parliamentarians feel somewhat queasy. So, Llanitos would remain in a vulnerable position for the best part of the following two decades.

 Then fate delivered a stroke of luck. When the generalissimo closed the border, he not only succeeded in welding Llanitos into a nation but also offended every man, woman and child in the UK. Most of them didn’t know where Gibraltar was but they knew it was British and this little dago upstart was trying to garrotte it. The overwhelming support of the UK’s ordinary people made it inevitable that their MPs would jump on the bandwagon and the result was the ‘sustain and support’ that Gibraltar received, grudgingly delivered by, amongst others, the F&CO. That must have hurt. Sustain and support salved the conscience of the man in the street, who then promptly forgot all about us.

 Jump forward a decade or so to the Blair administration. Now here was a man, who despite being rather left of (their) centre, had ideas the F&CO could work with. They went into overdrive. Now, their policy of disposing of Gibraltar could be realised. They and Blair chose well, a second generation Polish immigrant and an ex-colonial South African poacher-turned-gamekeeper were ideal candidates to deliver the hatchet job… and if they failed, well, what could you expect from people who don’t have the right background.

We all know what happened next. This welded community of The Rock showed Jack Straw the front door and deflated the F&CO’s negotiated settlement with our next door neighbours. They had to swallow it. In fact Tony Blair was quoted as saying “who would have thought 30,000 people could be so much trouble.”

  

 

                                                      The allegedly violent demo outside the Convent.

 

In his limp-wristed autobiography, Inside Out, Hain states that Straw; “was almost violently attacked by a baying mob.”  Not at all - we did what Hain used to do when protesting apartheid; we barracked, we heckled, we shouted him down, we called him Judas… no more. The only physical threat to Jack Straw was being bowled over (like the older lady at the Convent door) by his own policemen, who used riot squad snatch tactics where crowd control tactics were required. (and as you might expect, a police inspector brought out a chair and a glass of water for the lady his men bowled over)

 

But things don’t stand still. The Brexit situation is seen as a massive opportunity by the Palacio de Santa Cruz and probably by the F&CO. We must expect to be set up for a fall, to be bargained away for some supposed advantage for the UK. It is clear that the current PM has little understanding of the Spanish character and with the F&CO batting for the other side she may well be deliberately misled. We are in dire peril… possibly not since the Great Siege have we been in more danger. Well, that’s my opinion.

This is one interpretation of the facts… others are available.

 

 

First published at the History Society Chronicle 2018.         Paul Hodkinson.