Massive Aid From Britain : Falklands Shed Feudal Traditions

This tiny archipelago in the South Atlantic is shedding its feudal traditions and moving toward self-sufficiency, thanks to a flood of aid from Britain following the 1982 war with Argentina.

A shortage of people remains a problem, with fewer than 2,000 Falklanders scattered over more than 100 islands, and there are few roads to speak of--but there are signs of progress.

Much of the aid money from London is helping former tenant farmers buy land and reform the autocratic system of sheep farming that is the main source of income in the islands.

Britain also built an airport large enough to accommodate wide-bodied jets, primarily for security reasons, and recently established a 150-mile fishing zone around the archipelago, promising enough income from fishing licenses to cover the Falklands government budget of about $9 million a year.

Create New Jobs

The fishing zone also will create new jobs to encourage the young to stay on the islands. Among other things, the government will need crews for one plane and two boats to patrol the zone.

But can the British colony become self-sufficient with only 1,900 people?

Simon Armstrong, manager of Falkland Islands Development Corp., thinks so, thanks to the new fishing zone--no matter how objectionable it may be to Argentina and other nations that fish the rich waters of the South Atlantic.

For example, Armstrong believes that there is a good possibility that the Falklands will get a fish-processing plant now that a conservation zone has been established in the surrounding waters that once were in danger of being over-fished.

“Now there will be security forces, and that will mean people and housing and so on,” he says. “The whole thing could act as a major catalyst to development.”

Others Less Optimistic

But other officials are not so optimistic, citing the lack of labor. Workers would have to be brought in from elsewhere, preferably from Britain, since most Falklanders are of British origin.

Located 8,000 miles from Britain, with half the people scattered on sheep farms and the other 1,000 or so in Stanley (the only town), the Falklands are never expected to attract large numbers of people.

“I’m desperately short of labor for high-priority jobs, one of them being to provide housing,” says William Hills, the superintendent of public works.

Terry Betts, chairman of the General Employees Union, also believes workers will have to be imported. “We just don’t have the people in the islands,” he says. “I have no doubt that people will have to come from elsewhere--the United Kingdom or St. Helena, perhaps.”

Betts’ union annually negotiates pay scales with the islands’ two big employers, the government and Falkland Islands Co., and the basic labor rate of $2.77 an hour is so low that islanders increasingly are going into private business or working for private contractors at double the negotiated rate.

That pay scale is still attractive, however, to people from St. Helena, another British island possession in the South Atlantic. A group of 50 St. Helenians is working now in the Falklands on one-year contracts with a catering company that serves the new Mount Pleasant airport.

Trouble Attracting Immigrants

In recent months the Falklands government has tried to encourage emigration from Britain. Skilled workers can get cheap travel to the Falklands and government housing. But Gov. Gordon Jewkes concedes, “There hasn’t been a rush to take up assisted passage.”

The colony, established in 1833, has always depended on wool, and the sheep farm acquired a feudal structure in which the manager was a potentate who ruled by decree and young workers bowed to a self-styled aristocracy.

Absentee owners drained wool profits abroad, and there was little local investment. Young farm workers yearning to have their own land were frustrated by a lack of land to buy.

In 1976, a British study recommended that the government buy some large farms, subdivide them and sell the sections to farm workers on easy terms, but until 1982 progress was painfully slow due to a lack of funds.

Then came the war with Argentina. After British troops had ousted the Argentine invaders, the British government gave $44 million in aid to the Falklands.

The newly established Falkland Islands Development Corp. supported some small projects, such as a crab fishery and a knitting mill, but its main concern was to help break up the large sheep farms.

Changes Made

Low wool prices induced some big owners to sell farmland, and the union says 34 individuals, including 21 former farm employees, now own farm sections. They farm 600,645 acres or 23% of the total farm area formerly owned by companies.

At the same time, change has crept into the remaining company-owned farm communities.

“Farm managers are moving away from the concept of a god on top of the hill and the peons on the green,” union leader Betts says. “Management and workers meet together and discuss community life, the operation of the farm and so on.”

The trend to individual farms has some drawbacks. It scatters people around the countryside instead of grouping them on huge farms. It has become more difficult to operate the school system, maintain farm trails (there are few real roads) and keep up the air service that links remote areas.

Farm manager Robin Lee doubts that everyone wants to be an independent farmer. “You have to have a balance of larger and smaller farms,” he says.

Different System

Lee and his brother Rodney have received backing from the development corporation to buy the big farm they manage, and they plan a new setup in which they will be majority shareholders but at least 20% of the shares can be bought by farm workers.

The farm’s dairy, store and workshops will be sold to individuals to operate as private businesses. Employees will be able to buy land from the farm to build their own houses. The Lees are converting the huge manager’s house, built in the feudal era, into tourist accommodations.

‘We’re all going to sit around a table with the attorney general and discuss the terms,” Robin Lee says, “and if we’re happy with the setup, we’ll go ahead.”

There are other signs of new construction, such as the home being built by Aidan and Cora Toase, a retired couple who brought homemade looms to teach others to weave. Their home is on Sea Lion Island, the southernmost of the Falklands, which is owned by sheep farmer Terry Clifton.

The perking up of the rural economy is also reflected in Stanley, the capital, where demand for electricity has risen 20% annually the last few years and demand for water by 12%. A recent census is expected to show sharply increased ownership of appliances such as videocassette recorders, freezers and TV sets. Sales of four-wheel-drive vehicles are also on the increase. Cars aren’t popular because of the poor roads.

‘Very Resilient People’

Jewkes, who is appointed by the British government, says the Falklands economy is still too dependent on wool, and its depressed price is hard on the newly independent farmers. “But they’re very resilient people,” he says. “They’ll come out on top.”

Jewkes sees the new fishing zone as the big hope for economy. “I don’t say it will solve all the colony’s ills, but at least it will lead to a diversification of the economic base,” he says.

In 1982, the Argentines invaded without warning and easily overwhelmed the small British garrison to claim the islands that Argentina calls the Malvinas. Britain sent a naval task force 8,000 miles to bring troops to retake the archipelago in a 74-day war.

But even if there had been advance warning of the Argentine invasion, Britain would not have been able to reinforce the islands quickly because there wasn’t an airport capable of handling big jets.

No more. The British invested $630 million to make Mount Pleasant into the centerpiece of the defense of the two main islands and more than 100 small islands in the archipelago.

The head of the British garrison, Rear Adm. C.H. Layman, says defense planning gauges the threat from Argentina against Britain’s ability to fly in reinforcements in 18 hours.

Britain now has “finger-tip control of how we meet that threat,” Layman says. The airfield permits Britain to reduce its Falklands garrison, but Layman refused to specify the manpower.

Neither Britain today nor Argentina in 1982 could defend the whole coastline of the Falklands, he says, “so you make sure that if you can’t win the first skirmish, you can win the last battle. And the secret of that is holding Mount Pleasant airfield. If you can do that, the end result is not really in doubt.

“The great thing about this new airport is that it has totally changed the balance of power in this part of the world,” he says.