Heligoland (13 page)

A particularly prominent opponent was Robert Heron-Fermor, an Inner Temple barrister who had written a specialised book on the foreign policies of Prussia and England, and who made a series of speeches condemning the planned cession on the grounds that it was strategically disadvantageous for Britain to do so. He commenced his agitation road-show on 28 June 1890 and continued it unremittingly throughout the next month, speaking at specially convened public protest meetings in Brighton on 9 July and at least one other occasion, in London on 17 July, and at the National Liberal Club on 25 July. To further broaden the reach of his campaign he arranged to have extracts of his barnstorming utterances published in a pamphlet entitled
A Speech in condemnation of the Cession of Heligoland
.
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To illustrate his talk he took on stage with him a map of Heligoland. Speaking at the Athenaeum Hall, Brighton, in July, he said:

To further stimulate public discussion that summer, other high-minded citizens produced pamphlets, with titles like
Heligoland for Zanzibar
, but Heron-Fermor’s was the most energetic campaign. At the close of his meeting on 9 July a vote was taken – and only one hand was held up for the surrender of Heligoland. The overwhelming majority of those present were in favour of its retention. What perhaps even Heron-Fermor did not realise was that no one but he was making any attempt to measure British public opinion on the question of the cession of the island.

Such was the unease in public life, and at Westminster in particular, about the Heligoland element of the Anglo-German Agreement, Salisbury knew it was quite imperative for him to present an overwhelmingly convincing case when he led the first full parliamentary debate on the subject. The Heligoland clause had its Second Reading in the House of Lords late at night on 10 July 1890. Salisbury had done his homework thoroughly, and seldom can a Prime Minister have made so much effort to concoct so many distorted facts, half-truths and fibs. The crucial make-or-break speech with which he opened the debate covered the main strands of his argument.

He began with a historical review, claiming that in 1807 ‘Denmark was the owner of Schleswig, to which Heligoland naturally and by population belonged’ (thus abandoning his earlier claim that it had once belonged to the Hanoverian kings).
¹⁶
He sought to denigrate the islanders by claiming ‘their pecuniary interest comes down to motives which are less noble to dwell upon’, thus implying, without evidence, that they had once made a living from deliberately wrecking ships.
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In terms of the strategic position of the island, he drew comfort from the fact that there was still no harbour there, and thus only ‘an open roadstead which is untenable in a north-west wind, which is the prevailing wind’. Yet the absence of a large constructed harbour had not prevented the island from being of value to Britain in the past. With no historical foundation Salisbury was now insisting that ‘in respect of a war with Germany . . . it would expose us to a blow which would be a considerable humiliation; and it would not confer upon us any great advantage in the conduct of the war’.
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Such was the lack of knowledge about Heligoland in Parliament that Salisbury was able to avoid mentioning Heligoland’s primary value to Britain: simply by holding it, she prevented others from doing so. Nor was it mentioned that the continuance of that dog-in-the-manger strategic function was costing the Exchequer virtually nothing.

Where Salisbury was most vulnerable in his arguments was on the question of the wishes of the islanders; and the Leader of the Opposition, Lord Rosebery, duly concentrated on that issue in the debate. He claimed that if an island population of 2,000 was an acceptable level for a transfer of sovereignty, why not hand over a few of the smaller Channel Islands? ‘Whether you have 2,000 souls or one soul, you have some right to be considered in the transfer of your person and the territory in which you live from the flag under which you were born.’ Referring to the proposed cession as a ‘Capitulation’
¹⁹
Rosebery reminded the House that in a recent debate Lord Knutsford (now the Colonial Secretary) had insisted there was no desire for annexation on the part of the people of Heligoland. And yet now Salisbury was evading the question of the views of the islanders. ‘We have’, Rosebery observed, ‘as yet failed to find out exactly how the noble Marquess arrived at the conclusion which he has confided to us.’ Salisbury hedged unconvincingly: ‘The manner in which I have arrived at the impressions I have stated, I am compelled to treat as
confidential
.’
²⁰
Nevertheless, later that night the House of Lords approved the Bill.

Although the government was desperate to get the process completed in order to have the necessary legislation on the Statute Book before the summer recess, opposition to the Bill was even more intense in the Commons. Delays caused by the slow progress of parliamentary business on Ireland meant that the Second Reading of the Bill in the Commons did not commence until the evening of 24 July. Views varied. One MP, Mr Philips of Lanark, noted the implication of the government’s stance that keeping Heligoland might mean needing to fortify it. ‘But do we’, he observed, ‘garrison outlying islands around our coasts? No garrisons are needed; they are defended by the power of the British Navy.’
²¹
Another MP, Mr Storey, who was one of the few to mention the rights of the many thousands of Africans involved in the exchanges, scornfully condemned the transaction: ‘Since the day Dick Turpin and Tom King met to divide the plunder of Hagley Hall I do not know of any more atrocious thing that has been done by those two great civilising powers in Africa.’
²²
And yet, regardless of these and other protests against the proposed cession, notably by Messrs Channing, Vincent and Summers, the entire proceedings were dominated by what William Gladstone identified as a fundamental constitutional question of precedence.
²³

The elder statesman paid tribute to the Heligolanders as ‘an interesting people of substantial existence with a good deal of character’. He noted that hitherto, on the very rare occasions when British possessions had been ceded, this had been done by the Crown, without the need to obtain parliamentary approval. He gave as examples Dunkirk, which Charles II had sold to France in 1662, and the Ionian Islands, transferred (as a Septinsula Republic Protectorate) to Greece in 1864. But now, said Gladstone, even though ‘the nationality of the Heligolanders is more microscopic than any other subject to which the idea of nationality has yet been applied’, by seeking parliamentary endorsement for their actions, Salisbury and his government were embarking on ‘an absolute and entire novelty’. That the Commons were having such a debate at all was a perilous and unnecessary step, and he effectively washed his hands of it. The Secretary for Ireland, Arthur Balfour, disagreed. He claimed to approve of the setting of a precedent that created the safeguard of a full debate and a vote in both Houses. ‘That precedent, I hope, will always be adhered to.’
²⁴

The controversy was so intense that the debate had to be continued in another session the next evening. Regardless of attempts by the hapless Leader of the House, W.H. Smith, to bring the debate to an end sooner, the arguments continued until just before midnight.
²⁵
As the MPs cast their votes in the lobbies that night Heligoland’s future hung in the balance. If Salisbury’s grand territorial swap scheme could not be derailed in the Commons, the only person still able to impede the transfer of Heligoland would be the island’s governor.

Unfortunately for Heligoland, the prospects for the island looked bleak. The governor suffered a bout of illness which distracted him from his efforts to fight off the proposed swap. Arthur Stuart Barkly, who had arrived on the island in late 1888 to replace Sir Terence O’Brien (1881–8) as governor, had been much debilitated by diabetes while serving in Basutoland in the early 1880s.
¹
He was a talented and humane colonial administrator, who had enjoyed a varied career. In 1885 he was made governor of the Seychelles, but soon had to leave because of ill health and was advised to take a year’s sick leave. But money was tight, and he still needed to cover the cost of travelling with his wife Fanny and their five young children. His financial worries seriously affected his health. In January 1886 he was appointed relief governor of the Falkland Islands, where he served for eleven months. After a year’s absence in London, awaiting a new assignment, he was sent back to the Seychelles for another stint as governor.
²
Now he had the chance to improve his family’s fortunes by having his salary paid in advance. But his prospects of financial recovery were dashed when he was taken ill again and was obliged to return to England. After a few months he was informed by the Colonial Office that he was being appointed governor of Heligoland, at the lower salary of just £1,275 a year.

So it was that in December 1888 Heligoland received its latest and – as it happened – last British governor. Arthur’s problems were exacerbated by his beautiful wife Fanny, who expected to live in a grand style irrespective of what her husband could afford. Thus, in addition to their children, the Barklys took to the island with them a nanny, a private secretary, a butler and two English maids. They did not arrive in style. The furious sea conditions around the island at the time of their arrival were an ominous foretaste of the upheaval caused by the cession. Fanny Barkly later recalled:

Since their memorable arrival in 1888, Arthur had become increasingly enchanted with Britain’s North Sea possession and was always delighted to converse with the inhabitants in their broken English. Browned from their exposure to the sun, the people had a pleasing countenance that reminded Barkly of portraits by Flemish artists that he had seen in the National Gallery. Roaming about on foot, for there were no horses or mules on Heligoland, he would sometimes brave the incessant din of squawking seabirds and wander around the hummocky green plateau. There the islanders grew oats and potatoes in cultivated strips of ground, sheltered from sea breezes by hawthorns. Guillemots, kittiwakes, auks and gannets would sometimes land near these vegetables. From the path along the rim of the red cliffs high above the pounding waves he could look over to Sandy Island. To the west he could see the lobster boats checking their pots in the oarweed for catches of Heligoland’s legendary huge crustaceans. He could peer down at the harbour complex, home to the island’s 107-strong fleet of fishing boats, including small sloops for catching cod and haddock. Jaunty Heligoland tricolours, proudly bearing the Union Jack in one corner, fluttered briskly at the vessels’ ensign staffs.

Sometimes, on his walks around Government House, he would find himself at the wooden church of St Nicolai, with its ancient tenth-century font. From the high ceiling hung a celebrated collection of model Frisian ships; an especially venerated one had been presented by Governor Maxse in 1869. On the side of the church tower was the bronze plaque telling the world it had been built: ‘For the honour and glory of God, and in great admiration of our gracious Queen Victoria.’ From the vantage point of the tower, across the sapphire blue water, he could see vessels from the Elbe estuary plying the sea-route past the low-lying East Frisian Islands. The sight reaffirmed his belief that Germany was only interested in Heligoland in order to secure the mouths of the Rivers Ems, Jade, Weser and Elbe and the Kiel Canal, and to acquire the strategic waters for a radius of 30 miles around the island.

Down the wooden Pottchen stairs nestled the Unterland, which Barkly considered to be the livelier of the twin towns. Its quaint narrow streets had distinctive British names: Thames, Church, Prince of Wales and Maxse. The buildings huddled close together as if for protection from the wild winds of the North Sea. Characteristically the Unterland houses were clean and neat-looking, with clapboard walls, slate roofs and brightly painted verandas. Fish were hung on drying racks outside the boatmen’s cottages, in preparation for being placed into barrels for consumption in the winter. Strolling along the main street Barkly would find colourful gift shops stocked with shells of every description; all manner of boxes and fancy articles made from the skins of gulls, and Schensky’s photographs of the island. Many of the restaurants had tables set out in the open under small trees. When dining out, the Heligolanders liked to sip a small quantity of schnapps and follow it down by a draught of ale. After their meal they would move off to the Strand, where the excellent town band might start to play in front of the pavilion-style Reimer’s Restaurant. In the evening some people would go to the Casino, or perhaps to a show at Her Majesty’s Theatre, but more would proceed to the Conversation House, where from 9 o’clock till midnight or later there would be a public ball. Their relatively carefree alfresco lifestyle prevailed even when the tourist season was over. Although drink could be purchased anywhere the locals were almost invariably sober and well behaved.