ULSTER’S LESSON FOR GIBRALTAR
THE current negotiations between Her Majesty’s Government and the Government of Spain, in a desperate attempt to reach agreement on sharing sovereignty over Gibraltar-with a view to H.M.G. surrendering the Rock to Spain in due course – remind one very much of the frenzied efforts to reach agreement between the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic on the future governance of Northern Ireland, immediately prior to their signing the Belfast Agreement.
Unlike the Ulster Unionist Party’s Negotiating Team back in 1998 however, the Gibraltarian Government itself has – to date at least – had the good sense neither to join in the negotiations nor attempt to mislead the Queen’s Subjects into believing that there will be no change in their identity without the express consent of a majority of the affected people in a referendum. Would to God that Ulster Unionists had resisted the call to remain in the multiparty negotiations leading to the signing of the Belfast Agreement (following the earlier decision of the Governments of the United Kingdom and Irish Republic to lift their suspension of the Anglo-Irish Conference & Secretariat for the duration of the negotiations) or, at least, desisted from misleading the people of Northern Ireland that there would be no change in their identity without their consent in a referendum.
Time will tell whether Her Majesty’s Government and the Spanish Government will produce an agreement between the United Kingdom and Spanish authorities on jointly governing Gibraltar which will gradually extinguish all evidence of the Rock’s Britishness in favour of an exclusively Spanish society, in the same way as the Belfast Agreement is fast extinguishing all aspects of Britishness in Ulster with a view to absorbing Northern Ireland into an All-Ireland Republic at a later date.
It is increasingly clear that many Pro-Union voters who voted “Yes” in the June 1998 referendum on the Belfast Agreement had not either read or fully understood that Agreement as, whilst it may provide the people of Northern Ireland with a future opportunity to decide whether they wish to remain within the United Kingdom or become part of an All-Ireland Republic, by the time that vote is taken the proponents of the Agreement will have so successfully extirpated all aspects of Britishness in Northern Ireland that a vote in favour of becoming an All-Ireland Republic will be a mere formality, as there will then be an All-Ireland Republic in all but name. Gibraltarians take note and continue to resist the temptation to participate in your own destruction!
One is again reminded of the adage I learnt as a small boy: “Britain is only Britain when England, Scotland and Wales are joined together, but can only be truly prefixed with ‘Great’ when ‘united’ with Northern Ireland to form the ‘Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, whilst the ‘isles’ on which we live can only be truly prefixed with ‘British’ to form the ‘British Isles’ when the Irish Republic rejoins Northern Ireland under our British and Protestant Crown”. I am an Ulster Unionist because I wish to see the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland maintained and strengthened, not because I wish to see – as Pro-Agreement politicians wish to see – an amalgamation of Northern Ireland and the existing Republic of Ireland to form an All-Ireland Republic.
It should neither be the “right” of the people of Northern Ireland to determine their constitutional position – and, through that, determine the configuration of the United Kingdom as a whole – nor the “right” of the Gibraltarian people to determine their national identity in future referenda. The British Isles collectively constitute “the Appointed Place” Almighty God promised to our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the same way as the British Empire was a fulfilment of God’s promises to our forefathers that His people (i.e., the Celtic Anglo-Saxon Protestant people not the Jews) would constitute a “company of nations”, and that His people would possess and control key places in the world (referred to in Scripture as “the gates of her enemies”), e.g., Gibraltar, as a blessing for keeping His law but with the solemn warning that He would rescind that blessing if we broke His law. It is no coincidence that the British Empire fell, just as today the continued unity of the United Kingdom is under threat and our remaining strategic points across the world are being negotiated away, when we (individually and nationally) have not obeyed God’s law and kept His commandments. No one generation has a freehold to dispense with the land God has leased to us, and of which He alone remains the freeholder. We are nothing but tenants and occupants under divine instruction to occupy and maintain our inheritance until Christ’s Second Coming when, collectively and individually, we shall be called to account for our stewardship of the legacy our forefathers have bequeathed to us.
The booklet The Gates of the Enemy: From Abraham to Armageddon setting out the Biblical significance of Gibraltar and the United Kingdom’s other strategic points in the world – is available @ £1.75 including p&p from Open-Bible Ministries, P.O. Box 92, Belfast, BT5 7SA. Please make your cheque/postal order payable to “Open-Bible Ministries” and enclose with your order.
