Heligoland (12 page)

Queen Victoria’s constitutional stance posed a far-reaching and fundamental question. How was Salisbury to reconcile his need for freedom to cede Heligoland with the newly perceived sense that the interests of the inhabitants should, in some form, be taken into account? Hitherto such transactions were exceedingly rare and the peoples of such colonies had not been an impediment to British government action. But now Salisbury calculated that in order to reconcile these elements he would subject the swap to parliamentary approval. Although it was scarcely recognised outside the esoteric world of West-minster at the time, this initiative was a profound break with the constitutional tradition whereby the British government made treaties and relinquished sovereignty over particular colonies in the name of the Crown
without requiring parliamentary ratification
. Ominously for the Heligolanders, it was the establishment of this precedent, rather than their enforced change of sovereignty, that most perturbed the minds of influential politicians.

In all this activity the Heligolanders had been kept entirely in the dark about the momentous decisions regarding their future. They were not even granted the courtesy of a ceremonial or private briefing. One day in June 1890 the astounding news burst upon the islanders – via newspapers brought from Hamburg via the mail paddle-boat – that Britain was arranging to hand over their homeland in return for the withdrawal of Germany’s rather indefinite claims of recently acquired suzerainty over Zanzibar. The Heligolanders, who knew of William George Black’s 1888 travel book
Heligoland and the Islands of the North Sea
, and his deep interest in all that concerned their island, urgently sent him a telegram asking him to do everything possible to put their case against cession. Quite by chance Black had just returned from his second visit to the island, and therefore knew better than anyone in Britain what the latest conditions were on the ground there. But not being a well-known public figure, he was not necessarily the best choice of champion for the islanders.

Publicly Black’s protest began in the form of a letter published in
The Times
on 20 June. Twenty-one years later, in an article for the
National Review
in 1911, Black disclosed that in waging this campaign he had vainly sought interviews with leaders of the governing Conservative Party, but had been somewhat more successful in securing audiences with eminent opposition Liberals, notably former Prime Minister, William Gladstone, former Foreign Office minister, James Bryce, and – potentially most importantly of all – the current Liberal Party Leader, Lord Rosebery.

Rosebery was virtually the only senior politician still active who had ever visited Heligoland. He had gone to the island during the six months when he had been Foreign Secretary in the brief Liberal administration of 1886. Rosebery soon found a fine opportunity to reproach Salisbury in the Lords. On 19 June 1890 he asked him ‘If any steps have been taken, or are in contemplation, to ascertain the wishes of the Heligolanders themselves with regard to the transfer?’
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For a while the Prime Minister was able to side-step the issue by claiming ‘the plebiscite is not among the traditions of the country’.

Never before had the British press taken so much interest in Heligoland. The news that Salisbury was intending to surrender the island prompted a stampede of journalists. As so few people knew anything about the island, despite eighty-three years of continuous British rule, the early correspondents concentrated on describing Heligoland to their readers. One illustrated paper, the
Leisure Hour
, ran a despatch reporting it to be a land ‘where there are no bankers, no lawyers, and no crime; where all gratuities are strictly forbidden, the landladies are all honest and the boatmen take no tips’. An article in
Murray’s Magazine
trivialised the place, recounting a story of a Lutheran pastor martyred by the Catholic islanders.

The
English Illustrated Magazine
provided a depiction in the most glowing terms: ‘No one should go there who cannot be content with the charms of brilliant light, of ever-changing atmospheric effects, of a land free from the countless discomforts of a large and busy population, and of an air which tastes like draughts of life itself.’ It just could not resist the temptation to shock its Victorian readers with titillating stories of nude bathing. ‘One curious feature of bathing at Heligoland’, it revealed, ‘has now become much less common than it was. The ladies from the more remote parts of Germany used at one time to have a curious prejudice against bathing otherwise than in the costume of their mother Eve! And, in spite of government edicts, even now the practice has not been finally stamped out.’

Initially much comment was also made on the likely consequences of the exchange. Salisbury was reassured that a few newspapers praised him for his desire to end the dangerous Anglo-German rivalry in East Africa. The
Manchester Guardian
hoped that the Anglo-German Agreement would ‘be accepted in both countries as a final settlement’, while the
Daily News
considered that, if faithfully observed, it ‘must make for the peace and prosperity of Africa’. The
Morning Post
on 18 June thought that greater than any territorial advantages must be reckoned: ‘the good understanding’ established between England and ‘her natural ally’. It considered that the price Germany had agreed for Heligoland justified the deal.

In addition to accepting Goschen’s advice to release certain official papers for public scrutiny, Salisbury himself fleetingly made a foray into public speech-making on the question of the Anglo-German Agreement in a foreign policy speech he gave in London that summer to the Merchant Tailors. A real bonus for the Prime Minister was the surprise endorsement his grand swap received from the celebrated explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who was then in the early stages of a tour of Britain.

Map 4
German East Africa. Heligoland was pivotal in achieving the 1890 Anglo-German Agreement, which resolved several territorial disputes between the colonial powers.

Just as Salisbury had foreseen, the interest aroused by the cession of a British possession in time of peace meant that the debates in the English-language newspapers and in the Westminster parliament were much more vigorous than foreign policy discussions normally were. The question of the wishes of the colonial inhabitants aroused the greatest passions. As well as the moral issue of taking the wishes of the Heligolanders into account, people began to contemplate the possible significance of the swap for the rest of the Empire, and to realise the potential dangers of setting a precedent by so doing. At first the reaction of Parliament was rather muted. On 18 June, the day after Salisbury’s announcement, questions were asked as to whether a Bill would be introduced, and when; and even if the views of the inhabitants had been obtained. Evidently suspicions were growing that all was not right. Why, the Leader of the House, W.H. Smith, was asked, was the government refusing to disclose the opinions offered by the naval authorities?
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And was it because of the Foreign Office’s contempt for Parliament that the inaccurate map provided of Africa in the Tea Room had boundary changes marked that differed from those advocated by Lord Salisbury?
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By 23 June, just six days after Salisbury’s announcement, the First Reading of the Cession of Heligoland Bill was held, by which time a number of its key opponents were finding the range of their target. The merciless forensic questioning by three tenacious parliamentary figures, Mr Channing, Mr Howard Vincent and Mr Summers, now threatened to jeopardise the parliamentary progress of Salisbury’s entire scheme. Unfortunately for the Heligolanders, the three were not especially well known or influential.

Even though Heligoland was less than 300 miles from the Norfolk coast, few if any Members of Parliament had ever visited the place. This lack of familiarity had been a crucial element in Salisbury’s intention to bluster the legislation through. His bluff was suddenly called in that furious debate when Howard Vincent called for the Treasury to provide one of HM’s ships in which members of the House, paying their own expenses, could visit Heligoland. Just as alarmingly for Salisbury, a request was made that a Commissioner be sent to ascertain the views of the islanders.
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Doubts about the views of the islanders were soon articulated in condemnatory letters in national newspapers. On 24 June Howard Vincent indignantly thundered in
The Times
’s letters page: ‘For one I have no intention of voting for the hauling down of the British flag upon any portion of the globe unless personally convinced that the Empire gains more than it loses.’ Newspaper editorials were also scathingly critical of Salisbury’s refusal to take account of the colonial inhabitants’ wishes.

On 19 June 1890 the
Daily News
incisively pointed out that from the ‘first line to the last’ there was not a word in the agreement about ‘the rights of the Africans’.
Punch
was also scathing, producing a critical cartoon of the Salisbury scheme on 28 June. The
Review of Reviews
sourly noted that ministers were refusing to listen to the protests of the Heligolanders: ‘It reminds one of the transactions between Russian grandees of olden times, when, to pay a gambling debt, an estate with all its serfs would be made over from one noble proprietor to another.’ The envisaged transfer of sovereignty was most aptly summarised and condemned by the pioneering lady journalist Miss Friederichs, who had gone to Heligoland as a correspondent for the
Pall Mall Gazette
. She brought back, condensed into a single sentence, the sentiments of the islanders on the subject of their abandonment: ‘You may give away a cat or a dog’, had said an indignant Heligoland dame, ‘but not a whole people.’

For parliamentary purposes Salisbury had disentangled the question of the Heligoland cession from the rest of the Anglo-German Agreement on Africa, and on 1 July 1890, when the provisionally accepted Agreement was signed in a simple ceremony in Berlin, two documents were initialled: one covering Africa, the other Heligoland. The latter, written in large copper-plate handwriting, barely covered three folio-sized pages. So hastily had this vitally important document been cobbled together there had been no time to bind it in leather, so its covers were of simple bureaucratic red cardboard. Britain’s signatories were the ambassador in Berlin, Sir Edward Malet; and the chief of the Foreign Office’s African Department, Sir Percy Anderson. The Kaiser considered the acquisition of Heligoland so important that he was gratified his new Chancellor was the leading German signatory.

Outside very select official circles no one ever discovered that at the last minute a secret annexe was attached to the draft Heligoland Agreement – namely that in the event of any difficulties arising between Britain and Germany with respect to ownership of property on the island, such questions should be submitted to the arbitration of a Dutch lawyer, who would be nominated by the highest Dutch Court of Justice. The part of the proposed legislation that covered Heligoland, Article XII, was printed as follows in Foreign Office Paper C.6046 in July 1890. Covering just one page, it read:

1.   Subject to the assent of the British Parliament, the sovereignty over the Island of Heligoland, together with its dependencies, is ceded by Her Britannic Majesty to His Majesty the Emperor of Germany.

2.   The German Government will allow to all persons natives of the territory thus ceded the right of opting for British nationality by means of a declaration to be made by themselves, and [or] in the case of children under the age of consent by their parents or guardians, which must be sent in before 1st January 1892.

3.   All persons natives of the territory thus ceded and their children born before the date of the signature of the present Agreement are free from the obligation of service in the military and naval forces of Germany.

4.   Native laws and customs now existing will, as far as possible, remain undisturbed.

5.   The German Government binds itself not to increase the customs tariff at present in force in the territory thus ceded until 1st January 1910.

6.   All property rights which private persons or existing corporations have acquired in Heligoland in connections with the British Government are maintained; obligations resulting from them are transferred to His Majesty the Emperor of Germany. It is understood that the above term ‘property rights’ includes the right of signalling now enjoyed by Lloyd’s.

7.   The rights of British fishermen with regard to anchorage in all weathers, to taking in provisions and water, to making repairs, to transhipment of goods, to the sale of fish, and to the landing and drying of nets, remain undisturbed.

Another aspect of Heligoland which passionately excited its supporters in Britain that summer was its strategic significance. William Black was by no means the only public-spirited eminent person to send letters to newspapers arguing in support of the status quo. Quickest off the mark in springing to the islanders’ defence in print was an earlier Governor, Sir Ernest Maxse. Writing to
The Times
on 26 May 1890 he claimed that: ‘Had Germany possessed Heligoland, the blockade of the Elbe and Weser by the French fleet in the earlier part of the war would have been impossible. I was at Heligoland at the time and observed the French fleet, obliged as it was to lie outside English waters at a safe anchorage from whatever direction the wind blew.’ He went on to advocate that Britain should spend a million pounds on the island to develop it into the ‘Gibraltar of the North Sea’.

Maxse’s intervention stimulated some fascinating exchanges of views in the letters pages of
The Times
. On 23 June the newspaper ran a letter from Sir John Coode, the engineer who had surveyed the coast of Heligoland and prepared a plan for a harbour for the Colonial Office in 1883. Coode now insisted that, were the British to make a base of the island, nothing less than £1 million on a harbour alone would be necessary, and at least £2 million would be required to fortify it. But Maxse was supported in his view that Heligoland was already of strategic importance in a letter to
The Times
from Admiral Philip Colomb (the elder brother of John Colomb, author of
The Defence of Britain
, who in 1880 had prophetically warned of the rise of German naval power).
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