Thomas Docherty: It is for the islanders, not Argentina or the UK, to decide the future of the Falklands

IN Saturday’s Scotsman, Gerry Hassan argued that the United Kingdom should enter into negotiations with Argentina regarding sharing sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.

In making this argument he clearly has the same disregard for the rights of the Falkland Islanders to determine their own future as the current government in Buenos Aires.

Mr Hassan and Holywood celebrities like Sean Penn like to talk in terms of colonisation and settlers – an absurd attempt to equate the Falkland Islands to the illegally occupied territories of Palestine. Their calls for “compromise over sovereignty” with Argentina is to misrepresent the dynamics of the diplomatic situation as to be a two-party dialogue between the governments in London and Buenos Aries. It bypasses the third party in all this – namely the islanders themselves.

It is not for either the UK or Argentina to decide to whom the islands belong – that is a matter for the citizens of the islands themselves. It is for the islanders to decide whether they wish to remain a United Kingdom Overseas Territory, become a separate sovereign state or become a province of Argentina. The UK is the guarantor of the islanders’ right to determine where their constitutional future lies, it is not for us to decide what that will be.

The notion that somehow because the islands are nearer to Buenos Aires than Dunfermline they must belong to Argentina, is quite unsettling. By this logic should ownership of the Channel Islands be unilaterally transferred to France? Should the Isle of Man be handed over to Dublin?

The ownership of a peoples is not a matter for governments removed from the wishes of those involved. Consigned to last century is the idea that prime ministers and presidents could over cigars and brandy decide that a faraway group of people could unilaterally be traded, simply to make an atlas’s lines look cleaner or because things would be less troublesome.

When the House of Commons Defence Committee visited the islands last month, one of the things that we observed was how little nationalistic hyperbole we heard from either the islanders or the UK forces protecting their freedoms. The former simply want to be allowed to live their lives in peace. The latter understand why they need to be there but cannot fathom why politicians in Buenos Aires claim any right to decide what happens to people who live quietly – except for 74 tragic days 30 years ago – 130 miles away.

For Scots in particular, as we contemplate where our constitutional future lies, the right to self-determination is one we should all celebrate as we remember the 955 British, Argentinian and Falklands servicemen and civilians who lost their lives in the conflict that began 30 years ago today.

• Thomas Docherty is Labour MP for Dunfermline and West Fife and a member of the Commons Defence Select Committee