The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

After attending small settlement schools, Camp kids join their Stanley brethren in the junior school, boarding in the hostel or with family. Everyone goes on to the new com- munity school built in 1992. At 16, qualified students are fully funded by the Falkland Islands government to attend boarding school in Britain. The government also funds vocational, university and graduate education. The first islander physician recently graduated in the U.K. and returned to work at the hospi- tal, where one operating room nurse is also an islander. While the rate of return after education abroad is 65 per- cent, a labor shortage necessitates the importation of workers from St. Helena and Chile. Most residents have multiple jobs, and 14 percent of taxpayers run small busi- nesses. TimMiller is thin and 50-something, soft-spoken, with receding blondish-red hair over thick eyebrows, rosy cheeks and a perpetual grin. His rough hands testify to years as a sheep farmer on West Falkland, where he was accidentally bombed by a British jet during the war and lost an eye. Afterwards, Miller established Stanley Growers with the help of a hydroponics farming expert brought in from the U.K., and eventually built it into a thriving business that includes outdoor furniture and gar- dening supplies. Stanley Growers is the principal produce vendor in the islands, with a large organic nursery pro- ducing tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and other vegetables for sale locally and to cruise ships. Miller does extensive business in Chile, importing fresh fruit and other goods via the weekly LAN flight and via ship, and has been badly hurt by Argentine efforts to squeeze the economy. He could easily sell more, but the capacity and frequency of transport from Chile are insuf- ficient. He is clearly frustrated. In another blow, Stanley Growers and other businesses suffered significant losses when some cruise ship visits were canceled after Argentina refused transit permission for passenger exchange charter flights. Besides the weekly LAN flight from Chile, the only other air link is a weekly service from the U.K. provided by Britain’s Royal Air Force. Both flights use the airbase at Mount Pleasant. Sea links are no better. There is a general cargo ship every six weeks from Chilean Patagonia, 1,500 miles south of Chile’s main container port of Valparaiso, plus five chartered sailings a year from the U.K. and some commercial space aboard military charters. A LAN Chile request for an additional weekly flight through Argentina was denied, with the aviation authority in Buenos Aires citing strong pressure from “the very top of the government.” Likewise, a major international ship- ping line agreed to link the islands to South American container terminals, only to have the Argentine Foreign Office threaten “spontaneous” industrial action in Argentine ports. Since these efforts of Argentina to inter- fere with the Falklands’ economy in 2004 and early 2005, there have been no new initiatives as islanders await a sig- nal that Argentina is prepared to cooperate. Lack of access to South America seriously undermines the economy. A 20-foot refrigerated meat container costs $9,000 to ship to the U.K. on ships available only about every two months. The same container could go directly to a South American hub for onward shipment anywhere in the world for about $2,500. From “Sheepocracy” to Self-Determination Before 1982, the Falkland Islands Company, a royal charter since 1852, owned most of the 30 enormous farms and controlled every aspect of commercial activity. Councilor Richard Cockwell calls this period the “sheep- ocracy.” He ought to know, having been the last farm manager at Fox Bay in West Falkland, before it was pur- chased by the government after the war and split into family-size plots. Managers were the elite of Falklands society, living in large homes, hobnobbing with the gover- nor, and able to travel off the islands and educate their children. Until the 1950s, most islanders had little access to education, under the premise that expanded horizons would tempt them to leave, thereby denuding the sheep farms of labor. In this static, isolated society, principal settlements such as Goose Green on East Falkland and Port Howard and Fox Boy on West Falkland provided basic health ser- vices and a simple school, but were dominated by shear- ing sheds, large structures for the seasonal shearing of thousands of sheep. There were virtually no roads outside of Stanley, leaving Camp reliant on intra-islands steamers and horses until 1948, when the Falkland Islands Government Air Service introduced light bush planes. (A network of all-weather tracks now links nearly every cor- ner of the islands.) Prior to 1971, the Falklands were only accessible by four cargo ships a year from Britain and a monthly ship to Montevideo. That year a communica- tions agreement between Britain and Argentina intro- F O C U S 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 6