Since the spring of 1890 there had been repeated stories at Westminster and in the British press about Sir Percy Anderson’s mission in Berlin to harmonise the colonial boundaries in East Africa, but at no time had Heligoland ever been mentioned in such a context. Thus the news that the two were to be linked in a swap was greeted with total shock and amazement. On the British side the divulgence was personally orchestrated by Salisbury himself. It was done at midnight on 17 June by means of depositing in the Vote Office of the Houses of Parliament a copy of a despatch dated 14 June which Salisbury, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary, had sent to Ambassador Malet in Berlin, instructing him that Anderson was returning to that city immediately to finalise the deal.
In that despatch Salisbury summarised the outline agreement which had been reached on the disputed spheres of interest in East Africa: the Witu coast, Zanzibar and the area at Lake Victoria north of the 1st degree of S. latitude. On Heligoland, Salisbury wrote with needless damnation:
On the other hand, her Majesty’s Government are prepared to propose a Bill to Parliament which shall transfer the Island of Heligoland to Germany. It has never been treated by the British Government as having any defensive or military value, nor has any attempt or proposal been made to arm it as a fortress. Her Majesty’s Government are of the opinion that it would constitute a heavy addition to the responsibilities of the Empire in time of war, without contributing to its security. There is no reason, therefore, for refusing to make it part of a territorial arrangement, if the motives for doing so are adequate.
The few copies of the despatch had been deposited so very late at the Westminster Vote Office on the night of 17 June that not one MP had a chance to read it. However, it was soon noticed by hawk-eyed parliamentary correspondents from The Times. With almost unbelievable speed they rushed the long despatch to their newspaper offices and within hours it appeared in print in full.
Auspiciously, an eclipse of the sun that morning cast an eerie, though scarcely perceptible, shadow over much of southern Britain. It was patchy, visible in some counties, obscured by cloud in others. The Times newspapers, which appeared at the breakfast tables of the good, the great and the influential that morning, contained a relevant leading article which by some extraordinary feat its staff also had been able to put together in a few hours. Just as Lord Salisbury had expected, however, it was an historically distorted and scathing interpretation of his despatch to Malet. It stated as accepted fact: ‘Indeed, the connection between the little Frisian island and Great Britain is extremely slight, and is not even sacred by long prescription. It came to us as a part of the possessions of the Hanoverian Kings, and remained British in 1814, because of its proximity to Hanover.’ What the staff at The Times did not know was the sentence referring to the Hanoverian kings was precisely the one which the Prime Minister had used in his telegram to Queen Victoria on 12 June.
One consequence of the story of Edward Thornton’s negotiation of the Treaty of Kiel never having been told was that Salisbury was able to distort history enough to deceive his queen. In fact, the Congress of Vienna (which dealt with Hanover) was signed on 9 June 1815, while it was the Treaty of Kiel that was signed in 1814, by which Denmark agreed to make peace with England, Sweden and Russia. Heligoland had never been a jewel in any German crown. So was this faulty editorial in The Times an early example of deliberate governmental spin-doctoring? Perhaps it was just a careless late-night misinterpretation of what Salisbury’s despatch had seemed to state. Its significance was far-reaching, as it reinforced Germany’s historically groundless fantasies about their links with Heligoland. Salisbury had won the first round.
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?’10 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 mothe
r 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?11 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?12 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.13
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).14
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.15 To illustrate his talk he took on stage with him a map of Heligoland. Speaking at the Athenaeum Hall, Brighton, in July, he said:
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