MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Stanley Book-signing Shows Support for Falklands Author.
One of the more unusual events this week in Stanley was a book signing on Friday at the Falkland Island Company's Capstan Gift Shop. For two hours from three o'clock, a steady stream of local people queued up to have a copy of Terry Betts autobiography, A Falkland Islander Till I Die signed by the author.
Fortunately, the majority brought copies previously acquired, because by the end of the afternoon, there were none left on the shelves.
At £20 per copy, such a volume of sales has to be an indication of considerable interest among a population not particularly noted for splashing out on literature. Judging by the positive comments of those who had already read it, Terry Betts' account of his rise from obscure and humble beginnings to something approaching international prominence also met with considerable local approval and it is easy to see why. Agree or disagree with some of the author's outspoken comments on life and politics, like or dislike the conversational and occasionally expletive-laden style in which they are written, what is clear is that Betts is a genuinely representative voice of a people who have not always found it easy or indeed advisable to express frankly the realities of their situation.
A Falkland Islander Till I Die is a big book, which combines a number of themes and stories, each of which could have formed the basis of separate volumes, and, in some cases, maybe major movies. For example, in tracing his lineage from a number of pioneer Falklands families, including the progeny of the splendidly-named Jacob Napoleon Goss, Terry puts us directly in touch with 19th century Stanley, a swashbuckling frontier town, populated by sea-farers, gauchos and assorted riff-raff and presided over by a sparse, but influential colonial plutocracy. At this time a series of underhand deeds, which might have included murder, were perpetrated by an Anglican clergyman and appear to have robbed Terry of any chance of being born into the upper echelons of Falklands society.
"The children were crying, dad was in his bed, too frightened to move, my wife was shaken and pale, whilst I was frantic, confused and shitting myself." No book written about the Falkland Islands in recent times can ignore the events of 1982 and A Falkland Islander Till I Die is no exception. Military and political commentaries of the war abound, but Terry Betts clear, graphic and honest account of his family's war makes a very valuable addition to the small store of good writing about the civilian experience during this traumatic time.
In the section of the book, which deals with his career as member and finally leader of the Falkland Islands General Employees Union, the author gives us a very clear and readable description of the social and economic structure of the farming industry during this time, but Terry Betts was essentially a town boy and the passages which deal with his boyhood in Stanley in the fifties, besides being occasionally very entertaining, are also very valuable from a social history point of view.
What written records there are of ordinary Falkland Islands life in the past generally concern "The Camp", the islanders name for anywhere that isn't Stanley. Early illnesses prevented Terry Betts from following companions onto farms during the school holidays and so he grew up, for a Falkland Islander, uniquely unacquainted with sheep and sheep farming. As he puts it himself "Reading, talking, playing and thinking about football was just about all I did do, other than a bit of singing'. Perhaps because of this lack of familiarity, his account of an unexpected, shocking and fortunately brief introduction to the world of work on an isolated island farm is all the more acute and well-described.
Born into a family in much reduced circumstances, in a country where at the time the majority of the wealth produced flowed overseas, it is clear from the book that Terry Betts' sympathies have always been with the ordinary Falkland Islander and that he has no difficulty in combining pride in his British heritage with the certainty that Falkland Islanders do constitute a distinctly separate people. If he appears to labor this point it is because he considers it an important one to make in the face of the Argentine claim to sovereignty over the Islands, which he dismisses as "based on extremely inconclusive evidence, drawn from a very blurred record of history indeed."
Terry Betts shows a reluctance to consider anything other than the peaceful British occupation of the Falklands since 1833 as being relevant to the sovereignty dispute, but he was also acutely conscious of the second-class status afforded to Falkland Islanders by successive expatriate colonial administrations, which prevailed throughout much of that period. This awareness, we learn, was shared by his older brother Alec, but the conclusions they came to and the different and opposing paths that each brother was to take as a result, is another of the intriguing threads that run through this narrative.
Alec, now Alejandro, Betts, took the view that Argentina would make a better colonial master of the Falklands, or Malvinas, than Britain and left the Islands at the end of the 1982 conflict to live in Argentina. He now annually presents that country's sovereignty claim to the De-Colonisation Committee of 24 at the United Nations in New York. In 1987, in the same forum, he found himself opposite a newly elected member of the Falkland Islands Legislative Council, his brother Terry.
In the concluding and possibly most contentious part of this book, Terry Betts expresses the view that the sovereignty dispute between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands needs to be resolved if the Islands are to be able to continue to develop. This, he contends, will only be achieved to the satisfaction of Falkland Islanders if they, themselves take the diplomatic initiative to become "problem solvers". While offering a path by which a solution might evolve, Terry Betts concludes, "I do not think for one moment my ideas are that easy to implement, nor do I believe that all sides directly involved would readily agree to consider my thoughts."If the above has given the reader the notion that the tone of the book is completely serious and political, this is not the case. Terry Betts told MercoPress that it had taken him just over a year to produce the first manuscript of this book, writing, for the sake of peace, from late at night into the small hours in his room in a high-rise apartment building in Lisbon. Although the view from this room, is by his own account one of other similar apartment blocks, it is clear that in his head the author still lives the sights, sounds and smells of the Falklands of his youth and although tapping his words onto a modern laptop, the style of narration is clearly recognizable as that of the kind of rambling yarn, which in earlier days might have been told to entertain companions around a camp fire or in the forecastle of some tall ship. Like a tall ship under full sail, too, this story rattles along, and despite its 569 pages is very difficult to put down. Because of this, it is not the book to take with you on a long sea cruise, but it would be ideal reading for anyone taking the eighteen hour flight from Britain to the Falklands.
John Fowler ? Stanley.
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