Science, People & Politics

Shaw for Australia said that his government was not in favour of an arrangement that pooled sovereignty, but that Australia would support some kind of regional arrangement, particularly one that promoted the development and exchange of scientific, meteorological and technical information.

Prime Minister Fraser from New Zealand said he had originally been in favour of a UN Trusteeship¹. Fraser thought it foolish to quarrel about the issue, and said that some kind of international arrangement was best. He said he thought sending a British warship had produced salutary effects, but agreed that a constant show of force would not be the best way forward. Any international arrangement, he thought, particularly that propounded by the US, presupposed the sharing of sovereignty. He thought it was logical that the close co-operation which existed in various fields between European countries and the US should be extended to Antarctica. Fraser said he had come to think that a UN Trusteeship would be a bad idea, because it would bring the Soviet Union into the Antarctic. He said also that the Falkland Islands and any other inhabited British territory should be excluded from any Antarctic arrangement. The meeting concluded that Bevin and Noel-Baker would discuss the issue with Dr Evatt in Paris. Evatt had been deputy prime minister of Australia until the previous month, and was in October 1948 president of the United Nations General Assembly², then meeting in its Third Session in Paris.

FEBRUARY-OCTOBER 1948
Between Bevin's interchanges in February and March with the Chilean ambassador, and October's meeting at the Foregin office, the professionalism with which the international political and diplomatic game was played among the contestants for regional hegemony in the American Antarctic and sub-Antarctic was straight A.

At the beginning of the month Bevin, with his mandate from the Cabinet to explore a diplomatic solution to the Antarctic dispute, knew neither Chile nor Argentina would entertain submitting the dispute to the International Court of Justice. Both had said so in 1947. He knew President Videla of Chile was interested in a diplomatic solution, and that both Argentina and Chile, by acts of occupation, were determined to assert Sovereignty in the American Antarctic. Much of Argentina's and Chile's manoeuvring in the sub Antarctic region was aimed at one another. They had been disputing a strategic waterway called the Beagle Channel since 1881³.

Additionally to the Antarctic Bevin was involved in trade negotiations with, and competition for the dollar market in Latin America. Devaluation of the pound, which would happen on 18th September, 1949, from $4.03 to $2.80⁴, was still more than a year away, but the economic balls were all in the air, and no-one knew where they would fall⁴.

The Cabinet's discussion of Antarctica in January 1948 was classified secret. By contrast, and indicative of their significance, aspects of Britain's trade negotiations with Latin America were top secret. In particular, top secret applied to a document of the Cabinet's economic planning committee, entitled "Arms for Latin America"⁵, dated 4th April, 1948. Bevin wrote,

"The question of the Policy to be followed in regard to selling arms, particularly aircraft and warships, to Latin American countries urgently requires a ruling from the Cabinet."

In light of the Antarctic dispute, mentioned by Bevin in this document, arms sales made the region a potential mine field⁶.

The tension Bevin needed the Cabinet to address, was, he wrote,

"Briefly, there is conflict between our urgent need to earn hard currency and maintain export outlets for our aircraft and shipbuilding industries on the one hand .... and strong objection from the United States Government to any sale of arms which might conflict with their standardisation plans [in relationship to arms trade] for the Western Hemisphere."

The subsidiary conflict Bevin wanted the Cabinet to balance was the need for Britain to maintain the good will of armed forces in Latin America by fulfilling its contracts, and not being seen as under the sway of the US, against the danger that countries such as Argentina might use their military power to terrorise their neighbours. Yet, as Bevin makes clear, Britain had contracts with Argentina for the supply of jets and bombers, and unofficial enquiries from Argentina about the purchase of an aircraft carrier, cruiser and destroyer from naval surplus, as well as tentative enquiries through commercial channels for almost every type of land military equipment. In 1947, Prime Minister Clement Atlee had authorised British firms to tender for programmes with a value of £10 million. The orders did not materialise. It would be interesting to know what each side learned about the capabilities of the other, and to know what each side was, in geopolitical terms, really saying to the other.

In April 1947, wrote Bevin for his Cabinet colleagues in April 1948, Britain had rebuffed efforts by George C Marshall, as US Secretary of State, to oppose sales of bombers and fighters to Argentina, and had entered contracts with Argentina.

"The only things which has occurred since May 1947 which alters the conditions in which the Cabinet decision was made in 1947 is the Argentine and Chilean activity in the Antarctic," wrote Bevin.

3rd March 2013: In response to concerns raised by the copy editor the name, Peter Hanessian, was corrected by the publisher to the correct name, John Hanessian, on 1st March, 2013, and the final paragraph on this page was clarified by specifying that the writer of the quoted text was Bevin. H.G.

FOOTNOTES
1. The Trusteeship system was established to advance the political, social and economic welfare of inhabitants in trust territories as they prepared for independence or self-governance, and was run by a Trusteeship Council. Actions of the Trusteeship Council required compromise between administering and non-administering powers of the territories preparing for independance. As writers like John Hanessian have pointed out, since there were no inhabitants in Antarctica the Trusteeship Systems was not deemed appropriate. See: The Antarctic Treaty 1959, John Hanessian, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol.9 July 1960.
2. Presidents of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
http://www.un.org/en/ga/president/index.shtml Accessed 27th February, 2013.
3. Garrett, J.L., The Beagle Channel Dispute: Confrontation and Negotiation in the Souther Cone. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, V27, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1985).
Argentina and Chile signed the Treaty to end the Beagle Channel dispute on 2 May 1985 at the Vatican. During the ninteenth century both Chile and Argentina laid claim to the waterway through which Charles Darwin travelled in 1830 around the tip of South America. The dispute in the 1950s and 1940s centred on the path the waterway took around islands south of Tierra del Fuego, and was a remnant dispute from a treaty agreeing demarcation between the two nations in 1881. Oil, possibly, and fish were at stake.
4. The Guardian, 18th September, 1949.
http://century.guardian.co.uk/1940-1949/Story/0,,105127,00.html
Accessed 26th February, 2013.
5. CAB 134/217.
6. Types of mine which can be deployed at sea.
http://www.minwara.org/Meetings/2009_05/
Presentations/tuespdf/MINE_AWAYThreat_Mason.pdf
Accessed 27th February, 2013.

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