Royal Navy turf Spaniards out of Gibraltarian waters

The Royal Gibraltar Police and a Royal Navy ship had to evict a number of Spanish fishing boats and police cruisers from Gibraltarian waters today.

The Spaniards are still trying to bully the people of Gibraltar into submission over Spain's spurious claims to Gibraltar with unacceptable delays at border crossings and now incursions into Gibraltarian waters.

Today's stand-off was down to Spanish fishermen illegally fishing off Gibraltar and the Spanish police boats that went along to "protect" them.  Spain disputes the UK's claim to waters up to 3 miles off the coast of Gibraltar and fishermen and the Spanish police have made numerous incursions into Gibraltar's territorial waters.

The situation has been confused somewhat by the EU's refusal to condemn Spain's bullying of Gibraltarians and in allowing Spain to claim jurisdiction over all Gibraltarian waters outside the harbour under EU environmental protection laws.

When all this kicked off in the latter half of 2009, Nigel Farage told us that UKIP was committed to Gibraltar's right to self-determination and quite unequivocally said that Spain needs to stick to what it has previously agreed on the rights of Gibraltarians.  The Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, described Spain's actions as an "obviously carefully premeditated challenge to our indisputable sovereignty, jurisdiction and control of British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and our airspace".

What is the British government's response to this act of war?  The EU Minister, David Lidington, was going to phone the Gibraltarian First Minister today and reassure him of the British government's position and Wee Willy Vague will tell his Spanish counterpart that Gibraltar is ours so stop being so mean.  Scary stuff.  Like being menaced by a hamster.

It's time we had a UKIP Gibraltar.  They vote in EU elections as part of the south west of England and as the only party that opposes the EU which causes so many of Gibraltar's problems, UKIP should be able to establish itself quite effectively as a political force on the rock.

Royal Navy sees off Spaniards again

The Royal Navy saw off an armed Spanish boat from Gibraltarian waters on Saturday.

Spain has been encroaching on Gibraltar's territorial waters far too often of late, even going as far as registering Gibraltar's waters as a Spanish environmental protection zone which the European Empire were more than happy to allow them to do and the British government were stupidly negligent enough to allow them to do.

Last week a Royal Navy warship forced a Spanish paramilitary police launch out of Gibraltarian waters and on Saturday, another warship was dispatched to remove another Spanish boat that had been given instructions by the Spanish government to board fishing boats in Gibraltar's waters and carry out inspections.

Spain thinks it has the right to control Gibraltar's waters because the European Empire has allowed it to register the sea around Gibraltar as Spanish under EU environmental legislation. The British and Gibraltar governments both failed to notice so Spain was given responsibility for the environment in Gibraltarian territorial waters.

The facts around Gibraltar are quite simple - under the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain ceded Gibraltar to the UK in 1713 and under international law, the British government can claim up to 12 miles of sea from the Gibraltar coast. As it happens, the British government have claimed only 3 miles but the Spanish claim that Gibraltar has no territorial waters outside of the Port of Gibraltar.

Spain's actions are a deliberate provocation and the British government needs to buck its ideas up where Gibraltar is concerned. Spain's use of the European Empire as a tool in its illegitimate claim to Gibraltar and the European Empire's willingness to support Spain's campaign speaks volumes. We are in a political union with a country that is committing acts of war against us, aided and abetted by the collective will of that same political union.

Nigel Farage told Bloggers4UKIP:

UKIP fully supports the Gibraltarian right to self-determination. As of course we fully support the UK's right to such self-determination.

This means of course a rigorous adherence to the sovereignty and rights that Spain has already agreed with both Gibraltar and the UK. Which is what the Royal Navy was doing, chasing off Spanish ships from Gibraltar waters.

If only the government in Westminster were as assiduous in protecting our rights from their encroachment by Brussels.

UKIP played a key part in resisting the British government's plan to share sovereignty of Gibraltar with Spain, in defiance of the express wishes of the people of Gibraltar who voted in a referendum in 2002 to remain a British Overseas Territory and further re-iterated by a referendum on a new constitution that clearly set out Gibraltar's status in 2006.

Gibraltarians have the chance to vote for a party on June 4th that will fight for Gibraltar's right to self-determination and to free the territory from the treacherous European union that the British government has signed us all up to against our wishes. The only party that will protect Gibraltar's interests - and the interests of the UK as a whole - in the face of European imperialism is UKIP.

Is this the end of the Royal Navy asks Bloom ?

In the light of Operation Atalanta, the EU naval mission to the Horn of Africa designed to fight piracy, Godfrey Bloom UKIP MEP has called for clarity about the chain of command.

Mr Bloom says, "As with the real projection of naval force this week off the African coast no one, including very senior naval and military officers seem to know where the chair of command extends beyond Northwood, formerly NATO regional command centre and now the HQ of the EU operations".

He continued "So where does the buck stop? Under whose ultimate control is the naval task force? It is not under the NATO structure, nor presumably the Ministry of Defence and subsequently the cabinet and parliament?

This time it is just piracy. However what if there is an escalation in Iranian waters. Or other potentially hostile state power. I think we should be told. To that end I have asked a series of question of the Council of Ministers for clarification".

Godfrey Bloom, is a graduate of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, Military historian, an ex soldier returned recently of Arkitiri, Cyprus where a major logistics exercise was being carried out and questioned a range of senior British military figures about their new, EU chain of command.