The Sun Barely Rises on Today’s British Empire

LONDON — In St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, a meeting between a group of unemployed locals and the British governor turned angry. Someone grabbed Gov. David Smallman’s tie.

Compared with 50 years ago, when millions of Indians rioted against British rule, the recent incident ranks small. But so does what’s left of the British Empire.

When Britain returns Hong Kong, with its 6.3 million people, to China at midnight on June 30, the empire will be down to around 180,000 subjects scattered among a handful of islands that range from wealthy Bermuda to impoverished St. Helena.

The British Empire once spread around the globe, encompassing Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian subcontinent and big chunks of Africa and Southeast Asia. The holdings brought frequent wars for the British army and huge expenses for the government, along with the boast: “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

But even the tiny pieces that are left aren’t always easy to run.

In 1982, Britain went to war to drive Argentine invasion troops from the Falklands, wind-swept islands in the South Atlantic. The price of victory was a $1.1-billion annual bill to station 2,000 British soldiers to guard the islands, home to 2,200 British-descended inhabitants. Gibraltar, a 2 1/4-square-mile promontory dominated by its famous Rock at the entrance to the Mediterranean, bedevils relations between Spain and Britain.

The 30,000 Gibraltarians, like the Falklanders, insist on remaining British--a cause for resentment among Hong Kong’s ethnic Chinese, who have been denied that option.

St. Helena became a British territory to serve as a supply post for trading ships in the 17th century, but it now struggles as an isolated outpost of 6,000 inhabitants with a marginal role in the world economy. Unemployment runs 18%, and subsidies cost the British government $13 million a year.

The nearest airport is 700 miles away, on Ascension Island--an even tinier British speck in the ocean.

Corinda Essex, St. Helena’s spokeswoman in Britain, said the islanders have the worst of all worlds: only short-term permits to work in Britain, no natural resources and no international aid because their island is a colony.

Another island colony, Montserrat in the Caribbean, turned expensive for London in 1995, when a still-smoldering volcano erupted. Nearly half the island’s 12,000 inhabitants, most of them the descendants of African slaves, had to leave their homes. The capital, Plymouth, is empty, and permanent relocation on the safer northern side of the island could cost millions of dollars.

Of the remaining colonies, most are prosperous, eager to remain British and, barring occasional embarrassments, no trouble.

Governors don plumed regalia for big occasions, locally elected councils run domestic affairs, and Britain takes care of foreign affairs, defense and internal security.

The territories are:

* Anguilla, population 7,000, an eastern Caribbean island with tourism, banking and finance its main resources. It was colonized in 1650 by English settlers from nearby St. Kitts (now independent), but it opted to stay British.

* Bermuda, population 61,000, an island off the southeastern coast of the United States and a thriving center for tourism and finance. It got its first two settlers in 1609--shipwreck refugees--became a colony in 1684 and voted to remain one in a 1995 referendum.

* Cayman Islands, pop. 32,000, a Caribbean trio that boomed as an offshore banking center and tax haven--and money laundry, critics say.

* Turks and Caicos Islands, pop. 14,000, southeast of the Bahamas. Britain suspended the local administration after the chief minister was jailed in Miami in 1985 for drug-smuggling. A 1988 constitution restored self-government through the governor.

* British Virgin Islands, pop. 13,000, east of Puerto Rico. They were discovered by Columbus in 1493 and annexed in 1672.

* Tristan da Cunha, pop. 262, in the South Atlantic. Islanders were evacuated to Britain when a volcano erupted in 1961, but they couldn’t adjust to life there and moved back in 1963.

* Pitcairn Islands, pop. 53, Britain’s last Pacific colony, midway between Panama and New Zealand. The main income is from making postage stamps.

* British Indian Ocean Territory: No local population, but an important U.S. naval base with about 3,100 American and British personnel on the island of Diego Garcia.

* South Georgia and South Sandwich: uninhabited former whaling stations near Antarctica.

* British Antarctic Territory: 656,000 square miles, uninhabited except for 70 scientists on five bases.