SPEAKING OF Thatch, older
readers will remember that her finest hour came when she went to war to
save the sheep, penguins and democracy of the Falkland Islands from the
Argies. The sheep are flourishing, I'm happy to say, but the rockhoppers
and local freedoms are being wiped out.
The forthcoming issue of Index on Censorship tells the story of Mike
Bingham who left North Wales to become a wildlife officer for the
government-backed Falklands Conservation in 1993. He did a penguin census
(don't ask me how) and found the number of rockhoppers had fallen from
three million to 300,000 pairs. He checked carefully. There wasn't a
pandemic slaughtering penguins across the South Atlantic.
Elsewhere, they were having a great time going for dips and eating lots
of fish. The slaughter was confined to the Falklands. Oil and fishing
industries were eating up the penguins' habitat and their fish.
Bryant was told not to publish his findings. He refused and was fired
by a board stuffed with local politicians and the directors of the oil and
fishing companies.
Undeterred, Bingham carried on penguin counting. The campaign against
him turned vicious. A theft charge was made by Falklands Conservation. The
Falkland Islands government used it to justify denying him a resident's
permit. The allegation was dropped, but the government still refused to
give him a permit. Customs officers joined the persecution and produced a
skin flick which he had allegedly ordered from Britain.
The video seemed to prove the saintly Bingham was a pervert until the
baffled twitcher investigated and discovered it had been sent from a
fictitious address. This year the British authorities tried again. A
triumphant Customs officer said he would be tried and deported for
deceiving Falklands Conservation into believing he was honest when he had
burglary convictions in the UK.
Bingham's fingerprints were sent to Interpol where an angry clerk said
he had already told the Falklands plod twice that the break-ins had been
the work of another Michael Bingham, two years older than Mike and with a
different middle name.
Bingham is a tough man and refuses to flee and leave the 'cosy' cartel
that runs the island 'unchallenged'. He has to put up with malicious phone
calls to his wife and son, an unexplained burglary and an attempt by
persons unknown to sabotage his car. Every Briton can be proud that their
young men did not die in vain.
