Norma Edwards - Two Decades on Council

Jenny Cockwell
October 2005

After almost two decades' service, Norma Edwards has resigned from Legislative Council and is adamant she won't be standing again. Here she recounts her early days on Council, representing Stanley for two years, then Camp.

Born and raised in the Falklands, Norma Edwards left the Islands at the age of 18 to become a nurse. She qualified and worked in a variety of fields, including midwifery and theatre nursing and it was while she was doing the latter in Swindon that she met her future husband Roger, who was based at Royal Air Naval station, Portland. They married when Norma was 29.

Three years later, Norma was able to head home for the first time since she left, when Roger took up a tour on HMS Endurance. Norma and their two and a half year old daughter, Emma, lived in Stanley during this time. After two years, the family returned to Britain, and Roger and Norma's second daughter Rebecca was born there in 1975.

Norma was living in Dorset when Argentine forces invaded the Falklands in 1982. Roger was called up and left Britain the day after the invasion, seconded to the Special Forces, where his knowledge gained from the Endurance work was valuable.

Norma explained, "On the way south they planned the retaking of South Georgia which he was involved in with the Navy. After that the SAS asked him to join them; luckily in both cases he had quite a good knowledge of South Georgia and also where they wanted to go next which was Pebble Island."

Being stuck in Dorset during the war, Norma said, was "awful". "I hated the not knowing most of all. All that was coming out before the Task Force arrived was Argentine propaganda." Being the only Falkland Islander in the area, she was sought out by the press whom she initially refused to speak to. However, this changed when she saw Tony Benn on the television condemning the Task Force.

"That made me absolutely furious. He'd never shown any interest in the Falklands before and was just using us as political capital. It made me particularly angry because at that time the ships were being bombed in San Carlos. I thought his words were in very bad taste." The local newspaper contacted Norma for an interview and she agreed. "I used it to tell them what I thought of Tony Wedgewood Benn."

In her years as councillor, Norma never had the chance to personally confront Mr Benn about his stance in 1982. "He never ever showed any interest in the Falklands, only at that particular time to condemn everything out of hand."

Her time in Dorset also presented Norma with her first taste of politics: "There was an old primeval wood - Hook Wood - that belonged to the forestry commission and was being taken over by a furniture maker called John Makepeace. The locals were up in arms so I suggested we call a public meeting to see how we could try and stop it. So we called the meeting and we got people from all over the place. There was a lot of public interest - it even got into Private Eye."

Norma said that campaign allowed her to see, "that if your average Joe wasn't getting a fair deal, I should try to help."

Back Home

The Edwards family returned to the Falklands for good in 1983, when Roger was appointed to the British Forces Headquarters in Stanley. As someone with "a foot in both camps", Norma took an active role in liaising between the military and civilians, particularly helping integrate young soldiers and matelots into the local community.

At the time, Norma was approached by the hospital, which was short of nurses, and asked to work there. "I said yes, provided they pay me according to my qualifications, not my place of birth, knowing full well that they would say they couldn't do that.

"In those days they would not employ professional Falkland Islanders on equal terms, you had to go on local rates of pay, you wouldn't be paid what you would elsewhere in the world. So I said it was the principle I was complaining about and I would come and work for nothing before their new nurses arrived. I said I wouldn't sign a contract with government because I felt the way they treated local professionals was appalling."

This was one of the main issues which prompted Norma to first stand for election in 1985. "I really felt that there was work to be done on government locally, particularly the issue of inequality of pay for locals - which is why now FIGAS pilots are paid the same as they would be paid anywhere else in the world.

"I didn't disagree with contractors being paid more - because the very reason you become a contractor is for the perks - and I didn't think that this would cause us not to need contract workers. I just felt if there was a local around with the qualifications, they should have been more encouraged to take up the job. And I still do."

To this day, Norma remains frustrated by the level of experience Falkland Islanders are told they need before they return home to take up jobs: "They are told they need a hundred years experience, it seems to me.

"I understand that if you're going to take a highly professional job - like a doctor or a lawyer - of course you have to have experience before you step into a responsible position, especially in a place like this where you don't have anyone else to call upon. However, there are other professional people - such as teachers and nurses - who I don't believe should need vast amounts of experience. Those people can turn to others for help and advice on the job."

Norma believes valuable local workers are being lost because of the need for experience: "Some of these people never come back and if they do come back they find someone that hasn't been away has stepped into the job that they want - and that to me seems a little bit unfair."

Transhipment

Another issue Norma was keen to tackle early in her council career was the way fishing vessels from all over the world transhipped in Berkeley Sound for no charge.

"At that time there were about 800 vessels fishing in our waters at any one time. There were no controls - they were fishing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - and I thought this wasn't right and I knew the council of the day for some time had been after some kind of fishery control."

One of the first things she did once elected was to visit the Attorney General to ask him what fishing laws existed. "He showed me the laws. He opened a room which the Argentines had been through in the war, and it was a heap. He said he didn't know of any fishing laws - apart from the inshore fishing ordinances - but that there could be some.

"So I went through this pile of stuff whenever I had a spare minute and he helped me when he could. One day we turned up a law which said there shall be no transhipment of fish within the three mile limit, which I think was passed in the 1960s." Norma took this matter to Legislative Council to have the law enacted, allowing transhipment fees to be charged.

"So in 1985-6 that brought about three million pounds into the coffers. Mind you, by 1987 we had got the fishery zone up and running and that, of course, changed things completely. My little transhipment thing, although it was handy at the time, didn't really mean a lot."

Committees

Over the years, Norma has served on all the government's committees - "except the Secretariat Committee" - and she cites housing as one of her most challenging portfolios. "We didn't have any social services in those days - just Alice Etheridge who was the social worker. I was on the housing committee and we dealt with a lot of social problems because there wasn't anywhere else for them to go. I'd have crying women on my doorstep."

With this in mind, it is perhaps surprising to learn the increase in social welfare facilities led Norma to resign from another of her long-service committees, Health and Medical Services. "I do think that when you go down the road of an organised social welfare system, which is what they're aiming at now, it perpetuates the problem. Maybe the problems are there hidden and once you get things organised, that brings them out and you find you've got more problems than you ever knew you had."

She continued, "It was thought that we needed Social Welfare, and probably we did; my worry - and the reason why I resigned from the Health Committee - was that we're trying to ape the National Health System. I don't think that's what we need or want in the Falklands because it's a failed system. We want our own system; we don't want to slavishly follow everything the National Health has failed to do."

Another pet issue for Norma is the preservation of Falklands history: "It means a lot to me - if you don't know where you've been, you don't know where you're going. I think you owe it to your ancestors to look after it. We haven't got anything ancient but we have got some nice little cottages and stone corrals and we should look after what we have got."

Norma said this is why she "made a fuss" when a proposal was made to remove the chimneys at Government House. "This century won't appreciate it at all but in a couple of centuries time they'll think, thank God for that silly old cow."

Move to Camp

After two years as a Stanley councillor, Norma resigned when she and Roger decided to buy a farm at Fox Bay West: "We didn't have telephones in those days, everything was done over the RT (radio telephone), and I didn't feel I could do my job properly, because of all the social problems that came with the housing committee."

Norma's final act as a Stanley councillor in 1987 was to agree to the fisheries regime, which she described as a "high point" in her time on council. She signed in somewhat amusing circumstances. She recalled: "I was milking a cow and Roger came running down the hill saying I needed to get on a flight to town because the Foreign Office team was down to sign the fisheries bill; they had a quick turnaround and were leaving that evening.

"After milking the cow, I got Roger to look in my hair because I thought the bloody cow had given me lice - and she had. So I got Roger to sprinkle animal louse powder in my hair and I got on the plane. I thought I'd be all right and have time to sort myself out. I didn't think they'd take me straight to Government House. But they did, they took me straight there, by which time I had forgotten about the powder.

"A full council was called and they were waiting for me to get in to start this meeting. I sat down and John Cheek said to me: 'Norma, have you gone grey?' and I said, 'Oh no, it's louse powder.' Then the chaps from the Foreign Office came in and started the meeting. I got some funny looks but I didn't get a chance to explain because they were in a rush. I guess you could say that was a high point of my time on council!"

Camp Councillor

Norma stood for election again in 1989, this time for Camp; that same year, the wool price crashed. She first became concerned about the future of the wool market when she attended a Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in Zimbabwe and met Australian politicians who also happened to be sheep farmers.

"I asked if they thought the crash in the wool market was going to last and they said, 'yes, because we've got four million tonnes of wool stockpiled and we can't release that on to the market in one fell swoop.' I asked them how long they thought it would last and they said five years; in fact it has lasted longer."

Upon her return home Norma asked the Governor to call a special meeting of Executive Council to discuss assistance in Camp. She explained, "I wanted the Government to buy the wool in and sell it on, paying the farmers the same amount of money they'd had for the previous year's wool clip. They could have coped with that. Then government had a choice of stockpiling the wool until prices rose then selling at a profit for the taxpayer or selling it at a loss.

"Either way, it would have been cheaper for them than the way they did it - which was, I thought, very unfair because it meant they paid on a per kilo basis. Those who had more wool got the most money and those with the least amount of wool got the least amount of money. It should have been the other way around."

Norma became a Camp councillor soon after the large farms - mainly owned by absentee landlords - were subdivided and sold off to Falkland Islanders. With hindsight, she said, it is easy now to see the social problems subdivision causes.

"At the time everybody was eager about it. It was the first time Falkland Islanders were actually allowed to buy a bit of their land, so of course people wanted to do that. I just feel desperately sorry for them, particularly as most had gone down this road with nothing more than last week's pay packet in their pockets."

So how does Norma see the future of Camp? "That's a very difficult question. I think to some extent you'll find the more successful farms will buy up the smaller farms and you'll end up with bigger farms - maybe not as big as the great ranches that existed before sub-division.

"I can remember arguing, when we bought the farm, I wouldn't touch anything with less than 5,000 sheep. Now I would say 5,000 isn't enough, you need 8,000, possibly 10,000. But then of course with 10,000 you're looking at needing more staff."

She says the West is likely to attract "weekend farmers" in future: "No one is going to slog away producing wool for nothing. So there will probably be people who begin to have farms for weekend retreats and find some other job during the week. I'm hoping that if the West does open up, then some businesses will move out there, which would make it a whole lot better."

She still holds out hope for wool: "Yes, farmers are producing lamb and beef, however there is only a certain amount of beef you can consume. Next door is the biggest beef producer in the world and dear old New Zealand has got the lamb market sewn up so what we an ease into is going to be very small - it's not going to replace the heydays of wool.

"I hope one day wool will come back - I'm sure it will as it's all swings and roundabouts - but it's tough in the meantime." Norma holds this hope, in particular for young families in Camp who, she says, do not know if they can last out much longer. "That is really said - they've weathered out so many storms." She added, "We always take a lot of stick for the subsistence we've had; it hasn't been that much, not in real terms."

Norma is keen for Camp roads to be well maintained, no matter how bad times get for the Islands' economy. She said, "If the roads weren't maintained, that would be a tremendous waste of money." She said maintenance could be carried out by farmers out of the busy season.

"It's an ideal opportunity for farmers to earn a bit of money. Most of them have got HGV licences but they never get a look in on the roads programme because it happens during the summer months. I can't see any reason at all why the farming community couldn't be employed at the beginning and end of the season, to do maintenance work around and about the place and be paid accordingly, which would bring a little bit of money in to their pockets and keep the roads in a good state."

She added, "I used to campaign for a second road gang on the West. What I really wanted was a flexible gang with a foreman, who worked out of normal government hours. That's what I liked about the Lee Brothers' road. That's how they worked and it's the best road in the Islands."

Argentina

Norma Edwards has always had a hard-line approach towards Argentina - "I just don't trust them" - and holds the opinion that talks with the South American country should only progress once they drop their claim to the Falkland Islands.

"For our ancestors this must have been a bloody awful place to settle and just to roll over because Argentine keeps wittering on at us is not enough reason to back down on our principles. They don't have any real claim to the Islands; just because they say they want us doesn't mean they can have us." She believes problems with Argentina will "go on and on".

"My big worry is, I don't know what kind of Falkland Islands history they are teaching here and how much of the recent history they're teaching the kids. The up and coming generation will probably have a completely different view to me and maybe in a hundred years time we'll all be Argentine, which would be a great pity, I think, unless they improve their ways. It's not the Argentine people that I dislike, it's their crappy governments. They don't seem to improve as time goes on."

Norma was unhappy with the signing of the 1999 Joint Statement between Britain and Argentina; it was signed during the Carlos Menem administration, and led by his Foreign Minister, Guido Di Tella. "It was the way it was handled that I disliked an awful lot. I didn't think it was necessary. I didn't think there was anything in it for us."

Norma was present at meetings in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at the beginning of June 1999. "By the middle of the next month the agreement was signed. I didn't think they had done the necessary consultation with the people of the Islands. I know that Di Tella would have been quite satisfied if he could have had an agreement that allowed Argentines to come off cruise ships. That's all he wanted - he didn't want anything else added.

"Really what he was laying on the table was a form of condominium so I went home thinking no one in their right minds was going to accept it. The next thing I heard was we were going to sign an agreement. I had been abroad to meetings but I knew from what people were saying to me that they hadn't agreed with what the councillors were saying. But the councillors were doing their own thing anyway."

Just days before the signing of the Agreement, approximately 300 people gathered to protest against the negotiations with Argentina. Norma said she was blamed for organising the demonstrations but, "I didn't honestly know that they'd happened. I certainly did know that people were not happy though."

The Agreement was signed by Dr Di Tella and the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, on July 14, 1999, and witnessed by Councillors Sharon Halford and Mike Summers on behalf of the Falkland Islands Government.

Included in the Joint Statement were:-

" An end to the ban on access by Argentine citizens to the Falkland Islands introduced in 1982
" The securing of Lan Chile flights between the Falklands and South America (including two stops per month in Rio Gallegos in Argentina)
" An agreement by the Argentine government to look at toponymy (ie. place names) in the Falkland Islands
" An agreement to enhance co-operation on conservation of fish stocks, and, as a priority, to agree to a co-ordinated programme of practical measures on poaching, and
" Permission from the Falkland Islands for the erection of a memorial in the Argentine cemetery at Darwin.

At a public meeting held the week after the signing, Norma spoke out against the Agreement. She said, "We rushed into this agreement. You repent at your leisure. Mr Cook said you must take this window of opportunity - I would say whose window of opportunity - ours or the Argentines?"

Looking back at July 1999, Norma said, this was a "bad time" in her life and a "low point" in her council career. "I didn't like it at all - the bad feeling - and the way it was dealt with and handled. It upset the population which upset me." Now, however, she is philosophical: "Some you win and some you lose. In politics it's a democracy and you go along with the democratic decision, whether you agree with it or not."

At the time she decided not to stand for election again, "… because I didn't like the way it was handled - it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn't feel I could trust some of my fellow councillors of the day." However, "I had loads of people nag me (to stand again) so I said I'd give it another four years, which I have done."

Di Tella

Of Dr Di Tella, Norma said, "He was a very charming man but I didn't trust him. He used to say to me, 'Ah Norma, one day I will change your mind,' and I used to say, 'Over my dead body you will.' But the poor old chap, he died first and I still haven't changed my mind."

Norma was also concerned about a secondary agreement signed after the Joint Statement, allowing small private flights to the Islands. Of this she said, "It just means you're opening it up to private planes and they'll use it as an extension of their aeroclub in Buenos Aires."

She continued, "Originally, the people that gave us the most problems were the ones who came in on private planes. One landed on the road to Eliza Cove, another landed on the racecourse and planted a flag - they were on private planes. And now we're telling them, 'yes you can come in'."

Despite difficulties with Argentina, Norma is confident in the Falklands' political future. "If we're strong enough to stand by our commitments and our beliefs, I can't see the future being anything but rosy - whether we get oil or we don't. I still feel that Argentina, if they had any sense at all, would be pleased to have a Western presence on their doorstep, because it's a stable government, it's a stable country and they've got good relations with Britain - what the hell do they want the Falklands for?"

So, if the signing of the 199 Agreement was a low point, what were the highs?

"The establishment of the Falklands fishery of course," Norma said, "plus the inauguration of the Dependent Territories Conference." This, she explained, came about as a result of a conversation with Joe Bossano, who was Chief Minister of Gibraltar at the time. "We decided to work on our various governments to set up a body of Dependent Territories to meet and discuss problems or things that pertained to us where we could help each other out."

It was in this form that Robin Cook chose to announce the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's new Together in Partnership plan for the newly-renamed Overseas Territories. Of the Overseas Territories Consultative Council (as the conference became known), Norma said, "I think it has been a very useful thing. It's not serving the same purpose as old Joe and I thought it might as it is being run by the Foreign Office - and the aim originally was to have something independent of the FCO, with an invited FCO presence - but it works very well. It's good for us and the other Ots."

'A Privilege'

Overall, Norma said, it has been "a great privilege" to be involved in the government of the Falklands. "Not just because of the people - and I think the people of the Falklands are some of the best in the world - but also because of all the great changes there have been, a whole new way of life. And to be even a tiny part of shaping that kind of future, not many people, even in big governments, get that kind of opportunity."

She added, "I hope that when I'm dead and gone, there haven't been too many bad things I've done and I haven't left too much of a mess behind me."

And does she have any words of advice for new councillors? "Enjoy it. You will meet so many people that you would never get to meet normally. You get the great and the good from all around the world coming to get a look at us."

She added, "Keep your enthusiasm going as long as you can - it's difficult. You come in all fired up, you know what you want to change, you know what you want to do and what should happen, then you come up against a stone wall. Actually it's like banging your head against a pillow. It can take a long time to make a difference - so don't give up."

Jenny Cockwell is Editor of the Penguin News

First published in the Penguin News on 14 and 21 October 2005 and reproduced by kind permission of the Editor

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