A fine aid effort in testing circumstances
IT is not often that I spring to the defence of the establishment but the accusations that we did nothing (or far too little) to help those affected by the disaster of hurricanes Irma, Jose and Maria in the Caribbean are not comparing like with like.
The Caribbean is a vast oceanic area of about a million square miles, or roughly a thousand by a thousand, and containing many hundreds of islands, large and small. The Dutch, much praised by our critics, have charge of half of one, St Martin, which they share with France. Her other three, Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba, are up against the Mexican shore, far west and untouched.
France has little more: the other half of St Martin of course, all of St Barts, plus Guadeloupe and Martinique. The latter even has a resident French army garrison which was available to help from the first puff of wind.
British concerns spread from far south, Trinidad and Tobago, just north of the coast of South America right up to the northern Bahamas, off the coast of Florida; and from the Leewards out in the Atlantic 1,000 miles west to Grand Cayman south of Cuba.
In this huge bowl of water are hundreds of English-speaking islands, including the American Virgins. The British forces could not conceivably have been in a hundred places at once. There have been reports of French and US forces refusing to help British tourists in despair on their islands. They should be ashamed of themselves. They were happy to take British tourists’ money to enrich their economies before the hurricanes struck.
The crews of RFA Mounts Bay and HMS Ocean battled through mountainous seas to bring aid to those they could reach and the RAF crews who helped flew through filthy conditions. Their efforts were immense.
I have said it before but let me do it again. We should create a Natural Disaster Command, run by all three Armed Forces, paid for out of our foreign aid budget and available to do our bit at an hour’s notice when tragedy strikes anywhere in the world.