When Argentina's players unfurled a banner reading "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" after their World Cup semifinal victory over England this week, the British state required no time for reflection. Within a day, Downing Street had urged FIFA to investigate, ministers had denounced the gesture, and the Prime Minister's spokesperson had delivered the line that "the World Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are". Beneath the quip sat the position London has held for four decades: that the future of the islands rests on the right of the islanders to self-determination, a right on which Britain's commitment “will never waver”. It went to war on that principle in 1982, at the cost of more than nine hundred lives, and it invokes the principle still, whenever the question is raised.
Britain is not wrong to invoke it. Self-determination is a foundational principle of international law, holding that peoples have the right to freely determine their political status and pursue their own economic, social and cultural development. When some 3,600 islanders voted in a 2013 referendum, with all but three ballots cast in favour of remaining British, London declared the question settled by the only voice that mattered - theirs. On its own terms, the argument is coherent. A people consulted, a verdict delivered, a status affirmed. This, Britain says, is how the destiny of a homeland is properly decided.
Eelam Tamils have been making precisely this argument for more than half a century. The Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976 asserted the right of the Tamil nation to self-determination, and at the general election the following year the Tamil people of the North-East delivered an overwhelming democratic mandate for it, in numbers no less emphatic than any South Atlantic referendum. In the decades since, Tamils have invoked the principle in international conferences, in marches, and in the halls of the United Nations. They have petitioned, litigated, testified and mobilised. Beyond the armed struggle, they have pursued their claim through every peaceful avenue the international order provides, and they continue to do so, from Geneva to Westminster itself, where British Tamil constituents press the case on the very government that professes the principle so fluently.
No referendum has ever been permitted in the Tamil homeland. The democratic mandate of 1977 was answered with pogroms, and the assertion of the right itself was met with decades of war, occupation and genocide. The British state, far from championing the Tamil claim, helped to construct the problem. After all, it was Britain that bequeathed the island a unitary state in 1948, dismissing Tamil appeals for constitutional protection, and it is Britain that has spent the years since 2009 urging Eelam Tamils to seek their future within the very structure that was built to subordinate them. The right of the Tamil people to self-determination remains unrecognised, not because the principle does not apply, but because no powerful state has found it convenient to apply it.
Therein lies the lesson of this week. Self-determination, as practised by the world's most powerful governments, is not a principle but an instrument. It is brandished when interests align, for 3,600 islanders in the South Atlantic, and buried where they do not, for millions of Tamils in the North-East and displaced around the world. Kosovo could be recognised, South Sudan midwifed into existence, East Timor shepherded to a referendum, because in each case global politics permitted it. Yet, the Tamil claim, no weaker in law and considerably older than some, is refused a hearing. Britain will despatch a naval task force eight thousand miles to defend the principle. But it remains silent when Tamils are its claimants.
There is a particular irony in the timing, for the man who will restate Britain's Falklands doctrine as Prime Minister next week has built his entire politics on the principle at stake.
Andy Burnham's pledge to "rewire" Britain rests on a conviction that power belongs closer to the people it governs, and that those who live in a place are best placed to decide its future. Earlier today, as he took up the Labour Party leadership, he pledged to “take power back from Westminster and Whitehall”. His government will likely continue to defend the islanders' right to determine their own status without hesitation. But a Prime Minister who holds that Manchester should not be ruled from Westminster, and that the Falklands must not be ruled from Buenos Aires, will find it difficult to explain why the Tamil North-East alone must be ruled from Colombo. The principle he carries into Downing Street does not come with a map of exemptions.
Tamils do not begrudge the Falkland islanders their right. The islanders were asked what future they wanted, and their answer was respected. That is all the Tamil nation has ever demanded. If the principle Britain proclaims is truly a principle, it does not dissolve upon crossing the Indian Ocean. Burnham now has the chance, and the stated convictions, to change that.