To Sign or Not to Sign: The Debate in Britain on the Law of the Sea Convention

Abstract

with the competing ideologies of domestic British politics rather than for any considerations to do with British foreign policy. It came nevertheless as an unwelcome reversal of policy to much of the British administrative machine itself, as it did to much of the British marine and maritime industry. Properly to explain it requires a short disquisition on three themes: the British role in the Law of the Sea Conference; the organization of British policymaking machinery on the Law of the Sea Conference; and the political origins of Mrs Thatcher and her supporters in the cabinet. There is, to begin with, no denying that the original United Nations initiative in calling the Third Law of the Sea Conference (unclos in) was greeted in Britain with a mixture of distrust and disbelief. In 1973 the popularity of the General Assembly, of the Group of 77, and of the movement towards a North-South dialogue on matters of access to resources was, to put it mildly, at a general low both in Foreign Office circles and with the Heath government, which was to hold office until the first general election of 1974 (which barely preceded the Caracas meeting). The specific issues involved in the movement towards the recodification of so much of the existing international law of the sea had