Land reform call from the Falklands

Press, 26 October 1982, Page 9

Land reform call from the Falklands

NZPA-Reuter ' Port Stanley The elected council of the Falkland Islands will ask Britain to end the absentee capitalism which has dominated the remote colony's backward economy for more than a century, a leading council member said yesterday. John Cheek, who has spoken for the Falklands at the United Nations, said that most of the council was ready to support a radical land reform proposed last month by a Governmentappointed study group under Lord Shackleton. The Shackleton Report was revised in the aftermath of the Falklands war earlier this year, when the islands were seized by Argentina and recaptured by a British task force. The report said that the

island economy faced prolonged decline and collapse unless the Government bought out the British-based companies which own most of the Falklands sheep farms and turned the land into smaller, owner-run homesteads. Support for the proposal from the islanders may embarrass the Conservative Government of Mrs Margaret Thatcher, which is backed by most of Britain's business community and strongly opposes most forms of State interference in the economy. Lord Shackleton, who belongs to Britain's opposition Labour Party, was asked to make his report because he had headed a detailed survey of the island economy in 1976.