Liam Bates

Liam Bates is part of the third generation of the family running the Principality of Sealand, the self-declared micronation on a former Second World War sea fort in the North Sea. Grandson of founder Roy Bates and son of Michael Bates, he works on Sealand’s governance and community and is a director of the family shellfish company, Fruits of the Sea.

Sealand was founded in 1967 by his grandfather Roy Bates, a wartime army officer turned pirate radio broadcaster, who occupied an abandoned anti-aircraft fort several miles off the Essex coast and declared it a principality. It has since survived a court case, an attempted armed takeover and several changes in the law of the sea, and it remains the most persistent micronation in existence.

The third generation runs it as a working concern rather than a stunt. The fort has to be maintained, staffed and paid for, and the family funds it partly through a shellfish business, Fruits of the Sea, which harvests cockles largely for the Spanish market, and partly through the sale of titles, passports and merchandise.

Liam works on Sealand’s governance and community and is the family member most engaged with the wider movement, where Sealand is less a model to copy than the longest-running demonstration of what a micro-jurisdiction actually costs to keep going.