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The following sad story relates how as late as 1967 our Colonial government was still treating the descendants of the slave trade no better than they had treated their ancestors 132 years previously. An inconvenient truth that they even existed was how they were considered.

There were defence issues associated with this story which are not under debate here,

but the manner in which the British Colonial government handled it is

Having instigated the slave trade as far as UK is concerned they continue to this day to inflict

misery on the descendants of those original slaves without charity or conscience.

Look no further than last year and the Empire Windrush Scandal that brought about the resignation of the Home Secretary! 

Before we move on to the 1967 incident read about last year’s Empire Windrush events as reported in Wikipedia:-

The Windrush scandal is a 2018 British political scandal concerning people who were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and, in at least 83 cases,[1][2][3] wrongly deported from the UK by the Home Office. Many of those affected had been born British subjects and had arrived in the UK before 1973, particularly from Caribbean countries as members of the "Windrush generation"[4] (so named after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought one of the first groups of West Indian migrants to the UK in 1948).[5] 

As well as those who were wrongly deported, an unknown number were wrongly detained, lost their jobs or homes, or were denied benefits or medical care to which they were entitled.[3] A number of long-term UK residents were wrongly refused re-entry to the UK, and a larger number were threatened with immediate deportation by the Home Office. 

Linked by commentators to the "hostile environment policy" instituted by Theresa May during her time as Home Secretary,[6][7][8] the scandal led to the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary in April 2018, and the appointment of Sajid Javid as her successor.[9] The scandal also prompted a wider debate about British immigration policy and Home Office practice. 

The British government has since issued an apology concerning the matter but it reflects an ingrained attitude amongst the administration that I thought had long gone but obviously still exists beneath the surface.

Continuing on with the 1967 story which refers to the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean the remnants of Britain once vast empire and a group of islands once part of the many islands in the Indian ocean that formed part of that Empire. Administratively Britain had grouped them with the bigger islands of Mauritius which was also part of the empire although they lie some 1,341 miles away.

Going back some hundreds of years islands such as Mauritius had been uninhabited until the Europeans such as the British, Dutch and French developed their trade with India which in those days before the Suez canal was by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Mauritius was on that route and ships would stop to pick up water. The Dutch (Dutch East India Company) first attempted colonisation of the island and when they gave up the French took over partly due to strategic reasons as both Britain and France sought influence in India. During the Napoleonic wars sea battles were fought between Britain and France and they sought to capture each others merchant ships bringing high value goods home from India.

However the straw that broke the proverbial camels back was not the on going animosity between Britain and France but pirates from the Caribbean.

Pirates in the Caribbean had long been the scourge of Britain and the islands of the West Indies until about 1730 when the Royal Navy had all but eliminated their actions. The pirates then moved on to easier pickings and that of the East Indiamen homeward bound to Britain from India. They established themselves bases on the island of Mauritius. The British East India company and other merchants petitioned parliament to act to protect their trade as the French who occupied the island were doing little to eliminate this scourge. The Royal Navy then attacked the islands and captured it from the French giving them the option of remaining there under the rules of the British government with a certain amount of autonomy or returning to France.

What is the point of this story? It explains how Britain came to possess islands in the Indian Ocean that she had no need of as her principle trade was that of India which takes us back to Mauritius and the Chagos islands.

About 1967 the British Colonial era was virtually at an end and most of its colonies had been granted independence Mauritius being one of the last few to become independent. About this time the USA was involved in global conflicts and needed a secure base to operate from in the Indian Ocean that would not be subject to the whims of local politics and saw the Chagos islands as the ideal location. They approached Britain who had yet to grant Mauritius independence who said “no problem” we will give you a 50 year lease”. The legal eagles at the Colonial office then set to work as there were a few problems to resolve before this could happen. They needed to detach the Chagos islands from Mauritius first as once they had granted it independence they would have no more jurisdiction over the islands. This was done and the Chagos islands were designated British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The second problem was a little more tricky and that was how to get rid of the 2000 inhabitants of the islands and not fall foul of any international treaties that existed at the time. So a plot was hatched to make them leave by making it difficult for them to stay. As they say “one volunteer is worth ten pressed men”. This was achieved by methods which would make Dick Dastardly look like a saint. From this point I will let information from Wikipedia and the UN take over.

The Chagos Archipelago was uninhabited when first visited by European explorers, and remained that way until the French successfully established a small colony on the island of Diego Garcia, composed of 50–60 men and "a complement of slaves". The slaves came from what are now Mozambique and Madagascar via Mauritius.[9] Thus, the original Chagossians were a mixture of the Bantu and Austronesian peoples.

The French surrendered Mauritius and its dependencies (including the Chagos) to the UK in the 1814 Treaty of Paris, and the British immediately outlawed the slave trade. However, nothing precluded the transport of slaves within the colony, and so the ancestors of the Chagossians were routinely shipped from Mauritius to Rodrigues to the Chagos to the Seychelles, and elsewhere.[10] In addition, from 1820–1840, the atoll of Diego Garcia in the Chagos became the staging post for slave ships trading between Sumatra, the Seychelles, and the French island of Bourbon, adding a population of Malay slaves into the Chagos gene pool.

The government is therefore often[quantify] accused of deciding to clear all the islanders by denying they ever belonged on Diego Garcia in the first place and then removing them. This was to be done by issuing an ordinance that the island be cleared of all non-inhabitants. The legal obligation to announce the decision was fulfilled by publishing the notice in a small-circulation gazette not generally read outside of FCO staff.

Starting in March 1969, Chagossians visiting Mauritius found that they were no longer allowed to board the steamer home. They were told their contracts to work on Diego Garcia had expired. This left them homeless, jobless and without means of support. It also prevented word from reaching the rest of the Diego Garcia population. Relatives who travelled to Mauritius to seek their missing family members also found themselves unable to return.

Another action taken during the forced depopulation was to massacre the residents' pets. As recorded by John Pilger:

Sir Bruce Greatbatch, KCVO, CMG, MBE, governor of the Seychelles, ordered all the dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. More than 1000 pets were gassed with exhaust fumes. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked", Lisette Talatte, in her 60s, told me, "and when their dogs were taken away in front of them our children screamed and cried". Sir Bruce had been given responsibility for what the US called "cleansing" and "sanitising" the islands; and the killing of the pets was taken by the islanders as a warning.[45]

The following is part of an article written on the subject by the Historian, author and journalist Mark Curtis:-

The Chagossians were removed from Diego Garcia by 1971 and from the outlying islands of Salomen and Peros Banhos by 1973. The secret files show that the US wanted Diego Garcia to be cleared “to reduce to a minimum the possibilities of trouble between their forces and any ‘natives'”. This removal of the population “was made virtually a condition of the agreement when we negotiated it in 1965”, in the words of one British official. Foreign Office officials recognised that they were open to “charges of dishonesty” and needed to “minimise adverse reaction” to US plans to establish the base. In secret, they referred to plans to “cook the books” and “old fashioned” concerns about “whopping fibs”.

The Chagossians were described by a Foreign Office official in a secret file: “unfortunately along with birds go some few Tarzans or man Fridays whose origins are obscure”. Another official wrote, referring to a UN body on women’s issues: “There will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee (the status of women committee does not cover the rights of birds)”. According to the Foreign Office, “these people have little aptitude for anything other than growing coconuts”. The Governor of the Seychelles noted that it was “important to remember what type of people” the islanders are: “extremely unsophisticated, illiterate, untrainable and unsuitable for any work other than the simplest labour tasks of a copra plantation”.

Contrary to the racist indifference of British planners, the Chagossians had constructed a well-functioning society on the islands by the mid-1960s. They earned their living by fishing, and rearing their own vegetables and poultry. Copra industry had been developed. The society was matriarchal, with Illois women having the major say over the bringing up of the children. The main religion was Roman Catholic and by the first world war the Illois had developed a distinct culture and identity together with a specific variation of the Creole language. There was a small hospital and a school. Life on the Chagos islands was certainly hard, but also settled. By the 1960s the community was enjoying a period of prosperity with the copra industry thriving as never before. The islanders were also exporting guano, used for phosphate, and there was talk of developing the tourist industry.

Then British foreign policy intervened. One of the victims recalled: “We were assembled in front of the manager’s house and informed that we could no longer stay on the island because the Americans were coming for good. We didn’t want to go. We were born here. So were our fathers and forefathers who were buried in that land”.

Britain expelled the islanders to Mauritius without any workable resettlement scheme, gave them a tiny amount of compensation and later offered more on condition that the islanders renounced their rights ever to return home. Most were given little time to pack their possessions and some were allowed to take with them only a minimum of personal belongings packed into a small crate. They were also deceived into believing what awaited them. Olivier Bancoult said that the islanders “had been told they would have a house, a portion of land, animals and a sum of money, but when they arrived [in Mauritius] nothing had been done”. Britain also deliberately closed down the copra plantations to increase the pressure to leave. A Foreign Office note from 1972 states that “when BIOT formed, decided as a matter of policy not to put any new investment into plantations” [sic], but to let them run down. And the colonial authorities even cut off food imports to the Chagos islands; it appears that after 1968 food ships did not sail to the islands.

Not all the islanders were physically expelled. Some, after visiting Mauritius, were simply – and suddenly – told they were not allowed back, meaning they were stranded, turned into exiles overnight. Many of the islanders later testified to having been tricked into leaving Diego Garcia by being offered a free trip.

Most of the islanders ended up living in the slums of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis, in gross poverty; many were housed in shacks, most of them lacked enough food, and some died of starvation and disease. Many committed suicide. A report commissioned by the Mauritian government in the early 1980s found that only 65 of the 94 Illois householders were owners of land and houses; and 40 per cent of adults had no job. Today, most Chagossians continue to live in poverty, with unemployment especially high.

From the above it is hard to believe our public servants at the Foreign Office would think and behave in such an arrogant and ignorant manner. It puts a stain on our character as a nation.

Having evicted the islanders from the islands their case was eventually taken to the International Court of Justice in the Hague and the case against Britain was upheld.

The following is a report from the BBC on the case

By BBC Hague correspondent Anna Holligan

A "blockbuster" of an opinion from the UN's highest court. 

The judges' assessment was damning. At the heart of it, the right of all people to self-determination as a basic human right, which the UK violated when dismembering its former colony. 

The detachment of the strategically valuable archipelago cannot have been said to be based on free and genuine expression of the will of the people concerned, when one side is under the authority of the other.

As the ruling power, the responsibility lay with the UK to respect national unity and territory integrity of Mauritius as required under international law.

Instead, it divided the territory - effectively using the process of decolonisation to create a new colony. 

As part of the advisory opinion the judges poignantly pointed out that all UN member states were under obligation to cooperate to complete the decolonisation of Mauritius. This includes, of course, the US, which operates a military base on the largest atoll of Diego Garcia.

Some of those who were forced to leave their homes on the Chagos Islands in the late 1960s hoped they would be allowed to return - and not just on one of the rare visits authorised by the UK.

Speaking to the BBC last year, Samynaden Rosemond, who left when he was 36, said: "Back home was paradise."

He and his wife, Daryela, moved to the outskirts of the capital of Mauritius, Port Louis.

Chagossians often complain that they are treated as second-class citizens in Mauritius, and they often gather to cook coconut and fish curry and to sing songs about the life they left behind.

Mr Rosemond added: "The British didn't give us a chance. They just said: 'Oh, this is not yours anymore.'

"If I die here my spirit will be everywhere - it wouldn't be happy. But if I die there I will be in peace."

Finally the following article was published in the Guardian newspaper on the 16th January 2018 written by Benjamin Zephaniah:-

I bang on about the plight of the people of the Chagos Islands a lot, and sometimes even I might use statistics too much, so let me tell you about Jeanette. Jeanette’s mother, Monique, was born on the Chagos Islands and was therefore a British subject. But her time living there was destined to be short. In the late 1960s, she, like the rest of the population, was forced to leave.

Her removal came when the UK leased the islands to the US military, so it could build a base on the largest island, Diego Garcia. Chagossian deportees were dumped on the docks of Mauritius and Seychelles. Compensation was promised but those exiled to Seychelles, such as Jeanette’s mother, never received a penny. Even for those in Mauritius, meagre compensation arrived almost a decade late.

Viewed as outcasts by the local population, many quickly fell into debt and poverty. It was not until her mid-20s that Jeanette realised a way out and moved to the UK. A legal change in the early 2000s gave her, as well as all the first generation born in exile, British citizenship. But Jeanette’s daughters will not get the same benefits. “I have a British passport, but my daughters aren’t entitled. The Home Office say I must go through an expensive ‘naturalisation’ process.”

The costs exceed £10,000 over a five-year period, too much for Jeanette who, despite working two jobs, struggles to pay bills most months. Missed payments or simple slip-ups can lead to expensive legal battles – and ultimately to deportation.

Taniella, one of Jeanette’s daughters, is nearly 18. Once her birthday comes, her ability to remain in the country will depend on her family meeting the costs. Returning to Seychelles is not a prospect Jeanette or her children relish. “All the young women where we come from are getting hooked on drugs and falling into prostitution.”

With no family members left in the country, her daughters warned her: “Mummy, if we go back to the Seychelles, just forget about us. We will kill ourselves.” The forced exile was shameful in the first place. Today’s governments should be doing whatever they can to make amends for their predecessors’ crimes. Instead they perpetuate them.

Jeanette’s story is far from unique. Hundreds of Chagossian families suffer like this daily. Vast sums of money from an already impoverished community are drained in visa costs, appeals and legal fees. Jeanette lives in Crawley, which today houses the largest Chagossian population in the UK. The local MP, Henry Smith, is alive to the issue and is proposing   that would help to ease the burden for many families.

On Tuesday, Smith will present a bill to parliament that would allow anyone of Chagossian descent to acquire British overseas territories citizenship – the status all Chagossians would have had they not been exiled. As well as being symbolically significant, the bill would cut the cost of acquiring British citizenship for Chagossians to roughly a fifth of what it is now.

The UK is no utopia – something Jeanette knows better than most. As well as constant struggles to pay the bills, her family of five live in a cramped two-bedroom flat with mould that is making her youngest children ill. Her first experiences of the UK were even worse. Two domestic roles saw her sold into modern slavery. “I had to live in their house and was paid £60 per month. I could not eat any of the family’s food. They pointed at an outside tap and said: ‘This will be your bathroom.’ It was the middle of winter in Manchester and I’d never been so cold.”

Thankfully the police intervened and Jeanette now sees a future for her family in the UK. But it is in jeopardy. Smith’s bill comes a year after the government denied the right of return. In its statement, the government instead announced a £40m support package to help Chagossians “where they now live”. It urged: “We must now look forward, not back.” It is very difficult to look forward when your past continues to restrain you. I take the view that most Chagossians take: if the government is serious about its intentions, the single best thing it could do is support Smith’s bill – and waive all the fees.

Jeanette, like most Chagossians, has fought tirelessly to build a life in this country. How cruel if the consequences of the event which blighted her mother’s life, denies her daughters the chance to build their own lives here.

Despite the judgement of the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, Britain continues to “stonewall” their decision.

For those who wish to read more about this sad and shameful episode they should read Simon Winchester’s book “Outposts”. Simon Winchester OBE is a British American journalist and author who writes for the Guardian newspaper.

In closing this Post I find it incredible that after all the time that has past since slavery was abolished their descendants are still being treated with the same inhumanity that their ancestors experienced.

Is this the country that my father fought for in WW2 and was wounded and his life cut short? I had hoped by now we had some honour and put right the wrongs

 of our past but apparently not. 

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi!

Oh! What a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive.

Sir Walter Scott - Marmion