In his book Freedom Next Time the journalist John Pilger paints a harrowing and disturbing picture of the fate of the Chagossians, the former residents of the Chagos Islands. I don't often see eye to eye with Pilger but reading his description of the way in which the inhabitants of this archipelago were systematically dispossessed and thrown off their land is deeply moving.
Between 1968 and 1973, Labour and Tory governments organised the removal of everyone living on the 55 islands that constitute the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This was done at the behest of the United States, which at the time was embroiled in the Vietnam war and required for understandable security reasons the use of the island of Diego Garcia as an air and naval base. The narrative employed at the time by the Foreign Office was that the Chagos Islands had no settled population.
The Chagossians were shipped off to the Seychelles and Mauritius, where they were deposited and left to fend for themselves. They were ostracised and isolated, and many succumbed to mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism. Pilger's book contains distressing passages in which Chagossians recount their deceased relatives 'dying of sadness' at having to leave their homes.
Despite the tragic impact of this compulsory removal, the islanders never gave up their campaign to win the right to return home. Many Chagossians eventually moved away from the Seychelles and Mauritius, and some have settled in London, my constituency. They have been a persistent thorn in the side of successive British governments, and it would seem right now that the coalition government seeks to conclude this matter in a fair, humane and just way.
The Chagossians want to return to the outer islands of the Chagos archipelago. They have never sought to resettle on Diego Garcia, which remains off-limits and leased to the US government until 2016, and plays a vital role in western security and defence. Given David Cameron's determination to place the US-UK relationship on a more equal footing than it was under Labour, I hope he will feel free to raise this issue with the Obama administration, as apparently a deal was very nearly closed between the late Robin Cook when Foreign Secretary and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. There is no possible threat to US interests from the islanders' return to the outer islands, and to claim that such a threat exists is hard to comprehend.
Ten years ago, the Chagossians won a tremendous victory in the High Court, which ruled that the islanders' expulsion had been unlawful and that they should be allowed to return. Initially the government accepted the ruling but it was overturned by an Order-in-Council in 2004.
Now is not the time to discuss how appropriate Orders-in-Council are for lawmaking in a 21st century democracy (and people complain about how opaque the EU is with comitology), but this move, which bypassed parliament, showed disregard for the Chagossians' basic human rights. Earlier this year, we saw this cynicism in action once again, when David Miliband, the outgoing foreign secretary and current Labour leadership candidate, declared the Chagos Islands to be a protected marine zone, thereby preventing the islanders – if eventually they do return – from making their living from fishing.
Unsurprisingly the Chagossians have sought to lobby the European Union, which increasingly, rightly or wrongly, seems to be a tactic for pressure groups when all else fails. Some of their community leaders came to see me in Brussels recently and reinforced in my own mind that this was an historical injustice that laid heavy on our own national conscience. The Foreign Office has often used the excuse that resettling the Chagossians would be prohibitively expensive from a logistical point of view. However, in an answer to a parliamentary question I put to the Commission recently, the commissioner responsible for development policy, Andris Piebalgs, indicated that the Commission would give full consideration to any request from the UK, which the EU fully and rightly accepts as a sovereign UK matter, for helping by co-financing the repatriation of the Chagossians.
When we were in opposition, many Conservative MPs supported the Chagossians' right to return. William Hague, as shadow foreign secretary, assured the islanders that a Conservative government would work towards a fair settlement of this longstanding dispute. Sadly we don't have a Conservative government but the Liberal Democrats are deeply supportive of the Chagossians' right of return, so hopefully the coalition government will bring this issue to a sensible and just conclusion. The Chagossians have also taken their campaign to the European Court of Human Rights, which has suggested that the case be withdrawn in favour of a 'friendly settlement'.
Ten years have now passed since the Chagossians' legal victory - a victory, sadly, that turned out to be pyrrhic, in that it seemed merely to strengthen the FCO's resolve to stop the islanders going back. Many Chagossians have settled in the UK but would go back immediately if only the government would let them.
