William Hague has written about Chagos in to-day’s edition of The Times, recalling that, as Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs in 2014, he launched a feasibility study examining the possibility of resettling displaced Chagossians back on islands within the archipelago. (There being no prospect of a return to Diego Garcia itself, on account of resistance to such a prospect by the United States, which operates the airbase there).
I was the Minister for International Development at the time, and I was involved in those discussions.
Given the shameful treatment of the Chagossians back in the early nineteen seventies, when they were forcibly removed from their homeland, and resettled in Mauritius, The Seychelles, and Crawley, my sympathies lay with their return. Nevertheless, I was reluctant to open up another remote island settlement for which we would have responsibility. I felt that our hands were full enough already with the needs of Tristan da Cunha, St Helena, and Pitcairn, whose requirements placed a disproportionate burden on the DFID budget. There were also ‘safeguarding’ issues for women and children. (At one stage the Foreign Office was badgering me to spend £1 Million to build a new prison on Pitcairn to house its only prisoner, a prolific sex offender).
My colleague, James Duddridge, was despatched to the Chagos archipelago on a fact-finding mission. I recall that he returned with a very bleak report, including that he was unable to even get ashore on most of the islands because the vegetation was so impenetrable.
We concluded that the endeavour was simply not feasible due to the expense involved. Instead, we came up with an education and healthcare package to address the needs of the dispossessed and disadvantaged Chagossians where they were then currently settled.
Two things have changed. First, the facts on the ground: A group of Chagossians have, very recently, made it back on to one of the islands. Second, the huge cost of the Government’s plan to cede sovereignty to Mauritius and lease back Diego Garcia -some £34 Billion, puts the comparatively modest cost of resettlement, which we rejected as too expensive in 2014, into a completely different light.
The fear within the Foreign Office, and which was shared by President Biden’s US administration, is that the non-binding ruling of the International Court in 2019 -that the UK should cede sovereignty to Mauritius, may at some stage be followed by binding litigation, which might make the future of the vital US airbase uncertain . This fear, together with a measure of ‘woke’ guilt for a colonial past, is what has driven the Government’s desire for a treaty with Mauritius.
On the other hand, international lawyers and commentators insist that the danger is imagined and that there is no prospect of a successful challenge to the future of the airbase.
What would put any question beyond doubt however, would be to resettle Chagossians in the archipelago and to give them the right of self-determination: a fundamental principle that would trump any other claim from Mauritius of anywhere else.
It’s worth considering.