By Daniel Simpson
[This article is cross-posted here, with comments]
Of all the warm words clouding Britain’s “partnership of purpose” with America, four rang especially hollow this week: freedom, justice and human rights.
Far away from Camp David, and Gordon Brown’s choreographed coming out, one of history’s footnotes was picking holes in the Churchillian script about “a joint inheritance not just of shared history but shared values.”
In a letter to The Times, a man named Olivier Bancoult complained that:
“Calls for justice in the world are hollow as long as Britain denies justice to its own people.”
Readers could be excused for scratching their heads here, but the outrage of which he writes ought to be a national scandal: it’s as much an indictment of British subservience to Washington as the decision to invade Iraq.
Almost 40 years ago, Mr Bancoult and his compatriots were evicted from an old British colony in the Indian Ocean, where their coral-encrusted islands were turned over to the Pentagon. The largest, Diego Garcia, now serves as an American aircraft carrier and plays host, on occasion, to planes ferrying prisoners to foreign torture chambers.
Mr Bancoult’s challenge to Britain doesn’t extend to demanding “the Footprint of Freedom” be shut down. On the contrary: he thinks his fellow Chagos islanders should be working there in place of Filipino contractors. Having already won three court cases against the Government, he just wants it to accept the Chagossians’ right to go home.
The most recent verdict in their favour said that efforts to bar them forevermore “constitute an abuse of power”, the judicial equivalent of an uppercut. Undeterred, the Government is appealing to the House of Lords, wasting more taxpayers’ money on a legal bill that runs into the millions.
“The effect of the Court of Appeal’s judgment, even if correct, should be clarified,” argues Tony Humphries, who administers the islands for the Foreign Office. Decoded, this comment is alarming. It suggests firstly that the Government expects to lose, and secondly that it’s given up challenging the right of return.
Instead, officials want to know if they can still govern overseas territories by decree, free from parliamentary oversight and the threat of judicial review. Although the specific Orders in Council used against the Chagossians were illegal, the Government could in theory keep issuing new ones until these too were slapped down.
Why bother? What could be less in keeping with Mr Brown’s belief that “government should be open and accountable”? If the Labour Party needs prerogative powers to impose its will on far-flung subjects, it’s either hopelessly colonialist or passing the wrong laws.
The United States claims a resident population would pose a security risk to Diego Garcia, even from atolls 100 miles beyond the horizon. After the courts first allowed Chagossians to return to outlying islands, Britain wheeled out a study that said resettlement would be too expensive, despite not investigating what it would cost.
David Miliband’s “new diplomacy” calls for “the spread of democracy and good governance”. His credibility will be limited if he can’t extend either to British citizens.
Instead of playing legal games, Britain and the United States should apologise to the powerless people they dispossessed. Many have already died in penury; the rest deserve compensation and funding for resettlement, without which they’ll be exiled indefinitely.
“While lives may be ended, the belief in liberty never dies,” Mr Brown opined this week in the Washington Post. “While hearts may be broken, the faith in a better future is unshakeable.”
If he really wants his foreign policy to “honour human dignity”, where better to begin than by sending the Chagos islanders back to where they came from?
[Please consider distributing this leaflet. And write to your MP about supporting resettlement]
