island group. Then, two years later another deal was signed, for expansion of the facility—but it was still only to be what the then Labour Defence Secretary, Roy Mason, called ‘very austere’. Indeed, so confident was Mason of the unimportance of the island that he publicly assured the Mauritians, who were by this time becoming rather exercised at the idea of a large superpower fortress being built in their neighbourhood, that ‘Diego Garcia will not be used as a military base’.
The most charitable explanation is that Mr Mason simply did notknow what was in the Pentagon’s mind. Two years later another Labour politician, Roy Hattersley, signed the most crucial of all the many agreements that record the saga: the ‘limited’ communications facility was now to be allowed to evolve into ‘a support facility of the United States Navy…the facility shall consist of an anchorage, airfield, support and supply elements and ancillary services, personnel accommodation and transmitting and receiving services. Immovable structures, installations and buildings for the facility may…be constructed.’
The United States was, in other words, establishing a base on Diego Garcia. Sailors who were posted there, and who loathed its isolation, came to call it ‘the Rock’ the naval authorities put up a water tower near the harbour entrance and emblazoned it with the words ‘Welcome to the Footprint of Freedom’—the island, a long and narrow curve of coralline limestone, has the appearance of a child’s foot, heel pointing south, toes to the north.
The final purely administrative note in the story took place in June 1976, four months after the Hattersley Agreement was announced. The Seychelles won their independence, and were allowed to take with them three of the four island groups that had been made part of BIOT in 1965. They won back Farquhar and Desroches because the British Government decided it had no use for them; and they were given back Aldabra because, although the US Navy thought it a suitable spot for a base, a number of the world’s wildlife organisations had complained that the giant Aldabran tortoises would be disturbed by aircraft noise and construction work, and the Pentagon wisely decided not to pick a fight with the tortoise lobby. BIOT, from 1976 on, was limited to the Chagos Islands only, and was administered from London by the diplomat who was also head of the East Africa Department. He seldom visited his charge, though one Commissioner did have a governor’s hat made, just in case. The day-to-day running of the island was left to a resident Administrator, arguably one of British diplomacy’s least enviable postings.
All of the foregoing would be unremarkable, if regrettable, had the Chagos Islands been but a group of uninhabited tropical atolls upon which the armed forces of the Western Alliance had decided to build a fortress. Perhaps some conservationists would have grumbled at the despoliation of some thousands of square miles of virgin wilderness; and perhaps pacifist groups would have condemned the extension of war-making powers into an ocean hitherto untroubled by the superpowers. But there would have been no exceptional reason for controversy, and the word ‘scandal’ would probably not have been applied to the case.
But it has been, and with good reason. It turned out that the Chagos Islands were not, and in recent history never had been, uninhabited. There was a flourishing, contented and permanent population on Diego Garcia and on half a dozen other islands in the group besides. There were towns, churches, shops, schools, prisons, farms, factories, docks, playgrounds, warehouses and a light railway. People had been living on the islands for the previous two centuries; there were graveyards, with stones inscribed in Creole and English and telling of a tradition of community and comradeship.
On the day that British Indian Ocean Territory was formally established as a colony the
The most charitable explanation is that Mr Mason simply did notknow what was in the Pentagon’s mind. Two years later another Labour politician, Roy Hattersley, signed the most crucial of all the many agreements that record the saga: the ‘limited’ communications facility was now to be allowed to evolve into ‘a support facility of the United States Navy…the facility shall consist of an anchorage, airfield, support and supply elements and ancillary services, personnel accommodation and transmitting and receiving services. Immovable structures, installations and buildings for the facility may…be constructed.’
The United States was, in other words, establishing a base on Diego Garcia. Sailors who were posted there, and who loathed its isolation, came to call it ‘the Rock’ the naval authorities put up a water tower near the harbour entrance and emblazoned it with the words ‘Welcome to the Footprint of Freedom’—the island, a long and narrow curve of coralline limestone, has the appearance of a child’s foot, heel pointing south, toes to the north.
The final purely administrative note in the story took place in June 1976, four months after the Hattersley Agreement was announced. The Seychelles won their independence, and were allowed to take with them three of the four island groups that had been made part of BIOT in 1965. They won back Farquhar and Desroches because the British Government decided it had no use for them; and they were given back Aldabra because, although the US Navy thought it a suitable spot for a base, a number of the world’s wildlife organisations had complained that the giant Aldabran tortoises would be disturbed by aircraft noise and construction work, and the Pentagon wisely decided not to pick a fight with the tortoise lobby. BIOT, from 1976 on, was limited to the Chagos Islands only, and was administered from London by the diplomat who was also head of the East Africa Department. He seldom visited his charge, though one Commissioner did have a governor’s hat made, just in case. The day-to-day running of the island was left to a resident Administrator, arguably one of British diplomacy’s least enviable postings.
All of the foregoing would be unremarkable, if regrettable, had the Chagos Islands been but a group of uninhabited tropical atolls upon which the armed forces of the Western Alliance had decided to build a fortress. Perhaps some conservationists would have grumbled at the despoliation of some thousands of square miles of virgin wilderness; and perhaps pacifist groups would have condemned the extension of war-making powers into an ocean hitherto untroubled by the superpowers. But there would have been no exceptional reason for controversy, and the word ‘scandal’ would probably not have been applied to the case.
But it has been, and with good reason. It turned out that the Chagos Islands were not, and in recent history never had been, uninhabited. There was a flourishing, contented and permanent population on Diego Garcia and on half a dozen other islands in the group besides. There were towns, churches, shops, schools, prisons, farms, factories, docks, playgrounds, warehouses and a light railway. People had been living on the islands for the previous two centuries; there were graveyards, with stones inscribed in Creole and English and telling of a tradition of community and comradeship.
On the day that British Indian Ocean Territory was formally established as a colony the
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