Imperialism, the Chagos Islands and the fight to return

I have just finished reading Tariq Ali’s excellent book Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes (Verso, London, 2021).

Although with a chronological structure, it is thematic. It places the crimes of Churchill (these were many and horrific) in the context of the times in which they were situated.

Empirically-based, Ali highlights Churchill’s awful white supremacist views and his disregard for loss of human lives, along with his love of empire (particularly the British Empire).

Understanding imperialism

But what I found particularly insightful was Ali’s analysis of imperialism, revered and well-understood by Churchill.

Vladimir Lenin: imperialism the highest stage of capitalism

Imperialism is when one nation establishes and enforces its governance over outside peoples or other countries. It can cohabitate with but is not the same as colonialism. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism.

Often this is through the use of military power to achieve economic or political control of a region. Imperialism is as relevant today as it was in Churchill’s long political era.

Increasingly imperialism can take many forms. But, regardless of form, it has a common trait of cruelty as the imperialist power exploits and oppresses its subjects. Differences in cruelty are in degree rather than kind.

Opposition to imperialism has historically been in the form of anti-colonial struggles for self-determination, predominantly in Africa, Asia, and central and south America. These struggles have all varied in scope, intensity and duration.

‘Below the radar’ imperialism in a strategically important remote archipelago

Owen Bowcott’s investigative writing on the Chagos Islanders long struggle

Some of these struggles have had a much greater public prominence than other smaller struggles occurring below the public radar.

Ali’s discussion on imperialism took me back three months to an article published in The Guardian (3 October) by journalist Owen Bowcott:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/03/chagos-islanders-long-and-determined-campaign-for-right-to-return

The British colonised Chagos Islands are a remote but strategically important archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It had been part of Mauritius which itself was a British colony.

Chagos Islands in Indian Ocean (Wikipedia)

From the 1960s to the early 1970s around 1,500 Chagossians  were forcefully evicted from their islands. By 1973 the forced removal of all Chagossians from their homeland had been completed.

They were initially dumped without effective compensation in shantytowns in Mauritius and the Seychelles. Today there are now about 10,000 Chagossians scattered in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK.

This brutal removal was to enable the establishment of a United States military based leased from the British government on the largest Chagos island, Diego Garcia. It has no permanent population; just around 4,000 US-UK stationed military and contract civilian personnel.

Diego Garcia: largest Chagos Island and location of joint UK-US military base

The fight to return

Despite their small numbers and vulnerability these forcefully evicted Chagossians and their descendants did not give up their struggle for the right to reclaim their land.

This included numerous legal challenges in British courts by the Chagos Refugee Group whose most prominent leader was the determined Olivier Bancoult.

The first case against the Foreign Office was in 2000. Unexpectedly the High Court ruled that the government did not have the power to expel all the Chagossian inhabitants.

Bowcott describes this ruling as an “emotional rollercoaster” opening up hopes of a return home for exiled Chagossians.

But both Conservative and Labour governments shamefully got around this by switches in Foreign Office policy. This defence of British imperialism was reinforced by racism. One internal memo notoriously belittled Chagossians as a “a few Tarzans and Man Fridays”.

Olivier Bancoult: Chagos struggle leader

Further legal actions by Bancoult continued unsuccessfully. But the fight for the right to return was strengthened by the Mauritian government coming in from a new legal angle challenging the legality of the original detachment of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius.

Enter Mauritius

In 2017 Mauritius successfully argued that the separation was in breach of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960) banning the breakup of colonies prior to independence. The Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support this argument.

Again the UK government was dismissive and duplicitous. However, in 2019, this led to the International Court of Justice issuing an advisory opinion stating that the United Kingdom did not have sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and they should be handed over “as rapidly as possible” to Mauritius.

The UN General Assembly then voted to give the UK a six-month deadline to begin the process of handing over the islands.  In October 2024, the UK announced it would concede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a yet to be finalised treaty.

While successful this lengthy and determined struggle was not completely victorious. The military base in Diego Garcia is to be leased to the British government for an initial period of 99 years. This may restrict the return of many Chagossians to the outer islands.

Further, while they had begun the struggle, the critical involvement of the Mauritian government marginalised Chagossians from the eventual deal that will form the basis of the forthcoming treaty.

Take-home points

Tariq Ali provides context for learnings

In the context of Tariq Ali’s Churchill book I have three main take-home points. First, imperialism is as alive, aggressive and cruel today as it was back in (and before) Churchill’s time.

Second, even where the victims of imperialism are small in number, dispersed and vulnerable, struggle that leads to consciousness can occur and bring some success. East Timor is another case in point.

Third, Ali makes the point strongly that in respect of imperialism, including when reinforced by white supremacy, both Conservative and Labour governments were complicit. In Churchill’s era the differences were paper thin.

In the struggle for the right of return to the Chagos Islands, both the Conservatives and Labour parties (with the notable exception of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn) were also equally complicit over imperialism’s cruel oppression.

 

 

 

 

Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes