And John Pilger (2004):-"A 1965 Foreign Office memorandum describes how the Americans made the expulsion of the entire population "virtually a condition of the agreement". As for the gentle Creoles they were throwing out, "these people have little aptitude for anything other than growing coconuts". They are, wrote Sir Bruce Greatbatch, "unsophisticated and untrainable". In other words, expendable.Files found in the National Archives in Washington and Public Record Office in London provide clear evidence of a conspiracy between the Labour government of Harold Wilson and two American administrations in the form of a searing narrative of official lying that will be all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq. The conspiracy got under way with the creation of a fake colony called the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT. The sole purpose of this was to get rid of the people. To do it, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,000 miles away. This was the equivalent of "returning" the majority of Australians, whose ancestry dates from 1770, the same year the first islanders settled in the Chagos. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents into shortterm, temporary residents". What the files also reveal is an attitude of brutality and contempt.In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill of Harrow. "Along with the birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays?" Under the heading Maintaining The Fiction, another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along". As for the United Nations and international law, which invested in the remaining colonial powers a "sacred trust" to protect the basic human rights of their citizens in dependent territories, a senior Foreign Office official proposed "a policy of 'quiet disregard' - in other words, let's forget about this one until the United Nations challenge us on it". Reading these documents, I could find not a single word of concern for the suffering caused or even recognition that Britain was, in effect, kidnapping its own citizens. There is worry about the press finding out and "damaging publicity" and now and then the conspirators appear to get the wind up. "This is all fairly unsatisfactory," wrote one official, "We propose to certify these people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else?""http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-secret-files-that-reveal-how-a-nation-was-deportedAnd, of course, Jeremy Corbyn (October 2015):-"Jeremy Corbyn: I apologise for not being here for the earlier part of the debate. I am doing what I have condemned many others for doing by turning up late and taking part. Please forgive me.I declare an interest as the president of the Chagos islands All-Party Group and as someone who has been a passionate advocate for the Chagos islanders for a very long time. I am delighted that the Minister will be travelling there and meeting the islanders. I hope that he will—I am sure he will—understand the humanitarian hurt that the Chagos islanders have suffered, the justice of their right to return and the real possibility that that could be brought about.I hope the Minister will agree, as soon as he returns from that visit, to meet the all-party group and have a serious discussion with it and the islanders, so that we can finally put to bed this horrible period in British history when a group of islanders, wholly innocent of anything, were so abominably treated and so brutally removed from their homes. They have suffered for so long and fought so valiantly for their human right to live where they were born and grew up."According to the next Chairman of the Group, Jeremy Corbyn "founded the group back in 2008, having championed the cause of justice for the Chagossian people since his election to Parliament in 1983".Sorry, getting carried away. Pessimistic about this anyway. Too "important" a base.
David Ainsworth ● 2663d