'The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours.... There will be no indigenous population except seagulls," wrote Sir Paul Gore-Booth, a senior official at the British Foreign Office, as the plan to expel the 2,000 Chagos Islanders from their homes was taking shape in 1966. "We must surely be very tough about this."
They were indeed very tough about it. Six years later the Chagossians ("Ilois" as they call themselves) were scooped up, loaded on ships and dumped on the waterfront of Port Louis in Mauritius, where most of them have lived in abject poverty ever since. But this month a number of them went back to the islands on a Mauritian ship.
Not to stay, yet. They were shadowed by a British "fisheries protection" vessel throughout their visit, which comically claimed that it was "cooperating in environmental research". But the balance has now tipped so far in favour of the former residents that the British ship dared not stop the Mauritian vessel.
