An extraordinary blame game has erupted dragging in Liz Truss and James Cleverly following Sir Keir Starmer’s shock decision to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
The deal is meant to secure the future of a secretive military base on the island of Diego Garcia, but it has left the UK without sovereign territorial control over a piece of land that is crucial to Western security in the Indian Ocean. The US-UK base will remain on Diego Garcia, but this latest development has led to fears that China could achieve its goal of setting up bases on the Chagos Islands.
The sudden announcement was rapidly followed by a furious tweet from Tory leadership contender James Cleverly calling the Labour government “weak, weak, weak”. However, it quickly emerged that the talks to hand over the islands were instigated by Mr Cleverly himself before being halted by his successor as foreign secretary David Cameron.
This piece reminded of a post I wrote iin the early days of this blog, (more than eleven years ago) about how the word 'plagiarist' was derived from the Latin plagiarius.
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'A plague/pox on...' was a popular curse in Shakespeare's time. Some time later (I have a feeling I first met it in Regency Buck [ – in my early teens I was led astray by the literary tastes of my older sister] a cuss-word with similar force was 'Zounds' (which I originally mentally misvocalized to rhyme with 'sounds'). It is derived by attrition from the expression used by Chaucer's Pardoner: By Goddes Wounds; but by the time the Regency Buck got hold of it any explicit reference to God, or even the wounds of Christ...
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(one in each hand and foot, and one in his side [whence unda fluxit et sanguine, as singers of Mozart's sublime setting of Ave Verum Corpus may remember]). There were many others, whose relevance will become apparent: read on.
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... had been ironed out: 'S 'ounds.
In the 1970s, the UK committed the act of a plagiarius (keep up...a kidnapper or underhand dealer) in doing the Chagossians out of their birthright so that the Americans could build an airbase within easy range of the Soviet Union). And in 2010 the UK government (the smylere with the knyf under the cloke) established a marine conservation area in the archipelago (butter wouldn't melt...) which – with its no fishing law – would (gosh, fancy that) prevent the islanders from returning.
Diego García: an airstrip surround by a marine conservation area
When that news broke in 2010 I wondered about the name of the archipelago. The colonizing powers (I'm thinking chiefly of Spain and Portugal, who had the appropriate religious background) were wont to name islands with religious references: Trinidad or Dominica , for example, the latter named after the Lord's Day– when Columbus 'discovered' it. Even El Niño refers to a particular Niño, whose official birthday is celebrated at the time of that meteorological phenomenon off the coast of the Spanish-speaking Chile.
So, feverishly, I supposed that the Chagos Archipelago must have five islands (one for each hand – or wrist if the preacher was of the hell-fire persuasion – one for each foot, and one for the lance in the side). The atlas disproved this, so I moved on to a more numerous source of wounds: the scourging would have left hundreds of marks. But the fever of folk etymology passed: Goddes Wounds were not chagos but chagas. Another fine mess a little learning had gotten me into!
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This old post came to mind when the long-overdue return of the Chagossians' birthright (greeted by some unconvincing, not to say disingenuous, transparently self-serving, and plain silly) protests from Tory hopefuls.
When I first heard about the settlement with Mauritius – particularly the 99 year lease on Diego García – I thought "Hmm... That old "99 year lease"' trick didn''t turn out so well with Hong Kong, did it?' But let's face it: the chances of humanity surviving into the 22nd century aren't great one way or another (war, pestilence, meteor-strike etc [ably assisted by climate change], and besides by 2223 most if noit all of the Chagos Islands will be under water anyway; according to the Foundation for Environment, Climate and Technology:
There is considerable interest in the long-term consequences of global warming on sea level, both globally and at the regional or local level. The current consensus is that global mean sea level has risen at a rate of about 2 mm yr-1 during the 20th century, and at about 3.2 mm yr-1 over the last 20 years, but there is also large variability in the magnitude at regional scales. In the Indian Ocean, in particular, recent studies have highlighted the large degree of spatial variability in sea level. According to the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, current estimates project a sea level rise of 0.5 to 1.2 meters by 2100, with the possibility of several more meters beyond.
Rising sea levels are of particular relevance to low lying coastal areas of the world, including the coral atolls and islands of the world’s tropical oceans. In this context, the coral atoll islands of the Chagos Archipelago are vulnerable, although they lie close to an area of the Indian Ocean where studies have suggested that recent sea-level rise may have been small. The island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is a critical logistics hub for U.S. and British forces in the Middle East. Due to its exposure to the extreme weather in the Indian Ocean, changing temperatures and increasing rainfall, Diego Garcia faces the threat of coastal erosion and flooding. The highest point above sea-level is 22 feet, but the island’s mean height above sea-level is 4 feet. Diego Garcia is threatened by the effects of climate change because its average height above sea level is just over one meter. A sea-level rise of a several feet would force the US military to undertake a costly and difficult military relocation process.
That's enough for today; I hope the Chagossians now shivering in Crawley finally get Mauritius (an improbable lattter-day colomial power) to re-home them – preferably somewhere where they're allowed to fish.
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