[A-List] UK sub-imperialism: Ascension Island

["Michael Keaney" <michael011@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The island where Britain has refused to allow democracy

Inhabitants of a tiny place which served as a crucial base for British
forces during the Falklands conflict say the UK government promised them
a new regime, but changed its mind after 9/11. Could pressure from the
United States have prompted the U-turn? Elizabeth Mistry investigates
The Sunday Herald, 22 April 2007

WITH BRITISH soldiers dying in Afghanistan and Iraq to bring democracy
to those troubled lands, it might come as a surprise to learn that there
are still British citizens - who live on British soil and are governed
by a representative who rules in the Queen's name - who have never known
what it is to be truly free.

The fact that the soil is almost 4000 miles from the UK and barely
covers the tip of a long-dormant underwater volcano should make no
difference to the plight that the inhabitants of Ascension Island, one
of the UK's most remote overseas territories, now find themselves in.

In just a few years they have seen the real possibility of long-term,
sustainable development dangled before them, only to have their hopes
dashed by government departments who sent out "dishonest and
contradictory" messages and then failed to fully explain the rationale
behind the mysterious change of heart which has left the 1200 islanders
devastated.

Other than the endangered green turtles and rare seabirds, the first
inhabitants of the island, named by a Portuguese settler who went ashore
on Ascension day 1503, were British soldiers, sent from London in the
19th-century to prevent the French from attempting to rescue a certain
Napoleon Bonaparte who was imprisoned on St Helena, 700 miles to the
south.

Since then, Ascension had been run for more than 100 years as a virtual
fiefdom belonging to a small number of businesses, such as Cable and
Wireless, and British government-related entities including the RAF and
GCHQ. The BBC has its Atlantic relay station on the island which is also
a key satellite tracking station.

These bodies were known as the "Users" and they only handed over day-
to-day control of the island to an administrator a few years ago. No-one
is allowed to stay on the island without the written permission of the
administrator and in practice that means almost all those on the island
either work for the Users or the Ascension Island administration - or
are the dependents of someone who does.

No-one has "right of abode" - the right to stay on the island after the
end of their contract.

Lawson Henry who was born on St Helena but who went to Ascension as a
teenage migrant worker in the 1970s and who - apart from a spell at
police training college in the UK - has lived most of his life on the
island. Of his three children, one now lives in Yorkshire but, like all
other young people born on the island, if her siblings want to stay on
Ascension they could only do so after the age of 18 if they can secure
employment.

This rule, strictly adhered to, has resulted in several families being
forced apart and it is why the right of abode is so keenly sought by
islanders.

In the early years it took weeks to reach Ascension and even today the
island can only be reached from the UK by hitching an expensive lift in
a British Royal Air Force plane which makes a weekly sortie to
Ascension's airbase. In 1982 this base served as a vital refuelling stop
for British fighter jets on their way to the Falklands during the war.
There is also the possibility of a long - and equally expensive - sea
voyage on the Royal Mail Ship St Helena which is notoriously unreliable.

Ascension's land surface covers barely 35 square miles yet its position
makes it invaluable as a gateway to the west African oil fields. While
the situation in the Middle East remains uncertain, the African reserves
could become an even more important source of petroleum and there are
many who would like easy, unfettered access to it.

In a consultation document sent to the people of Ascension in 1999, the
UK government outlined plans to move towards a more inclusive form of
government saying: "The people of the overseas territories must exercise
the greatest possible control over their own lives."

Under the 1999 proposals, the government seemed willing to address the
antiquated status of Ascension and the islanders, many of whom are low
paid by British standards and who have no representation in Parliament,
agreed to introduce income tax and elect a council to advise the
Administrator.

The efforts of the islanders to construct a viable response to London's
overtures was a community-wide effort. They accepted that the granting
of a right of abode would change the nature of the island and, says
Caroline Yon, the Lancashire-born manager of the rocket tracking station
that monitors launches from the US and South America, this right brings
responsibilities.

Yon has lived on Ascension for 16 years and serves as a part-time
Justice of the Peace. She married a Saint - as anyone originally from St
Helena is known - and their young daughter was born on the island.

"It is a very different way of life which is hard to understand if you
haven't been here. We are a quiet place. There are beautiful beaches and
hardly any crime - we like it. But we need to develop and, when the
government sold the few small businesses, people who wanted a stake in
the future invested.

"The council worked tremendously hard, but just when we thought we were
moving towards right of abode we began to receive messages from London
that they were having serious thoughts about things we all believed had
been agreed.

"They talked about contingent liabilities' that could make the plan too
expensive for the UK to accept. But they never fully explained this and
would not enter into discussion about it."

Eventually, late in 2005, after a delegation from the Foreign Office
arrived on the island for what a meeting to explore ways to move
forward, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) dropped the
bombshell.

"They told us that the contingent liabilities - which they only ever
suggested would be costs associated with healthcare and other provisions
for islanders who remained on Ascension - made the plan unviable."

No breakdown of these costs was ever made available. The islanders who
have seen millions of pounds spent on other overseas territories such as
the Falklands and Pitcairn Island, which has population of fewer than
100, felt betrayed.

"It came out of the blue," says Lawson Henry. He had met Lord Triesman,
the Foreign Office minister responsible for overseas territories the
previous month in London. At that meeting, in the presence of witnesses,
he says, Triesman who has acknowledged the Americans' strategic
interests in the island, assured him there would be no U-turn.

Today his softly spoken manner barely conceals his anger and
disappointment at the way the government has treated the islanders.

Last month, after more than a year of waiting for a satisfactory
explanation from Whitehall as to the reasons for the government's
decision, six of the seven elected members of the Ascension Island
council resigned in protest.

It is an unprecedented situation and a huge embarrassment for the
Foreign Office, the UK Department For International Development (Dfid)
and the government which only a few years ago had commended the
islanders "moves towards democracy."

But if the UK government had hoped to keep this latest humiliation under
wraps by suggesting blame lies with the islanders themselves who were
"confused" over the nature of the proposals, it has failed. The final
straw occurred last week when nominations for candidates for a new
council closed.

The election was due to take place on May 1st but only two people put
their names forward, a situation that the present administrator,
Ayrshire-born Michael Hill, told the Sunday Herald he very much
regretted.

"The people have spoken", says Lawson Henry, "the government can't say
that it is just a problem with the island council now."

The current situation means that Ascension Island, once described by the
government as "a beacon of democracy" is once more without
representation and its people will never, ever trust the British
government again.

Many are too afraid to speak up, concerned that they will lose their
jobs and be ejected from the island. But there are others who have
bravely put their careers and futures on the line.

Many questions remain unanswered. Why did the government change its mind
so abruptly? The issue of contingent liabilities would surely have been
considered before a white paper proposing right of abode was ever
released. In any event, adds Yon, the government knows it would be a
small number of people who would stay and the plans drawn up by the
island and presented to the FCO had already taken this into account.

In addition, no such liabilities appear to be mentioned in any relevant
government accounts for the years when a possible payment of that nature
should have been identified. Failure to do so would be a breach of the
government's own accounting standards.

For Celia Whittaker, secretary of the UK-based Chagos Support group
which campaigns for the Chagossian people forcibly evicted from their
Indian Ocean archipelago in 1967 to allow the US to use Diego Garcia as
a military base, the situation is extremely worrying.

"We've been watching this closely and see Ascension going the same way
as Diego Garcia. I am extremely worried that the Americans are behind
this decision," she said last week.

Others, including many on the island - but not Lawson Henry - also
believe it is possible that the US would prefer to maintain the status
quo on Ascension which, according to one academic "is festooned with
intelligence gathering kit which is not protected as everyone on the
island has been checked out".

Lord Triesman was not available for comment when the Sunday Herald
requested an interview earlier last week but a foreign office spokesman
insisted "the government has fully answered all the questions that have
been put to it on Ascension Island. We've provided explanations to
members of parliament".

But this is disputed by MP Vincent Cable, who has raised the matter
several times in London: "I've always suspected there was another
motive."

While the islanders wait to see how the government will seek to find a
solution to the current impasse, bearing in mind that the islands are
now in the unfortunate position of taxation with no representation,
several young men, born on Ascension are serving with British forces.
They can fight on behalf of a country almost 4000 miles away and
possibly die for it. But the British government won't let them call the
island of their birth home.


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