The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy

Britain’s colonial past casts a shadow over this heart-rending case where the battlefield for justice shifts from a tiny island in the Indian Ocean to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Professor Philippe Sands QC acted for Mauritius in relation to Peros Banhos, part of the Chagos archipelago that was severed from Mauritius and reincarnated as a new colony called the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The experiences of Liseby Elysé, a witness for Mauritius, who lived on Peros Banhos until she was 21, form the emotional core of this short, powerful book. ‘Without warning,’ Sands recounts, ‘one spring day she was rounded up by the British authorities, allowed a single suitcase, and ordered to board a boat that would transport her a thousand miles away.’ This drew Sands into her orbit, and a legal fight in The Hague to establish whether or not our last colony belonged to Mauritius or Britain. We learn of the agonising human dimension, involving ‘some 1,500 people, almost all Black and many descended from enslaved plantation workers, [who] were forcibly removed from their homes and deported’.

Sands covers the history leading to these flashpoints in The Hague, always with a sympathetic eye for the human toll. He recounts America eyeing up British-owned islands in the Indian Ocean for a new military base, and how the Privy Council made an Order in Council to establish the BIOT. By 1973, the Chagos population had been forcibly removed. Sands writes: ‘They left behind homes and possessions, furnishings and animals, and many dogs. The pets created another problem, a solution for which was found with bullets and strychnine.’ As for Elysé, ‘soon after we arrived [in Mauritius to resettle] I lost the child, my first. I suppose it was the trauma and sadness.’

Ultimately, the case boils down to what judges in the Great Hall of Justice decide, scenes painted with insightful detail. Before we reach that point, Sands explores other key cases. In 1966, Liberia and Ethiopia sought ‘to hold South Africa to account for its racial mistreatment of the inhabitants of South West Africa’ (Namibia) and ‘its refusal to allow the former British colony to become an independent country’. Despite The UN General Assembly adopting resolution 1514, which proclaimed a principle of ‘territorial integrity’, the International Court of Justice ruled that ‘Ethiopia and Liberia had no right to come to court to hold South Africa to account’. As Sands observes: ‘In the era of decolonisation, the judges were seen to strike a blow for colonial rule, leaving apartheid and discrimination in place’.

But the most compelling moments belong to Madame Elysé. Unable to read or write, she prepared a pre-recorded statement that was projected on large screens. ‘After [she] finished there was a long silence, as powerful as the words, then the sounds of tears,’ Sands relates.

A riveting story that reignites the embers of Britain’s colonial past.

Nicholas Goodman is a sub-editor at the Law Society Gazette