This letter, which was published in The Daily Telegraph on October 10, echoed the widespread criticism of the Government’s decision to give away the Chagos Islands, and drew attention to a previous surrender of island territory.
SIR-- Charles Moore (Notebook, October 8) states, apropos the ceding of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, that James Cleverly as foreign secretary “gave the issue a push in the wrong direction”.
That is how Queen Victoria felt when her foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury, told her in June 1890 that he was thinking of giving Heligoland, an island of great strategic importance at the mouth of the Keil Canal, to Germany.
She said it was wrong to hand over the 2,000 British subjects living on the island “to an unscrupulous despotic Government like the German without first consulting them. The next thing will be to propose to give up Gibraltar.”
But Salisbury rallied the Cabinet behind the plan, which went ahead. Mauritius may not resemble the Kaiser’s Germany, but the 2,000 or so Chagossians should have been properly consulted by Mr Cleverly and his Labour successor. They would probably agree with the great Queen-Empress that “giving up what one has is always a bad thing.”
Lord Lexden
London SW1
