Ascension Island

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 9:30 am on 15 February 2006.

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Photo of Vincent Cable Vincent Cable Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Treasury) 9:30, 15 February 2006

I sought this debate because there is an emerging controversy—indeed, a scandal—about the small British dependency of Ascension Island. Over a period of years, its inhabitants, of whom there are just over 1,000, were led to believe that they had a settled future on a developing, liberalising island. Those expectations have been rather brutally removed following a Government policy U-turn announced at the end of last year.

Concern over the issue has been compounded by the suspicion—there is no proof of this—that much of that change in policy is attributable to the influence exerted on the Government by the Americans, who have a major strategic interest in the island. That, therefore, is the context of the debate.

I was prompted to seek the debate by a constituent, Mr. Hutchison, who is passionately interested in the subject. Since then, I have been deluged with e-mails and other messages from islanders, their elected councillors, people who have served on the island and former British administrators, all of whom feel passionately that the islanders have been betrayed and that we might well be on the brink of a case similar to that of Diego Garcia, which aroused much controversy four decades ago and whose consequences rumble on to this day. The island is, of course, very small, and the issue affects a small number of people, but it is worth remembering that this country went to war 20 years ago over the 2,000 people in the Falklands. The status and rights of just over 1,000 people on Ascension Island should therefore concern us, and rightly so.

Let me give a bit of background to explain why the issue is important and how it came about. The British started using Ascension as part of the empire roughly at the time of the Napoleonic wars; that was related to Napoleon's incarceration on St. Helena. From the outset, there have been arguments within the Government about what to do with the island. That was rather beautifully captured in a quotation about the first Admiralty commandant at the beginning of the 19th century, Captain Bates. It was said that he was

"by no means the last commandant of Ascension to be crippled by changes in—or rather the lack of—any proper policy in London. The Lords of the Admiralty seem never to have made up their minds about what they wanted Ascension to be."

That is as true today as it was 200 years ago.

The geography is unpromising, as the island is on a volcanic outcrop on the Atlantic ridge. The rock is very new; indeed, it is so new that there was originally no soil on the island. However, when people involved in the campaign first showed me pictures of it, I was struck by the fact that there were forests and small farms at the top of the mountain. I was told that they were there because people had imported soil in the 19th century so that agriculture could begin. They had carried it to the top of the mountain because that was the only place where water could be captured. Great labour has therefore gone into creating this British dependency and into its active use.

The population is small, and there has been a long tradition of controlling it. A statement of policy in, I think, 1925 said that only friendly tribes could go to the island. That was a reference to St. Helenians, and migrant workers from St. Helena make up three quarters of Ascension Island's population. The pattern of population has been characterised by contract working. Workers on the island are, in effect, Gastarbeiter in the truest sense: they are there to work for a period and are required to leave when they retire. That has been the traditional pattern.