British Broken Promises

A flag but no citizens

His Excellency Mark Capes, Governor of St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, welcomed Royal approval of the design of the first ever flag of Ascension Island, saying:
“I am delighted to announce that Her Majesty The Queen has graciously approved the design of the first ever flag for Ascension Island, part of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.  Ascension Island now has its own flag, which it will fly with pride. The residents on Ascension Island will raise their flag for the first time during a ceremony on Saturday 11 May 2013, when the Island will celebrate Ascension Day, after which the Island was named in 1503.”

Ascension Island is a tiny volcanic island 700 miles from anywhere. It is dominated by a US military airbase. There are satellite and submarine tracking stations, a BBC transmitter, and a listening post run by GCHQ's Composite Signals Organisation.

Its resident population – most of them originally from St Helena, another British South Atlantic island – has fallen by a quarter in a decade to less than 800, as the companies that now run most military and civilian services replace settled family communities with contract workers. The island council – a purely advisory body that is the island's only semblance of democracy after 198 years of British rule. With no right of abode, anyone who retires or reaches 18 without a job, or whose contract ends, has to leave. The biggest cause of Ascension's recent depopulation  was the privatisation of most government and military services on the island. The British contractor Interserve is now the island's biggest employer. Jobs are being shed and workers moved on to short-term contracts. Families now only accompany workers if that is essential to fill positions, say officials. Since 2006, in response to questions about the rights of islanders, ministers have insisted that "there is no indigenous population, or 'islanders'", the island's administrator Colin Wells said: "On Ascension, everyone is an expat, present by virtue of an employment contract."

In the heyday of Labour foreign secretary Robin Cook's "ethical foreign policy", Britain promised a new deal for the residents. It drew up plans for democratic institutions, a legal right of abode and to own property. "We want to ensure that Ascension continues to be a viable community," said the island's then administrator, Andrew Kettlewell. The new island council planned to develop eco-tourism. The only downside was the introduction of taxes. In 2006, Cook's successor, Jack Straw, committed what Colin Wells, admits was a "spectacular U-turn".  Ministers wanted to avoid "contingent liabilities" such as providing pensions, unemployment pay and beefed up security, he said. The promises were all abandoned, though not the taxes. Businesses set up during the "Ascension spring" have lost their value because they cannot be sold and have no secure land tenure.

Caroline Yon, a former island councillor said: "The US and UK are squeezing the life out of the place. They want to make Ascension like Diego Garcia." Britain expelled the population of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean 40 years ago to make way for a US airbase.

A shopkeeper, Cedric Henry, said: "It's like being on an oil rig now. We have no rights. We are just a workforce, even though many people have never lived anywhere else. Some families have been here for four generations."

St Helenians, known on the island as "Saints", feel frozen out, said the island's internationally regarded conservation officer, Stedson Stroud, himself a Saint.

Last month, a former Ascension councillor, Lawson Henry, who returned to St Helena in disgust at the British U-turn, said Saints forced back were discriminated against twice over by the British authorities, because they got no pension on St Helena. "A person must work on St Helena for a minimum of 20 years [to qualify]. This effectively cuts out all those St Helenians who have worked on Ascension for all or most of their working lives."

The school could be an early casualty. It has about 100 pupils, educated up to 16 years, but Wells said a roll anywhere below 75 would be unviable. The loss of families means that three-quarters of the population is now male. Sexual exploitation of the remaining teenage girls is becoming a serious problem, said Yon.

The Saints are mixed-race descendants of European colonists and the African slaves and Asian labourers brought to St Helena to work on flax plantations to make mailbags for the Post Office. They began moving to Ascension in the 1920s to work in short-lived guano mines

Stroud said many Saints believed Britain planned to abandon Ascension, evacuate the resident Saints, and leave it to the Americans – "perhaps when the airport is completed on St Helena in 2016". That would give the RAF an alternative refuelling stop en route to the Falkland Islands.

 The comparison to Diego Garcia is very apt.