For arrogance, hypocrisy and sheer nastiness, few organizations in the world rival the British foreign office. Exhibit A in the case against it, for the past decade, has been its marathon legal struggle to deny the former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands their rights. Last week, it cheated them again.

The Chagos Islands, a group of seven atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, were settled in the late 18th century by slaves who were brought there by the French to work in copra plantations. Britain took the islands from France in 1814, but little changed for the descendants of the original African and south Indian settlers, by now a blended, French-speaking population, until 1967 when Britain suddenly expelled all of them. The islands now have no permanent population.

The islands have many thousands of temporary residents though, all of them working for the American armed forces except for a few British service personnel. The Chagossians were deported from their homeland to make room for a giant base from which the US air force could dominate the entire Indian Ocean, and part of the deal was that there should be no local inhabitants to complicate matters.

Nobody in Britain now defends what was done to the Chagossians, not even foreign secretary David Milliband. “It is appropriate on this day,” he said, “that I should repeat the government’s regret at the way the resettlement of the Chagossians was carried out in the 1960s and 1970s and at the hardship that followed for some of them. We do not seek to justify those actions and do not seek to excuse the conduct of an earlier generation.” Unfortunately, he does not seek to make restitution for it either.

On the contrary, the foreign office has waged a bitter struggle through the British courts to deny the Chagossians the right to go home. It lost the first round when the British high court ruled in 2000 that they could return to the islands, although not to the specific atoll, Diego Garcia, on which the Americans had their air base. That ruling might have been allowed to stand if 9/11 hadn’t happened.

For a few brave men

It did happen, and the subsequent mania about security made the British and American authorities determined to keep the islands uninhabited. So, in 2004, the British government issued “Orders in Council” — an exercise of the royal prerogative that sets aside court judgments — renewing the ban on anybody returning to the Chagos Islands.

The Chagossians went back to court. In 2007, seven judges of the court of appeal unanimously ruled that the use of Orders in Council was invalid. This meant that the islanders could rely on the 2000 high court judgment and demand to be returned to their homeland. So the foreign office appealed once again, this time to the highest court of all. And last week, the House of Lords appeal committee decided, by a three-to-two majority, that the government did indeed have the right to ignore the islanders’ wishes.

The agreement that created the Diego Garcia base in 1966 gave each party a veto on who is allowed on the islands, and it is the United States of America, which has been exercising its veto behind the scenes throughout this whole ugly episode. The French used to refer to Britain as “Perfidious Albion”, and the British foreign office is indeed steeped in perfidy. But it has also learned servility, and it is this attribute that is driving its current behaviour. Diego Garcia is an American base, and it is really the US state department that is denying the Chagossians the right to go home.

The best hope for the Chagossians is a braver British foreign secretary than Milliband, because the US is hiding behind Britain in this affair. Washington would never use its veto against the Chagossians openly, and it probably wouldn’t punish Britain severely for defying it either. All it would take is some guts in London.