US military surveyors considered Aldabra Island, another British possession nearer to Africa, but it was ruled out because of the presence of a rare species of turtle. The people of the Chagos archipelago, however, were not considered a problem.

Between 1968 and 1973, the entire population of this small group of islands in the Indian ocean were systematically removed from their homes and exiled, by a government who deliberately ‘maintained the fiction’ to the rest of the world that they didn’t exist, and therefore had no rights.

Recent court hearings have heard how senior officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at the time of the expulsions conspired to conceal the operation, which involved the gassing of animals and the forcing of pregnant women into the hold of a merchant ship. Some miscarried after being dumped in the slums of Mauritius, where many islanders still remain.