Member

I mentioned last week that I had the honour of representing Crawley when I was a Member of the European Parliament. I never ceased to be impressed by the tenacity of Chagossians in this country when it came to preserving their folkways and language—their ancestral customs of cuisine, dress and so on, and the melodious Bourbonnais Creole that they speak, which is almost incomprehensible if you speak only standard French but has a very beautiful sound. We heard it not long ago on the streets of Port Louis, when some very brave Chagossians in Mauritius demonstrated against this deal, shouting in the creole of their homeland: “Chagos pour British”. They made it very clear, despite the dangers and disadvantages in that country of asserting Chagossian sovereignty, that they still felt themselves linked to the wider community of Chagossians around the world.