Returning the Chagos Islands has righted a longstanding injustice | Letter

A truly successful country can never rise in the future if it remains shackled by injustices from the past, writes former British high commissioner to Mauritius Jonathan Drew

It is welcome news that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius to return sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius means that the Chagos Islanders will be able to return to the vast majority of the islands (Britain to return Chagos Islands to Mauritius ending years of dispute, 3 October). For far too many years, the UK applied one set of values to the (white) Falkland islanders and another to the (black) Chagossians, who had actively been expelled by the UK from the islands that they had called home for generations.

While shamefully late – too late for the hundreds of Chagossians who have died in the intervening years – it is never too late to draw on our values and the future identity we want to have as a country, and change tack. It takes courage to do this, and I applaud the new government, led by Sir Keir Starmer, and civil servants for doing so. It also took courage for the Chagossians, led by Olivier Bancoult, to never give up and to be strong in their own identity.