Islanders buried by volcano and burned again by London

When does an eruption column become a fountain collapse? What is the difference between a pyroclastic flow and a pyroclastic surge? Technical questions of volcanology, it might seem, but a matter of life and death on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat in June 1997. By then, the people of this British colony had been living under the shadow of the rumbling Soufri re Hills volcano for two years, torn between fear of a cataclysmic eruption and the desire to live a normal life.

On June 25, 19 islanders were in the wrong place at the wrong time as pyroclastic flows rushed down the mountainside at almost 80km an hour. Their deaths turned a protracted crisis into an emergency, exposing not only Montserrat's vulnerability to natural disaster but also its precarious political status in a "post-colonial" age.

As Polly Pattullo's lucid account makes clear, the Montserrat volcano affair cast unexpected light into one of the dustier recesses of British foreign policy. The island had been left behind during the general rush towards independence in the 1960s and 1970s, remaining a "dependent territory" of the United Kingdom. Not that the islanders necessarily wanted independence; most believed British tutelage would guarantee political stability and encourage foreign investment. To a large degree they were right: Montserrat escaped the ideological turmoil that affected much of the area in the 1980s and developed a reputation as a placid place.

The relationship between London and Montserrat was harmonious enough, with the appointed governor mediating between the elected local government and the Foreign Office. Naturally enough, as the island's politicians saw it, the British never gave enough financial support, while civil servants in London hardly viewed this colonial relic as a budgetary priority.

It took the awakening of the volcano to turn this anachronistic conflict of interests into a full-scale constitutional row, best exemplified by Clare Short's complaint that the Montserratians would soon be asking for "golden elephants". In fact, the islanders wanted help with housing, sanitation and emergency infrastructure development after their capital and several villages had been buried under volcanic ash and molten lava. More significantly, they were also seeking Britain's commitment to the long-term future of the island. Many feared that London would use the crisis as a pretext to evacuate the entire population and, in effect, mothball Montserrat or abandon it altogether.

In the event, no such draconian solution was needed. The volcanic activity subsided, the northern half of the island continues to house a stable, if much diminished population, Montserrat remains a colony, albeit renamed an "overseas territory". The islanders have perhaps won small concessions from a grudging British government, but they have lost much more in ruined livelihoods, destroyed communities and the end of a way of life.

Pattullo tells this story of separation and loss with an admirable blend of political objectivity and personal sympathy, showing how people rooted in a traditional structure of small-holdings and rural villages found themselves billeted for months on end in makeshift tents and church buildings. Montserrat will never be the same again, but its people have once again proven their resilience and attachment to what the guidebooks used to call "the Emerald Isle".

James Ferguson is a freelance writer specialising in the Caribbean.