It was the time when Britain ruled the waves. Europeans and Americans were making and losing fortunes in the Pacific, where the white man was "masta" and natives were either "splendid", "childlike" or "unruly".

In the twilight of the Victorian era, just as the new century had begun, a young New Zealander, Albert Ellis, sailed to a small tropical island, strode purposefully ashore and set in motion a commercial operation which within decades would bring about the destruction of the entire island on which he stood - while considerably fattening up the populations of Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain.

Within hours an illiterate man the New Zealand party mistook for King of the island had given thumbprint assent to an outrageous contract which signed away unlimited amounts of the island's newly-discovered phosphate reserves, in return for £50 a year, or the equivalent in goods, for a period of 999 years.

Just a few years later the Banabans, now British subjects, watched helplessly as their food trees were cut down so that the British Phosphate Commissioners could gain access to more and more of the precious mineral, so badly needed to fertilise Australia's ancient soil.

Into exile

In 1942 the Japanese invaded Banaba and sent the Banabans to other occupied Pacific Islands in Japan's "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere".

When the war ended and the Japanese were defeated, the Banabans were told that their houses had been destroyed by the Japanese. The entire population was taken to Rabi (pronounced "Rambi"), an island in the Fiji group. They were not allowed to return. Instead, the British Phosphate Commission set about mining what was left of their island.

The rest of the world then forgot about the Banabans until the early 1970s, when they managed to bring a legal case against the British Crown for rehabilitation of their homeland. Their case was heard in the British High Court, and caused a sensation. But it didn't do them much good - all they got was an out of court settlement amounting to about 10 million Australian dollars - about £5 million Sterling.

Today the Banabans live in poverty on Rabi, forgotten about by the rest of the world. Rabi has only one phone, and few people have televisions, radios or even toilets. Most of the houses have no windows. These are the people who just a century ago were living on a treasure trove.

Without Banaba's phosphate Australia and New Zealand wouldn't have been able to provide us with so much cheap beef and lamb before we joined the Common Market in 1973.

So it seems very unfair that they should live in poverty, far away from their original home.