Why won't Europe return all the islands they took during the colonial eras

“Why won't Europe return all the islands?”?

We tried; we really did. Look at Anguilla in 1983.

In the 1970s the UK wanted to withdraw from its Caribbean colonies. St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla were geographically close, but individually too small to make viable nation-states, so it was decided [in London] to put them together and give them independence.

Fine for the St. Kittsians and the Nevisians; NOT for the - much less numerous - Anguillans, who feared discrimination from their openly antagonistic neighbours. They asked to remain as a colony.

London insisted on independence.

So the Anguillans gently locked their two policemen in their own prison, and announced themselves a ‘loyal colony’.

The UK had to send a few London bobbies [policemen]

to walk up the beach and order them to become independent, and therefore to stop obeying orders from London, EXCEPT their order, to stop obeying.

If that isn’t irony, what is?

Anyway, the Anguillans gently persisted; the “War of Whitlock’s Ear” - as it was named - wound down.

Anguilla is, to this day, a UK Crown Dependency