Rightly not trusting our leaders to deliver on their statements (there were, IFUC, no promises about leaving the EU from Mrs May), the Sage of Kettering and I have left the EU in that recently, we have visited our nearest escape hole, the Channel Islands. A fleeting visit, one day in each, but we have seen a future, and it works, more or less. For our more distant readers, Jersey and Guernsey are ‘Crown Dependencies’, historically part of the Duchy of Normandy, owing allegiance to the British Crown but not part of the UK. The UK government has arrogated to itself the overlordship of the islands, holding responsibility for foreign affairs and defence (well, sort of, as we shall see), but the two Bailiwicks are otherwise independent jurisdictions with autonomy in most areas, crucially taxation, and are outside of the European Union, albeit within EU Customs arrangements, allowing them to trade with the EU. Here, they say, the Queen is the Duke of Normandy, although monuments refer to ‘la Reine’. She is the only Duke I can think of married to a Duke. Whether or not they can simply declare independence is constitutionally unclear, but with Labour dangerously close to power, they might be advised to make some plans.
We flew into Jersey, at our departure airport in the UK, a government advert, a stark reminder of how Orwellian the UK is, and note the gentle stab at diversity in the poster.
Our first stop in a windy and rainy Jersey being the ‘War Tunnels’ a German Underground Military Hospital from WW2.
Like quite a few residences here, there is a Porsche sitting around, probably one of the first on the island.
The hospital is now a museum of the German occupation. After the fall of France, came the signal informing the Islands’ governments that they will ‘not, repeat not’ be defended against attack by sea or air. There is a poignant poster on the difficult ‘choice’ facing the islanders, the echoes today being a pure co-incidence:
However, it wasn’t all about choice, many had none. One British-born Jewish woman remained, and was eventually deported to Europe. Remarkably (and telling, for the efficiency of the operation), after protests from the Jersey Bailiff (the nominal head of the Island’s government), she was repatriated directly to the UK in 1944. She said later that she’d never be honest again, having obediently registered herself as a Jew. She only needed to never have trusted government again.
As it became clear that the Islands weren’t going to be defended, there was, understandably, panic. Some chose to leave, and before getting on a boat, found that their houses had been burgled between them leaving their house and getting off the Island.
The tunnels tell the grim story of the Occupation. German rules, anti-Jewish laws, price controls (this from the people who gave the world wheelbarrow inflation), enslavement, starvation and death. One Jersey woman, Louisa Gould, who had lost a son in the Royal Navy in 1941, was deported to Ravensbrück for sheltering a Soviet PoW slave worker, and keeping a radio, and was worked to exhaustion in the camp, and was gassed in February 1945 when no longer able to work. So powerful was the Reich and its ideas, it had to gas this lady lest her example cause them trouble.
The museum is not afraid to address the collaboration between the government and the Nazi occupiers, it offers a replay of a conversation between the Bailiff and the Attorney-General, discussing a German order to mandate the confiscation of radios, the gist of which is that they will pretend to enforce the edict by, er, …enforcing it. (Yes, you read that right). There was also an indication that Mountbatten wanted to invade the islands in a plan that sounded as if the Dieppe Raid hadn’t been enough pointless slaughter in one operation, but Bomber Harris would have none of it. There were also collaborators, some of whom, post-Liberation on 9th May 1945, were hidden in the Island’s prison for months, before being shipped to Bristol. Women who formed relationships with German soldiers were called ‘Jerry-bags’. Denunciations were used to settle scores, but some crafty postal workers steamed open the letters, read them, tipped off the targets and then forwarded the letters, enabling covert radios or other evidence to be disposed of.
The War Tunnels were rather more circumspect about the Soviets, who had, after all, been in a pact with the Nazis when the Occupation started. The museum’s signs referred to the ‘Fascist’ ideology of the occupiers, not ‘National Socialist’, it became apparent why. In making the exhibition, the museum had some support from a Jersey Marxist organisation, who somehow omitted to mention the Nazi-Soviet Pact in force when the Occupation started, which literally fuelled the invasion of France. Regarding one of the surviving Soviet PoWs, it noted how they only heard from him once after his return to the Motherland, his fate in the camps (my guess being his ‘promotion’ from hospital tunneller to, perhaps, gold miner) being acknowledged in passing as a possibility.
The role of the Swedish Red Cross in delivering food parcels to the Channel Islands after Overlord is prominent, including Canadian cheese. The Germans were fastidious in not taking the food intended for the Islanders from them for their starving troops in the period from June 1944 to May 1945, but they did manage a raid on Normandy in March 1945.
Emerging from the tunnels into daylight, we strolled to St. Helier, down pleasant rural lanes, a red squirrel popping up, and saw some local architecture. Rural Jersey did feel ‘foreign’, more like France than England, particularly as street names are French.
St. Helier is a pleasant town, population c. 34,000, Jersey is made up of parishes rather than towns, the neighbouring parishes blend into St Helier. It’s not as obviously prosperous as one might have thought, with quite a few empty buildings, both retail and residential, but certainly appearing on a par with a prosperous English Home Counties town. Of note, the Major Peirson pub, just of Royal Square, outside of which the valiant Major fell to enemy fire defending Jersey from the last French invasion of British territory (1781). The French invasion force’s commander died inside the pub (of wounds, not drinking), saving the Revolutionaries the trouble of executing him a few years later. We toasted the Major with Kentucky bourbon. The then-Governor of Jersey had allowed himself to be captured, but his failure to fight was more or less overlooked, and he got a pension. Rewarding failure seems to be a well-established British government trait.
There are plenty of clean, working phone boxes in St. Helier, local calls (i.e. on the Island) are free from these boxes, and surprisingly, they have phone books in them. There was no sign of any grafitti or vandalism anywhere on the island, indeed the Sage only spotted some in a public loo in St. Peter Port, Guernsey.
There is a pleasant covered market in St Helier.
St. Ouen’s Bay has a huge beach and a long promenade. Jersey was once home to the fourth largest ship-building industry in the British Isles, it could have expanded, but for some reason they stuck a railway through it, so it could not expand as ships got bigger. Railway and shipyards long since gone. Still, had Jerry got his thieving National Socialist mitts on a ship-building industry, that would not have helped the Battle of the Atlantic, and might have meant routine bombing by the RAF during the Occupation. One thing of note in Jersey, the vast areas of polytunnels, and some impressive effort going into farming even very steep slopes.
The main sight for us was Mont Orgueil (Mount Pride) castle on the east coast, a 30 minute ride on a Liberty bus, past incredibly rocky bays. The castle is impressive, taking a good 2 hours to look around, with views of distant France, and German additions, observation points, at the top.
Mont Orgueil was ‘demoted’ in the age of powder, with Elizabeth Castle on an island in the bay outside St. Helier taking over as the main fort. Sadly, Elizabeth Castle (named for the ginger one) was in its close season, so we could not visit.
Meals were in the Pomme D’Or Hotel – the German Naval HQ in WW2 -overlooking what is now Liberation Square, in which a 50th anniversary statue commemorates Liberation Day (9th May 1945). The statue is Islanders raising a Union Jack.
The original plan, Islanders releasing doves, was rejected by the Islanders, they said the starving German soldiers would have long since shot and eaten any doves left by that time.
Our brief stay ended with a bus ride back to the airport for the short flight to Guernsey, a smaller island (25 sq miles) but with a cluster of smaller islands within its jurisdiction, mad Sark with its thieving price controls, the Sarquois appear to have averted disaster for now by buying the power company from the unfortunate owners, and Herm and small Jethou, with Alderney, not liberated until 16th May 1945, so perhaps the last outpost of the Reich’s power, distant on the horizon.
St. Peter Port, the capital of Guernsey, is a fine town, prettier than flat St. Helier, and quite hilly. It has the air of a prosperous Cornish seaside town, but without the pasties.
Victor Hugo, the chap behind an unhappy musical, lived here for c. 15 years after exile from France, his house, now owned by the City of Paris, appears to have been done up somewhat.
The national beast of Guernsey is (the cow apart) the donkey, the beast fondly memorialised in the capital. In Jersey, they have the toad ‘crapaud’ as their animal, with an amusing monument in St Helier, complete with excerpts of a now-repealed penal code.
There is a rumour, most likely unfounded (since I have just started it) that Mrs May’s advisers write her speeches in this Guernsey pub.
Out in the bay of St Peter Port is Castle Cornet, once an island, now on a causeway, often seized by the French before gunpowder, and then in the Civil War, held by Royalists against Parliamentarian Guernsey, with Jersey Royalist. Supplied by sea, they pounded around 10,000 cannonballs into St. Peter Port during the war, and were the penultimate Royalists to surrender, after around 9 years holding out. It was closed when we visited, and is much reduced after a lightning strike to the magazine in 1678, when there seemed to be something wrong with their bloody castle that day, as Admiral Beatty might have put it. Today, it is much reduced from its Civil War peak.
What I particularly liked about Guernsey was that you could easily see Herm, Jethou and Sark from St. Peter Port, giving a bit of perspective and sense that the sea was a road rather than an isolating wilderness, here are Herm and Jethou Sark (edit) from the causeway past Castle Cornet.
Addendum: A view of Sark (and Brecqhou) from St Peter Port, with the wrath of the weather gods lashing down on their price controls, with Jethou and Herm to the left, and the edge of Castle Cornet in the left foreground.
Near the harbour, a statue of Prince Albert, a German visitor who is fondly memorialised. Behind him, is reputedly the pub, the Albion Hotel, that is closest to a church in all the British Isles.
One feature of the Islands is that they have their own respective Sterling bank notes, starting at £1, whilst Bank of England notes are accepted. Thomas de la Rue being a Guernseyman, it’s quite appropriate that he is on one version of the Guernsey note. The Jersey government helpfully points out that by Jersey keeping its own bank notes, that makes money for the government, since when banks run out of notes, they buy them off the government, who make a ‘profit’, so everyone wins, hurrah!
Why it’s important to keep Jersey notes in circulation
Jersey notes that are circulation generate income for the Island. If we aren’t withdrawing Jersey cash from the banks, then the banks would have no need to buy notes from the States of Jersey. This is why the Island benefits from having its own currency.
How paper money creates more money
Jersey’s banks order paper money from the States of Jersey to meet the demand for cash from their customers. Jersey notes enter circulation via the following process:
local banks place an order for cash with the States of Jersey Treasury
the Treasury issues Jersey notes to local banks
in return the local banks pay the Treasury the face value of the cash received
the notes are withdrawn from local banks by Islanders
The money that the banks pay for the notes is invested by the States of Jersey and contributes to the overall running of the Island.
Sadly, despite the proximity to France, M Bastiat’s wisdom haven’t penetrated in St Helier. Still, they are far better than the UK for most things.
Jersey and Guernsey are noted financial centres, with neither having inheritance or capital taxes, and with no VAT or sales taxes in Guernsey, but Jersey has started on the slippery slope of a GST, currently 5% (introduced at 3%), I can only image it creeping up towards the UK’s 20% for VAT. In both Islands, income tax is maintained at the wartime emergency rate of 20%, with Guernsey alone having a tax cap. As for Sark, the Sage wrote this prescient piece in 2005.
Politically, both Islands are a bit of a mixed bag. The first thing that you see in Guernsey airport is a ‘Fairtrade’ declaration, showing that they fail to understand the importance of prices and are, in effect, ashamed of market prices. Both Islands have ‘mindless equality blather’ as part of the public sector default mode, with police concerned about ‘hate crimes’. I can’t help getting the impression that they have no real appreciation that what makes them prosper is (a) low taxes, private property, the rule of law and (b) the state of the UK in comparison.
Guernsey licenses its own air routes and has its own mini-‘Aeroflot’, Air Aurigny (the local word for ‘Alderney’). The airline was ‘nationalised’ by the States of Guernsey in the interests of ‘economic development’, despite a local businessman who runs another local airline offering to buy it. Still, the airline was perfectly pleasant, and they don’t seem to have the customer-repellent habits of Flybe of charging people with slightly over-sized bags £50 to as they take their bags on the flight.
With all the reminders of the German Occupation, there was one horror memorialised in Guernsey that really stuck with me. During the Marian Terror, 3 Protestants were burned alive, one was pregnant, she gave birth in the flames. The baby was rescued, but was then ordered that he be thrown into the flames.
At Guernsey airport, for departure in a field opposite the entrance, I managed to catch sight of a Guernsey cow. I am happy to put Guernsey butter on my toast of a morning. And I got some genuinely duty-free aftershave, 2/3rd of the retail price in the UK. I look forward to returning not too far into the future, Guernsey for preference.
In summary, both Islands are very pleasant places to visit, and a glimpse of how the UK might have been (and might yet be) had they rediscovered the benefits of low taxes and restrained government some 50 years ago.
And finally, in Jersey, another sign that you are not in England. In England, there is in many a town a ‘Magistrates’ Court’ for summary offences (misdemeanours). In St. Helier, it is, despite their being surely more than one magistrate, caught in stone as per the sign below. I like to think that, having been freed of the real Nazis, they are subtly trolling the Grammar ones.
