The isle of Jersey sits off the coast of France like a rocky little remnant of
history, not French but not entirely British either, a place of secrets
where the bankers are discreet, the sun often shines and the past is too
often hidden.
The island’s long tradition of self-government has bred a hardy independence,
but it has also instilled a tendency to leave unpleasantness unspoken,
whether the subject is the murkier aspects of offshore banking, or wartime
collaboration, or, as now, the fate of youngsters in a former children’s
home.
The Channel Islands pride themselves on following their own rules. Jersey has
its own banknotes, its own legislative assembly, its own language and its
own way of doing things. It is not part of the UK or the EU, but a
possession of the British Crown, never fully incorporated into Britain.
Many of the 90,000 Jerseymen and Jerseywomen do not consider themselves either
British or French, but a breed apart, with France only 12 miles (20km) to
the south, and Weymouth 100 miles to the north.
Jersey’s strange history of semi-inde-pendence dates back to its annexation by
the Dukes of Normandy in the 10th century. When Duke William conquered
England, the Norman lands and the English kingdom were united under one
monarch, and Jersey was ruled from Rouen; when King John lost his Norman
territories in 1204, the Crown retained Jersey and the other Channel
islands.
Victor Hugo, who lived in exile in Jersey in the mid-19th century, called the
islands “pieces of France fallen into the sea and picked up by England”. But
in many ways, Jersey feels like a combination of British suburbia and
ancient Norman tradition.
Jersey law is based on Norman customary law as well as English law and royal
statute. The Clameur de Haro, for example, is an ancient legal right
whereby an individual may appeal against a wrong being inflicted by uttering
the words: “ Haro! Haro! Haro! À l’aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort.”
(Come to my aid, my Prince, for someone is doing me wrong.) No one knows for
certain what “Haro” mean, but the law remains technically enforceable today.
Jersey’s 53-member legislature is made up of senators, constables, deputies,
the Deputy Bailiff and the Bailiff, the island’s civil leader. Justice is
administered by a Royal Court, presided over by an Attorney General. The
Queen is represented by a lieutenant governor.
Alongside Jersey’s ancient titles persist some splendidly peculiar traditions.
When the Queen visited in 2001, for example, she was presented with two
mallards chained together on a silver dish by the Seigneur of Trinity “as a
symbol of the tithe he owes for his fief”. History does not relate what she
did with the luckless ducks.
Measuring only 118 sq kilometres (46 sq miles), with its rugged cliffs and
sandy beaches, Jersey is a place of extraordinary beauty, and a powerful
tourist magnet. Most British visitors to Jersey are simultaneously struck by
its familiarity, the expat ambiance, the smart bungalows and bilingual
street signs, but also by the sense of apartness on the island.
Jersey is different: this is the sunniest place in the British Isles, and the
only place in these islands with green lizards. It is also, statistically,
speaking, one of the richest places in the world, thanks to an economy based
principally on financial services and tourism. Only Bermuda and Luxembourg
have a higher per capita income. People who wish to move to the island but
who are not considered “essential” must demonstrate massive net worth.
Income tax is levied at 20 per cent, and there is no VAT, making Jersey a
haven for tax exiles. The Jersey government cooperates with international
financial law enforcement, but this remains one of the largest offshore
banking centres in the world, with money, clean and, occasionally, dirty,
passing through in torrents.
Jersey mints its own banknotes and coins, and even in the matter of currency,
the island guards its past. Where pound coins are now the only form of that
denomination in Britain, in Jersey the pound note remains ubiquitous.
Until comparatively recently, the language of the islands was Jèrriais, a
Norman French patois almost equally incomprehensible to French and British
ears. Only three in a hundred islanders still speak the language (although
one in eight claims some knowledge) but the linguistic difference persists
in a guttural accent, closer in sound to South African than French.
If there is something defensive in the Jersey manner, that may be because the
island has been on the political defensive for most of the millennium,
building up fortifications to defend against French invasion.
When the invasion finally came, it was German. In July 1940 German troops
entered the Channel Islands unopposed, Britain having made the strategic
decision that they were not worth defending. The islands thus earned the
grim distinction of becoming the only parts of the British Isles to be
occupied by the Nazis.
The five-year Nazi occupation had a profound, if incalculable effect on the
island’s mentality. For many years, the truth about the Nazi occupation of
Jersey was often suppressed or ignored, and documentary evidence hidden
away. The issue of whether Jersey collaborated, cohabited with the enemy, or
quietly resisted the Nazis has been fiercely debated ever since. Certainly,
there was no resistance movement in the islands equivalent to that in
France, but then the occupation was far heavier here, with one German
soldier for every two citizens. Unlike France, with its rural hinterland,
there was virtually nowhere in a small island for resisters to hide.
Some certainly did resist, a few with remarkable heroism. Others actively
collaborated. There were inevitable liaisons between the invaders and some
Jersey women, disdained forever after as “Jerrybags”. The most shameful
aspect of the occupation was the way some officials overzealously furnished
the Nazi occupiers with details of Jewish individuals, many of whom
subsequently perished.
There were small signs of resistance: V-signs painted on walls, the secret
listening to the BBC, the occasionally sabotaged telephone wire. But for the
most part, the islanders unenthusiastically acquiesced.
The story of Jersey under occupation is not a simple morality play of good and
evil, but perhaps a cautionary tale about how hard it can be to identify the
dividing line between the two. In Britain, we like to assume that the
British would never have submitted to occupation; the story of Jersey is
proof that British subjects are quite as capable of this sort of
accommodation as anyone else.
Jersey suffered horribly under occupation. D-Day bypassed the islands, leaving
the occupiers, but also the islanders, stranded. “Let ’em rot,” Churchill
declared. He was talking about the German troops, probably. When the islands
were finally liberated, Churchill hailed the return of “our dear Channel
Islands”. Some islanders, remembering how the British troops had left in
1940, wondered just how dear they were to the British.
The psychological damage inflicted by those wartime events, and the
recrimination and guilt that followed, may in part explain the island’s
postwar sense of separateness. As it emerged as a postwar tax-haven, Jersey
developed a reputation as a place where financial secrets would be kept,
where privacy would be respected, where embarrassing issues would not be
raised.
The relationship between Jersey and mainland Britain remains complex and
ambivalent. A recent poll found that about 68 per cent of islanders favoured
full independence from Britain. Jersey is surely too rich and comfortable to
follow Kos-ovo, but the sense of autonomy remains a central part of the
island mentality. Angry demonstrations erupted in 1992 when the Home
Secretary sacked the deputy bailiff, the second-most senior judge, for being
too slow. When the subject of wartime collaboration is raised on the
mainland, the island reaction tends to be one of fury.
The prospect of police officers from the mainland wading into Jersey’s more
recent past, and the investigation into allegations of child abuse, will
renew claims in some quarters that Jersey is being unfairly targeted and
misrepresented by outsiders.
Jersey remains a place of contradictions: an island of vivid sunlit beauty,
with a sometimes dark past; a place where the past is the present, and
jealously preserved; a small, self-govern-ing anomaly of history, where
tourists and foreign money are welcome, but questions are not.
A law unto itself
— Jersey was populated by Vikings in the 9th century; the “ey” in Jersey is a
Norse suffix meaning ”island”
— In return for refuge on Jersey in 1646, Charles II granted the island’s
Governor, George Carteret, land in the American colonies, which Carteret
named New Jersey
— When the Channel Islands became the only British soil to be occupied by
Germans, in July 1940, sterling was replaced with Reichmarks, curfews were
imposed and radios were confiscated
— More than 2,600 islanders still speak the indigenous Jèrriais, or “Jersey
Norman”, as their first language. This was especially useful during the
Occupation as neither their German occupiers nor the French interpreters
were able to understand
— Beneath the sands of the surfer beach, St Ouen’s Bay, Jersey, lies a
prehistoric landscape including an entire Neolithic forest
— Although the defence of Jersey is the responsibility of the British
Government, Jersey is not part of the UK nor the European Union
Sources: jerseyheritagetrust.org
, societe-jersiaise.org , CIA
World Fact Book, States of Jersey, jersey.com
