Douglas Ford: Jersey - A question of History

Right.

For most of the time since its political separation from mainland Normandy, er, in 1204, the population of Jerseys more or less stayed around about 20,000. It was a self-contained community, largely French refugees who came to live here, were just quietly accepted. As far as everyday life was concerned, linguistically, islanders spoke Jersey Norman French or Gerrie, which was essentially a spoken language and carried out official business in good French. Um, in the same way that people in England, er, spoke their local dialects but carried out official business in good English.

Uh, this all changed, of course, with the French Revolution.

A Royal Navy squadron was based here and a large number of English-speaking troops, er, came here permanently. I will not mention the Russians.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the island experienced an influx of English speakers. And the resident population of Jersey shot up to about 50,000 within a generation, to about 1850, and there's 50,000 people here. And this is gonna has led to an increasing Englishness in Jersey society. New houses in Saint Helio were built in the English style. 1834, an English-style currency superseded the local currency. For the next 43 years, mind, there were 13 pennies in the shilling, not 12 like anybody sensible to do.

Jersey's traditional weights and measures were gradually being supplanted by the English weights and measures. Families who'd been in in the island for centuries began emigrating to the colonies in search of a better life, and they were being replaced by mainlanders. It must have seemed in the 19th and mid-19th century that Ireland's identity was under threat.

Of course, this isn't unique. People like think so, but isn't. People in England felt that their regional cultures were being eroded by industrialization, urbanisation, growing bureaucratic centralization, and even the beginning of universal education. All over the country, people, like-minded people were gathering together to form antiquarian societies, to study the history and organise lectures and activities centred on their respective regions, and they often collected relevant articles and shoved them in a local museum. The oldest of these regional societies in England is the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1813 began publishing its academic journal, The Archaeology Eliana in 1822.

Its interest was obviously sparked up by the presence of the Roman Wall, which you can't miss, er but it rapidly expanded to cover the history and archaeology and intriguingly, the industrial archaeology of the Northeast. It hardly started, but they stood in it. And from my perspective, interestingly, the traditional music of the region. Perhaps inspired by these societies, a public meeting was held in Centalia on the 18th of January 1873, and after which 10 journeymen led by William Lawrence de Gruchi and Gervais Le Gros, who believed passionately in the study of the island's history, language, its monuments, historical sites, decided that a society should be formed.

10 days later there was a second meeting. And they decided that they were going to prepare the the regulations governing this new body. 10 weeks later, they adopted the regulations, and on 23rd of April 1873, an executive committee was set up and elected its head by the elected head was Jura Dre Lerier. Rule number 2. Set out that the society's main aim was to study the history, language, and antiquities of the island and their conservation, as well as the publication of historical documents.

An island society had been divided politically, sometimes quite vehemently, for the previous 100 years.

And so rule number 3 states the soc is to be outside any partisanship and has no political significance. By the end of that year, 1873, the associate claimed 3 honorary members, 68 subscribing members, and by the time the first annual reports published two years later, it's gone up to 83 members.

So the question is why did it really take until 1873 for this to happen? And I think in a way, it's because it's a reaction to Georg's establishment to the creeping anglicisation of the island, and they're holding a mirror to themselves. At the same time, the basking the reality of Britain's success is the most formidable power on earth. Society was beginning to place a greater importance on education.

For centuries, the better off members of Jersey Society, the boys, had been taught at the old grammar school, Saint Annasars and Saint Menelier. Uh, while her sisters tended to get a limited education at home. This changes in 1852 when Victoria College opens in Saint Elier, and this offers boys an English-style education. Takes another generation before the girls get the same benefit mind. Uh, this of course only applies to the more affluent members of society, those who could pay. However, with the increased mechanisation, there's now a need for an educated literate workforce, and so the states begin a review of elementary education in the island.

And in 1871, a committee, Caion Elementaire, is set up, and they make a crucially important decision because the size of Jersey, they can't do it by themselves, so they adopt the principles of English elementary education. And in order to do this, they have to import English inspectors. They also have to decide what language the children are going to be taught.

Ireland's a linguistic hodgepotch.

standardised French and standardised English are being used in commerce and the church, the courts, the newspapers. Well, Grier is commonly used in the country. And of course the debate is going to be heavily influenced by this economic influence of having to bring inspectors from the English system. And so it's decided that English is going to be the language of instruction in Jersey schools. Once that happens, It's inevitable that English is going that the island's going to become part of the English-speaking world, and by the time education becomes compulsory in 1899, every islander has to speak English at least some of the time, and by the following year, 1900, the new century, English is allowed as the language of debate in the states. When the regulations of the saus were drawn up 1873, rule number 8 stipulates, and I'll say this in English because my French is atrocious.

The books, minutes, and other documents of the sauci shall be drawn up in the French language, and all discussions as far as possible, shall be conducted in that language. So, by this, I think we can say that despite what's popular and regarded today, it's French.

That good French, that the flaging Soci is interested in preserving rather than soci.

The Gerrie section only begins in May 1995, and the first bit of errie I can find published in the Sosbulletin only appears in 1936 when Frank Le Mac's poem on the on the flowers of the the names of the local flowers appears.

Three committees were set up to reflect the Sosa's original purpose, archaeology, language, and history.

Within 3 years they'd been joined by a 4th, the Museum and Natural History Committee. Committees get changed to sections in 1914.

The first bulletin is published in 1975, 1875, and since then it's been the chief vehicle for members to present the results of their research.

Interestingly, the first article in the 19 in the 1876 bulletin is written entirely in English.

Many of these articles have been about island families, the military situation of the island, er, the involvement in the island's overseas trade, and as the number and interests of the sections grew, natural history, geology, or mythology.

And while the articles were submitted in both French and English, it's only in 1945 that the business reports appear in English.

So that's the background from the the sausage emerges. And so what, what's the quality of the research was, from my perspective, it's been excellent, some's been mediocre, some's been particularly dodgy. Some have been incisive, some has been overly patriotic, some has been self-congratulatory.

Some articles have been written extremely well and some have been rather tedious, but the thing I've found out as far as the history articles are concerned, they've all been of interest. And they, they reflect the thinking of that time, and the emphasis is largely over the last 150 years, been on the great and the good and the military issues.

In 1988, um, in David Lowenthal's book, The Past is a Foreign Country, he wrote, memory, history, relics of earlier times shed light on the past, but the past they reveal is not simply what happened, it's to a certain extent the past of our own creation, mouldered by selective erosion, oblivion, intervention, and despite cultural amnesia, there's grown up a cult of nostalgia, preservation and the search for roots, and I think it's this creation of the past that I find interesting.

And when I, I was asked to do the, the talk, I toyed with the idea of going through the achievements of the of the organisation, but I thought, ah, can't be bothered with that.

What I'm going to do, I just want to present a bit of a challenge and ask, are we in danger of using the past as a comfort zone to validate ourselves, to broadcast our credentials, because in the last decade or so, what I've I've noticed is an increase, and this is outside the so I'll add here, it's been an increasing what's been termed presentism. Judging historical figures and events by today's morality, and I believe this is dangerous because it ignores the true complexity of human nature, unlike us people in the past that didn't know what was going to come next.

And this has been accompanied by growing demands in in certain areas for apologies to be given for actions taken in the past, for all sorts of things.

It might be an unpopular view at the moment, but I don't believe that people in the past don'owe anybody an apology, and we can acknowledge what happened in the past, but As has been said, like us, the people in the past emerged from the womb into a society that like all societies around the world, had pre-existing customs and mores. Presented with this, they simply played the cards that God dealt them in the best way they knew how, and that's all you can expect of them. History isn't a safe place. It doesn't care what you think about things. You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. And those facts don't cease to exist simply because you ignore them.

However, when it's presented to us, history is also there to be challenged.

I've always found that history to be fascinating. It's often, it's often been said that history is all around us. We certainly need to look and have an inquiring mind. And everybody's interested in history, not necessarily the stuff that showed at you at school. I was never particularly interested in 19th century sewage problems, but I had to learn it. Um, a history, of course, we're all interested in something, and that something has a history. A history that can be specific, it can have local association, have wider implications.

It can be long term, it can be short term, it can be military, political, economic, social, it can be the story of the great and the good, or it can be the story of the common man. What history does, it explains the world around us. It gives us value and meaning of the present and a realistic sense of a shared past. It's what makes us a nation. It's who we are and why we are the way that we are. However, it is also a dangerous place when it's manipulated and not challenged.

A few years ago, there was a very famous advertising campaign on television. The advert shows a small boy pushing a delivery bicycle up a very steep cobbled road and everything's shot in sepia, and there's an a motive soundtrack provided by a brass band. The small boy gets home, he's received at the bosom of the family in a warm, well-made kitchen, and he's given a slice of bread and butter. This is the past, like we'd like to live in it.

It's uh the rural it'll, that was presented in the classic British films like Mrs. Miniver in History, Mr. Polly. The Welsh word have got the Welsh and the word for it hireth, it doesn't translate into English very easily.

It's often described as meaning a deep longing or a nostalgia for a place or a time that may never have existed. It it's, um, or it might only have existed in one's memory or imagination.

It brings together the feeling of homesickness, uh, nostalgia, and longing. Here is a pull on the heart and it conveys a distinct feeling of missing something. It's irretrievably lost. In Gerry, in Jersey, I think Tom Passe actually brings that same feeling. And of course history, as I said, isn't a safe place.

If you give this advertisement any more than a passing thought, what should hit us on reflection is that this is passed on a superficial level. What the advertiser didn't want to ask is why the small boy was working at all, and the reality of the portrayed unspecified age for the working class was actually one of disease, poverty, exploitation, deprivation on such a scale that the government of the UK was forced to intervene and create the beginnings of the welfare state. Would have been as powerful if the young boy was consumptive and had to hand over all his wages to his mother to supplement the family income.

Would the advert have generated such a rosy glow if there'd been a realisation that the slice of bread and butter was the boy's entire meal? And that's one of the problems of the past. There's a tendency to create an image of the past of a time when life was simpler, it's seductive and selective. We're tempted to use it the same way as toddlers use teddy bears and blankets to surround ourselves with a fixed point for security and comfort. And as we all know, life in the past was just as contradictory, as complex as it is today. It may have been different, but it was just the same. The people in the past had their own values, needs, desires in the same way as we do today. There may have been different values, different needs, different desires, but they're just as important. And are we guilty of simplifying their life? Here in Jersey, I believe that over the years we have as a community adopted an acceptable version of the past in which to regale visitors and residents, a past that fits comfortably with our idea of identity. I don't think that we're owning this. National myths of shared pasts are important. However, I do think we've been guilty of ignoring the uncomfortable parts of the past. No matter how much one would like something to be true, we're still dependent on facts. But sadly, we live in an age where many people have no interest in facts or history, just in their own mythology and grievance. It could refer to the issue of collaboration during the occupation as an example of the uncomfortable parts of the past.

But I think a better example would be the current fascination with something I've been looking for the past 20 years, slavery.

The comfortable view is that Jersey wasn't involved in transatlantic slave trade.

It was a nasty business, and not being part of it allows us to feel good about ourselves. However, it's incomprehensible that that islanders wouldn't have participated in what was such a lucrative trade.

And at the time, it was regarded as totally legal and respectable.

we now know that islanders were involved in this, the slave trade.

To what extent we're still exploring, but definitely the hints were there, but they're just ignored. And of course what we're focusing on 1982 bulletin, John Stevens and Jean Arthur wrote an article about the Saint Martina family, fine historians were the war. And despite stating, the most interesting and valuable of these documents is a group of letters written from Jamaica in 1668, 7077 and 1983, the letters brag about plantations, building sugar mills.

They totally ignore the mention of the word slave is not mentioned.

Because in the 1980s, the transatlantic slave trade was an interest, and that actually and say from these letters we gained the impression of a family who emigrated and through their own resources and hard work became prosperous in Jamaica, but who retained a deep affection for their relatives in Jersey and a keenness to employ Jerseymen and keep up trade with their native island.

Yeah.

So the The point about um students of history is that what we want to do, our guidance star should be the past as a relevant factor in the present. And we are ruled in the past.

Nobody really understands it, but I like to use the analogy of a coral island that is a little piece peeing above the surface, but underneath, there's all these dead skeletons. And so we're we are ruled and conditioned by what we never see and by what most of us never think about, and the things from the past decide nearly everything in our lives, but they're usually accepted without question, and it's important that we question.

History is the most powerful intellectual tool that society possesses. Its purpose is to explain the present. It's that to say why we live in the world that we live in. It tells us what's important. It could be said that the future lies in the past for whoever controls the past shapes the world that we live, and it's a frightening thought.

And when you look at certain events, look at the Bosnian Serbian conflict, look what's going on in Ukraine, smash the museums, smash the archives, you deprive the people of the past, you then control the narrative.

Now they're the questions that I think is important.

The great Irish folk song collector Frank Hart wrote, those in power write the history while those suffer in silence write the songs. Question I want to finish with is that simple.

For the working class, traditional music, traditional songs with the theatre.

It was how people gathered the news and how they found out about around the world. It found out what happened in Jersey, where, where's the traditional music gone? Where's the traditional songs gone? What happened? What happened in Jersey? That destroyed all that. I don't know.

Yeah