LIBERATION DAY 2008 gave islanders the chance to focus on many aspects of Guernsey’s national day.
Are alcohol-free zones a godsent relief for families tired of drunken idiots swearing violently and swaying freely? Or are they an infringement of the very liberties that the day is supposed to commemorate?
Likewise, the funfair. Is it mean-spirited to rob youngsters of a chance to enjoy themselves in the helter-skelter of noise and mayhem? Or is it prudent to remove the focal point of so much trouble?
Some would even argue that it is high time the very essence of the day changed. HMS Bulldog’s arrival in St Peter Port to liberate these islands is now a distant 63 years past.
So should the day be allowed to mutate from marking a specific period in the island’s history to being a special day celebrating all the things that make this community unique, not just its wartime occupation?
It is not an argument that would have cut much mustard among the 150 St Andrew’s School children who were ‘evacuated’ to Herm for a day.
For while the liberation took place some two decades before most of their parents were even born, many found a direct, personal connection.
Tales of how their grandparents and great-grandparents were evacuated or waved loved ones goodbye tumbled from the lips of the children as each imagined themselves torn from home, and even parents, for five long years.
In these softer times, it is hard for adults, let alone children, to conceive the emotional wrench the evacuees and their parents endured.
But outings like this – and full credit to St Andrew’s for another fine educational idea – and Liberation Day itself give us all an opportunity to reflect on the harsh realities of war.
By moving on quickly and not giving all our youngsters some chance to learn from our past, we would rob many of their own history, a past which has no doubt shaped the island that they live in.
It will be a long time before that lesson loses its relevance.
The Bulldog spirit lives on in Herm
LIBERATION DAY 2008 gave islanders the chance to focus on many aspects of Guernsey’s national day.
Are alcohol-free zones a godsent relief for families tired of drunken idiots swearing violently and swaying freely? Or are they an infringement of the very liberties that the day is supposed to commemorate?
Likewise, the funfair. Is it mean-spirited to rob youngsters of a chance to enjoy themselves in the helter-skelter of noise and mayhem? Or is it prudent to remove the focal point of so much trouble?
Some would even argue that it is high time the very essence of the day changed. HMS Bulldog’s arrival in St Peter Port to liberate these islands is now a distant 63 years past.
So should the day be allowed to mutate from marking a specific period in the island’s history to being a special day celebrating all the things that make this community unique, not just its wartime occupation?
It is not an argument that would have cut much mustard among the 150 St Andrew’s School children who were ‘evacuated’ to Herm for a day.
For while the liberation took place some two decades before most of their parents were even born, many found a direct, personal connection.
Tales of how their grandparents and great-grandparents were evacuated or waved loved ones goodbye tumbled from the lips of the children as each imagined themselves torn from home, and even parents, for five long years.
In these softer times, it is hard for adults, let alone children, to conceive the emotional wrench the evacuees and their parents endured.
But outings like this – and full credit to St Andrew’s for another fine educational idea – and Liberation Day itself give us all an opportunity to reflect on the harsh realities of war.
By moving on quickly and not giving all our youngsters some chance to learn from our past, we would rob many of their own history, a past which has no doubt shaped the island that they live in.
It will be a long time before that lesson loses its relevance.
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