ON THE basis that the disruption to Guernsey’s airport could not have been allowed to continue in May and that action had to be taken to end the fire crew’s industrial action, today’s special Billet d’Etat will surprise many islanders.

Not because it seeks to establish some form of inquiry into what happened, but because its primary purpose appears to be to punish those responsible for getting the men back to work.

The words in the petition seeking to establish an investigation are weighted against those who brokered a return to work and the tone of the request for a formal tribunal of inquiry is ‘how dare you do that…’

Questions certainly need to be asked about what triggered the dispute, how a return to work was engineered and why the airport was allowed to close in such a damaging fashion.

Yet the requete reads more as an accusatory document and it is clear that the 18 deputies who signed it have already made up their minds regarding guilt.

Since five of them are members of the Public Sector Remuneration Committee, whose handling of the airport negotiations is central to any review and who resigned after the back-to-work deal was concluded without their involvement, that may not be surprising.

The depressing thing for anyone reading the Billet, however, is that the thrust of the petitioners’ interest is not in security of airlinks and preventing further disruption but in obsessing over whether executive action was taken to reopen the airfield.

One of its concerns, for instance, is why a special sitting of the States was not convened to discuss the closure.

Given the chaos, cost and damage to Guernsey’s reputation as a well-governed international business centre, it takes a certain mind-set to believe that not being consulted is more important than the reopening of the airport.

However, this is now entering Never Never Land: the Policy Council says that the precise form of any inquiry is a matter for each individual deputy to determine – but provides no steer on what might be appropriate.

Meanwhile, the key issue of industrial relations remains sidelined while deputies fret that they were excluded from keeping the aircraft flying.