As islanders gathered for the 80th anniversary of Jersey’s Liberation, the Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, spoke of the need to ensure the occasion “is never reduced to a date in the diary” but “remains alive in our words, our actions, and our understanding”.

You can read his speech in full below…

“Your Excellency, Chief Minister, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to the celebration of the eightieth year since Jersey’s Liberation from occupation, Liberation Day, our National Day.

I extend a special welcome to the His Excellency Mr Miguel Berger the German Ambassador to the Court of St James, and to Lord Soames, Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson, who is here with us to help us celebrate this significant anniversary.

I also welcome those special islanders, from each of the parishes, who lived through and survived the occupation and the war and the many friends of Jersey who have travelled to attend, representing governments, départements of France, communities and members of the armed forces all with longstanding ties to our island and its history.

We are honoured by your presence. Your participation reminds us that while the story of Jersey’s Occupation and Liberation is an island story, it is also part of something much greater, a shared history, woven from countless acts of service, sacrifice, solidarity and reconciliation.

Liberation and occupation and what they truly mean is etched into the hearts and fabric of island life. I – like the Connétable of St Martin who spoke a few moments ago – stand before you not with memories of my own of the smiles and jubilation which filled these streets eighty years ago, but with the strength and knowledge of that joy and the hardship which preceded it because in no small part of the stories of occupation and then liberation told by so many including my close family. Stories passed down, carefully carried, deeply felt and, importantly, still relevant.

Both of my parents spent the war away from the island, the island that they loved, while their parents and wider family remained in an occupied Jersey. Both wrote at different times of the war they witnessed. Both felt it important to make a record of what they saw.

My mother was evacuated aged 8 and had to learn a new life in the north of England. She never, of course, forgot her home and one of her life’s proudest memories was choosing to sing ‘Beautiful Jersey’ before the Lord Mayor of Barnsley some five years after she had had to leave this island. It is perhaps not surprising her main memory of her arrival back off the boat from Southampton in 1945 was the ‘beautiful, beautiful’ warmth of the Jersey sunshine.

My father was somewhat older and had been working away from Jersey in Poole when the war broke out and so enlisted and served in the Royal Navy throughout the war. He was part of Force 135 and recalled marching past La Folie Inn in May 1945 when his younger brother – who had not seen him for five years – recognized him by the distinctive Le Cocq walk! It was only then, when working in the island in the weeks after Liberation, that my father came to fully understand the true deprivation suffered by islanders. He also found out the many ways in which islanders – including his brother – had found to express their quiet resistance to the occupying forces.

It is such family stories – fragile, precious, and powerful – and the lessons they teach that we now protect and carry forward by the telling, as the years place more distance between our time and almost all of those who lived during Jersey’s occupation.

You do not need to have a family history in Jersey to learn and experience the past here and how it sits in the present. It is all around us. When we walk the cliffs or stroll along the sea walls we are experiencing true beauty whilst passing fortifications and treading on structures first built by slave workers under dreadful inhumane conditions. Here in Liberation Square we are close to the statue – seen by many everyday – that represents so well the feeling of the Jersey people eighty years ago; a statue we were proud to have unveiled by HM The King in 1995 when he was Prince of Wales to commemorate the fifty years of freedom. Our beautiful island is a place which bears its own witness and it is all of our responsibilities – born here or not – to respect, understand and see this.

The arrival of the liberating forces in May 1945 marked the end of a long and difficult chapter. Five years of Occupation had taken its toll – but through hardship and heartache, the people of Jersey held firm, and held together. Later today we will gather in the Royal Square to commemorate the arrival of the SS Vega on December 30, 1944. The food parcels it brought to the island were truly lifesaving.

We need also to acknowledge that for many, this is a deeply personal day. A day of quiet reflection. Of remembering those who never returned or who were there at Liberation and no longer with us. Today, we remember all of them.

We are the custodians now. It is up to us to ensure that Liberation is never reduced to a date in the diary, but remains alive in our words, our actions, and our understanding.

the bailiff, sir timothy le cocq

I have been immensely privileged to speak over the last six years of the themes of Liberation, of the Jersey that I know, and that I have come to know even better, as a place of community, of inclusivity, of service and of courage. I have seen it in action, as have we all, both in joyful celebration and in tragedy, and, whilst human and far from perfect I know, we can be proud of our home.

I think every Bailiff since the war has asked himself, if it had been me who had been tasked with leading the island through occupation, how would I have done? What would I do now if faced with similar challenges? None of us can answer that question with any certainty.

The author J.R.R Tolkien witnessed both the First and Second World Wars. He wisely understood the value of individual moral courage and collective resistance. His assertion in one of his best loved stories that ‘all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us’ continues to be a simple philosophy to guide us when faced with the enormous uncertainties of a troubled world. There remains a need for active decision making and for our continuing to work to understand what is true and for us all to do our best.

So, as we look ahead, the passing of time gives us not only perspective, but responsibility. We are the custodians now. It is up to us to ensure that Liberation is never reduced to a date in the diary, but remains alive in our words, our actions, and our understanding. To teach our children. To tell the stories. To speak the names. To look around and to explain. To ensure that even as the voices grow quieter, the message that liberty is precious and not to be assumed remains strong. Very shortly you will hear an occupation account read in both Jèrriais and English. This is, of course, testament to the time when Jersey’s own language had a part to play in our occupation story.

As I remarked in my speech in 2022, ‘the world is an uncertain place, and it may seem overwhelming’. That is even more true today. There is a danger in thinking what happened in Europe and in Jersey 80 years’ ago is the distant past, no longer relevant to our busy, contemporary lives. In fact, our need to appreciate the importance of individual honesty, moral courage, of kindness and the value of democratic freedoms has rarely been more pressing.

Hannah Arendt – the historian and philosopher and herself a refugee from Nazi Germany – wrote that even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination might well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given to them.

We have global challenges, the old order is shifting, and we may wonder what the future holds. We cannot know, but we can do the best that we can with the time given to us and we can work even in small ways to stand against tyranny and dictators, the enemies of democracy and liberty wherever they may be found and play our part.

So, as we mark this 80th anniversary, let us all stand together – as members of our island community, who are all, whether born here of not, inheritors of a legacy – a legacy of endurance. Of hope. And of liberation.

Thank you all for being part of this day. Thank you for remembering. And thank you for helping to carry the memory forward.”