Dieu et Mon Droit ("God and My Right") | |||||||
| Anthem | "God Save the Duke / Dieu Sauve Not' Duchesse" | ||||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
Saint Helier and Saint Peter Port | ||||||
| Language | English, French | ||||||
| Demonym | Channel Islander | ||||||
| Government | Idiosyncratic federal constitutional monarchy | ||||||
| Legislature | Committee of States | ||||||
| Duke of Normandy | Zara | ||||||
| Bailiff-General | |||||||
| Area | 118 km² | ||||||
| Independence | 1994 | ||||||
| Currency | cel | ||||||
| Organizations |  Celtic Alliance
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The tiny crown dependencies of Guernsey and Jersey emerged intact but shaken from the Third World War. They had to turn to each other for support after the collapse of the United Kingdom, the nation on which they had relied for centuries. The islands' close cooperation led to the first-ever political structures covering the entire archipelago, and these continued to operate after the islands restored links to Great Britain - this time in the form of the Celtic Alliance. Today, Guernsey and Jersey, together with Guernsey's outlying inhabited islands, comprise a sovereign federal state, Alliance member, and constitutional monarchy under the Northumbrian branch of the British royal family. Each bailiwick and island has kept the colourful and idiosyncratic political customs inherited from the Middle Ages, though each has also surrendered some power to the joint government for the Channel Islands as a whole. The islands continue to celebrate both their English and their Norman French heritage, and the French element of the population and culture has increased significantly due to migration from the mainland.
Background[]
Guernsey and Jersey consider themselves to be the last remaining piece of the Duchy of Normandy, the lands from which William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066. After many hundreds of years of war, William's heirs lost every piece of that inheritance in mainland France, keeping only this group of islands in the Channel. From the mid-thirteenth century, with the loss of Normandy proper, the English kings began to govern them as unique territories. Together with the Isle of Man, they became the Crown Dependencies, neither part of the United Kingdom nor its colonies, yet not wholly separate from them either. Parliament asserted the right to legislate on the islands' behalf, though acts of Parliament did not apply there unless the territories were named specifically.
Political reform came slowly and unevenly to the islands. There was never one moment when feudal rule gave way to popular democracy; indeed, vestiges of feudalism continue to this day, particularly on the island of Sark, part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, where landowners are still represented in the legislature. Meanwhile, the islands acquired a commercial importance far out of proportion to their size. The islands prospered from many activities through the centuries - from cross-channel trading to Newfoundland cod fishing, shipbuilding, privateering, and whaling, transitioning to light industry in the later 19th century and offshore finance toward the end of the 20th.
The Channel Islands' geographic situation made them a valuable military prize. They were fought over in the Hundred Years' War, English Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, and World War II, and fortifications dot the islands from each of these conflicts. The German occupation of the 1940s was still within vivid living memory in 1983, and hundreds of Nazi bunkers were reused as fallout shelters at that time.
History[]
War[]
The nuclear strikes of September 1983 destroyed at a stroke both Britain and France, leaving the bailiwick governments to mostly fend for themselves. They were not near any missile strikes, but a major nuclear threat sat nearby on the Cotentin peninsula. The La Hague site for reprocessing nuclear fuel was near the tip of the peninsula just 25 kilometers from the island of Alderney. To the south, the Flamanville nuclear reactor was still under construction and had no radioactive materials on site.
Local gendarmes secured both sites as soon as the attacks began. But within the hour the ominous form of Soviet "Badger" bombers loomed overhead. Those who saw it assumed that the end had come - but the bomber's payload was conventional ordnance, not nuclear weapons. It was attacking minor targets along the French coast with the aim of hobbling the country's warmaking capacity. To this end it bombed both the fuel site and the unfinished power plant. As the planes flew over the Channel Islands they dropped a few token bombs. The bomber group continued to Brittany before turning around. On the return trip they were finally intercepted by French fighters and shot down.
The bombs dropped on the islands caused great panic without destroying much of use; the islands had been demilitarized since the end of the Second World War. The La Hague site, however, became an acute hazard. Radioactive material now contaminated the air, water and land and threatened the islands, especially Alderney. The need to deal with contamination around La Hague would determine much of the islands' subsequent history.
Isolation and refugees[]
Cooperation between the two bailiwicks began that very night, when the lieutenant governors and bailiffs of Jersey and Guernsey, all four men World War Two veterans who were thinking of the occupation, consulted one another via shortwave radio. They agreed to an immediate course of action: shelter as much of their populations as possible in the islands' many abandoned Nazi bunkers. This began that night and continued throughout Monday. Even after it was clear that no attack was imminent, many terrified people chose to stay in the bunkers for a long time afterward. Other emergency measures were implemented over the course of that day, including curfews and rationing.
A still more urgent challenge came in the boatloads of refugees who now made their way to the island, mostly from France but also from England, especially people with Channel Island roots. The islands seemed an attractive destination, isolated from destruction all around them. But they lacked the resources to care for so many. The same bunkers ensured that there was enough housing, but food was scarce. Many began to starve, both locals and refugees. The autonomous local administrations of Alderney and Sark took a harder line, categorically refusing to take in anyone seeking refuge after a few months. This was only partly enforceable, but many boats were made to return to France or passed along to Guernsey. Guernsey's offshore island of Herm was converted into a giant camp, eventually becoming a site for a few thousand people to live and (in large numbers) die.
Alderney genuinely lacked the capacity to care for any refugees, because wind began to bring over radioactive materials from La Hague in the days following 26 September. At first people sheltered in bunkers; then many began to leave; and finally the president and States of the island ordered a general evacuation. Most went to temporary sites on Guernsey and Jersey. They found a warmer welcome there than most French refugees, but this did little to relieve the overcrowding and shortages that they faced there.
Britain's emergency government established itself on the Isle of Portland in the Channel, not very far at all from the islands, and this should have led to good cooperation and sharing of resources. But the government was in a state of constant crisis for years, dealing with survivors and fallout from Portsmouth and Plymouth as well as divisions within its immediate area of control in Southern England. There was not a thing that Portland could do to help the islanders, so they had to continue relying on each other. The strain on resources was immense, and both bailiwicks came close to collapsing; Alderney and Sark were operating with virtual independence already.
The gendarmerie in Cherbourg also was in contact with the bailiwicks and making some attempt to coordinate with them. The peninsula was dealing with its own humanitarian crisis, squeezed between the La Hague hazards in the north and a steady stream of migrants coming in from the south. The newcomers came from Lower Normandy, many of them having been pushed on by refugees from Paris. The regional and departmental administrations were failing to the south of the peninsula's marshlands, so local gendarmes assumed control of the local administration; and they could barely hold things together. They lacked any resources for containment or cleanup. All they could do was move people as far from the damage as possible. By 1984, the Cotentin was resembling an enormous camp governed as a police state.
Over the course of 1984, the situation on the peninsula was brought under a measure of control. Organized efforts began to resettle migrants and boost food production. But within a year the gendarmerie itself was beginning to unravel as a coherent force. Security around La Hague was reduced to little more than warning signs as the people on the peninsula became preoccupied with basic bodily needs.
Welsh and Irish intervention[]
The bailiwicks jointly asked for help from Portland, but the emergency government was itself facing collapse, pressed beyond its limits trying to handle the fallout, provide for survivors, and keep its three nearest counties together. It could only refer the islanders' request to another emergency government based at Aberystwyth in Wales. The Welsh had successfully contained two active nuclear plants in Trawsfynydd and Wylfa, with support from Ireland. Compared to the English, they had more access to resources and personnel that could secure the two Cotentin sites.
It took close to three more years for the Welsh and Irish to organize an operation to France. Gathering cleanup and construction supplies was exceedingly difficult during the chaos of those years. Guernsey and Jersey could no longer care for the Alderney refugees, who instead moved to a dedicated camp on the far side of the Cotentin. The island's legislature, the States of Alderney, reconstituted itself in exile and did what it could to regulate camp life, but the outlook was bleak.
In the autumn of 1987, an Irish freighter finally arrived with supplies and a team to confront the nuclear contamination. Available supplies were inadequate to decontaminate the areas thoroughly, but the team could at least mitigate the immediate threat to the islands and to the city of Cherbourg. The uncompleted Flamanville plant served as a useful source of supplies and a secure storage site for contaminated materials.
But the team also found a region on the brink of political and social collapse. The peninsula had disintegrated into a state of near-starvation and near-anarchy. Additional security had to be brought in, mostly from Wales and the Channel Islands, to help reorganise some kind of administration so that the work of containment could continue.
Councils were formed at the commune level around the peninsula, at first in cooperation with the foreigners in order to establish public safety and enforce the new exclusion zone. But they eventually formed the basis for wide-ranging social changes in Cotentin. Food production became more planned. Many of the refugee camps were broken up or incorporated into new farming projects. In the late 80s and early 90s this had a significant impact on the Channel Islands; the same French, Welsh and Irish administrators negotiated on behalf of the islands' refugees. Many were allotted land in the islands or the peninsula. The crowded, squalid camp on Herm was disbanded in 1990, with most of its surviving residents crossing back to France and around a hundred remaining to live there permanently.
The United Bailiwicks[]
By 1990, much of the old world was clearly gone for good. Nothing was left of the United Kingdom, and the Celtic Alliance was already beginning to step into its role, at least in northern Scotland and to an extent in Wales, though it was not yet a member. The many storms of the 80s, literal and figurative, had demonstrated the need for something to replace what had been lost.
Leaders on all the islands had recognised the need for new structures, but most also greatly feared any change to the old and intricate political systems of the islands. So much had changed, but the States of each bailiwick had continued to meet as before. In 1991 began the first of several summits between the lieutenant governors and bailiffs of each bailiwick, along with the president (still in exile) of Alderney and the seneschal of Sark. From these meetings came a plan for a legislative body that could act on behalf of all the islands, resolving the neglect that had come with the fall of the UK. It would be constituted as a committee of the States of each bailiwick, committees forming the basis of governance on all the islands. In this way it would build on existing traditions.
The Committee of States met for the first time in 1994, and this is considered the foundation of the modern Channel Islands. The first and succeeding committees would little by little make adjustments to its composition. Alderney and Sark received direct representation, rather than being represented by Guernsey States members. Herm, its population now quite enlarged by former French refugees, was granted separate representation, and the Committee took the lead in organising a semi-autonomous government for the island.
The Channel Islands had no separate executive for those first years. The need to have someone manage things when the States were not in session led to the creation of a Policy Committee, which would effectively serve as an executive for the Channel Islands' joint affairs. To serve as its head, the two bailiffs agreed to take turns. Therefore since 2000, the two main islands have alternated the role of capital of the islands. From January to June, the Committee of States and Policy Committee are based in Saint Helier on Jersey, and the Bailiff of Jersey also serves as Bailiff-General of the Channel Islands. From July to December, the committees meet in Saint Peter Port on Guernsey, whose island's bailiff then serves as Bailiff-General.
From most Islanders' perspective, the Celtic Alliance seemed to be the best hope for Britain's future; when England had failed, it was the Irish and Welsh who had come to their aid. The Isle of Man, Britain's other Crown Dependency, had already joined the Alliance in 1993, and Wales joined in 1995. The way forward seemed clear, though the slow pace of island politics meant that membership took considerable time to happen. Issues had to be sorted over representation, defence, and even the name that the islands would use: it was during this time that they adopted the name United Bailiwicks and adopted a flag: a combination of the crosses of Guernsey and Jersey in the style of the Union Jack. The islands acceded to full membership in 2004.
Other aspects of the administration were sorted out around this time. The Alderney exiles gradually returned home beginning in 2001. In 2006 the Alderney camp on French soil closed. The Cotentin was now under Alliance jurisdiction, and it was taking steps toward organizing its own government and deciding for itself whether it would remain a CA member.
Commerce[]
With the more stable climate beginning in the late 90s and 00s, the Channel Islands were well positioned to assume the role that they had played in the mediaeval era: the crossroads of trade between England and France. Nothing on either side of the Channel was a booming economy - despite some signs of recovery, both countries were experiencing poverty not seen since the Middle Ages. But the trade was a way to finally lift the islands' economies above a subsistence level. Irish investment helped some new small shipping firms establish themselves on the islands.
The same trade was responsible for the rise of Southern England and Brittany as viable regional powers. Mutually beneficial commerce helped the Channel Islands and Southern England repair their damaged relations, though this did not stop the islands from joining the Celtic Alliance camp.
Royal Questions[]
Unlike the Isle of Man, which never stopped recognising Queen Elizabeth's heir Andrew throughout his rule from exile in South Africa, the Channel Islands remained ambivalent on the Royal Question. No one seriously considered doing without a monarch - the entire intricate edifice of island law could hardly be conceived without one - but it was equally unclear whether they had the right to recognize a ruler who lived across the world instead of across the Channel. When a modicum of normalcy returned to the Channel, they observed the birthdays of both surviving Windsors, Andrew and Anne. Anne, unlike her brother, was still present in the north of England. In 2001, Anne became a queen in her own right, accepting with some reluctance the role of Cleveland's head of state.
Beginning in 2015, after Andrew had died and Anne had abdicated, the northern branch of the royal family took steps to separate itself from the branch in Africa, hoping thus to attract interest around the former UK and perhaps reunite the fractured kingdom. In 2017, independent Lancashire recognized Anne's daughter Zara, bringing the new United Kingdoms to two. The Committee of States began discussing the issue at that time.
In Channel Island fashion, this was treated not as a political question, but a legal one. Lawyers considered who was the rightful monarch of England and Duke of Normandy: the male-line heir still living in South Africa, with seemingly no intent to return? Or the heir to the junior line now reigning in two pieces of England? Looking at precedents in other royal schisms from the Normans to the Jacobites, the answer was clear: the Dukedom had always gone to the person actually sitting on the throne. Legislatures on each island accordingly declared for Zara during 2018, and the combined Committee of States confirmed the allegiance in November of that year.
This made the Channel Islands the first Celtic Alliance member to also join the United Kingdoms. The move sparked discussions in other parts of the UK that had become Alliance members and which had not specifically renounced the Crown, from England to Scotland to Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, slow-moving and conservative as they were, this time had blazed a trail.
Government and politics[]
Federal[]
The federal structures of the Channel Islands are built on the institutions of the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey, which themselves trace their origins to the thirteenth century and have evolved very slowly since then. Constitutionally, the federal legislature is a joint committee of the States of Jersey, Guernsey, and Alderney, the Chief Pleas of Sark, and the Council of Herm. The Policy Committee, which functions as something like an executive cabinet, is a subcommittee of that. Heading the government is a Bailiff-General, who during his or her tenure continues to act as Bailiff of either Jersey or Guernsey. The only official not connected to any particular island is the queen herself, in her right as Duke of Normandy. She is represented by a separate Lieutenant-Governor in each bailiwick.
Relations between the islands[]
The rise of the United Bailiwicks worked a change in the relationship between Guernsey and its dependent islands, Sark and Alderney. The federal government has taken over in large part the governing role previously served by Guernsey and now exercises many of the "transferred powers" that the smaller islands had delegated to the bailiwick. These include customs and security. The two smaller islands remain part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, mostly for ceremonial purposes.
The small island of Herm received an autonomous government after its large refugee camp was mostly cleared and a remnant permitted to stay permanently. Since the bulk of the population now had come from France, it was modeled on a French commune with a council and mayor. Herm also still is considered to belong to a tenant who leases it from the States of Guernsey. Under the new system, the tenant's proprietary role is carefully separated from the council and mayor's civic role.
Sark has attracted some attention for its undemocratic, feudal system of government. Its legislature consists of forty feudal landowners, titled Tenants, together with popularly elected deputies. Presiding over the island is a hereditary Seigneur with loosely-defined powers. The system has become somewhat more open. The number of deputies was increased in the 2000s. The tenancies themselves were opened up: many landlords had been absentee, and their places had to be taken by local residents, including some groups of people who pooled their resources and bought them from the Seigneur at highly deflated prices. Still, tenants outnumber the elected deputies 2:1 in the Chief Pleas. The last feudal domain in Europe, Sark has faced some scrutiny from other Celtic Alliance nations, but most people have still never heard of it. The island shows no sign of changing its antiquated system.
Political culture[]
Government on the islands relies on a culture of consensus and public service. Most of the work of administration is carried out by committees. Many who carry out the work are unpaid. Political parties are nonexistent. This culture in part explains the Channel Islands' reluctance to change. There is a fear that any further upset to the status quo might jeopardise that culture and introduce adversarial party politics.
Law[]
Guernsey and Jersey remain completely separate legal jurisdictions with separate bodies of law. Both use a mix of English common law and traditional Norman law. To be called to the bar in either bailiwick, lawyers were once required to study both in England and at the University of Caen. This became impossible when Caen's university closed and the city mostly abandoned, so lawyers began to train the next generation themselves. Many books have been recovered from Caen and brought to Guernsey and Jersey to tutor students reading law.
The Bailiffs, the two civic officers who run the administration of both Jersey and Guernsey, are required to be qualified attorneys.
Culture[]
The Channel Islands were all historically French-speaking, and their transition to English was a very slow one. The law courts spoke French into the 1940s. So the surge of French speakers in the aftermath of 1983 was not a new element to the islands, more a return to what had been before. Many of the newcomers even spoke Norman varieties of the language, not very unlike the traditional dialects of Jèrriais and Guernésiais.
The newcomers also tipped the religious balance in the country. Before the war, the islands had been diverse and balanced about evenly between Anglicans, Catholics, and other Protestants, despite the official established status of the Anglican church in both bailiwicks. The French refugees made Catholicism the largest religion. There have been calls to disestablish the Church, but change in this area has been predictably slow.
National symbols[]
All of the Channel Islands' flags draw on very old symbolism but are of quite recent usage. Sark and Herm both adopted flags in the mid-twentieth century in a similar style, putting the coat of arms in the canton of an English cross of Saint George. The Queen approved Jersey's flag in 1980, combining the arms of the bailiwick with a red saltire.
Guernsey had just begun the process of designing a unique flag, having earlier used an unadorned English cross. The idea of using a gold cross, based on a banner used by William the Conqueror and stitched into the Bayeaux Tapestry, had already occurred to members of the committee tasked with the design. Flag design took a pause at the onset of the emergency, but when Guernsey began sending personnel to France to help with cleanup and containment, a unique identifying symbol became necessary. The bailiwick chose the simplest solution, superimposing the Norman cross on the existing English cross.
The president and States of Alderney needed a symbol around the same time to identify their community during their island's evacuation. They adopted a design patterned on the other small islands, putting their arms in the flag of Saint George.
Mediaeval kings granted both bailiwicks the right to use the royal seal of England, also considered a symbol of Normandy. Over the years each added small differences to distinguish their local coat of arms. So a simple, undifferenced shield of England worked well as a symbol of the United Bailiwicks.
The national anthem is sometimes sung as "God save the Queen," sometimes "the Duke," and sometimes even "the Queen our Duke." Like most things in the Channel Islands, the rules governing the anthem are largely unwritten and nobody worries about it that much. The French version says "notre Duchesse" even though her title in English is always duke, never duchess.
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