The case was successfully argued by the then Attorney General, Cecil Harrison, later to become Bailiff in 1962. While all the other lawyers, including Sir Lionel Heald QC the UK Attorney General, were robed in black, Mr Harrison wore the traditional red robes of the Jersey Crown Officers. Between them, they were so persuasive that the vote was the first ever recorded of a unanimous decision by that court.
The EP chief reporter of the day, Charles Perry, waxed eloquent in his copious and daily reports of the case. At one point, for example as Mr Harrison addressed the court, he was moved to write: ‘We smelled the tang of the sea air as he spoke and I, for one, could see in my mind’s eye the stretch of beach opposite my own home at Grève d’Azette and the Minquiers looming on the horizon.’
Cecil Harrison was instrumental in making two momentous decisions in his life. One was to help save these offshore islands for Queen Elizabeth, and the second was in allowing his daughter, Sally Harrison, to become my wife, now Jurat Sally Le Brocq, in 1963.
All Islanders should be grateful to him for the first, and I am eternally grateful to him for the second!
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