THIS year’s elections are being described as the most important since those which were held immediately after the German Occupation. This is because they will be the nearest thing to a general election that the Island has ever seen.
They will also allow the electorate — including 16-year-olds, who will have the chance to vote for the first time — the opportunity to express their opinion on the performance of at least some of the members of the present Council of Ministers. But what about the celebrated post-war elections?
Why should they be so often mentioned in the same breath as the 2008 polls which are now fast approaching?
The fundamental reason is that the December 1945 election was able to shape the nature of Jersey politics for decades to come. It also offered voters the choice between two political parties, the Jersey Democratic Movement and the Jersey Progressive Party.
Immediately after the German Occupation Jersey found itself in a novel position. Thanks to loans from the United Kingdom government and the promise that the tourism and agricultural industries would recover quickly, the economic situation was relatively healthy. In spite of this, there was a political turmoil.
Islanders had had a taste of totalitarian rule, almost all had found it repugnant, and many had decided that there was too much in common between the rigid control exercised by the Germans and the paternalism of the pre-war States.
In addition, substantial numbers of left-wingers, including some who had put their lives on the line to resist the occupiers, were of the opinion that the Superior Council, the Island’s governmental structure which had had to deal with the Germans, had co-operated too willingly.
The Jersey Communist Party in particular was scathing in its view of the wartime administration. The political mix was also enriched by the attitudes of Islanders who had served in the British forces or had been evacuated to the UK.
Many saw that far from being typical of democratic rule, the States of the pre-war years had been an anachronistic body that could in no way be regarded as representative of the interests of many Islanders.
In 1945 the time was therefore right for the traditional order — based essentially on three interest groups with very different levels of power — to be overturned. Those interest groups were the rural and parochial part of the community, businessmen, and the working class.
Surprisingly quickly, political opinion after the Liberation polarised. The Jersey Democratic Movement, a left-wing alliance, formed during the war from those who opposed the Superior Council and had a vision of a socialist future for the Island.
A reaction to this came fromf the Jersey Progressive Party, whose members were mainly active or retired businessmen. However, if the JPP formed as a reaction to the socialist aspirations of the JDM, it cannot be characterised as reactionary.
It was committed to the idea of reform, recognising that the old order had had its day and that the retention of the Jurats and the Rectors as voting members of the States could no longer be tolerated. Co-founder
C P Rumfitt later wrote: ‘We agreed that there must be changes made to reduce privilege and to promote social progress.’
Left-wingers countered by saying that the ‘old guard’ were merely sponsoring a new party led by their friends and relations. Both the JDM and the JPP fielded full sets of candidates for the election of December 1945, but the JPP adopted a strategy that involved figures who were already well known in Island society. If independent candidates agreed to support the programme of the JPP, the party agreed not to stand against them.
By contrast, the JDM chose its own candidates, many of whom were unknown to the electorate. With allegations flying about alleged wartime collaboration and profiteering, the build-up to the polls was acrimonious.
The JPP pledged to concentrate on policies rather than personalities, but the mud that flew at the hustings and other public meetings made it difficult to keep to this strategy.
An Evening Post poll organised before the election revealed that there was tremendous appetite for change.
Of those who responded, 1,727 said that they were in favour of States reform; just 54 were against. The EP certainly afforded the JPP editorial support on account not only of its enthusiasm for change but also because of its opposition to the JDM — but the scale of the victory scored by the progressives strongly suggests that they had captured the mass of public support without that boost.
Of the JPP candidates and those who had agreed to espouse their policies, only two were rejected by the electorate.
In complete contrast, only one of the JDM candidates won a seat in the States. In the urban constituencies the JDM secured 39 per cent of the vote and the JPP 44.5 per cent; in the country the JDM’s share was 21.3 per cent and the JPP’s 78.7 per cent.
• Picture: Cyril Le Marquand, one of the great architects of Jersey’s post-war renaissance, was another of the Progressive Party’s successful candidates in 1945
