What is the future for the celebration of Liberation?

Stories of misery, suffering and oppression were volleyed across the plastic before one group member slammed down an ace with a tale of ‘you-know-family-pets-used-to-go-missing-nod-wink’, which I assume he had picked up from the pages of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, a book I imagine he never actually finished.

And they concluded how nice and how jolly important it was to turn out each year to recognise that suffering and to pay respects to those who endured those five long years.

Then the cloud rolled in, and one of the group suggested it was time to bail out to the Lamplighter as it was getting cold. And off they went. Suffering, indeed.

And it got me wondering where Liberation Day was heading, what it would look like in 20 or 30 years’ time when not a single Islander who lived through those five years is around to tell their story. And it got me wondering exactly how many of the 100,000 or so people who will inhabit this Island at that time will actually care about the events of 9 May 1945.

Will it be that the Liberation Day of say, 2030, will be attended almost exclusively by those who pop down to the Weighbridge for a pint and a hotdog (long after the ‘boring but important’ bit at Liberation Square) and to spout some twaddle about the Occupation that they once read in a text book or a novel that, disappointingly, just turned out to be a load of old letters, before disappearing half an hour later when it gets a bit chilly?

It has started to happen already, of course. Each year, fewer and fewer of the Occupation survivors are with us on 9 May. And more and more of the people who are around have little connection with those five years.

There are, of course, those who will cling on to Occupation and Liberation memories longer than most, but true, old Jersey, the large Jersey families of the rural parishes – they of the granite farmhouse – are now outnumbered.

The Census of 2011 revealed that just 50 per cent of Jersey is Jersey, lower than at any point in recorded history. A further 31 per cent are non-Jersey British and 7 per cent are Madeiran, and so for reasons beyond anyone’s control an ever decreasing number of people have any real connection with the Occupation and Liberation of this Island.

And it shows. Last Thursday’s event was a wonderful extravaganza of how to remember and how to celebrate. The sombre speech from the Bailiff, the service led by the Island’s Dean, the re-enactment and the States sitting are themselves special parts of the day which will only become even more important as the years tick by and more of us need to be told what happened in those days because we were not there ourselves.

And the celebration on the Weighbridge – the Occupation food stall, the wartime entertainment, even the 1940s-style hair-do stand and the fancy dress – made for an excellent atmosphere.

But I couldn’t help but wonder how many were there to celebrate Liberation Day and how many were there just for a day out, and how many had bothered to turn up for the service and re-enactment and how many had stayed at home until it was time for a pint and a spot of lunch at the Weighbridge.

For a growing number of people, Liberation is something that comes in pints. Or it’s something that your friend’s friend’s mother and father talk about from time to time, usually at the beginning of May. And for many, it’s just a bonus bank holiday, the one you need to be told about when you first arrive in the Island.

I imagine that for many, last Thursday was just like the previous week’s Boat Show, without the boats.

And any concerns I do have about the future of this important day were only compounded by the very sorry lack of children at the Weighbridge and Liberation Square last week.

Apart from the uniform groups such as Beavers and Scouts, children were largely absent from the proceedings.

Surely anyone with an interest in the future of this event – arguably the most important day in the Jersey calendar – must be scratching their heads and wondering where on earth the youngsters were, especially as they had been given the day off school.

Instead of being allowed to sit at home watching television or shooting their way through an imaginary battlefield on their Playstation, perhaps they should be forced to take part in the very much real life event of Liberation Day.

Given the quite ridiculous amount of holidays children enjoy, would it really be too much to ask to make attendance at the service and re-enactment compulsory?

Even if it was just one class from every primary school, it may just be enough to create a new generation of Islanders with a deep-rooted interest in the events of 1945. Quite how the adults of tomorrow are going to care about events of the past if they have never seen what the Island does to celebrate and remember them is just not clear.

The Liberation Day celebrations are something that everyone in the Island should be proud of and they are becoming no less important just because fewer and fewer of those who experienced the Occupation are around. But with the inevitable decline in wartime survivors, coupled with the dilution of Jersey’s indigenous population and the apparent dis-interest among school children, you can’t help but feel a little bit of sadness on Liberation Day, not just for the past, but for the future of this important and historic event.

Richard Heath