Comment: Why the Jersey Way, as a term, must be dropped and the Bailiff’s role split

ONE of the more interesting aspects of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry’s report is its reflections on the ‘Jersey Way’.

When I was growing up, the Jersey Way was nothing more than a positive affirmation of our independence. As an island community in the years before instant communication and the internet, and long, long before the emergence of social media, we were to some extent isolated and had little alternative but to steer our own course. Occasionally, when smart-alec newcomers told us we were doing it all wrong, we acted defensively and used the Jersey Way as a bulwark – no great harm in that and it helped to bolster civic pride.

In his evidence to the inquiry, former Deputy Trevor Pitman described the Jersey Way as ‘the powerful – the establishment – protecting the guilty and ensuring that those who probably should be held to account will not be held to account’. Unfortunately, it seems that the inquiry accepted this evidence as a truth which applied in general rather than in relatively rare, specific instances.

I am not willing to accept Trevor Pitman’s distorted view of our island. While there have been occurrences where, for wrong and misguided motives, paedophiles were not pursued with due celerity or determination, such failures are not exclusive to Jersey and I do not believe that they are evidence of widespread cultural or institutional corruption. In my view, the overwhelming majority of Jersey people are good, decent, law-abiding folk who will resent being tarred with the brush justifiably applied to the few.

Perhaps as a community we were slow, too slow, to realise that the Jersey Way had come to exemplify something more sinister than it did to my younger self. Be that as it may, the term is now irredeemably tainted and it should fall

out of use.

The inquiry sternly criticised an individual who once sat at the very top of what Mr Pitman referred to as ‘the establishment’ – the Bailiff. It quoted from Sir Philip Bailhache’s 2008 Liberation Day speech: ‘All child abuse, wherever it happens, is scandalous, but it is the unjustified and remorseless denigration of Jersey and her people that is the real scandal.’ The inquiry dismissed his explanation that the statement was an ‘unfortunate juxtaposition’ of words, and found him guilty of ‘a grave political error’.

We can agree or disagree with the inquiry’s finding on this, but what is most interesting is its use of the word ‘political’. It seems most unlikely that this was an unfortunate choice of word; Frances Oldham, a QC, will have been fully aware that the Bailiff, an unelected member of the States who is meant to be its impartial President, should not have been making a public political statement. Indeed, Sir Philip, whenever the matter of the separation of the Bailiff’s powers came up, was at pains to distance the office from any possible political involvement. Yet here, however honourable his motives, he was making an overtly political intervention.

Nor was this an isolated political excursion. In 2001 he wrote a highly political criticism of the findings of the Review Panel on the Machinery of Government (the Clothier Report) attempting to discredit the recommendation that the dual role of

the Bailiff, as chief judge and President

of the States, should be ended.

I recall Sir Philip, still Bailiff, in addressing the Guernsey Law Society, promoting the notion that the Bailiwicks might form an independent federation of Channel Island states. What could be more political than advocating far-reaching constitutional change? In

these, and through other examples of crossing the bounds of impartiality, he reinforced the arguments of those who favour separation.

On this, the inquiry said: ‘While constitutional matters are outwith our terms of reference we are of the opinion that this matter cannot be addressed without further consideration of the recommendations made in the Clothier and Carswell reports.’

Ten years after Clothier, Lord Carswell’s panel had come to the same conclusion on the separation of powers.

On 12 September the States is due to debate a proposition put forward by Deputy Montfort Tadier that, if approved, will end the Bailiff’s role as President of the States after next year’s election. Deputy Tadier, a Reform Jersey member, is recognised as an opponent of government and, as such, his proposition will not enjoy an easy passage.

What this observer can’t understand is why the Chief Minister, who says he supports the separation of powers, is

not himself bringing the proposition.