TRADITION will always be central to the success of the Battle, the organisation’s chairman has said.
Russell Labey said he was delighted by the buzz created by the involvement of all 12 parishes for the first time in a generation.
“All the parishes have responded really well and it’s great to see them all involved again because it obviously gives more ‘flower power’ to the parade but it also means that there are more opportunities for the whole community to get involved,” he said.
Mr Labey made the comments as Islanders gathered in the sun on the Avenue for this year’s event.
Highlighting the expansion of the festival element this year – with a bigger stage and higher profile artists in Eurovision star Sam Ryder and Marti Pellow’s Greatest Hits Summer Tour – Mr Labey said moving the main parade from Thursday to Friday had been a key development. Introduced for the first time last year, it gave the event “the feel of a long weekend of celebration”, he argued.
But he emphasised that the event’s traditions – which date back to the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902 – founded on a parade of floats adorned with flowers would always remain central to its success.
“I have always said that it would take three or four years to implement all the changes that I wanted to see. We can’t do it all in one go but it’s a case of gradually introducing things to enliven the event,” he said, adding that this was not a matter of modernising but rather expanding the potential audience while keeping those things that made the event special.
“Our traditions will always be our unique selling point,” Mr Labey said.
Having taken the reins in September 2022, Mr Labey said that a priority had always been to build on the event’s grassroots support at parish level, and he said he had been delighted by the partnerships which had developed this year between the northern parishes of St Martin, St John, and Trinity, now labelled the “Northern Alliance”, and the collaboration between St Mary and St Ouen in the west.
“This year’s Battle has been about making the event relevant for a wider audience and expanding the event’s parade to involve more Islanders,” he said.
