There was a headline in the JEP this week, which may have caused a few hands to pause before turning the page. Of course, “Jersey Banking goes bankrupt” was a feature, looking back to the calamitous events of 11th January 1886, which led to the demise of the Jersey Banking Company, and the sentencing of its manager, Philip Gosset – who also served as the Treasurer of the States – to five years penal servitude in Wormwood Scrubs.
When we talk about accountability – although he continued to protest his innocence – we clearly have nothing on previous generations.
As Mark Brocklesby pointed out in the article, given that the Jersey Banking Company also handled the finances of the States, and could no longer meet its interest payments, the island was effectively bankrupt.
How things were to change over the next century – as Jersey went from that position to becoming one of the world’s leading international finance centres, albeit with an industry which remains heavily reliant on the banking sector.
Of course, today’s world is a very different place, and comparisons are naturally tenuous.
But it is still intriguing to wonder what similarities remain. Clearly, one obvious common strand is that, in general terms, we fail to recognise what we have – and so take the steps to protect it – until it is gone.
Surely one very broad point which can be drawn from the unfortunate events of 1886 is that, firstly, people seem to have failed to see it coming; and, following on from that, they failed to do anything about it. Maybe to raise a serious concern would have been seen as scaremongering.
History tends to punish such complacency rather severely.
Secondly, there is the observation that what we have might appear to be resilient, but the vagaries of life have a habit of proving that perception to be false.
If something is valued, then it needs to be continually nurtured with its long-term health in mind.
At risk of stretching these comparisons too far, we should perhaps ask ourselves if we have truly done enough to look after the long-term health of our economy, which self-evidently is the real source of our prosperity.
That means asking questions such as would our current actions stand-up to the scrutiny of future local historians, and what exactly is being done now to make sure that the island is still a prosperous place to live, in another generation’s time? Our responsibility really does extend that far.
A longer perspective is often very helpful.
