Making it right

The reputation of Channel Islanders during the Occupation has taken a battering in recent years, with allegations of widespread collaboration with the Germans. But a new book published by a historian who has studied the period provides very different findings, as Chris Morvan explains A NEW book by a University of Southampton postgraduate paints a positive picture of the conduct of Guernsey people during the Occupation.

The Changing Face of the Channel Islands Occupation, by Hazel R. Knowles Smith, is a much-needed antidote to the kind of writing, exemplified by Madeleine Bunting's 1995 book The Model Occupation, which casts aspersions on the reputation of islanders and particularly Guernsey's wartime politicians, with suggestions of collaboration and a failure to put up the sort of opposition shown by the French Resistance.

Dr Knowles Smith wrote the book as a thesis, part of her PhD, having gone back to university after bringing up her son and daughter.

With no strong connection with Guernsey apart from having had a local penfriend (Hazel de Jersey, now Piriou) while still a child in junior school, she decided that the Occupation of the Channel Islands would be a good subject to research and present in depth.

The work began in 2000, when Dr Knowles Smith visited first Guernsey, then Jersey and later Alderney.

'At that time I was particularly interested in the fate of the forced workers, because I had read some unpublished papers by Freddie Cohen in Jersey,' she said.

In the meantime, Mr Cohen had published his book, but Dr Knowles Smith unearthed fresh information and in the process became aware of the controversy surrounding the Occupation in general. When people such as taxi drivers asked her why she was visiting the islands and she told them she was interested in the Occupation, she said a common response was, 'Have you read that awful book?', meaning the Bunting one, closely followed by: 'Oh, we were thrown to the Germans like a bone to a dog just to delay the feared invasion of the mainland.'

'I began to feel that an injustice had been done,' Dr Knowles Smith continued, 'particularly in the recent representations of the Occupation experience since 1992 when the Public Record Office documents started to be released.

Once I had begun to investigate, I was fortunate enough to be able to read some very detailed unpublished diaries and it soon became clear to me that more recent representations - made first by Peter King and later in Madeleine Bunting's work - were plainly wrong.'

The seed for this book had been sown when Dr Knowles Smith visited her penfriend at the age of 10 and was taken to the Underground Hospital. 'It was dark and eerie. I'd always been interested in history and there were war crimes trials going on at the time. So I think it all started for me with the tunnels.'

She feels that the lack of a stronger Guernsey link - she hails from Yorkshire rather than this part of the world - adds credibility to her book, as it is an independent study and she has no vested interest in the islands in terms of family or residence, therefore being free from any perceived responsibility for giving anything other than an objective account of her findings.

Dr Knowles Smith's research started at the Priaulx Library and the Island Archives, where staff would also suggest people who might be able to help her. This led to Michael Ginns, Joe Miere and Bob Le Sueur in Jersey and our own Richard Heaume at the Occupation Museum.

Richard was extremely helpful,' she pointed out. 'He has quite a lot of unpublished stuff as well as books about the Occupation and a friend of his, Peter Barton, lent me his grandfather's diaries, which are very exciting.'

Not all of the diaries through which she trawled were so fruitful, some consisting of little more than accounts of the weather.

'They were all worth reading, but some are mainly weather reports and you find out that the writer had three cigarettes that day and they killed a pig at some point.

But Frank Barton wrote about how he felt.

'I've tried to make the Occupation come to life. I wanted to show how it felt to be sitting there, frozen and starving and terrified that a member of your family was going to be carried off.'

With so much material at her disposal, Dr Knowles Smith found herself working much harder than she had in her first, pre-family stint at university. 'I worked on it seven days a week and just kept reading.'

Among the many books on the subject, she particularly appreciated the work of Frank Falla, the local journalist whose book, The Silent War, is among the most authoritative accounts of the period.

'In a lot of areas he seemed to know what was going on and he was one of the best at conveying the feel of the Occupation,' she said.

With work progressing well and the end in sight, Dr Knowles Smith was required to take part in a viva, an interview with senior academics, at which she would have to present details of her work and justify certain assertions.

It was here that she found an unexpected obstacle, in that one of the examiners had been on record for more than 10 years as a vigorous defender of the same sort of controversial views as Madeleine Bunting: 'i.e. that collaboration in the islands was the general rule etc. etc.'

After the viva came a written report which required many previously unmentioned changes to the arguments presented within the study.

'For several months it looked as if I would be facing a decision,' said

Dr Knowles Smith. 'Either change the book completely or publish it and forget the PhD.'

After putting in five years' work on the project, she was very reluctant to do either of those things. She decided to ring one or two publishers and was fortunate enough to be connected with the history editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who offered to read it and afterwards agreed to publish.

Fortunately, at around that time the examiners on the PhD course resigned and the replacement team did not require most of the changes.

But the saga didn't end there. After awarding the PhD in the summer of 2005, various university officials warned Dr Knowles Smith to expect controversy when the book was published.

Since that time, the publisher has commissioned a report on the book from the distinguished historian, Lord Asa Briggs.

It is not just the tone of the book that is a change from others on the subject.

Its title, The Changing Face of the Channel Islands Occupation, really sets it apart.

The notes on the dust jacket inform us that Dr Knowles Smith has a 'particular interest in the social construction of history and the historical creation of memory'.

What this means is that although it is true that our basic personal memories remain the same, every man's experience of the Occupation is different and our perception of our own past may be subtly influenced by the views of others as well as by a little natural forgetfulness caused by the normal passing of time.I read all kinds of psychological books and books on memory and what affects collective memory,' she explained.

'Generally speaking in this case, when you talk about the changing face of the Occupation it's not necessarily the survivor-witnesses' memories that have changed, or the records, but the collective memory can be affected by information laid over the original facts after the event.

In studies it has been shown that if some natural forgetting has taken place, then witnesses will tend to substitute whatever seems to fit in with the rest of what he or she remembers.

'It also alters with people who discuss their shared experiences. For example, if you're in a group and you say something that doesn't accord with the rest of the group, you have two choices: you either stick with what you believe is true or you adapt and fit in with the general memory pattern.

'In the case of the Channel Islands, the most prominent or most discussed memories have also been shaped by literature on the subject - both primary and secondary - and the effect of newly-released official documents has often been to highlight new ideas or bring back into focus memories which are unpleasant or which may have been temporarily overlooked by the collective group in favour of other, more topical issues.

'Thus, different and often controversial representations have very likely affected the focus of memory over the years. In fact so strongly do some witnesses and their families feel about certain perceived injustices that they have become not just indignant, but incensed because they feel totally misrepresented, especially when those criticising are "outsiders" who've not lived through their experience.

'Another influence on the construction and direction of collective memory change is the different political requirements of whatever time is or was the present.

The official view in the 1950s, for instance, would be different from that in the 1960s, 70s and so on, being first tempered by requirements of the Cold War and later by our connections with Europe and what is now known as the EU.

'Perhaps the best example of an apparent change in the attitude of the British Government towards the reputation of the islands during the Second World War is to do with their official stance on wartime collaboration.

'At the end of the war it was they who decided to give honours to island officials and not to prosecute known collaborators when our populations were crying out for justice to be done and yet in 2001 they supported the issuing of a schools' education publication which - quoting an unnamed researcher - claimed that collaboration was the general rule among both the island rulers and the population.

'It's that kind of influence that sharpens the focus in some areas and which may alter the construction of evolving collective memory for the future.

'As I said in the book's conclusion, what is deduced at the end of it should be what memories and records agree upon, but very often, I'm afraid, what results is an impression from the media and that comes from whoever has most influence and shouts their opinion with the loudest voice.'

* The Changing Face of the Channel Islands Occupation: Record, Memory and Myth, by Dr Hazel R. Knowles Smith is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Review by The Bailiff.