Top marks

A bastion of Imperial Britain, the Bisley rifle shooting competition is an important event in a marksman's calendar and local competitors have had more than their fair share of the prizes. WHEN the champion Guernsey marksman Charles Trotter won HM The Queen's Prize for rifle-shooting at Bisley in 1975 he received a gold medal, a gold badge and £250 donated personally by the monarch.

Three-quarters of a century before, in 1899, Private W.A. Priaulx of the Royal Guernsey Militia had become the first of the island's marksmen to win the coveted blue riband of rifle shooting. The make-up of the prize was exactly the same: the medal, the badge and a personal cheque, then from Queen Victoria for £250.

In the late 1880s, Britain's main rifle-shooting events were still being held on Wimbledon Common - before tennis had moved in. In 1888, George Fulton won 'The Queen's'. When the National Rifle Association moved its annual competitions, lock, stock and barrel to Bisley Common in Surrey, young George was able to give up his job as an engraver and use his small fortune to set up shop as a gunsmith.

It paid off handsomely for his family. George's son Arthur became the best shot in the world and won the sovereign's prize three times. Arthur's son Robin took it to a third generation by winning the prize in 1958.

When Robin died the male line ran out and so did the family of shooters. But Fulton's, the rifle shop, is still very much there and still in the very same building that was physically moved from Wimbledon to Bisley.

All this week on the Bisley ranges, Guernsey's marksmen are pitting their skills against the Commonwealth's best, as they have been doing for more than 100 years.

Tomorrow, they're firing in the first stage of the Queen's Prize. The top 300 scorers will go forward to the second stage on Friday, producing a 'Queen's 100' who shoot the final at 900 and 1,000 yards on Saturday afternoon.

Led by a band, the winner will be chaired off the Bisley ranges and cheered by thousands of well-wishers. That evening, he or she will do a round of all the Bisley clubs carried by clubmates (precariously, towards the end of the evening), in the winner's chair.

Saturday's winner will receive the same prize money as the first winner did in 1860. Nobody much cares that Her Majesty's chequebook is not index-linked. Rather, everybody heaves a sigh of relief when they drive through the gates of Bisley Camp to find that nothing much has changed over the years.

The colonial-style clubhouses, temporarily erected at Wimbledon in the 1870s and 1880s, are still standing permanently at Bisley today (some only just) and the civilities of past generations are still on offer on the clubhouse verandas. The three weeks of the year's most important rifle-shooting competitions, culminating in the Queen's Final on Saturday, probably capture much the same atmosphere as they did more than 100 years ago.

On the ranges, the dress of competitors constitutes nothing short of a sartorial nightmare. Most are paid up members of the funny hat brigade, too.

Over the past 20 years, political correctness has had its way. Not so long ago Bisley's pukka club, the North London, didn't allow women in the bar. In the 1980s the National Rifle Association did all it could to shed the image of rifle shooting being sexist.

It shot itself slightly in the foot, though, sending an all-women team to the bicentennial championships in Australia but neglecting, somehow, to include any women in its main Great Britain team at the same event.

Bisley isn't called the last bastion of the Empire for nothing. The events taking place this week are still known collectively as The Imperial Meeting. Great Britain is still The Mother Country.

Both Jersey and Guernsey will compete in the international match, The Kolapore, on Friday, the trophy for which is a pair of challenge cups presented in 1871 by His Highness the Rajah of Kolapore, no less.

Guernsey won the Kolapore in 1898, much to the excitement of the whole of the island, beating Australia and The Mother Country into second and third place. Facing the rifle range on the road to L'Ancresse there's still an old Guernsey cottage named Kolapore to commemorate the event.

When it comes to trophies, Bisley does not do things by halves. The China Challenge Cup takes a team of four men to lift it and four cases of champagne to fill it. Bisley's Victorian silverware is probably the most valuable collection of sporting trophies anywhere in the world.

The Maharajah of Vizianagram donated a pair of silver vases for a rifle competition between members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

The first Commons-Lords match was at Wimbledon in 1862 after Mr Speaker had issued a direct challenge to the Lord Chancellor. In the Commons team that year was the MP for Glamorgan, Henry Hussey Vivian.

His grandson, Lord Swansea, was to become a Commonwealth gold medallist and captained the Lords rifle team for years.

A regular visitor to Guernsey on the annual NRA tour of the Channel Islands, Swansea sadly died just two weeks ago.

As captain of the Lords, he was not above bending the rules of the match between the two Houses of Parliament. The Commons once objected (good-naturedly, it has to be said) to the inclusion of the Prince of Wales in a Lords team. They claimed royal princes didn't qualify as members of the upper house.

Swansea simply crossed his name off the scoreboard, replaced it with one of his other titles, the Duke of Cornwall, and referred to him as Duke for the rest of the day.

I, too, had first-hand experience of Swansea's mild skulduggery. Working at Westminster as a BBC regional political editor, I was invited by the late Michael Colvin, MP for Romsey in Hampshire, to make up the numbers for his Commons rifle team. Not being an elected MP obviously meant it was out of order.

Eager to help and with his usual humour, Lord Swansea made a simple, if not unusual, ruling. Aware that I'd shot in international matches for the Channel Islands, he 'appointed' me honorary MP for Guernsey for the day, to which the other lordships gave their assent and the match duly went ahead.

Channel Islanders have done consistently well at Bisley and have a success record out of all proportion to the islands' population. Not only has Guernsey produced two Queen's prize-winners, most of the other main Bisley trophies have found their way into the hands of islanders. Both Jersey and Guernsey have had remarkable results in international team matches, competing for many years on level terms with countries such as Canada, Australia and, indeed, Great Britain.

As a sport in the island, rifle shooting was born out of the Royal Guernsey Militia. The Guernsey Magazine records hundreds of islanders turning out to watch the first annual prize meeting at L'Ancresse in 1872 and there's been a Guernsey Rifle Club ever since.

Shooting events were subsequently held at various points in the island including across the beach at Vazon, from Cobo to Grandes Rocques and even across Fermain Bay. It wasn't until 1956 that the GRC was provided with its permanent ranges at Fort Le Marchant, said to be the most picturesque in the whole of the British Isles.

One of the most distinguished island shots was Captain Don Bisset, who shot his way into the Queen's Prize final no fewer than 16 times, his last appearance at the age of 74.

Last year, Michael Martel beat Bisset's island record when he chalked up 17 Queen's 100 badges. Michael has been attending Bisley for more than 50 years, starting his shooting career, as so many islanders have done, at Elizabeth College. He's a former Commonwealth Games shot and the winner of many Bisley prizes.

His namesake, Geoff Martel, now living in New Zealand, was also a distinguished marksman. Captain of the Cambridge University VIII, he not only won the St George's Vase at Bisley (second only to the Queen's Prize) but also carried off the equivalent of the Queen's Prize in Canada, the Governor General's.Elizabeth College has been known as a 'shooting school' for decades. Next year, the college will be celebrating 100 years at Bisley, a century that has seen all the main schools' trophies won by the island's cadets.

Since the 1930s, Elizabeth College boys have been included in Great Britain teams of cadets shooting against Canada both at Bisley and at the Connaught Ranges in Ottawa. One of them, John de Putron, not only captained the GB team but also made the highest score in the entire match in two successive years.

Lt-Gen. Sir Philip Neame, VC, Governor of the island after the Occupation, was vice-president of the NRA and an Olympic shot. Neame was the driving force behind the establishment of ranges at Fort Le Marchant.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Le Cheminant, appointed Lt-Governor in 1980, was also a keen Bisley marksmen and still shoots occasionally for the Old Elizabethans in the veterans' matches. He shot for the Great Britain cadets against Canada in the 1930s. The former Bailiff, Sir Charles Frossard, also shot for Guernsey in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Jory family has an unequalled record in Guernsey shooting. In the 1870s Joseph Jory was treasurer of the GRC, his son Alfred was in the 1898 winning Kolapore team. Today, two of the island's finest shots are Peter and Adam Jory and their father Jurat David Jory has represented Guernsey at Bisley for decades.

The public image of the sport of rifle shooting has suffered a battering in recent years. It was demonised by the carnage of Hungerford and then Dunblane. Knee-jerk responses by the authorities did little to address weapons falling into the wrong hands. Rather, life was simply made more difficult for those who were already following all the guidelines and sticking strictly to the laws governing firearms.

Before such horrific events, shooting had encountered another problem. It didn't translate to the TV screen. Sponsorship, so vital to other sports, was almost impossible to attract. Whereas Bisley was once part of the English social season, after Henley and before Cowes, today there are few spectators. It's difficult to imagine that a crowd of 20,000 watched Private Edward Ross win the first Queen's Prize on 2 July 1860.

The big hand of sponsorship, had it been available, together with inflated prize money, might just have spoiled everything. If the £250 Queen's Prize in 1860 would have bought a nice house in the home counties, today it just about covers the entry fees to the Bisley Meeting itself. And a decent rifle costs anything up to £2,000.

Perhaps, unwittingly, the Queen has done her bit to preserve the status quo in this remnant of the old empire. Who, after all, would dare to ask Her Majesty if she'd up the money for her own prize? And who would dare to give a prize greater than Her Majesty's? A clear case of lese-majesty if ever there was one.