Time to talk

IT IS difficult to know precisely why Sark's General Purposes and Advisory Committee has chosen this week, if at all – and not on the main agenda but as an addendum published little more than a week before Chief Pleas meet – to make public the exchange of correspondence between Seigneur Michael Beaumont and the Sark authorities on the one hand and Sir David Barclay and his lawyer on the other.

After all, the exchange started more than two years ago – in the aftermath of the elections for the first directly-elected Chief Pleas – and while many would argue that the suggestion of a seat on the all-important GP&A for Brecqhou's principal representative in Sark, Kevin Delaney (pictured), was a trifle presumptuous, given that he had failed to be elected by island voters, surely there existed the bones of an agenda which could have formed the basis for civilised discussion.

Instead, much of what passed for debate during that legislature's first two years centred on measures widely interpreted by some Sark residents as being a deliberate attempt to thwart Sark Estate Management's multi-million-pound programme of inward investment – investment which, despite changes to the Shipping Law that may well decree that

the company is prohibited from bringing freight in its own vessel from ports other than Guernsey's, has undoubtedly transformed many business premises.

Despite this and other measures – a hastily drafted bit of legislation to ban them placing moorings for visiting yachts when those that had existed for years were suddenly withdrawn – the correspondence reveals that the requests for around-the-table talks continued nonetheless.

The principal reason given for continuous rejection of the offer of talks is made crystal clear in the correspondence – published in full on the Sark government website – the vitriolic attacks on the Seigneur, Conseiller Charles Maitland (GP&A chairman) and others associated with island administration in the weekly Sark Newsletter, which is published by Mr Delaney.

This persistent criticism is itself widely criticised on occasions in Sark, principally for its repetitiveness, because – in relation to Mr Beaumont, at least – many view it as a pointless exercise and an often unnecessarily personal attack on an elderly man (whose wife is not in the best of health) and whose influence, never as great in any case as that of his grandmother, La Dame, is probably on the wane.

While many view attacks on politicians and their policies as fair game – as those, both here and elsewhere in that line of public service would confirm, if pressed, it is part of the baggage that goes with the task – many Sark residents take the view that the Seigneur and his wife should be allowed to enjoy their retirement without wondering what that week's Sark Newsletter will contain.

That said, that does not explain why – even in the Seigneur's absence from such discussions – the politicians who hold the real power in Chief Pleas could not have said that they, as the elected representatives of Sark residents, were the people to talk to and they'd be happy to at least sit and listen.

The fact that they chose not to, but instead embarked upon a programme of legislation widely interpreted as being along the lines of 'anything that gets up Brecqhou's nose must be worth doing', certainly does not meet the expectations of those Sark residents who want an end to too many years of confrontation, on both sides.

Put simply, they view the offer from Brecqhou to remove the sword of Damocles of seemingly never-ending litigation as one that could at least have provided the starting point for a cessation of hostilities.

Now, it seems, we will never know what it might have led to.

* The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.