Liberation Day is 'a day for everybody'
LIBERATION DAY was enthusiastically celebrated across Guernsey yesterday.
Events in five parishes were well-supported while the cavalcade of more than 100 military vehicles, classic cars and tractors drew large crowds to the coast from Torteval to St Peter Port to view them pass by.
‘It’s a day for everybody, and everybody is part of it,’ was how Lt-Governor Lt General Richard Cripwell described it.
Deputy Sue Aldwell, who has responsibility for Liberation Day, said the day had been ‘absolutely joyous’ from the start.
‘There were so many smiles,’ she said.
Liberation Day was also celebrated in Jersey and marked in London, where Chief Minister Lyndon Trott and his deputy Heidi Soulsby were among parliamentarians, including those representing Alderney and Jersey, gathered for a reception on Wednesday evening.
The flags of the islands were flown at Westminster yesterday, with House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle among those at the reception.
It has also been revealed that a full report on what happened during the Second World War in Alderney will be published by the end of the month.
The expert review into the number of prisoners who were taken to slave labour camps and who died in the island during the Nazi Occupation has been completed and should be published on Wednesday 22 May.
Lord Eric Pickles, the UK’s Post Holocaust Issues Envoy, commissioned the review last year, saying that Alderney ‘deserved the truth to free them from the distortion of conspiracy theorists’.
Dr Gilly Carr, part of the expert team behind the report, who has a long connection with the islands, announced the completion of the report on social media, saying the team ‘had answered all questions posed, and cracked it’.
‘We exceeded even our own expectations,’ she said.
The island’s annual remembrance service at the Hammond Memorial takes place on Sunday.
Dr Carr and Lord Pickles were in Jersey for its Liberation events yesterday and today are involved in a public panel debate on forced and slave labour in the islands during the Occupation.
Back at home thoughts have already turned to next year’s celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of the Liberation.
‘Next year I expect the community will come together and it will be bigger,’ Deputy Aldwell said.
