Liberation Day celebrations will find a level

So it’s not a massive surprise to see the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture confirm a similar arrangement for Liberation Day 2022.

It is going to spread a £25,000 event pot equally across 10 parishes – though that has already caused murmurings of discontent about what St Peter Port and Torteval, say, may respectively put on for their parishioners with the money – and leave party arrangements up to the parishes.

This has been largely welcomed so far, but there are also quite a few dissenters popping up too.

Is part of the reason for a large celebration, centred around town, to replicate those events and celebrations of 9 May 1945, as has been suggested? Or do most islanders really prefer activity centred around the Piers on the sea front?

Is there real appetite for the parish-based events? Or is this an attempt by the States to do the day ‘on the cheap’ – by sharing the money around the parishes, there won’t be a need, or at least such a need, for concentrated policing, erecting of barriers and closing of roads, and rubbish collections the morning after.

Do we still carry the Guernsey Together spirit of the lockdowns? Are we now more prepared to accept more simple entertainment and make our own fun? Do we want parishes to be involved in putting on more modest events, rather than simply channelling thousands into Town, where parents have been concerned for some time about how small children can sometimes mix uncomfortably with heavy drinkers on packed piers?

Whatever’s argued now, it seems inevitable that we will have the parish-based celebrations for 2022 and that should not be a reason for concern. For haven’t Liberation Day celebrations changed over the decades anyway?

We went from the 1970s and early 1980s when only the five-year anniversaries were marked in any real significant way, to all-singing, all-dancing funfairs on North Beach, and then eventually people tired of the problems that seemed to inevitably bring, and changed focus again.

The pandemic has given us a chance to recalibrate again. People are now talking about being parish-based, and making the five-year anniversary events larger affairs in town.

We should be prepared to embrace parish celebrations and see how they run, safe in the belief that there’s no reason that as it has in the past, the way we celebrate Liberation Day can’t change again in the future.