The fire of loyalty is still burning
WHEN the Guernsey Evening Press was marking – most comprehensively, in thousands of words gathered from across the Bailiwick – the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953, the island was in tune with the celebrations too, perhaps even more so than now.
Guernsey was in awe of its new Queen. Her visit to the island in 1949 had been seen as a great tonic to an island still recovering from the Occupation years.
The Press of 2 June said: ‘We in Guernsey are also celebrating this day of days. We do so in a spirit of rejoicing and loyalty, happy to show our ancient fealty to the Monarchy, thus renewing a pledge which is as old as our history.
‘It is the Crown which links us to the Mother Country. Owing no allegiance to Parliament, we are related to Britain solely because its sovereign is heir to the Dukes of Normandy, our hereditary rulers. For close on 1,000 years that link has existed, and time, far from weakening it, has strengthened that precious bond the more.
‘To explain what the Crown means to the subject is an impossibility, but it is a fact that some mystic bond is there.’
Very nearly 70 years on to the day, nothing much has changed. The island still values its links with the Crown and has marked the Coronation with a fervour and with the recognition, as we said in 1953, that ‘the fire of loyalty has always burned brightly in these isles of the Norman Dukes’.