Little cause to fear a fair review
IT’S no surprise that Alderney authorities and ordinary islanders are calling for a sensitive approach to be taken to an imminent expert inquiry into the deaths resulting from from the Nazi prison camps which operated in the island between 1942 and 1944.
Residents in Alderney will be nervous about sensationalist headlines that result from any inquiry, just as they currently do when rumour and ‘research’ emerge every now and then.
The island authorities do have, on what appears to be no notice, seemed to set the right tone. Nobody in Alderney, or the wider Bailiwick, hides from the truth of Nazi occupation of the islands, and reservations about this inquiry should not focus on such claims.
The island would surely welcome clarity and certainty and hopefully, an end to rumour, but is also right to encourage the UK government to carry the people of Alderney with it.
Islanders will want to understand what the inquiry seeks to achieve, how it will go about it, and what might happen as a result of the outcomes and recommendations made.
Lord Eric Pickles, the UK’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, told this newspaper that he ‘absolutely’ wants the Alderney community to be involved in the inquiry. ‘I can assure Alderney that its community will not be left behind in this work.’
Managed properly, this review should give Alderney little to fear.