Changing times

While the most recent suggestions have been focused on reducing the size of the States Assembly and creating new committees, islanders have been squabbling about the machinery of government since the very first election in Guernsey almost 125 years ago.

As Rob Batiste reveals in today’s LOOKback feature, part of a new series charting the island’s election history, back then Guernsey was governed by a group of unelected rectors and jurats, alongside parish deputies, put forward by their respective douzaine.

It was time for the people to have their say, but the rectors and jurats were unsurprisingly reluctant to relinquish their unelected power.

The Guernsey Evening Press of 1898 made its stance on keeping the clergy in power very clear, suggesting that ‘in many instances their presence in the States is a distinct evil’.

But stay they did. In the end, it was agreed that the States should be made up of 12 jurats, nine parish rectors, two crown officers, the publicly elected deputies of each parish douzaine, plus a deputy from each of the four St Peter Port cantons.

Things have obviously changed since then, although this quote from a Guernsey Evening Press leader column of 1898 makes interesting reading: ‘The old Guernseyman is proverbially a lethargic creature, his motions are deliberate in the extreme and if we had an assembly of such we may be sure they would prove themselves most efficient in blocking progress.’

Perhaps not so much has changed after all.