A face to call home

IT WAS thinking about the redesign of our banknotes that led me down the rabbit hole.

We aren’t actually very good at being exceptional, and seem to have a reluctance to praise anyone who is a bit more than an average Sarnian. When we do, we seem to favour those who were moderately successful doing something somewhere else with little benefit for the island that raised them and which they left at an early age. Brock saving Canada springs to mind, as does De La Rue.

In this century, the footballing Le Tissier, broadcaster Montague and motor-racer Priaulx all found success by leaving Guernsey.

In fact, it would appear that anyone from Guernsey with any potential leaves our shores to find success. And it has been going on for centuries. Not just a brain drain but a talent drain as well. Could this explain why we struggle to find any locals who have done anything worth celebrating? Even more concerning, is that why we are generally mundane, given the ones who stay and breed Sarnians don’t have the exceptional genes of the ones who leave?

No wonder then that our most famous person is French. And it’s not that he was drawn here by a desire to make us his forever home. To add indignity to indignity we were his second choice when he was forced to flee France. Yes, he picked Jersey first but they soon kicked him out. If they hadn’t, Guernsey wouldn’t have anyone world-famous associated with it. Plus as soon as he was able to leave, he upped sticks and left.

Who, therefore, can we put on our bank notes to celebrate us? Stone de Croze perhaps, or Ebenezer Le Page, possibly even the pig farmer from the Potato Peel thing? Although it would probably be better if actual real people were chosen?

Given that the bulk of our history happened between 1940 and 1945, we know of very few historical characters who stayed behind to keep the Bailiwick running when their young siblings left to seek fame and fortune. Presumably we did have some outstanding islanders in the past but have just forgotten them. I’m sure most reading this would find it easier to name people alive two millennia ago than our leaders of the last century. Or even this century.

America was discovered in 1492, which must have come as a shock to the people living there, whose ancestors thought they had discovered it thousands of years earlier. When was Guernsey discovered? Sometime in the 20th Century?

Back to those banknotes. Perhaps it’s time to honour the founding fathers and mothers of our finance industry. Who are the great people of our finance industry, those giants who can make the knees of finance professionals knock just at the very thought of being in their presence? The names Hands, Moulton and Jones immediately jump into our minds. These titans who we offer up our prayers and thanks to on a daily basis to thank them for the great bounty they have given us.

Hang on a minute. Wasn’t finance well established here by the time they came along to show us how it is done? I seem to remember those early pioneers of finance had local sounding names such as Brehaut, Carey and Harwood. And the pen-pushers still had the smell of the greenhouse about them.

When our pioneers often ended sentences with ‘eh’ and responded with ‘is it?’ and occasionally had ‘yer ache’, lords rarely walked among them. Probably because there wasn’t much money involved at the beginning. Certainly not enough to start an influx of people clamouring to get their snouts into the feeder. That came later when the pioneers finally built very successful businesses, and the carpet baggers came to take it over and show them how it should be done.

It was at this point, deep in the rabbit hole, that it came to me that what appears to be our weakness is in fact our strength. We are a people, a community and we achieve more as a team than we do as individuals. If we really want to celebrate our great past on our banknotes we should move away from idolising individuals and instead venerate the groups of Sarnians who built what we enjoy today. The ones who didn’t come to take advantage of the hard-lifting by Sarnians and the ones who stuck around when hard lifting was required again.

We live in an age where three years in a job is considered long enough, and for a fair proportion of our population five years is long enough living here. That works in fair weather, but how many will hold fast when great storms drive the money away?

I ask a question I don’t know the answer to but wish I did.

Many of the nurses in our hospital and the teachers in our school come from a country crying out for nurses and teachers. That country educated and kept them healthy and would expect to be paid back by their services and their taxes. Instead they come here, and I’m eternally grateful that they do, but turn their backs on their own country. Did they come to educate children and heal people, or did they come for the money? Our finest leave because there are no opportunities. Hundreds come here every year because there are opportunities. There seems to be some sort of mismatch.

The general consensus seems to be we will never be able to fill the vacancies for qualified, professional jobs. Our main purpose as the local community is to ensure there is someone behind the shop counter, and someone to push a wheelbarrow around a building site. All necessary jobs, but wouldn’t it be nice to think we could make a greater inroad into our higher-value caring and education positions?

The States promotes equality of opportunity but I’m not certain giving local children the same opportunity to leave the island in search of fame and fortune is exactly the best way to maintain our culture and make the Guernsey Way Great Again.

As to those banknotes, well I do know of a self-proclaimed giant of the finance industry who would be prepared to be the face on the £1 notes if no one else comes to mind.