Is Lit Fest speaker a man of straw?
I WAS intrigued to note that among the guest speakers for this September's Guernsey Literary Festival will be Jack Straw, the recently-retired British politician. The reason for my being intrigued is that in persuading Mr Straw to visit Guernsey, the festival organisers have achieved a real coup which proved beyond the ability of the island's authorities during the seven years that Mr Straw (first as Home Secretary, then as Lord Chancellor) was the Privy Counsellor responsible to the Crown for the affairs of the three Crown Dependencies.
Unlike his predecessors, Mr Straw declined to visit either Guernsey, Jersey or the Isle of Man, despite several official invitations to do so. It came to be known that he had an ideological distaste for the islands and their constitutional status, a distaste which soon after he became Home Secretary led to his discourteous, even arrogant, imposition on the islands – without any prior consultation or advance notice – of the 1998 Edwards Review. This review amounted to a British government arbitrarily taking upon itself the conduct of an inquiry into the financial legislation and regulatory systems in the Crown Dependencies, fuelled by the suspicion that the islands' finance industries were poorly regulated, crime-ridden, harmful to the UK economy and liable to embarrass HM government if found at fault by international regulators.
As it happened, the eventual Edwards Report gave the Channel Islands' finance industries a broadly clean bill of health, but that was insufficient to elicit even a hint of an apology by the Home Secretary for the unconstitutional manner in which he had sprung the review on the islands in the first place. To say the least, the episode left a bad taste in the Crown Dependencies where it is still quoted as an example of the UK government's past lapses into high-handedness and lack of respect for the constitutional position of the islands.
I congratulate the Literary Festival organisers on their success in persuading Mr Straw to overcome his aversion to visiting these shores. I hope I will not be thought too cynical in harbouring the suspicion that the lure of a speaking fee and a boost to sales of his recently published memoirs might have proved more persuasive than was his sense of duty to the Crown as our Privy Counsellor during the periods 1997-2001 and 2007-10. I further hope that his participation in the Guernsey Literary Festival will leave him both better informed of Guernsey and less antipathetic towards the island than he ever was while in office only a few years ago.
RICHARD GRAHAM,
Veue du Guet, Rue de la Lande,
Castel, GY5 7EH.
Editor's footnote: Catriona Stares, Literary Festival director, replies:
I am delighted that Mr Straw's appearance has prompted Richard Graham's heartfelt letter and thank the Guernsey Press for giving the festival the chance to respond. I also regard it as a coup that we have secured the attendance of such a high-profile name, especially as he has charged no fee. His book gives a fascinating overview of the last 40 years of British politics and his talk will, I am sure, be a highlight of the festival. I hope Mr Graham attends on 18 September and puts his questions to Mr Straw – the purpose of a literary festival is to promote the exchange of fresh ideas and challenge each others' thoughts in a robust fashion. I am sure Mr Straw will want to answer all of Mr Graham's questions, especially in light of his recent appointment to review the freedom of information legislation in the UK. The Literary Festival would be delighted to offer Mr Graham a complimentary ticket.
