As lead on the Island Identity project I am very pleased to report that the States Assembly approved my proposition to recognise Liberation Day as Jersey’s National Day. We will continue to refer to it as Liberation Day and the celebrations will remain as they are, but it will now have the status and internationally recognised importance of a National Day.

The Assembly also approved ‘Beautiful Jersey’ as the Jersey Anthem (obviously not the National Anthem which remains as ‘God Save the King’). It is very fitting that these two decisions were made ahead of the Liberation 80 Celebrations.

0n Liberation Day itself, I was honoured to have been given the opportunity to give an address at the Commemoration of the SS Vega in the Royal Square with the Red Cross. I spoke of how after D-Day, people in Jersey had literally began to starve. We commemorated the SS Vega and the lifesaving supplies brought in by the Red Cross which had been donated by the people of Canadian and New Zealand. Without this lifeline, it is not an exaggeration to say that many of us would not be here today.

As one of the only places on British soil to have received humanitarian aid, we will never forget the relief and jubilation that Liberation brought to Islanders on 9th May 1945 and the freedom we enjoy today.

As International Development Minister, I am proud to say that Jersey now “pays-back” the generosity shown by the Canadian and New Zealand people, and brings some of this freedom from poverty and squalor and injustice, to hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries.

Later that evening, Lord Soames (who is Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson) kindly acknowledged my speech in his address to the many MP’s, Diplomats and Ambassadors who had travelled to the Island on the occasion of Jersey’s 80 anniversary of Liberation.