What is oral history?Oral history is the recording ofpeoples’ memories and life stories andto the modern historian it plays asimportant a part in research asdocumentary sources. In recent timesthe view of history has expanded toencompass the first-hand account fromliving memory, whereas in the pastsocieties traditionally recorded thestories of the social elite.

Oral history serves a number ofpurposes. First, it helps to makepreviously marginalised communitiesmore visible.

For example, it is through oral historythat the experience of migrants andethnic minorities can be understood.In the past it has been easy for suchgroups to be forgotten and lost byhistory, other than the recording ofstatistics, so oral history serves to re-establish those who had previouslybeen forgotten.

Memories can also give a face topreviously dry historical information.History is about people and it isthrough oral history that the detailsof the

‘common man’ and society, and theeveryday things within it, are pushedto the forefront. For example, anyonewishing to discover how a domestickitchen was run in the 1960s wouldbenefit much more from thereflections of a housewife of the erathan from the scant written sources onthe subject.

In the past, oral history was oftenlooked upon as an unreliable sourcethat needed documentary evidence to

back it up. It wasregarded as ofless importanceand likely to beless accuratethan writtenevidence, butthe study ofevents such asthe Holocaust

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ORAL HISTORYAs part of the Liberation 60 celebrations the Jersey Heritage Trust created a living archive of theperiod from May 1945 to the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Archivist Stuart Nicolle explains howthe Jersey Archive undertook its first large-scale oral history project.

Some of the people who risked imprisonment by listening to their wireless sets during the Occupation, photographed by Robert H Lawrence at the farmBel Respiro. The image was brought to the St Brelade Parish Afternoon and later featured in the exhibition of Liberation 60 banners in Charing Cross.

Two images from cattle expert Mrs Anne Perchard(née Billot) who was recorded reminiscing aboutthe years from Liberation to Coronation: TheBillot family with friends and neighbours fromthree farms in St Martin on Liberation Day, whenthey went to town on the lorry belonging to Anne’sfather Thomas “Tom” Billot.

has dispelled this myth as interviewswith the survivors brought theirpreviously unknown sufferingsexplicitly to life. The Holocaust wasprimarily a human disaster, and byputting forward survivors’ accounts asreliable testimony the unbelievablebecomes altogether more tangible.This method of recording first-handaccounts of events within livingmemory has undermined the previousmistrust of oral history and it is nowregarded with much more respectwithin academic circles.

In the past, historians relied onwritten documents, but that limitedtheir research to the availabledocumentary sources. A person’smemory is a living document that isconstantly evolving, and in face-to-facesituations the historian has theflexibility to interact with their subject,to ask questions and tease out moredetails. Nonetheless, oral history doesnot serve to undermine the importanceof the written sources, but acts as agood counterpoint and companion to the written memory. Informationgleaned from an archival document can be juxtaposed with a quotationfrom an interview in order to provide adifferent viewpoint orto complement it.

Jersey Heritage Trust projectsThe Jersey Heritage Trust’s (JHT)experience of large-scale oral historyprojects was limited until theLiberation 60 Parish Project. In 2003Jersey Archive undertook a small-scalehistory project in conjunction with theMethodist Church as part of thecelebrations of the 300th anniversaryof the birth of John Wesley. An openday was held to enable the public toview photographs and objects from theMethodist Church records which areheld in the care of the Archive, andfrom that event appointments weremade to record memories of thechurch’s history. It proved to be avaluable early project in theorganisation’s understanding of oralhistory.

In 2001 the Jersey Sound Archivewas transferred from Jersey Museumto the Archive. This collection of anumber of sound recordings wasoriginally deposited with the SociétéJersiaise by the Education Departmentand consisted of interviews withvarious people relating to the GermanOccupation of the Channel Islands,tourism, vraicing and life in Jersey atthe turn of the century, as well as other

m i s c e l l a n e o u ssubjects. Theywere mostly

recorded onto cassette or reel-to-reeltapes.

Since that time other soundarchives have been deposited fromvarious sources. These include thePhilip Gurdon sound archive, whichconsists of recordings made for theblind by a group of Jerseybroadcasters, and the Channel IslandsOccupation Society (Jersey) archive,which includes a collection ofprogrammes and recordings from theradio concerning the Occupation ofthe Island and some original oralhistory recordings. Amongst recentdeposits has been a collection of tapesfrom BBC Radio Jersey featuring anumber of programmes on a variety ofsubjects, including both live broadcastsof events and temps passé. As well asrecording history, all these collectionsalso provide experience of interviewsand the different techniques ofconducting interviews.

Liberation 60The period 1945-1953 was chosen fora number of reasons. A great deal ofattention has always been devoted tothe Occupation itself. This time,however, the aim was to be not onlyforward-looking, but also to focus onthe immediate post-war years of peaceand prosperity. As Jersey’s economy

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A photograph taken by the local newspaper TheMorning News at the 1948 cattle show - Anne Billotwith “Sweetie’s Bouquet”.

Corporal Ted Dobson came to Jersey just after Liberation, as part of the “clean-up” force. The vehicle they used is still at Don Pallot’s museum; pictured here in Gas Place with Ted Dobson at right.Mr Dobson fell in love and got married, and with his wife, Barbara, was recorded for the oral history project.

and infrastructure were rebuilt, avariety of interesting events occurred.

The recorded memory seems tostop once Liberation had taken placeand it was felt important to bring thepost-war period back, especially asthere are still many people alive whowould remember this particular time.It was important not to lose theirmemories. Memory is a finite source,and if people die without recordingtheir memories they are lost forever.So with the passing of time, and theolder generations of Occupationsurvivors dying, the Trust wanted torecord as many memories as possiblewhile there was still time. In additionto the recording sessions, peoplebrought in photographs anddocuments that would otherwise havealso been lost.

One of the first problems wasknowing what questions to ask. Whathappened in the years 1945-1953 that the potential interviewees mighthave remembered? Research wasundertaken through the almanacs andback copies of the Jersey Evening Post todraw up a chronology of the period.This helped to crystallise the questionsthat might be of interest, as theresearchers were not only interested inIsland-wide events but also in morelocalised parish happenings. One ofthe aims of the project was to producean exhibition showing events in eachparish, and it was important to payequal attention to both aspects ofIsland life.

TechnologyTechnology was another obstacle toovercome. The JHT wanted to keepthe recordings in perpetuity, and inorder to do so it would be necessary tochoose the most appropriate medium.On the advice of an oral history expertit was decided to use a mini-disc player,a reliable and easily portable means of recording – an importantconsideration when interviewingpeople in their homes. The recordeddata from the mini-disc player werethen transferred onto a computer.

In addition we had to decide whatmicrophones to buy, depending onwhether we would undertake one-to-one or group interviews. Bothsituations have pros and cons;individual recording, because of theintimate environment, can makepeople relax and ‘open up’. Similarly,interviewing in groups can lead to theparticipants triggering memories foreach other, but it can also lead to moreforceful members dominating thesession. It was decided to let theindividual being questioned decide inwhich situation they felt mostcomfortable, as it was only by puttingthem at ease that the optimuminterview could be achieved.

IntervieweesThe next stage was to find people

who were willing to be interviewed.Often oral history subjects comeforward without encouragement, suchas when a relative or friend suggeststhat their life story is of sufficientinterest to be recorded. However,with a project on such a large-scalemore immediate action was needed, soa meeting was held in each parish andparishioners were invited to attend,listen to a talk, watch a video and sharetheir own experiences.

The success of this approach varied,with as many as 50 attending at oneparish and as few as six in another, butthe meetings did provide theopportunity to approach people to seeif they were willing to be interviewedand for them in turn to meet the teamof interviewers. Their details weretaken and they were given the set ofquestions to take away so theyunderstood the extent of the projectand could give due consideration totheir responses.

The interviewNot only was the JHT creating anarchive: at the same time its intentionwas to sample the recordings for use inthe parish exhibitions, extracting threeone-minute sound bites from eachparish (36 in total). So the long

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Some oral history recordings at the Jersey Archive arerecorded on to reel-to-reel tapes that can only be listened toon a reel-to-reel player.

The original recording is made on a mini-disc player, which iscompact, reliable and easily transferable.

Sound software screen - recordings are transferred on to thecomputer and edited on Sony Sound Forge Audio Studiosoftware.

Compact disc player - once the recording has been edited itcan be burned on to compact disc so that it can be listenedto on a CD player.

interviews collected for the Archivehad to be edited for the exhibitions.This proved to be a tough task for theinterviewers, who were thorough intheir preparations. They were flexiblein their approach and took great careto put the subjects at their ease and tohelp them recall what they may haveconsidered mundane events but whichfor the historian are fascinating detailsof life during the Occupation. It wasgood practice to let the subjects hear acopy of the recording afterwards tomake sure they were happy for theinformation to be officially recorded.

As the Liberation 60 projectproceeded the process became easierand more natural. It is imperative toask only open-ended questions so asnot to lead the interviewee or restricttheir answers.

After the interviewIt was important to resolve the issue ofcopyright relating to the interview.For the Liberation 60 Project we askedall interviewees to sign an agreementthat would transfer copyright of theirrecorded interview to the JHT. Thismeant that in the future there wouldbe no confusion over rights in therecordings and that the Trust canreproduce extracts.

Once the interview was over eachdisc was labeled to create a mastercopy, to be kept in its pristine state.The recordings were then copied ontocomputer and saved as a wav file. Thismeant that the original recordingscould be put straight into the strongrooms and any editing could be carriedout on a computer.

The ultimate aim of the project wasto make all of the recordings fullyavailable to the public. Cataloguingthe sound material took a great deal oftime, as the archivist had to listen toeach recording in its entirety and makenotes.

Ultimately, the Liberation 60Parish Project served to provide aframework for the JHT in how toconduct large-scale oral historyprojects in the future. An archive of

memories of the years 1945-1953 hasnow been created and will be availableto researchers to consult in years tocome.

Stuart Nicolle is Archivist at JerseyArchive. Tel: 833336Email:Stuart.Nicolle@jerseyheritagetrust.org

If you wish to be interviewed please donot hesitate to get in contact.

BibliographyRobert Perks, Oral History: TalkingAbout the Past, London: The HistoricalAssociation, 1992.Paul Thompson, The Voice of The Past:Oral History, 3rd Edition, New York,Oxford University Press, 2000.

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Once a recording has been made the interviewee signs a copyright form giving permission for the recording to be used by the Jersey Heritage Trust.