Sport, identities, and politics at the 2023 Island Games, Guernsey

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the 2023 (NatWest) Island Games in Guernsey, the latest iteration of a sporting tournament held every two years in Atlantic Rim polities since 1985. The event’s participants include UK local authorities, crown dependencies, and British overseas territories. Significantly, non-British and non-Commonwealth polities such as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland also take part, thus allowing UK and Commonwealth jurisdictions a means of performing national identity and diplomacy alongside non-Commonwealth polities. The author explores the potential and limits of this in an era where the Commonwealth (formerly British Empire) Games is struggling for survival.

KEYWORDS:

• Island games
• Guernsey
• sporting events
• Commonwealth Games
• offshore economy
• subnational Island jurisdictions

Introduction

The British Empire Games were first held in Canada in 1930; and, judging from UK (and Australian) press commentary at the time of writing (December 2023–January 2024), it is possible that the competition now known as the Commonwealth Games might be struggling for survival, due to decisions by the Australian state of Victoria, and the Canadian province of Alberta, to withdraw their hosting of the respective 2026 and 2030 iterations of the competition (CBC News, 2023; Gorman, 2010; Mackay, 2023). The complaints from the Victoria government in particular have been heard repeatedly regarding the costs and consequences of mega-events: overspend on construction and consultants, questions about the post-Games use of facilities, a massive gap between the expectations of sporting organisations and those of regional governments and their voters, and the perceived erosion of democracy (Kassens-Noor & Lauermann, 2018). In the world of sporting events, the Commonwealth Games’ existence had become precarious anyway: the 2022 Games took place in Birmingham as the result of Durban’s withdrawal for the same reasons. In the run-up to Birmingham, commentators were questioning the continued existence of a sporting tournament whose membership qualifications were largely based around a violent and problematic history, rather than geography and qualified sporting talent (McDowell, 2022). The Commonwealth Games, in many senses, is struggling not to be consigned to history.

However, the Commonwealth Games are not the only international sporting competition in which some member nations of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) participate. From 8 through 14 July 2023, the XIX Island Games (branded the NatWest Island Games) took place in Guernsey. Over 2,100 athletic competitors took part, down from a height of around 3,000 in the 2015 iteration held in Jersey, but comparable to the number of competitors in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing (BBC, 2023c; Innes, 2015; IOC, 2022). The historical existence of the Island Games reflected a close proximity to the Commonwealth Games – its creator and first host, in 1985, was the Isle of Man, itself recognised as a nation by the CGF – but the Island Games and its governing body, the International Island Games Association (IIGA) (formerly the Island Games Association) exist beyond the realm of the Commonwealth. This article examines the Island Games: its life as a sporting competition, observations from the 2023 Games in Guernsey (which I attended as a spectator), and the competition’s significant relationship with small-island politics, sovereignty, and finance. This article follows on from research I performed in the Falkland Islands on the territory’s participation in international sport (McDowell, 2022). Here, I argue that the Island Games represent an emerging thread of European and Atlantic policy and politics, one which allows a (tenuous) opportunity for UK local authorities, crown dependencies, and overseas territories to practise diplomacy and forge relationships beyond the UK and the Commonwealth. This is increasingly necessary in an era where, like the Commonwealth Games, the Commonwealth itself is believed to be facing existential challenges. However, as I discuss, the Island Games reveal contradictions of their own about the future of the Commonwealth, the Atlantic Rim, and the UK itself.

‘Inter-Island’ sport

The Island Games were the brainchild of Members of the House of Keys (MHK) in Tynwald, the Parliament of the Isle of Man. The first iteration of the competition, 1985’s Inter-Island Games, was the showcase event of the Isle of Man’s Year of Sport, a varied programme designed by MHKs and Manx policymakers for the purposes of tourism development, in a tourism economy in the 1980s which faced many of the same issues as other British seaside resort areas, as they struggled to remain attractive in an era of ever-changing international travel. At least to some extent, the creation of the (Inter-)Island Games went forward because, whilst the dream of Manx parliamentarians was to host a Commonwealth Games, it was believed the Isle of Man lacked the large-scale infrastructure to host the competition. In the long run, it is questionable to claim that a subsequent focus on hosting sporting events has reversed the Isle of Man’s issues with these, but it has nevertheless proved a durable strategy for managing an ageing tourist infrastructure (McDowell, 2021). Certainly, then, the Island Games must be seen in the context of sport tourism on small islands in general (Arnott et al., 2023; Bull & Weed, 1999). However, one cannot divorce the politics of the tournament from its origins. Organisers of the 1985 tournament first invited fellow crown dependencies Jersey and Guernsey, afterwards moving to invite other ‘British’ islands of varying jurisdictional description, including: Shetland, Orkney, the Isle of Wight, Ynys Môn (Anglesey), Malta, and the distant St Helena, the British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. Manx organisers also built on the island’s own Nordic heritage when inviting Iceland, the Faroe Islands (a Danish territory), Gotland (an island and municipality on Sweden’s east coast), Hitra, Frøya (small islands in Norway’s Trøndelag region), and Åland (an autonomous, demilitarised Finnish archipelago populated by Swedish speakers) (Corlett, 1995; McDowell, 2021).

Towards the end of the 1985 tournament, there was already broad agreement that a second iteration of the Games would be held in Guernsey in two years’ time. Indeed, the invitees to the first tournament, along with the decision to hold the next iteration within a two-year interval, set the tone for the future organisation and membership of what would become the IGA/IIGA. Over the next four decades, the tournament, held every two years, would expand to include member islands who were either members of the Commonwealth and/or islands based on the Mediterranean or the Baltic. Table 1 shows the locations of subsequent Island Games, and the years in which different members took part in the event: 13 out of 20 Games have been hosted in ‘British’ islands – that is, UK local authorities, crown dependencies, or overseas territories – whilst half of the 28 members who attended the 2023 Games in Guernsey represented ‘British’ polities. At the time of writing six of the ten members of the IIGA Executive represent ‘British’ islands, although this notably excludes the current IIGA Chair, Jorgen Petterson of Åland. The IIGA offices are based in Douglas, Isle of Man.

Table 1. Participants in the Island Games, 1985–2023.

	1985 Isle of Man (I)	1987 Guernsey (II)	1989 Faroe Islands (III)	1991 Åland (IV)	1993 Isle of Wight (V)	1995 Gibraltar (VI)	1997 Jersey (VII)	1999 Gotland (VIII)	2001 Isle of Man (IX)	2003 Guernsey (X)	2005 Shetland (XI)	2007 Rhodes (XII)	2009 Åland (XIII)	2011 Isle of Wight (XIV)	2013 Bermuda (XV)	2015 Jersey (XVI)	2017 Gotland (XVII)	2019 Gibraltar (XVIII)	2021 Guernsey (XIX)	2023 Guernsey (XIX)
Åland																			X
Alderney																			X
Bermuda																			X
Cayman Islands																			X
Falkland Islands																			X
Faroe Islands																			X
Frøya																			X
Gibraltar																			X
Gotland																			X
Gozo
Greenland																			X
Guernsey																			X
Hitra																			X
Iceland																			X
Isle of Man																			X
Isle of Wight																			X
Jersey																			X
Malta																			X
Menorca																			X
Orkney Islands																			X
Prince Edward Island																			X
Rhodes																			X
Saaremaa																			X
St Helena																			X
Sark																			X
Shetland Islands																			X
Western Isles																			X
Ynys Môn																			X

Are the Island Games an ‘island Olympics’? If the 2023 Island Games has numbers of participants comparable to the Winter Olympics, then, certainly, the Games have some of the trappings of major sporting events, and occasionally there is even an overlap in sporting and administrative personnel. There is a bidding process to host future Island Games: hosts are typically decided six years ahead of time, and are in fact announced during the Games itself. In theory, applying to host an Island Games does not resemble the (extremely controversial) horse-trading involved in bidding for an Olympic Games – the IIGA, in fact, post necessary templates and forms on their website – but controversies nevertheless occur over the capacity of islands to host certain sports (dependent on facilities, firearms laws, and local customs), transport to islands, and whether or not ‘British’ islands are perceived to be dominating hosting the competition (Booth, 2011; IIGA, n.d.).¹ Much like the Olympics, there is pressure for Games to have a ‘legacy’, but there are few explicit promises made (Preuss, 2007; Thomson et al., 2013). For example, Guernsey’s most significant pledge regarding the 2023 Games was to ‘inspire islanders to ignite active lifestyles’, and to that end the Health Improvement Commission, a Guernsey charity, initiated the Physical Activity Legacy Grant system to provide a series of small grants to sporting organisations for the purposes of sport development (BBC, 2023b; Health Improvement Commission, n.d.). This is a third-sector initiative, however, and there has subsequently been criticism from opposition politicians about the States of Guernsey’s post-event investment (or alleged lack thereof) in facilities and school and youth sport (A. Brown, 2023).

Beneath the surface, however, the Island Games is clearly a very different competition from the Olympics, not to mention the Commonwealth Games. This is noticeable in terms of funding, transport, and accommodation: where the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) funds the transport and accommodation of its members to the Commonwealth Games, the IIGA does not. This can be a significant challenge for some polities, most notably the Falkland Islands and St Helena, who typically travel the furthest distance to Games: in the Falklands, for instance, the Falkland Islands National Sports Council, national governing bodies, and often Island Games competitors themselves organise and participate in an elaborate programme of community fundraising to help pay for their transport and accommodation (McDowell, 2022). Island Games team managers typically organise local accommodation themselves, often at least two years in advance of the event. The Island Games thus has more explicit engagement with local hospitality economies, and requires no purpose-built accommodation or athletes’ village. The Island Games additionally offer free entry and non-reserved seating to sporting venues for spectators, with the only exception at Guernsey 2023 being the swimming: it took place at a 25-metre pool (regulation length in the Island Games – half the size of an Olympic pool) at the Beau Séjour Leisure Centre in St Peter Port, Guernsey’s capital (typically referred to by residents as ‘town’), with the limited seating area reserved for swimmers’ families and members of the Guernsey Swimming Club. (Like everyone else, I watched a livestream of the competition from the centre’s cinema, adjacent to the pool.) Additionally, for the duration of the 2023 Island Games, Guernsey Bus offered free transport across the island.

The Island Games are often informally referred to as the ‘Friendly Games’, a moniker shared with the Commonwealth Games. There can be little denial of the political nature of the Commonwealth Games; but, whilst the Island Games is not similarly tethered to the British Empire/Commonwealth in an historical or contemporary sense, it too hints at the politics of the competitors involved, as well as those of the sovereign states under whose auspices these competitors ostensibly reside. Indirectly, these states still play a role in the administration and facilitation of the Island Games. Individual competitions are prepared and run by organising committees whose members are based locally. The organising committee for Guernsey 2023 was initially that of the 2021 competition to be held in the dependency; however, that tournament was postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. All decisions were made by the local organising committee, whilst liaising with elected government in the States of Guernsey and the IIGA, who rewrote the Games contract to accommodate the ‘postponement’ of the Games (Xu, 2023). In other respects, English and British sporting organisations made up a significant proportion of Games officials and judges. British Triathlon officials were clearly visible at Island Games men’s and women’s triathlon competitions, held on the first day of competition in the west of Guernsey. More problematic were the football referees, provided by England’s Football Association (FA): an administrative error when giving yellow cards to Menorca in a quarter-final women’s match against Jersey, and Menorca’s successful appeal, led to officials using a coin toss to decide who would go through – and Jersey were indeed knocked out (Pilnick, 2023). This hints at both the advantages and drawbacks for subnational jurisdictions when relying on their constitutional masters for administrative support (Androus & Greymorning, 2016; Baldacchino & Milne, 2006).

What of the sport itself? The standards of the competition can vary considerably. In some cases, athletes from these territories are of Olympic and (football) World Cup-calibre. Flora Duffy (Bermuda) won the women’s triathlon gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Matt Le Tissier (Guernsey) and Graham Le Saux (Jersey) were both professional footballers who represented the England men’s football team during the 1990s. None of these elite athletes got their start in the Island Games, but Manx cyclist Mark Cavendish did: his gold medal-winning performance at Guernsey 2003 was the one of the first successes in a long career in road and track cycling that involved Olympic and Tour de France glory (C. Brown, 2003). One Olympian who participated at the 2023 Island Games was Guernsey sprinter Cameron Chalmers, a member of Team GB’s 4 × 400 m relay team at Tokyo 2020. In front of Chalmers’s home crowd at the impressive Footes Lane – an athletics/football/rugby ground which itself was an infrastructural legacy of the 2003 Games – he was defeated in his individual 400 m race by 17-year-old Jónas Gunnleivsson Isaksen from the Faroe Islands. (Cameron and his brother Alastair, however, were part of a winning Guernsey 4 × 400 m relay squad that won the gold medal several days later.) At the same time, some athletes from Guernsey chose instead to run in the English Schools’ Athletic Championship, which was organised shortly before the Island Games.

Elsewhere, however, the gaps in talent and sport development systems hinted at broader geopolitical competition for ‘British’ and Commonwealth polities. Island Games medals tables typically finish with Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man (and possibly the Faroe Islands and another squad) with the most medals: in 2023, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, and the Faroe Islands finished in exactly that order (Guernsey 2023, n.d.). During the 1990s, sport leaders in small islands, especially the Falkland Islands, complained that ‘large’ islands, with access to considerably more finance, were dominating the competition, and thus they instituted a Small Island Games Trophy for the Falklands, St Helena, Alderney, Sark, Hitra, and Frøya alone. Both the men’s and women’s basketball in 2023 were dominated by Menorca and Saaremaa, teams embedded in the superior domestic basketball systems of Spain and Estonia respectively (McFarland, 2020; Schwede, 2021). (During the group stages, this author witnessed a 152–39 rout by Menorca in the men’s basketball over the Falkland Islands at the Beau Séjour Leisure Centre.) Bermuda, FIFA- and Olympic-recognised, similarly dominated the women’s football tournament – I witnessed a glorious 4–0 victory against Hitra in the group stages – but Bermuda’s status as a British overseas territory was nowhere near as relevant to its footballing success as its geographical and cultural proximity to the United States. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed by the US Congress in the ‘education amendments’ of 1972, enshrined equal status for US men’s and women’s university athletics programmes, inclusive of scholarships (Sandler, 2007). At the end of 2023, six of the Bermuda women’s squad’s 23 footballers were based at US universities (Bermuda Football Association, 2023). Bermudan footballing success, such as it is, is not achieved solely through the largesse of the UK.

Recognition and autonomy

At present, no recognised sovereign states are members of the IIGA. The Cayman Islands and Bermuda, which first participated in 1999 and 2003 respectively, are the sole members of the IIGA to be recognised by both the IOC and FIFA, perhaps the two most prominent (but certainly not the only) arbiters on the legitimacy of nationhood in sport. Recognition of nationhood in sport is an uneven patchwork which depends largely on contextual political circumstances at the time, along with larger nations’ fluctuating power within world sport and individual sports (Pulleiro Méndes, 2020). Satchwell and Wagner (2020), along with Storm and Nielsen (2023), have recently noted regarding Danish territories the Faroe Islands and Greenland (another IIGA member) respectively that recognition in sport means access to money, international competition, and (theoretically, anyway) rising standards of elite performance. However, Steve Menary (2017) has also noted British overseas territories’ recognition in sport can be manipulated from within governing bodies: his specific example is of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) membership of the Turks and Caicos Islands, which was expedited by late Trinidad and Tobago politician and CONCACAF President Jack Warner as a means of getting pliant votes within CONCACAF governance. Menary (2017) also notes that the ‘national’ recognition of French overseas departments in football has boosted French football by providing a steady stream of manpower from Caribbean islands to its leagues, and often its own national team: in effect, it reiterates an extractive imperial relationship.

Many authors note sport as an arena for soft power and international relations (with varying, uneven degrees of effectiveness), especially with regard to so-called ‘mega-events’ like the Olympics and the FIFA men’s World Cup (Cha, 2016; Freeman, 2012; Grix & Brannagan, 2016; Jarvie, 2021; Nygård & Gates, 2013). At the very least, sport – either in terms of participating in events or hosting them – is used as a form of national and place branding, often in relation to economic and tourism development, but often linked to more qualitative measurements regarding public diplomacy. This is true for small states and non-sovereign territories as much as so-called great powers (Kobierecki & Strożek, 2017; Nauright, 2013, Halldorsson, 2017; Pigman, 2012). Whilst academic literature which focuses specifically on sport diplomacy acknowledges the potential of non-sovereign territories to use sport as an arena to act on behalf of their own ‘stateless nations’, international affairs scholars are only recently beginning to study the phenomenon (Ganoharati & Dijxhoorn, 2020; Postlethwaite et al., 2023; Rofe, 2016). Sport as a tool for paradiplomacy, however, is not a new phenomenon. Outside of the Commonwealth and Island Games polities, examples of ‘stateless nations’ being treated as ‘states’ are numerous. The primary discussion of paradiplomacy in sport still starts with Xifra’s (2009) work on Catalonia, not typically accorded any recognition in world sport’s governing bodies. Perhaps for this discussion, then, Puerto Rico offers a more interesting case study of how this might work. Throughout the 20th century, Puerto Rico accumulated power in the Olympic movement and the Pan-American Games that the US commonwealth, conquered from Spain in the Spanish-American War, lacked in the halls of power in Washington. This included performing public diplomacy on a global scale. Especially notable was Puerto Rico’s attendance of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, the subject of a US-led boycott due to the USSR’s recent invasion of Afghanistan (Sotomayor, 2016).

Like Puerto Rico, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland are not sovereign states. But in a sporting competition which, intentionally or otherwise, bestows national status on non-sovereign polities, the fiction, and indeed the ‘imagined community’ of the ‘nation’, nevertheless become very real (Anderson, 1983). In international sport, both nations and non-sovereign polities have flags, anthems, uniforms (for sport and ceremony), featured athletes who carry flags, and national names which indicate deeply political choices about identity, how a nation/territory should be represented on behalf of its people, and the relative power of such nations/territories amongst other nations, including the metropolitan state (Biddle-Perry, 2012a, 2012b; Malanski, 2023). In the face of British resistance, Ireland’s long struggle to appear in the Olympics under its own name and flag did not end until 1956 (Hunt, 2015). In the present day, Taiwan, with the notable exception of baseball, in most sports has to accede to the People’s Republic of China’s wishes, and compete under the name ‘Chinese Taipei’ (Chiang & Chen, 2021).

Sporting representation here represents a series of choices and constraints. In one of the few academic pieces to date which touches on sport and identity in the Channel Islands, Henry Johnson (2015) discusses the process by which the Jersey anthem ‘Island Home’ was selected during the late 2000s. In 2006, a public contest was initiated by Jersey’s Chief Minister, Frank Walker, and carried forward by the cabinet department for Education, Sport, and Culture. This was not for the adaptation of a national anthem to replace ‘God Save the Queen’ – that would have intimated a much stronger shift in tone regarding Jersey’s constitutional relationship with the UK – but for the adoption of a sporting anthem which was to be used at the Commonwealth Games and Island Games. Essentially, this debate and contest allowed Jerseyans to discuss what a Jersey anthem might represent in terms of the dependency’s historic relationships with the UK, France, and Europe, and how those were shifting in the contemporary era (Johnson, 2015).

Much like Jersey, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar (not an island) are also both members of the CGF and the IIGA. However, a very different shadow hangs over their participation in both: notably, claims over ownership from neighbouring countries, and in the case of the Falklands the 1982 war with Argentina. Neither British overseas territory is an Olympic polity, and their representation in sport overall is uneven. Gibraltar, of course, scored a major victory in world football in 2013 when UEFA, after years of litigation, admitted the territory as a ‘nation’ (Kara, 2018). However, the territory’s success in gaining recognition has been fleeting, and faces sustained resistance from Spain (Gold, 2002). In one recent example, the Spanish government, via Spanish athletics authorities, threatened to pull the plug on one 2018 World Masters Athletics Championship in Málaga if Gibraltarian athletes were allowed to compete under their own flag. Four out of five of the Gibraltarian runners subsequently withdrew (Ignacio, 2018). The Falkland Islands, meanwhile, have very little hope of being recognised in world football anytime soon, but they have been recognised globally – since the Second World War – in world badminton (McDowell, 2020). Successful attempts at participating in Badminton Pan-Am tournaments in Brazil in 2016 and 2020 were nevertheless met with continual, if ultimately fruitless, protests to the hosts by the Argentine government, which demanded that the Falklands team fly under an Argentine flag under the name ‘Islas Malvinas’ (McDowell, 2022). Here, then, the ability of Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands to have access to international sport under their own chosen name and flag depends largely on the sports and competitions themselves.

The Guernsey 2023 Games saw other controversies regarding recognition and autonomy. The most high-profile was that of Orkney. At the beginning of July, coinciding with the opening of the Island Games, Orkney Islands Council voted 15–6 to explore alternative constitutional arrangements with the UK and Scotland, whose governments were both accused of short-changing and discriminating against Orkney, especially in terms of funding. The most eye-catching potential proposal was to explore a constitutional relationship with Norway. However, the arguably more substantive idea was that Orkney explore becoming a crown dependency, much like Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. Talk of exploring alternative constitutional arrangements was quickly shot down by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (BBC, 2023d). Exploring devolution in Orkney and Shetland, however, was not novel: the July vote was an eruption of the tensions which have long simmered under the surface since the mid-1960s, when oil was discovered in Scottish waters, and with the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP), increasingly successful in Westminster elections, explicitly linking the funding of a Scottish state to oil revenue. Local Scottish councils, including Orkney and Shetland, made lucrative deals with multinational oil companies, and a devolved Scottish Assembly/Parliament was viewed as threatening that settlement. In Shetland especially, through the Shetland Charitable Trust, oil money continues to fund community sport at a significantly higher rate compared to the Scottish mainland (Morgan, 2009). The language of protest in the Northern Isles thus highlighted Orkney’s and Shetland’s centuries-old relationship with Norway and Denmark as a means of stressing a ‘Nordic’, ‘anti-Scottish’ identity, a critique of power being accumulated in Scotland’s central belt. Shetland Islands Council had, in fact, first mooted the possibility of becoming a crown dependency in the late 1970s; the talk was revived by both Orkney and Shetland in the run-up to 2014’s Scottish independence referendum (Nicolson, 2023). It will be interesting to see if Orcadians use the opportunity of hosting the 2025 Island Games to debate this relationship further.

The link between sport, politics, and Orkney was not a hot topic for spectators during the 2023 Games. An issue which drew more commentary was the inaugural participation in the Island Games of Gozo. Malta sent a few team members to the first event in the Isle of Man in 1985, but afterwards quit the Games. Maltese and Guernsey commentators saw the return of a Gozitan team in 2023 as an omen. In 2007, Godfrey Baldacchino argued that Gozitan civic and political identity overlapped very little with the creation of the post-war Maltese state and its institutions (Baldacchino, 2007). Malta, of course, is a small state and Commonwealth member which has weathered a major political crisis over the past decade, especially in the wake of the October 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had been investigating high-level corruption (Cachia & DeBattista, 2018; Fenech, 2023). Whether or not political crises are reflected in Malta’s elite and grassroots sport development system, the nation’s elite sport development programme has struggled to live up to its promises, and in 2021 that included promised Olympic-sized swimming pools and athletic tracks in Gozo (Grech et al., 2021). At the 2023 Island Games, on the occasion of Gozo’s Lara Calleja winning a silver medal in sport trap shooting, the island’s first medal competing under its own flag, the Times of Malta’s Mark Laurence Zammit discussed the history of Gozitan autonomy:

Gozo rarely features as its own representative in sports and politics and is almost always considered a region of Malta. But ideas about Gozo’s independence or autonomy have been thrown around for decades, although they never gathered enough steam to develop into a movement that leads to a change in Gozo’s status. Up until 1973, Gozo had an elected regional authority – called the Gozo Civic Council – that even had the power to impose taxes and allowed Gozitans to have a direct say in the running of their island. Gozo has not had any self-governing status since, and the closest it got to have some form of say in its own affairs was in 1987 when the government set up a Gozo Ministry for the first time. (Zammit, 2023)

Additionally, the Guernsey edition of the Bailiwick Express (2023) noted that the Gozo team was accompanied by a civil servant for the Ministry for Gozo. In the meantime, Marlon Attard won a shooting gold medal for Gozo; five years earlier. The then 19-year-old Attard was noted (upon meeting a previous Minister for Gozo) as being the first Gozitan to ever represent Malta in the Commonwealth Games (Gozo.news, 2018).

Hosting sporting events, or participation within them, is a notoriously difficult means of predicting electoral outcomes and the actions of government, especially when sovereignty is involved. Famously, the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow – in an event where Scotland is represented as a nation (unlike, for instance, the Olympics) – had very little to do with the outcome of the independence referendum in September of that year (Jarvie, 2016). But the very fact that such teams exist at all in either the Island or the Commonwealth Games shows that sport sometimes provides arenas for national identity – and nationalism – that cannot be articulated within currently existing states or non-sporting supra-national organisations.

Other controversies

The individual national contexts of IIGA members do not exist within a political and social vacuum. At the 2023 Island Games, one could have almost forgotten about COVID-19, and perhaps even forgotten that the Games were being held two years later than planned due to the pandemic. In her 2022 work on COVID-19 in the Isle of Man, Sharon Cobb notes that the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey looked towards each others’ policies and experiences while enacting ‘lockdowns’ that were arguably harsher than those on the British mainland (Cobb, 2022). British overseas territories, meanwhile, had very different challenges relating to location, remoteness from the UK, and strained relationships with the British government, and (in the case of Gibraltar) land borders (Benwell et al., 2021; Matheson, 2022).

COVID itself was rarely mentioned in the Games literature, presentations, or Guernsey-based press coverage. As Pinkerton and Benwell (2018) hinted in their work on their recent work on Gibraltar (which discussed their hosting of the 2019 Island Games), another issue was far more present: ‘Brexit’, and uncertainly over trade, fishing, offshore finance, and defence and diplomatic representation from the metropolitan state. Most of these issues involved geographical islands outside of Europe; however, with Gibraltar, this also involved its hard land border with the EU – a pertinent reminder of how such borders can themselves play a role in ‘islanding’ (Ballantine Perera, 2021; Clegg, 2018; McDowell, 2022; Mut Bosque, 2020, 2022; Wilson & Hanlon, 2023). Sport is thus a logical sphere for these dynamics to evolve. However, fluidity also comes from the Island Games' non-Commonwealth polities. The period from Gibraltar 2019 to Guernsey 2023 also marked significant changes for the three Baltic IIGA members – Åland, Gotland, and Saaremaa – who, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, found themselves based on potentially one of the hottest nautical frontlines in the world. For Åland – autonomous and demilitarised – and Gotland, this meant an increased military presence in and around their islands, and NATO membership of their parent countries (Finland and Sweden respectively) (Heinikoski, 2017; Sliwa et al., 2022; Tuchtenhagen, 2022). If the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup represent ‘great power’ geopolitics, then the Island Games accurately represents the sport/politics relationship between the Atlantic Rim’s non-sovereign polities, all of whom are affected by the decisions and external relationships of their sovereign states’ politicians and their voters.

The Nordic and Baltic relationships with the Island Games will be discussed in future work. It is, however, worthy to note that much like any other international sporting federation, there are elements of protest, disharmony, and ‘othering’ within the IIGA. In the run-up to 2023, one of the primary lightning rods for Commonwealth IIGA polities was the Faroe Islands, specifically the grindadráp – the practice of driving pilot whales and dolphins into shallow water for hunting (Bulbeck & Bowdler, 2008). The debate over the practice was particularly loud in Jersey, especially after images and film of the 2021 hunt went viral and provoked international outcry. Immediately afterwards, Hugh Raymond, Jersey’s assistant economic development minister, proposed that Jersey and other islands ban the Faroes from the Island Games as punishment (John, 2021). Two years later, Deputy Lyndon Farnham wrote to IIGA Chair Jorgen Petterson to request that the Faroes be suspended from the IIGA unless there was a ‘firm undertaking to stop the annual destruction of marine mammals’. Petterson refused (Jeune, 2023). The issue was very much live in the summer of 2023: during 14–15 June, at the end of a two-day debate in Jersey’s States Assembly, elected deputies voted 22–12 (with 12 abstentions) to pass a motion condemning the Faroe Islands (SA Deb, 2023a, 2023b). The motion received praised from unexpected places, most notably from Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, who posted his appreciation to Jersey’s ‘parliament’ on Twitter (now X) (ITV News, 2023). However, even some deputies who voted in favour of the motion were uneasy about its consequences. Deputy Montfort Tadier voted in favour, but nevertheless directly linked the discussion of the grindadráp to other controversies in sport, the Commonwealth, and the crown dependencies: ones that potentially might backfire on Jersey should they decide to comment on matters:

We could say to the Isle of Man that we do not think the TT (Tourist Trophy) races that happen in the Isle of Man are very ethical, because quite a few people die every year in the Isle of Man … [A]s an Assembly we could say: ‘I do not think the Isle of Man should have a TT race every year. We think you should stop it. We want the UK Government to tell the Isle of Man that they should stop the TT races’. It is very bizarre territory for parliamentarians to be in … The Assembly could have a debate now, instead of about whales in the Faroe Islands, about women’s rights issues in Iran or we could be talking about gay rights issues in Uganda or in Dubai. We could send a message, because maybe the rationale is that the Faroe Islands are part of a group of islands that come together every few years to participate in the Island Games, in the same way that there are lots of members of the Commonwealth which have completely different practices to what we would see as the norm and against the current political zeitgeist. We could issue a statement to Uganda saying that: ‘We think your record on gay rights, LGBTQ+ … is appalling and that the current laws that you have brought in are wrong’. We could do the same to those countries who have regressed when it comes to abortion laws and the rights of women to access abortions. Do we do that?… Some people might say: ‘We do not like Jersey. You call it an offshore finance centre, we think you are a tax haven. We think that being a tax haven is very harmful to the world. We have a completely different social and economic model where we come from, so we are going to pass as motion that requires the French Government or whoever to condemn Jersey as being a tax haven’. What kind of reaction would we have if another Parliament did that to us? (SA Deb, 14 June 2023, 11.1)

Tadier’s comments nevertheless hinted that any number of these issues are never far from the surface of an Island Games. Certainly, Guernsey’s sole LGBTQI rights charity, Liberate, was integrated into the formal Games cultural programme of Guernsey 2023. Throughout the Island Games, it converted St Peter Port’s Market Buildings into ‘Pride House’, ‘a welcoming & safe space for LGBTQIA+ sports fans, athletes and allies at the Guernsey 2023 Island Games’ (Liberate, 2023). The ‘Pride House’ model of ‘safe spaces’ for LGBTQI athletes and spectators was borrowed from the Olympics: one was first instituted at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and similar venues were constructed for subsequent Commonwealth Games (Rich et al., 2017). Indeed, within the Commonwealth Games LGBTQI rights have become a live issue, especially after openly gay English diver Tom Daley, upon winning a gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast, called out ‘37 countries in the Commonwealth where it is illegal to be who I am’ (Cheeseman & Tomlin, 2018). IIGA member Bermuda might not be a sovereign state, but in 2018 it became the first polity in the world to ban recognition of same-sex marriages after they had been legalised in the territory. The bill to do so was granted royal assent by Bermuda’s Governor, despite loud protests in the UK House of Commons. In the Caribbean, much like UK efforts to prevent the legalisation of cannabis in British territories, the external imposition of LGBTQI rights is viewed through a postcolonial lens, and as an area of constitutional law where clear evidence of a ‘democratic deficit’ between the UK and its overseas territories struggles to be reconciled with the UK’s obligations to protect same-sex residents (Clegg et al., 2016; O’Brien & Clegg, 2023). But the UK’s Caribbean territories were not the only Island Games polities which struggled with LGBTQI issues: indeed, one lawyer’s opinion in 2020 was that Guernsey was only the beginning to catch up to anti-discrimination laws in the UK (Whitbread, 2020).

The presence of Liberate, however, highlighted other subtle ubiquities of Guernsey 2023: in particular, that of the offshore financial economy. On the day of the Games’ opening ceremony (whose main parade took place in the streets of St Peter Port), Liberate distributed rainbow laces in front of the Market Buildings. Attached was a card discussing the charity’s use of the hashtag #prideinsport during the Games; on the other side was an advert from sponsors, in this case accountants Ernst & Young:

At EY, we’re committed to creating an environment where all people feel like they belong. Whether at home, in the workplace, or on the sports field, it’s only when people feel truly accepted and able to be their authentic selves that they can perform at their best.

Of course, it is unfair to single out Ernst & Young for such a branding exercise. Much of the talk in the run- up to Guernsey 2023 surrounded the Games’ primary sponsor, NatWest International, whose sponsorship of the original 2021 Games was to be its last; it first sponsored the ‘NatWest Island Games’ in 1998 (GBC News, 2020; IIGA, 2023). At the time of writing, the IIGA are still searching for a naming-rights sponsor for Orkney 2025. NatWest’s sponsorship of elite British sport was not exactly a secret: the Royal Bank of Scotland-owned property long had a relationship with the England and Wales Cricket Board, and was famous for the award-winning campaign Cricket Has No Boundaries (Powis & Velija, 2021). But the Island Games were sponsored by NatWest International, an arm of the bank that trades only in Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, and Gibraltar. Sport sponsorship here, then, reflected the unique social and political context of the Games.

NatWest’s discontinuance as the Games’ primary sponsor hints that, as with the example of the Commonwealth Games, the sustainability of regular sporting events is often tenuous. In December 2023, the Island Games suffered its own hosting crisis when Ynys Môn withdrew from hosting the 2027 Island Games, with the Faroe Islands stepping in to replace them. The Ynys Môn organising committee was relying on funding from the public and charity sector, but various ongoing financial crises, during which Wales has especially been hard hit, meant that the organising committee could not realistically fund the event (BBC, 2023a). Incidences such as this highlight the unequal finances and powers of UK local authorities: Shetland’s state and third-sector finances (potentially) allow it a significant strategic platform to build on, while other IIGA members like Ynys Môn represent more typical bureaucratic contexts (Grydehøj, 2011). It may not be openly discussed as a controversy within the IIGA, but even within this Association there are clear winners.

Conclusion

Baldacchino introduced his 2018 article proclaiming the ‘mainstreaming’ of the study of small states and territories by using a sporting example – the fleeting attention given to the Iceland men’s football team’s success in EURO2016 – and how this reflected a large-state media’s tendency to trivialise and patronise ‘small’ jurisdictions as curios whose existences inevitably revolve around large states (Baldacchino, 2018). While the aim of this article does not dispute the relevance of small jurisdictions’ relationships with ‘mainland’ states, the Island Games arguably highlight an instance where ‘British’ islands of various jurisdictional types seek and reaffirm communion outside of the Commonwealth. The UK, the ‘mainland’ state often the topic of conversation in this journal, is not irrelevant to the logistical support for, or shaping of, this event, but within the IIGA the UK, along with Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Malta, Spain, and Estonia, is called upon when it is needed, rather than assuming a starring role. It reflects a present where ‘British’ and ‘Commonwealth’ institutions are under pressure, and the conversation largely takes place without the ‘mainland’ state in the room. It is pointless to speculate as to whether or not the Island Games will outlive the Commonwealth Games; the IIGA, after all, has challenges of its own, and does not operate within any kind of supranational structure such as the Commonwealth or the EU. However, the Island Games represent an instance where these particular ‘British’ island jurisdictions and their citizens have shown agency themselves – often at significant cost and considerable logistical difficulty, and without the UK’s help – in making relationships outside of the Commonwealth. It is worth considering the implications of these relationships beyond the sporting arena.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The author is currently writing a book on the history of the Island Games, and these issues will be discussed in due course in other publications.