Ivy Forster: From Resistance to the States Chamber

Ivy Forster: From Resistance to the States Chamber

There are stories in this Island which just go to show there are some people in Jersey’s history whose lives seem to contain enough material for several TV seasons.

Ivy Forster is one of them.

Ivy, her husband and young son sheltered an escaped Soviet prisoner whilst the island was under German Occupation. She was arrested and imprisoned for her actions, narrowly avoided deportation and, just a few years later, became the first woman ever elected to the States of Jersey.

Astoundingly impressive for someone who had grown up on an island where women weren’t even allowed to vote…

A Jersey Childhood

Ivy May Le Druillenec was born in Jersey on 6 April 1907, one of nine children in the family.

She grew up around St Ouen, attending Les Landes School before working alongside her sister, Louisa Gould, at the family business, La Fontaine Stores at Millais.

It was a very different Jersey from the one we know today.

Agriculture played a strong role in island life, communities appear to be centred around parish life, and opportunities for women were few and far between compared to later in the century.

When Ivy was born, Jersey women did not have the right to vote in States elections.

Some women gained voting rights in 1919, when Ivy was entering adolescence, but political equality was still some way off. As I have learned during my research into fellow islander Caroline Trachy, women had to fight to stand for the States of Jersey, and married women faced additional complications because of laws around their property and legal status being tied to their marital status.

Professional opportunities were also slowly changing. Women were able to train as teachers for example, although there was a lack of local specialist training. In 1907, when Ivy was born, aspiring female teachers from Jersey were being sent to the mainland for professional training, with only two available spaces per year.

By comparison, women in England could already access a growing network of specialist colleges and university courses.

We cannot say whether Ivy personally wanted to attend further education, nor that she was prevented from doing so solely because she was a woman as we have no evidence. But, what we can say is that she grew up in a time where a woman’s path remained connected to marriage, family and domestic life rather than to a life of politics or professional leadership.

As far as we can tell, Ivy did not appear to follow an academic route. Working in the family shop, she met Arthur Forster, a soldier serving with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry who was visiting Les Landes. She married him and moved away from Jersey.

The married couple spent time living in Aldershot, where their only child, Rex Murray Forster, was born in August 1929, before returning to Jersey. By 1934, Arthur was back in the island and had helped establish the estate agency H.A Gaudin & Company.

For a while, Ivy’s life looked pretty standard.

Then came the Occupation.

A Secret in the Attic

Jersey was occupied by German forces from July 1940 until the Liberation on 9 May 1945.

Thousands of forced and enslaved labourers were brought to the Channel Islands to construct fortifications as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Among them were men from the Soviet Union, many of whom were treated appallingly.

Some were able to escape.

Helping them was extremely dangerous.

In December 1942, Ivy and Arthur took it upon themselves to shelter an escaped Soviet prisoner named Grigori ‘George’ Koslov. They did this for two years.

Their son Rex later remembered George as the family’s ‘secret’ in the attic.

Stopping to try and comprehend this… you are living under military occupation. German soldiers are everywhere. People can be arrested for possessing a radio, never mind hiding a wanted escaped prisoner in their home.

And your adolescent child knows he cannot mention to his friends that there’s a man secretly living upstairs.

George apparently wasn’t interested in spending every waking moment staring at the attic walls either. Rex’s later account recalls him venturing round the island, including a trip to take a dip at Havre des Pas with young Rex in tow.

Another recollection suggests George once attended the theatre, sitting dangerously close to German officers. Now that is some confidence I am not sure I have.

George was not the only escaped Soviet prisoner associated with the family.

Ivy’s sister, Louisa Gould has a story which is well known across the island. Louisa was sheltering another man, Fyodor ‘Bill’ Burriy.

When the Germans were tipped off about Louisa in 1944, Bill was hurriedly moved and spent around five days with Ivy and Arthur, who, for a brief period, concealed two escaped workers at the same time.  For clarity, Bill was primarily sheltered by Louisa and George was hidden by Ivy and Arthur – this distinction becomes blurred in some later accounts.

Arrested by the Germans

As the Occupation wore on, things began to unravel for Ivy and her family.

Louisa was arrested in May 1944 after German authorities received information that she had been sheltering an escaped worker (snitches get stitches…).

Ivy was arrested shortly after German officers raided the house and found evidence that there had been someone living with the family (luckily Bill and George appear to have been transferred into Bob Le Sueur’s ‘network’ sheltering escaped forced labourers, sometime earlier).

She was prosecuted by the German authorities for resistance related offences, including helping escaped workers and receiving prohibited wireless broadcasts.

Her sentence was five months and fifteen days in prison.

But this type of sentence was not necessarily the worst that could be laid down by the occupying forces. Deportation to prisons and camps on the European mainland was a very real and horrifying possibility.

Ivy narrowly avoided it.

Dr Raymond Osmont and Dr McKinstry helped create medical evidence suggesting that Ivy was suffering from tuberculosis and could therefore not travel. The Germans accepted this.

Ivy remained in Jersey. The actions of Dr Raymond Osmont and Dr McKinstry may well have saved her life.

Ivy’s sister Louisa and younger brother Harold were not so lucky, and both were deported to Europe. Louisa’s story is well known. She was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she died in 1945. Harold on the other hand managed to survive the horrors of Bergen-Belsen.

The difference between Ivy’s fate and those of her siblings makes the actions of the doctors who helped her all the more significant.

From Imprisonment to After-Dinner Speaking

Liberation came in May 1945.

For Ivy, the years immediately after the occupation saw more changes.

Rather than disappearing quietly after everything she had experienced, she made a name for herself as an after-dinner speaker, discussing her wartime experiences (what I’d give to hop in a time machine to hear her speak in person!).

Her ability in public speaking eventually attracted the attention of Jersey’s Bailiff, Sir Alexander Coutanche. This big wig encouraged her to stand for election.

That encouragement would change Jersey political history.

Although women had spent decades campaigning for further political rights, and although Caroline Trachy had repeatedly challenged the barriers preventing women from standing for election decades earlier, no woman had actually managed to successfully do it.

Caroline helped open the door, and Ivy was the first woman to successfully walk through it.

Making Political History

In December 1948, Ivy Forster was elected as a Deputy for St Helier, becoming the first woman ever elected to the States of Jersey.

It had taken less than thirty years for Jersey to move from giving some women the vote, to electing a woman to its Assembly.

This is even more impressive given that only three years had gone by since men and women received equal voting rights in the Island.

Ivy herself had acknowledged just how strange the idea of women helping to govern Jersey was back then “I do most sincerely suggest that women’s opinion in the States Assembly would not be detrimental to the governing of the Island.” This seems like a very kind way to say that women’s participation in government would not make things worse…

But it says something about the world Ivy was walking into. The States Chamber had always been male territory. Now a woman was among them, propelled to that position because of the achievements won by women who had gone before her. Whilst Caroline Trachy fought for the right to be considered for election, she never sat in the Chamber herself. She did however live long enough to see Ivy do it.

More Than A Symbolic First

One of the most important things about Ivy’s political career happened three years after her initial political success. In 1951 when standing for re-election, she topped the poll. I can’t express how much this matters. It would be so easy for history to remember Ivy simply as the first woman to squeeze her way through to door into the States. Instead, voters solidified her position with the strongest support in the competition.

Ivy’s time in the States came to an end in 1954, when she lost her seat. Later accounts have linked her defeat to criticism around conditions at Sandybrook Hospital and the Health Committee on which she served, although the surviving evidence doesn’t tell us exactly how much this influenced things at the time.

What is clear is that Ivy didn’t stand again, and her formal political career was over.

But the precedent had just begun. Other women followed in her footsteps.

1966 saw Gwyneth Huelin become Jersey’s first female Senator. Iris Le Feuvre later became the Island’s first female Connétable, Kristina Moore took up the mantle of Chief Minister in 2022 and generations of women have since served the island through its political system.

Whilst Ivy did not personally challenge the law allowing them to do so, her contribution was in proving it could actually be done.

Later

Ivy lived for another four decades after her time in the states, though this part of her life is not well documented. In 1966, she and her siblings received recognition for their actions during the Occupation with gold watches presented to them for their assistance given to escaped Soviet workers.

Ivy died in June 1997 at the grand age of 90.

Recognition of her achievements has continued since her death.

In 2010, Ivy was posthumously named one of the British Heroes of the Holocaust for her actions during the Occupation.

Her political legacy has also slowly been recognised. Today, one of the meeting rooms within the States of Jersey building bears the name The Ivy Forster Room. How fitting. The woman who entered an entirely male States Assembly in 1948 now has her name permanently attached to the building where our political business continues.

Ivy Still Matters

Easily divisible into two separate biographies, one about a Jersey woman who risked imprisonment by hiding an escaped Soviet worker. Another about the woman who became Jersey’s first female elected politician.

But putting both stories together is what makes her life remarkable.

Born into a Jersey where women had no vote. Growing up whilst Caroline Trachy and others fought for women to have the power to make change.

Defying an authoritarian regime to protect another human life.

Then a few years after sitting in a prison, she walked through to door into the States Chamber to take a seat that no woman had ever held before.

She was not a lifelong political activist. She was a Jersey woman who worked in her family’s shop, a wife, a mother, a hero sheltering another human from the horrors of Occupation and a huge part of the Island’s historical memory.

And that is why her story still resonates. Courage doesn’t always arrive wearing a shiny hat, holding a certain job title or working for years to reach a pre-determined goal. Sometimes it looks like opening your home to someone who needs help. Sometimes it looks like taking your seat in a room where nobody like you has ever sat before.

A Note From Me

I started the research for this article thinking this would be a piece looking into women in politics. I had no idea of Ivy’s role during the war. I also had no clue she was Louisa Gould’s sister.

I don’t know if it’s because I class myself as a devout history nerd, but researching the stories of people like Ivy – who in my opinion are miraculous – makes me quite emotional and I can’t really put into words what type of emotions I feel. I think it’s pride but coupled with a bit of shame. Shame because I can’t say for certain that, if put in the same position as Ivy, Louisa and Bob Le Sueur I would be capable or more accurately, willing, to take the same risks that they did. I like to think I would, but I don’t know for sure…What I do know is how thankful I am for the people who’ve gone before us, shared their stories, and done things some of us can’t even imagine.

Sources and Further Reading

Full Sources Can Be Provided Upon Request

Jersey Heritage – Jersey Resistance during the Occupation

Jersey Heritage Catalogue – Multiple

States Assembly – Women’s Suffrage in Jersey

States Assembly – 75 Years Since the First Woman Was Elected to The States Assembly

Paul Sanders – The Ultimate Sacrifice

Frank Falla Archive – Louisa Mary Gould née Le Druillenec

The Parliamentarian – 2019 Issue One

Jerripedia – Ivy Forster

Wikipedia – Ivy Forster

Bailiwick Express – Jersey Celebrates 75 Years of Women in Politics

BBC News – The Occupation Heroine Who Led The Way For Women

Growing Up Fast: An Ordinary Man’s Extraordinary Life In Occupied Jersey – Bob Le Sueur MBE, as told to Chris Stone