A Short Story: Individual Cases

"But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" — Amos 5:24 (NIV)

This is a fiction. There is no lantern in Conway Street. All names are not based on real people. Now I know that political change needs to be well financed. We cannot just spend. But I think there is a lot of extravagant waste. The Broad Street project - did we really need it so urgently? Fort Regent - we have not yet started building a hospital, and yet this is planned with huge borrowings. Is this progress?

Here are some words I came across which I think show where priorities should lie.

Progress cannot be measured just by the passion with which we hold our ideals or the number of resolutions we pass or meetings we attend to achieve them. It has to be measured by the real difference we make to the majority of people’s lives.

The test of whether we are living up to our ideals for social justice has to be:

• the poor mother and family and whether they are able to rise out of poverty
• the sick patient and whether he or she is guaranteed the best free health care
• the insecure pensioner and whether he or she is made more secure, guaranteed dignity in retirement; and
• most of all, because we are for the future, that a vulnerable child left out, left behind and losing out receives the best possible opportunity in education and a better start in life.

And rather than bleating on about this, let's put it all into a story.

Individual Cases

When Deputy Matthew Le Marquand resigned, the island barely blinked. The headlines flared for a day, then vanished beneath talk of parish rates and the next Atlantic storm.

But for Anna Le Brocq, standing outside the States Chamber with the wind whipping in from Elizabeth Castle, the resignation felt like a rug pulled from under her. Three years she had worked beside him,  drafting letters, answering calls, listening to islanders who came with their stories. Now she was simply… surplus.

“Politicians come and go,” she murmured, watching civil servants stream out for lunch. “But the mission should outlast them.”

She walked down to Conway Street, past the cafés and charity shops, until she reached the old parish lantern fixed above a small lane. Now converted to electricity, it had once burned for more than a century, lit each night by caretakers who believed no street should be left in darkness.

Anna touched the cold iron. A movement with a soul, she thought. That not was what she had believed politics could be. Not the endless debates over clauses and sub‑clauses, not the evasions, not the ritual phrase she had heard too many times: “We can’t talk about individual cases.”

She had come to hate that line. It was the refuge of the comfortable. Because politics was individual cases,  or it was nothing. It was the poor mother in a St. Helier bedsit. The pensioner in St. Ouen choosing between heating and food. The child in Year 7 who needed a fair start. If you couldn’t talk about them, what exactly were you doing?

Her phone buzzed again, this time an email. The subject line read: “Please help. I don’t know what else to do.” It was from a deaf man she had met once at a parish meeting, someone living with severe mental‑health difficulties. He wrote that he had seen the latest government press release about crisis support. Every single one ended the same way: “If you are struggling, call this emergency number.” He wrote: “Call? How? I can’t call. They never think of us. They never think.” 

Anna felt the words like a stone in her chest. There it was again, the system’s blind spot, the casual assumption that everyone could navigate the world in the same way. And the worst part was knowing that if she raised it, someone would shrug and say, “We can’t talk about individual cases.” As if the man’s suffering were an inconvenience rather than the very reason public service existed.

Her mobile buzzed. A message from Mrs Renouf, the widow in St. Clement whose pension review had stalled the moment the Deputy stepped down.

Any update, love? I’m getting worried.

Anna felt the familiar twist in her chest. Powerlessness. The worst feeling of all. To see a wrong and be told you had no authority to right it. To know what needed doing and be told to wait for “process”.

She typed back: I’ll come by tomorrow. We’ll sort it.

As she slipped the phone away, and walked back to the Royal Square, she noticed a boy sitting on the steps by the States Chamber, hugging a thin schoolbag. His shoes were worn through at the toes.

“You alright?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Mum’s working late. I wait here till she finishes at the Co‑op.”

“What year are you in?”

“Year 7. I want to be an engineer. Build things. Fix things.”

There it was again, the quiet determination of a child who deserved better than the hand he’d been dealt. A vulnerable child left out, left behind, losing out… That was the real test of any society.

Anna sat beside him and pulled a notebook from her bag. “Show me your maths homework.”

For twenty minutes they worked through fractions and angles as dusk settled over St. Helier. When his mother arrived, tired, grateful, apologising, Anna felt something shift inside her. 

As they walked away, she looked again at the lantern above the shop. Its light glowed steady against the darkening sky.

Maybe she didn’t need a title to make a difference. Maybe politics wasn’t always in the Chamber, but in the lives of the people who were always dismissed as “individual cases”.

She straightened her shoulders and stepped into the wind.

There was work to do.