The Revd Canon Michael Arthur Halliwell
Class of 1946
Canon Michael Halliwell (Tilly’s, 1942-1946)
Died 4th August 2024
The following obituary was kindly provided by Michael’s son, David.
“One must, says Jesus, be a peacemaker. An important word this “peacemaker”: it reminds us that peace is not the absence of war, a state which exists when there are no hostilities. No, peace must be made. And for it to be made there is need for peacemakers… Some men are called to be specialists in it, to give their lives to it. But we do not need to hold high office to be peacemakers. Indeed we are wrong if we leave it do those who do. We can all be peacemakers. And we can make peace in many, unseen, little ways.”
Rev Canon Michael Halliwell, who died on 4th August aged 96, preached these words in both English and German in 1966 at the memorial in the Hindenburg Park to the fallen soldiers of Cologne, during a joint “friendship” ceremony involving German and British serviceman.
The words and the occasion epitomise Rev Halliwell’s life’s work, dedicated to reconciliation through his ministry, often in “unseen, little ways”. A few days before his death, he was awarded the Bailiff of Jersey’s Silver Seal, and the German Embassy’s German-British Friendship award, for his devotion to reconciliation between Jersey, the United Kingdom and Germany.
Michael Arthur Halliwell was born on 8th May 1928 to Arthur and Dorothea Halliwell. His parents had met at St Thomas’s hospital in London, and moved to Jersey in 1927, where Arthur was appointed surgeon at the General Hospital. He was the oldest of four, three boys and a girl.
Their idyllic childhood was shattered in 1940, as the Germans surged through France, and the children and their mother were evacuated to spend the rest of the war with her family in Somerset. His father chose to stay on the island to support the hospital and continued to write describing the build up to the German invasion. Once the Germans arrived on 1 July, communications were cut off except for occasional short and much delayed (and censored) Red Cross letters.
While in Somerset, life was mostly very peaceful, except for the German bombers overhead on their way to Bristol and Cardiff, and a near miss when boating, when a Focke Wulf 190 dropped a bomb very close by. He went up to St Edward’s, to Tilly’s House, in 1942. The strong Christian background and regular Chapel services built on his long-held spiritual approach to life, which had been fostered by his mother. He dreaded the annual ‘standards’, where each boy had to attain certain times or distances in athletic events over a three week period, and he was always well beaten by his younger brother Anthony. But he did well academically, particularly in languages, winning annual prizes. His love of German was not affected by the war underway, and was inspired particularly by his tutor, Reginald Maxse, a ‘true European’, who may have been a spy and had apparently been on the staff of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
News from Jersey came in November 1944, when he was called to Exeter College to meet Peter Crill, who had escaped from the island by boat with help from Michael’s father, who used his pass and his car to take the outboard motor down to the coast. On 8 May 1945, his 17th birthday, Michael was in the headmaster’s study to hear Churchill announce the liberation of the Channel Islands. He returned to the island soon after, reunited with his father but unsettled by the transformation by the occupying forces, before going up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 1946 to study French and German.
In 1947, Michael joined a trip to Germany to pioneer a movement of reconciliation between former enemy nations. He was devastated by the destruction visited upon of Cologne and the poverty stricken state of the residents. It had a profound impact on all that followed for him.
After ordination in 1955, and a curacy in Bournemouth (where he met his future wife, Susan), he worked with the Council for Inter-Church relations. From 1962-1967 he was chaplain to the British Embassy in Bonn, West Germany, at the height of the Cold War. Colleagues included future Head of the Secret Intelligence Service (now MI6) Dickie Franks, and a spy named David Cornwell. David told him he was thinking of becoming a writer, a course of action Michael strongly advised against. David ignored him, adopting the non de plume John le Carré, and worldwide success ensued.
In 1967, he moved back to the UK, initially to Croydon, but before long, came the dream posting to St Brelade’s, Jersey, and the family now of seven moved to the island in 1971. While at St Brelade’s, Michael led a modernisation of the whole Parish infrastructure, including restoration works on the Fishermen’s Chapel next to the church and dating back to the 11th century ,and the enthusiastic support for the building of a community centre Communicare with the Methodist community.
During the Occupation, the Germans chose St Brelade’s for their burials. Subsequently the bodies were removed to a mausoleum near St Malo, but occasionally relatives of those who had been buried there would call at the Rectory. They were pleased to be welcomed in their own language and invited in for a cup of coffee. The connections with Germany grew when, in 1975 – the 30th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials – Michael led a party of islanders to a community in the city and helped them build their first church.
The Burgomeister of Bad Wurzach, where a large number of Islanders were interned during the Occupation, was keen to form a formal connection with the island, but Jersey was not yet ready. In 1990, Michael and Susan visited him and tried to progress matters, and this helped pave the way to the formal twinning of Bad Wurzach with St Helier in 2002.
In 1996, Michael and Susan retired after 40 years of joint service to communities across Europe. Michael spent time tracing his family history, and publishing an account of his father’s experiences, ‘Operating under Occupation’.
After moving to be near their family in the UK, Michael cared for Susan through a few years of illness until she died in 2022, after 61 years of marriage, and where Michael stayed until diagnosed with a brain tumour in June 2024. He saw his whole family in his last few weeks, before dying peacefully on 4th August 2024. He is survived by their five children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Please click here if you would like to read Canon Michael’s obituary, published in The Jersey Evening Post, written by Michael de la Haye OBE.
If you would like to leave any messages for the family or share any memories please click here.
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