Book sheds light on Bermuda's recalcitrant whites

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31: Bermuda’s ruling white elite have consistently been among the most disloyal subjects of the Crown, a new book contends.

Far from hanging on to the colonial ties, men who would one day lead the country were, in the 1940s, threatening independence — and taunting the UK that the only way it could impose social reform was by “armed invasion”.

This according to a new book by Walton Brown, researcher and former PLP Senator.

It was just after the war when Bermudians, along with the rest of Britain’s allies, laid down their lives far from home in defence of an ideal — no matter how imperfectly that ideal was executed.

Britain’s post-World War II Labour Government  — and, according to Mr Brown, many of her then-colonies — moved towards some version of a welfare state and political reform.

But Bermuda, far from advancing, used legislation to stifle the development of trades unions and moved the burden of social welfare from Government to a politically neutered labour movement.

Bermuda and the Struggle for Reform: Race, Politics and Ideology 1944-1998 is a valuable guide to the “divide and conquer” techniques practiced in Bermuda, which alienated the black working class and ensured that the politics of class always took second place to the politics of race.

As a Captain Winters told the island’s Parliament, reforms “must come from within the Colony and not from without by Labourites and coal miners”.

In contrast, the Bermuda Workers’ Association, under Dr E. F. Gordon, who, for all his radicalism in some ways, was a monarchist and a firm believer in the democratic process, petitioned the UK’s Secretary for the Colonies politely asking for a Royal Commission “to investigate social conditions on the island” – social conditions that had been unacceptable in the UK, in some instances, since the 1800s.

Bermudian disloyalty wasn’t new: islanders ran a booming trade in gunpowder with George Washington and his Continental Army throughout the American War of Independence. And treason was taken seriously in those days.

Mr Brown’s book is a worthwhile and thought-provoking read — perhaps all the better for being presented in a relatively dry style.

Mr Brown writes insightfully about the landmark 1998 general election — in which the role of Frederick Wade, although dead by that time, is rightly recognized as crucial.

But there’s a notable error here when he writes: “The final nail in the UBP electoral coffin was implanted on the eve of the 1998 election when the UBP published a political ad that evoked a sense of racial outrage in the country and brought the racial divide into clear relief.

“The ad showed the full face of black PLP candidate Deleay Robinson — with his long dreadlocks overlaying a gun target backdrop and the caption ‘Do you want this man as your finance minister?’”

In fact, the ad wasn’t published by the UBP but by a fringe group of supporters, apparently without the knowledge of the UBP itself and the reaction of then-party leader Pamela Gordon was one of absolute fury.

But that faux pas aside, it is a scholarly and readable run through more than 50 years of Bermuda history and packs a lot into its 175 pages.

And it’s well worth perusal by all Bermudians and Bermuda residents — on the grounds that history is important.

In the words of George Santayana, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

And we can only wonder how different things might have been if Britain had called the Bermudian bluff back in the 1940s and sent in a couple of battalions – or better still, a few hundred “Labourites and coal miners.”