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Death is rarely a pretty or happy event. Sometimes, though, death is theatrical.

I recall watching old-time cowboys die on the silver screen. They'd get hit. Stagger three steps to the left. A half step to the right. Knees would buckle and their upper body would subside in a slow dramatic fall. Then, with a dying breath they'd hoarsely gasp something like: 'So long, pard'ner'.

It's like that with this slow and public death of a political party.

The UBP was born August 14 or 15, 1964. Re-reading the biographies of Sir Henry Tucker and Sir Edward Richards, recalls the ambience of those days. Senior politicians like Mr. Ernest Vesey explained the background to the UBP's start-up. Historian Barbara Harries Hunter has described those times. Anthropologist Frank E Manning dissected that era.

Created those forty-three years ago, the UBP's primary purpose was to retain political power for Bermuda's white minority. To do this, the UBP had to acquire additional support from part of Bermuda's black majority. With Sir Edward Richards as one of the two black Parliamentarians who first joined the initial UBP Parliamentary group, the UBP succeeded in acquiring some of that essential support.

In those times, blacks who joined the UBP were seeking to share the political power that was wielded, and wielded exclusively, by whites. The UBP used thousands of words and created acres of press coverage describing itself as a party of diversity, as a party that was inclusive.

In 1974, ten years after the UBP's birth, black UBP'ers were unhappy with what they perceived as a lack of political power-sharing coupled with a lack of black advancement. These UBP blacks showed their unhappiness. They tried to get faster change by forming the UBP's Black Caucus.

In 1998, Norman Tugwell, CEO of the Bank of Butterfield made scathing public reference to the lack of progress of blacks in that financial institution. Earlier, in 1994 and 1996 Drs Swain and Newman had produced reports that had been commissioned by the UBP. Their two reports, pre-dating Tugwell's 1998 comments, also described a general lack of black progress.

By 1998, thirty-four years after its 1964 creation, it was clear that the UBP had not delivered on its basic promise. After thirty-four years, the UBP was still a party of exclusion even as it trumpeted its inclusiveness.

So ten years after, twenty years after, and thirty-four years after the UBP had made its initial promises, those 1964 promises were still unmet.

However - and of critical importance - this feeling of non-delivery and exclusion existed only in the hearts, minds, and souls of black Bermudians and black UBP'ers. White UBP'ers and white Bermudians seemed satisfied with what they had delivered.

In response to the perceived non-changes and continued exclusion, black support for the UBP dwindled, but white support for the UBP remained unchanged.

Slow death

Black support for the PLP grew. This black shift was the critical action. This black shift was the UBP's bullet in the chest!

In 2007 and forward, what is the UBP's aim? What is its purpose?

The UBP was created as a political party whose aim was to maintain white political power by sharing power with blacks. Unless the UBP has completely changed its basic nature, the UBP is still a party whose main aim is to regain and re-wield white political power.

With all the dramatic writhing, falling about, and falling out within the current UBP membership and leadership, it's clear that something is happening within the UBP. The UBP is changing. However, instead of clearly re-constituting itself as a new party with a new vision and a new aim; the UBP remains as a party still clinging to its past. This current UBP fussing and fighting over apparent leadership issues is simply a screen for the deeper struggle within.

The deeper struggle is over ultimate aims, longer visions, and core values. The activity that is currently visible is akin to the staggering steps that those silver screen cowboys used to make - after that theatrical bullet in the chest. This week's UBP voices remind me of the dying gasps of those ancient silver screen actors.

The UBP has to change from what it began as - and what it still is - to what it needs to be. Like the cowboy on the silver screen, the UBP has to die, fall down, resurrect itself, and then return as something else. At the moment, perhaps for too many moments, the UBP has been in stagger-around stage.[[In-content Ad]]

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