And that speaker is and panellist is Mr. Jonathan Smith, former commissioner of police, who now works in the private sector,
is a former Progressive Labour Party senator and junior minister of national security, and he's served on numerous government boards.
He holds a diploma in criminology and police studies from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
And his latest book, Ireland Flames, focuses on Bermuda's 1977 race riots, which were the most extensive and deadly riots ever experienced in Bermuda.
Mr. Jonathan Smith. It's a real honour to be part of this panel tonight,
but I do recognise that I'm somewhat exceptional in my company because everyone here has actually completed a book.
And this might be the very first occasion where Oxford University have accepted a book for their library that no one's even read yet.
The lecture Before you go back to England next month, I can give you the book cover. You like to take that?
Take that with you. The book will be available in Bermuda in about mid mid-October, I'm pleased to say.
There's three parts to my presentation this evening.
The first one deals with nineteen seventy seven and how much we were on the brink of a catastrophe.
The second part is and ask the question why would this be of interest to a researcher?
And then the third part of my presentation is what did the research find?
The first part, 1977 was very different from today, Bermuda was on the brink of a catastrophe.
There were significant societal problems. Bermuda did not have a healthy diagnosis at that time.
There was a legacy of racial discrimination and unfair electoral system that some say was gerrymandered.
There was discrimination at all levels, particularly in the economy, a clear black and white divide.
And then by the end of the year,
the pending executions of burrows and tackling two black men for the murders of five white men raised the tension significantly.
What the problems, what's significant about 1977, though, the problems, as we've heard from the other speakers tonight,
the problems went back centuries and I believe it goes back to the very first parliament and 16 20 and who voted back then all male,
all white or landowners. And believe it or not, you have to then fast forward to the nineteen sixty eight constitution 348 years later.
In that time, whites had an advantage with the property vote.
It took 348 three hundred forty eight years to finally dispense with that property vote by virtue of the 1968 constitution.
In many ways, 1977 was the perfect storm for unrest.
There were many, many ingredients to it. There was a growing mood of violence.
There had been riots in 1965, 1968, 1970 and 1971.
We were not too far removed at that time from the very influential to the black community, the BlackBerry, a cadre of the early 1970s.
There were many unresolved political, social, racial and economic issues.
There was rising tension, almost exclusively tied to race.
The convictions and death sentences of barriers and tackling loomed large by the end of the year.
There was a colonial regime, but its which itself had become a target.
Remember, the governor was the very first, I'm sorry, the second to be assassinated after the British police commissioner.
And then there was this classic leadership contrast at the time, the Ulip leader at the time, Sir David Gibbons White viewed as privileged,
contrasted with the female black leader of the opposition Progressive Labour Party,
Lois Brown evidence you had this divide on the ground and also divide in parliament as well.
The death penalty itself was enormously contentious in 1977, and there was an anti capital punishment,
apathy and capital punishment campaign organised mostly by blacks,
supported mostly by blacks and seen to run contrary to the wishes of the white establishment at that time.
So all those issues and many more converged in 1977, and as two successive royal commissions found,
race was at the centre of everything in dispute in nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy seven.
So why was this period of interest? It's a period of enormous historical significance.
I argue in my book that it was the closest Bermuda ever came to a revolution.
The commission is arguably the most significant commission report into the affairs of
Bermuda in the prior 50 years when it was written and in the near 40 years since.
There was also political intrigue the progressive Labour Party was fresh off the success relative success of the 1976 elections,
where they picked up some seats and then further by election in 1976.
So you had this rising black awareness and rising black political power at the same time.
From a personal perspective, I had a rather unique perspective, I wasn't in the police in 1977,
but I joined a few years later and my affinity towards criminal investigations of which I spent most
of my career was a launching pad for me to enquire into why what happened in Bermuda in 1977 happened.
So the historical and political significance, the middle being close to a revolution.
My own police background combined to make it a very intriguing period to research, and nobody had ever written about this period before.
So what did the research find? Island flames, we used to gather information from many, many sources, most of it public.
But the real gold mine was contained in the UK National Archives, where the files had been held from public view for 30 years.
And there are some very surprising finds in the book about the context of who was
saying what publicly and how that contrasted with what they were saying in private.
Some enormous contrasts which will come out in the book.
The period is also steeped in all the socio economic, cultural and political upheaval that I've described.
Significantly, these were the executions of burrows and tackling were the last hangings on British soil anywhere in the world.
So that's the historical significance of why Bermuda was at the centre focus of world attention in 1977.
It's also an area that was extremely violent. There were 10 lives lost in total.
Two of them killed by the state. The confrontation, the outrage, the political brinkmanship, the protests, the petitions, the riots,
people were killed in the riots and millions of dollars worth of property were destroyed,
and quite simply, it was an error that the commission later found blacks by 1977 December 2nd had clearly had enough.
There are some similarities between seventy seven with nineteen sixty eight,
and if I could just quote very quickly from the witting commission, which kind of sums up that era,
the corrosive psychological effects of racial inequality and segregation affected
both segments of society and were at the heart of the problem from you to faced.
Interestingly, the United Bermuda Party's own Black Caucus described themselves in 1975.
This is their description of themselves as used black people.
They describe the black experience as exploitive and dehumanising.
The UK military intelligence officer in Bermuda only for six days in December 1977 described it as such.
The hard fact is that it has been clearly demonstrated to blacks that the white Bermudian still retains the veto.
Whatever the strength of black opinion, there is still a long way to go to racial equality.
That report was buried in one of the FCO files.
It was not commented on by anybody else, even though it was the truth at the time it ran contrary to FCO views in 1977.
But perhaps the 17 words that best define the problem were from Lois Brown, Evans herself and I quote,
we have swept a backlog of sociological, economic and political inequities under a manicured facade to fester 17 extremely powerful words.
1977, so what I describe as a significant expression of black conscience.
Black voices and black protests, and you only need to reflect back on that era.
Every single significant black group in Bermuda had something to say against capital punishment and
against what the establishment was doing from the Amy churches to the Ministerial Association,
to the working men's clubs, to the Progressive Labour Party, to the bayou,
to the little community of Islam, we're unanimous against the hangings at that time.
But as I articulated in the book, the events of 1977 should never be viewed in isolation.
There are many common themes of protests, some of which we've heard here tonight.
And if you were to categorise the five, the five main themes the book sets out that they were,
that they were these across decades and decades of conflict, race,
economic opportunity and immigration policy, which favoured whites and others over blacks,
the education system and the results of the education system and the franchise.
The electoral system. And an argument can be made that over those five issues,
the only ones substantively dealt with with results is the actual franchise system in and three.
There are still huge question marks over the equality of from UTA and the results we're getting in those other four areas.
So I'll conclude with this. The book paints a snapshot of 1977, but it reflects back, but it also reflects Ford.
I would like to acknowledge Quidel Reilly, whose presence here tonight, his former government statistician,
and he was invited to contribute one chapter in the book to provide that analysis of what's changed since 1977 and what might still be the same.
So I invite you for no other purpose. Don't read what I said, Cordell said.
Because he has he's got real letters of the alphabet after his name. There are many revelations and.
I can conclude in the final minute with just summarise them what they are.
A few of the interesting points that people did not know at the time,
the governor and the security services were caught off guard by the scope and scale of the riots, it's very clear from the memos.
The US Marines, not known at the time, were on a shoot to kill order.
The US Marines used to be down on the base. The UK troops that came here were also on a shoot to kill order if they were under threat.
That's how serious it was. The cabinet was split on several issues concerning the death penalty and the executions and
whether it should have been debated in parliament in that final week to stay the stay,
the executions. There was confusion, disagreement, misinformation,
miscommunication over many of the legal and policy implications of the executions, even to this day,
there are documented differences between Dr. David Owen, who's still alive and who contributed to my book and what Sir Peter Ramsbottom said.
They had a huge falling out over the 1977 events, and much of that has not been known to the public, and it was papered over at the time.
They were very intriguing files, so very intriguing findings from the UK files, which were kept out of public view for 30 years,
but obviously because of the legislation now the files were opened and it was just,
like I said, a gold mine for a former detective to come along,
and they didn't expect me to find what they wrote and penned in their taxes 30 years ago.
Thanks very much.