Good morning, everybody. I'm going to sit through a number of these slides simply because of time,
but also because the present a number of the presenters have already covered some of the subject matter.
So I'm going to go to the next slide straight away.
Before emancipation, there was a huge effort to keep the demographics of Bermuda as wide as possible and as a consequence of that,
a number of times throughout Bermuda's history, pre emancipation.
Every time there was any sort of uprising, free blacks on the island were deported or banished off of the island.
And that meant a constant flow. Hundreds of black people were being sent away over the years.
So I one of the things I posit is that if that had not occurred, if that deliberate policy had not occurred,
the population demographics of this island would look very, very different today.
So keep that in mind. I think it looked a lot more possibly like it was in like it is in the Caribbean.
Black disenfranchisement. So I just go straight away to 1834, that's already been mentioned how that at the same time, freedom was given to people.
At the same time, they took it away by basically changing the laws around voting and making it virtually impossible for black people to vote.
For many years, it took almost 50 years for William Joel to become the first black parliamentarian after that.
We've also mentioned 1842, the UK immigrants there was an attempt to bring white people from the UK here to try and build the white population up.
It was already being recognised that there was a problem coming because blacks were gaining the vote slowly but surely.
And so, as Kenneth Robinson says here, the first post abolition endeavour to increase instantly the relative size of the white population.
The arrival of Portuguese, we are going to have somebody else talking about the Portuguese after this,
so I'm not going to spend time on this, but basically it didn't work bringing in the white immigrants, not many came.
And so they turned to bringing in Portuguese people and they actually paid for them to come.
They paid bounties to the I was going to say skippers, but the captains of ships to bring in immigrants from Madeira,
the Golden Hind came in 49, and in 1853 there was a protest by black people seeking to say, This is unfair.
You're taking our taxes and you're a funding basically bringing people out here to undercut our wages.
And you have to realise that this is something that's repeating itself.
And when you hear the term, you know that if we don't learn from our history, we're going to repeat it.
This is what happens in our society. So black communities, unions already were very aware of what was happening at that time.
By 1890, for much larger numbers of West Indians began migrating to Bermuda,
in particular between 1991 and 1996, building the dockyard and dockyard in particular,
they had riots up there because they were treated so appallingly and these immigrants had come actually from building the Panama Canal.
They were skilled labourers and had been treated well during that process.
And so they came here and found that they were treated appallingly and there were riots at that time.
And Reverend Monk, if you if you remember, was the went to jail for standing up for them and sorry.
And if you notice there was a sort of practise of divide and conquer that was
occurring and black from unions were encouraged to view West Indians as less than.
And it was a kind of policy to separate.
And this went it went on between the Portuguese community to where initially the Portuguese community lived alongside blacks.
They certainly weren't allowed in white areas. They went to black schools because they they didn't have schools of their own.
And so there was a conscious of they were actually marrying each other and there was a growing working class.
And when you have a growing working class, it always concerns the oligarchy when you see that sort of starting to happen.
So by the 1920s, Bermuda's government introduced strict regulations banning the freedom of Portuguese people and from bringing their families here.
And in the 1930s, seeing this rising labour movement occurring in Bermuda,
they actually separated the Portuguese by building Portuguese schools again, a divide and conquer tactic.
Population explosion, I think most people here know about the tuckers town expropriation of land and putting it nicely.
Basically, the majority of those who were allowed to come in at that time following the Tuckers Town debacle were white people,
and they filled the burgeoning tourism industry because black people were not allowed to be front of house in any way whatsoever.
And as a consequence, the growth of the population was substantial at that time.
And I think Walton Brown mentioned that in his presentation. Birth control.
Between the 1920s and 1980s, the first indication of this is a report that was published by the government about the sterilisation of blacks.
It wasn't carried out, but the intent was there.
And to that end, Margaret Sanger, who many people might know of, who was a birth control advocate,
she proposed sterilisation and eugenics, and she was invited to note to who she was invited to speak.
It wasn't just the metal medical fraternity.
These are the people she was invited to meet with and the population song I wrote that had increased by 10000 within less than 10 years.
And much of that actually was white people coming into the island.
But there was a much higher birth rate.
This was an article, and I haven't got time to read it, but basically Bermuda birth control to limit Negro Families, 1936 in the New York Times.
This is very interesting, this is written in a book by Steven Hyde based colonies in the Western Hemisphere,
and he writes from an American perspective looking at Bermuda.
And he says a small group has made Bermuda its own paradise for controlling legislation,
and by seeing that taxation policy kept all by themselves and strict economic subjects.
And while they themselves accumulated fortunes subject to no taxes whatsoever and going on,
a commanding general said the government Bermuda government would object strongly to the importation of non-white
labour and would be obliged to withhold the issuance of landing permits to any non-white based worker base worker.
So there was a constant effort to make sure that black people could not come and settle here.
So the birth control policy was successful, according to the director of health services at this time,
and said that in a period of 10 years, it had dropped substantially.
So the outcome, and by the way, no surprise here.
Guess who the focus was for birth control? It was predominantly on the black population.
OK, the infamous Bermuda Immigration and Protection Act 1956 was watched.
So much stuff has happened about recently.
Basically, the act drew a line in the sand in 1956, first of July, and said If you were born here or domiciled here for a certain period of time,
you automatically, in the word I use, is acquired or they used is acquired Bermudian citizenship status.
Thereafter, you could only get it by grant of status.
And what's interesting is that those people who acquired status by the drawing of that line three thousand eight hundred forty five people.
Seventy three percent of them white acquired status just by the introduction of that piece of legislation,
not by going through a process or you had to do was present your piece of paper showing that you were domiciled or your birth certificate.
OK. Sixty three Parliamentary Election Act. Finally, we get universal adult suffrage, but they introduce a plus vote for property owners,
and the majority of property owners were white at a time when most countries in the world were dropping their voting age to 18.
We were raising it to 25 and all British subjects living on the island, and this was mentioned earlier for a period of at least three years.
Were given the world vote. 83 percent of those were white.
So you see the constant efforts throughout history to control the demographics,
make access to how you could vote, who could vote, who was favoured and who was not favoured.
So racialised immigration policies. We had those just like Australia in many other countries.
There was a racialized immigration policy in place.
And you saw a remarkable increase in the number of non Bermudian between 1950 and 1960 of 18 percent.
But the next decade? Sixty six percent increase.
Many of whom later stayed on long enough to be able to gain communion status.
So you can see the constant effort and it was purposeful and we mustn't kid ourselves that it was just top down.
That was a very purposeful plan. UK Hansard report when they were discussing the Bermuda Constitution in Parliament,
questions were asked about what is this thing called status and one an MP, Leicester, Leicester City states.
A British parliamentarian says it seems to me that Bermuda status is reserved for white people since the establishment of this qualification.
Remember, September of July 1956, 700 white people have been granted it and six coloured people.
Two of the coloured people are Dr. King and Mr Richards, later premier, who are well-known supporters of the NPP.
If Bermuda status is to be one of the qualifications for standing for Parliament,
we need an explanation why 700 white people have achieved it as opposed to only six coloured people.
What is interesting in this statistic is remember I said three thousand eight hundred forty
five acquired status by the introduction of that act that was never told to the UK parliament.
They worded it in such a way that they said the introduction of the 1956 act.
We have since then given seven hundred and six people the grant status when in fact,
just by introducing that led legislation three thousand eight hundred forty five, almost 10 percent increase in our population.
Lord Pitt, following the 77 riots, I was here for the 77 riots, said.
Oh, two more. Just been said said that the importance of reducing immigration, but we didn't pay attention.
Granting of status, I'm going to skip that one. I just want to get to this last one.
We know I have one here on the path to civil unrest all that happened recently in Bermuda leading up to 2016.
I went too far. How do I go back? No, go back one more back, OK?
More importantly, the U.N. has three General Assembly resolutions that state member states to adopt the
necessary steps to prevent a systemic influx of immigrants into colonial territories,
which disrupts the integrity and social, political and cultural unity of the peoples under colonial domination.
The next resolution basically repeats the same thing in slightly different words about self-determination for the people of a country,
a small jurisdiction. And the last one actually requests the administrating powers,
which was the government in Bermuda as a matter of priority to ensure that the exercise of self-determination is not
affected by changes in the demographic composition of due to immigration or displacement of properties in the territories.
So you can see that what's been happening in Bermuda historically has basically ignored those U.N. resolutions with regard to our country.
So that's my presentation on immigration. Thank you.