1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:06,900 Good morning, everybody. I'm going to sit through a number of these slides simply because of time, 2 00:00:06,900 --> 00:00:12,180 but also because the present a number of the presenters have already covered some of the subject matter. 3 00:00:12,180 --> 00:00:17,570 So I'm going to go to the next slide straight away. 4 00:00:17,570 --> 00:00:26,060 Before emancipation, there was a huge effort to keep the demographics of Bermuda as wide as possible and as a consequence of that, 5 00:00:26,060 --> 00:00:30,230 a number of times throughout Bermuda's history, pre emancipation. 6 00:00:30,230 --> 00:00:37,700 Every time there was any sort of uprising, free blacks on the island were deported or banished off of the island. 7 00:00:37,700 --> 00:00:44,120 And that meant a constant flow. Hundreds of black people were being sent away over the years. 8 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:51,860 So I one of the things I posit is that if that had not occurred, if that deliberate policy had not occurred, 9 00:00:51,860 --> 00:00:56,780 the population demographics of this island would look very, very different today. 10 00:00:56,780 --> 00:01:06,950 So keep that in mind. I think it looked a lot more possibly like it was in like it is in the Caribbean. 11 00:01:06,950 --> 00:01:16,490 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. 12 00:01:16,490 --> 00:01:24,500 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. 13 00:01:24,500 --> 00:01:34,240 For many years, it took almost 50 years for William Joel to become the first black parliamentarian after that. 14 00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:43,060 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. 15 00:01:43,060 --> 00:01:49,450 It was already being recognised that there was a problem coming because blacks were gaining the vote slowly but surely. 16 00:01:49,450 --> 00:02:00,230 And so, as Kenneth Robinson says here, the first post abolition endeavour to increase instantly the relative size of the white population. 17 00:02:00,230 --> 00:02:05,610 The arrival of Portuguese, we are going to have somebody else talking about the Portuguese after this, 18 00:02:05,610 --> 00:02:11,270 so I'm not going to spend time on this, but basically it didn't work bringing in the white immigrants, not many came. 19 00:02:11,270 --> 00:02:16,160 And so they turned to bringing in Portuguese people and they actually paid for them to come. 20 00:02:16,160 --> 00:02:23,900 They paid bounties to the I was going to say skippers, but the captains of ships to bring in immigrants from Madeira, 21 00:02:23,900 --> 00:02:32,870 the Golden Hind came in 49, and in 1853 there was a protest by black people seeking to say, This is unfair. 22 00:02:32,870 --> 00:02:39,320 You're taking our taxes and you're a funding basically bringing people out here to undercut our wages. 23 00:02:39,320 --> 00:02:42,320 And you have to realise that this is something that's repeating itself. 24 00:02:42,320 --> 00:02:47,900 And when you hear the term, you know that if we don't learn from our history, we're going to repeat it. 25 00:02:47,900 --> 00:02:58,070 This is what happens in our society. So black communities, unions already were very aware of what was happening at that time. 26 00:02:58,070 --> 00:03:03,200 By 1890, for much larger numbers of West Indians began migrating to Bermuda, 27 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:11,360 in particular between 1991 and 1996, building the dockyard and dockyard in particular, 28 00:03:11,360 --> 00:03:19,340 they had riots up there because they were treated so appallingly and these immigrants had come actually from building the Panama Canal. 29 00:03:19,340 --> 00:03:23,060 They were skilled labourers and had been treated well during that process. 30 00:03:23,060 --> 00:03:27,470 And so they came here and found that they were treated appallingly and there were riots at that time. 31 00:03:27,470 --> 00:03:35,870 And Reverend Monk, if you if you remember, was the went to jail for standing up for them and sorry. 32 00:03:35,870 --> 00:03:39,920 And if you notice there was a sort of practise of divide and conquer that was 33 00:03:39,920 --> 00:03:46,310 occurring and black from unions were encouraged to view West Indians as less than. 34 00:03:46,310 --> 00:03:48,710 And it was a kind of policy to separate. 35 00:03:48,710 --> 00:03:56,720 And this went it went on between the Portuguese community to where initially the Portuguese community lived alongside blacks. 36 00:03:56,720 --> 00:04:02,510 They certainly weren't allowed in white areas. They went to black schools because they they didn't have schools of their own. 37 00:04:02,510 --> 00:04:08,450 And so there was a conscious of they were actually marrying each other and there was a growing working class. 38 00:04:08,450 --> 00:04:15,680 And when you have a growing working class, it always concerns the oligarchy when you see that sort of starting to happen. 39 00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:25,850 So by the 1920s, Bermuda's government introduced strict regulations banning the freedom of Portuguese people and from bringing their families here. 40 00:04:25,850 --> 00:04:31,040 And in the 1930s, seeing this rising labour movement occurring in Bermuda, 41 00:04:31,040 --> 00:04:39,280 they actually separated the Portuguese by building Portuguese schools again, a divide and conquer tactic. 42 00:04:39,280 --> 00:04:49,830 Population explosion, I think most people here know about the tuckers town expropriation of land and putting it nicely. 43 00:04:49,830 --> 00:04:56,820 Basically, the majority of those who were allowed to come in at that time following the Tuckers Town debacle were white people, 44 00:04:56,820 --> 00:05:03,540 and they filled the burgeoning tourism industry because black people were not allowed to be front of house in any way whatsoever. 45 00:05:03,540 --> 00:05:09,630 And as a consequence, the growth of the population was substantial at that time. 46 00:05:09,630 --> 00:05:17,410 And I think Walton Brown mentioned that in his presentation. Birth control. 47 00:05:17,410 --> 00:05:26,140 Between the 1920s and 1980s, the first indication of this is a report that was published by the government about the sterilisation of blacks. 48 00:05:26,140 --> 00:05:29,890 It wasn't carried out, but the intent was there. 49 00:05:29,890 --> 00:05:37,930 And to that end, Margaret Sanger, who many people might know of, who was a birth control advocate, 50 00:05:37,930 --> 00:05:43,600 she proposed sterilisation and eugenics, and she was invited to note to who she was invited to speak. 51 00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:46,330 It wasn't just the metal medical fraternity. 52 00:05:46,330 --> 00:05:57,070 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. 53 00:05:57,070 --> 00:06:02,410 And much of that actually was white people coming into the island. 54 00:06:02,410 --> 00:06:07,290 But there was a much higher birth rate. 55 00:06:07,290 --> 00:06:18,310 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. 56 00:06:18,310 --> 00:06:24,340 This is very interesting, this is written in a book by Steven Hyde based colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 57 00:06:24,340 --> 00:06:27,710 and he writes from an American perspective looking at Bermuda. 58 00:06:27,710 --> 00:06:32,950 And he says a small group has made Bermuda its own paradise for controlling legislation, 59 00:06:32,950 --> 00:06:38,290 and by seeing that taxation policy kept all by themselves and strict economic subjects. 60 00:06:38,290 --> 00:06:44,000 And while they themselves accumulated fortunes subject to no taxes whatsoever and going on, 61 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:51,130 a commanding general said the government Bermuda government would object strongly to the importation of non-white 62 00:06:51,130 --> 00:06:58,780 labour and would be obliged to withhold the issuance of landing permits to any non-white based worker base worker. 63 00:06:58,780 --> 00:07:06,190 So there was a constant effort to make sure that black people could not come and settle here. 64 00:07:06,190 --> 00:07:13,480 So the birth control policy was successful, according to the director of health services at this time, 65 00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:18,160 and said that in a period of 10 years, it had dropped substantially. 66 00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:21,820 So the outcome, and by the way, no surprise here. 67 00:07:21,820 --> 00:07:29,560 Guess who the focus was for birth control? It was predominantly on the black population. 68 00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:34,030 OK, the infamous Bermuda Immigration and Protection Act 1956 was watched. 69 00:07:34,030 --> 00:07:36,940 So much stuff has happened about recently. 70 00:07:36,940 --> 00:07:48,970 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, 71 00:07:48,970 --> 00:07:56,620 you automatically, in the word I use, is acquired or they used is acquired Bermudian citizenship status. 72 00:07:56,620 --> 00:08:01,240 Thereafter, you could only get it by grant of status. 73 00:08:01,240 --> 00:08:09,820 And what's interesting is that those people who acquired status by the drawing of that line three thousand eight hundred forty five people. 74 00:08:09,820 --> 00:08:16,960 Seventy three percent of them white acquired status just by the introduction of that piece of legislation, 75 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:28,800 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. 76 00:08:28,800 --> 00:08:37,920 OK. Sixty three Parliamentary Election Act. Finally, we get universal adult suffrage, but they introduce a plus vote for property owners, 77 00:08:37,920 --> 00:08:44,370 and the majority of property owners were white at a time when most countries in the world were dropping their voting age to 18. 78 00:08:44,370 --> 00:08:52,320 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. 79 00:08:52,320 --> 00:08:56,460 Were given the world vote. 83 percent of those were white. 80 00:08:56,460 --> 00:09:01,560 So you see the constant efforts throughout history to control the demographics, 81 00:09:01,560 --> 00:09:08,620 make access to how you could vote, who could vote, who was favoured and who was not favoured. 82 00:09:08,620 --> 00:09:15,280 So racialised immigration policies. We had those just like Australia in many other countries. 83 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:18,190 There was a racialized immigration policy in place. 84 00:09:18,190 --> 00:09:24,490 And you saw a remarkable increase in the number of non Bermudian between 1950 and 1960 of 18 percent. 85 00:09:24,490 --> 00:09:30,800 But the next decade? Sixty six percent increase. 86 00:09:30,800 --> 00:09:35,570 Many of whom later stayed on long enough to be able to gain communion status. 87 00:09:35,570 --> 00:09:44,570 So you can see the constant effort and it was purposeful and we mustn't kid ourselves that it was just top down. 88 00:09:44,570 --> 00:09:55,170 That was a very purposeful plan. UK Hansard report when they were discussing the Bermuda Constitution in Parliament, 89 00:09:55,170 --> 00:10:02,130 questions were asked about what is this thing called status and one an MP, Leicester, Leicester City states. 90 00:10:02,130 --> 00:10:09,870 A British parliamentarian says it seems to me that Bermuda status is reserved for white people since the establishment of this qualification. 91 00:10:09,870 --> 00:10:18,090 Remember, September of July 1956, 700 white people have been granted it and six coloured people. 92 00:10:18,090 --> 00:10:25,020 Two of the coloured people are Dr. King and Mr Richards, later premier, who are well-known supporters of the NPP. 93 00:10:25,020 --> 00:10:29,880 If Bermuda status is to be one of the qualifications for standing for Parliament, 94 00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:36,690 we need an explanation why 700 white people have achieved it as opposed to only six coloured people. 95 00:10:36,690 --> 00:10:41,340 What is interesting in this statistic is remember I said three thousand eight hundred forty 96 00:10:41,340 --> 00:10:47,490 five acquired status by the introduction of that act that was never told to the UK parliament. 97 00:10:47,490 --> 00:10:53,340 They worded it in such a way that they said the introduction of the 1956 act. 98 00:10:53,340 --> 00:10:59,460 We have since then given seven hundred and six people the grant status when in fact, 99 00:10:59,460 --> 00:11:10,490 just by introducing that led legislation three thousand eight hundred forty five, almost 10 percent increase in our population. 100 00:11:10,490 --> 00:11:17,570 Lord Pitt, following the 77 riots, I was here for the 77 riots, said. 101 00:11:17,570 --> 00:11:32,060 Oh, two more. Just been said said that the importance of reducing immigration, but we didn't pay attention. 102 00:11:32,060 --> 00:11:39,510 Granting of status, I'm going to skip that one. I just want to get to this last one. 103 00:11:39,510 --> 00:11:48,390 We know I have one here on the path to civil unrest all that happened recently in Bermuda leading up to 2016. 104 00:11:48,390 --> 00:11:56,170 I went too far. How do I go back? No, go back one more back, OK? 105 00:11:56,170 --> 00:12:03,190 More importantly, the U.N. has three General Assembly resolutions that state member states to adopt the 106 00:12:03,190 --> 00:12:08,860 necessary steps to prevent a systemic influx of immigrants into colonial territories, 107 00:12:08,860 --> 00:12:15,160 which disrupts the integrity and social, political and cultural unity of the peoples under colonial domination. 108 00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:22,840 The next resolution basically repeats the same thing in slightly different words about self-determination for the people of a country, 109 00:12:22,840 --> 00:12:28,030 a small jurisdiction. And the last one actually requests the administrating powers, 110 00:12:28,030 --> 00:12:34,510 which was the government in Bermuda as a matter of priority to ensure that the exercise of self-determination is not 111 00:12:34,510 --> 00:12:42,010 affected by changes in the demographic composition of due to immigration or displacement of properties in the territories. 112 00:12:42,010 --> 00:12:49,970 So you can see that what's been happening in Bermuda historically has basically ignored those U.N. resolutions with regard to our country. 113 00:12:49,970 --> 00:12:55,941 So that's my presentation on immigration. Thank you.