Dear Sir,

I went to the meeting on February 2 at BIU Headquarters [the Night of Reflection to mark the 50th anniversary of the Belco strike], which was well attended and conducted in a well-organised and sometimes humorous manner.

The main speaker was Ottiwell Simmons, who said Bermuda had come a long way since the Stone Age conditions of the 1960s.

I disagree, because the working conditions at Belco were defmitely not Stone Age in 1965. I started to work in the power house in 1964 and left Belco to work in Libya in 1974.

I had ten good years at Belco. My wife and I had taken out a mortgage in 1963 and by 1972 it was paid in full. At that time, Belco was one of the best local companies to work for with regard to wages and working conditions. All the hourly paid workers received paid vacation leave: two weeks after one year of employment, three weeks after five years, capped at four weeks after ten years.

We also had paid sick leave on production of a doctor’s certificate after the second sick day. We would be paid for the first day if we called in before the start of the shift. I am not sure but the ladies in the office may have had paid maternity leave.

All employees were covered by insurance — after ten years of employment, all employees would receive a company pension based on their years of service on retirement.

In 1967, all the hourly paid staff could buy shares in the company at a small discount. I did not take up that offer, as by that time I was treasurer of the ESTU and I felt it would be a conflict of interest. In any case, my wife and I were putting everything we had to paying off our mortgage.

My first Christmas at Belco, the company had a raffle and everybody who bought five tickets seemed to win. The prizes were not a trip to Disneyworld or a car — they were turkeys, hams and rum, but we appreciated that.

I saved the best for last — the Christmas bonus every hourly paid employee received, based on their pay grade and their years of employment. I did not get anything that year.

Mr Simmons stated that Belco had been divided between inside and outside workers. That is standard practice all over the world. The inside workers are responsible for power generation and the outside workers (linemen) are responsible for the repair and maintenance of the distribution system. Last but not least, there is office staff. These feisty women came to work every day during the strike.

Mr Simmons also stated that the riot began when Police began pushing picketers to allow the Belco office girls to get to work. Two or three officers were badly beaten by a mob of about 50. By that time it was no longer a picket line as the rioters had completely blocked the entrance to the Belco office block.

In 2010, Mr Simmons told a journalist that the riot started because the Police, wielding metal pipes, attacked the picket line and the picketers had to defend themselves. That was nonsense then and now, five years later, it is still a pathetic attempt to rewrite history without the benefit of truth.

He also said that he had been informed that the Police had formed a riot squad the day before. I wonder if he told the picketers that news. The question I would put to the public and Mr Simmons is why would the Police form a riot squad if, as Mr Simmons stated, relations between the Police and the picketers had always been cordial. The fact is that the riot squad was patched together that morning in response to the ongoing riot at Belco.

There was also a panel of four [at the reflection event]. Mr Stovell, who had worked in the garage at Belco, said he joined the Union because he was outraged that Dr Ball had been blocked from seeing patients. That had nothing to do with Belco.

Mr Stovell also said that all the drivers and linemen talked to him about segregation in the theatres and racial discrimination. In the power station we never had the time to talk about politics, we worked.

Then we had three former Policemen. Roger Sherratt and Andy Bermingham gave brief and informative accounts of their experiences that morning, while Wentworth Christopher rambled on about mortgages and political repression and never mentioned his experience at Belco.

In 2013, PC Mulhall, who was badly injured that morning, and to whom I give total and unconditional respect, said that in his opinion, negotiations between Belco and the BIU would always be soured because of Belco’s blatantly racist policy of segregated facilities, like washrooms.

I disagree. It was true that the changing rooms at the power station were segregated but it was not by race, it was by skill sets. In 1965 all the engine cleaners and labourers were black, all the shift operators and mechanics were white. There was no place in the power station to have all the plant employees under one roof. Both changing rooms had the same facilities — shower, toilet, wash basin — and every employee had his own locker.

Not many people knew that an office worker at Belco had taken an 8mm camera to work that day because later in the day the office girls were having a shower for one of the girls who was going to have a baby. Somebody used the camera to film the events that were happening outside. The film was made available to Belco management and the Police. I was told about it months later but I never saw it. Dr Ball was seen less than 30 yards from where PC Ian Davies was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely, after being struck on the back of the head. She made no attempt to assist him. Apparently she had decided to throw the Hippocratic oath (first, do not harm) under the bus that morning. To be fair, I don’t think anybody could have helped PC Davies because of the severity of his injury — he suffered permanent brain damage.

In spite of what the political cockroaches said, there was no racial divide in the power station. The mechanics, operators, and labourers worked side by side, eight hours a day, often six days a week.

The demand on the system in the summer months was so heavy that some nights a crew of mechanics and labourers would have to be brought in to change the piston rings on a couple of pistons. When we finished we had some downtime while the unit was started. A few of us would go down to the labourers’ changing room and play cards. Everybody was happy as we were being paid overtime. One of the labourers told me that not all of them wanted to walk off the job because they couldn’t afford it, but they went because they did not want to be harassed. They were young and some of them had children. I was 27 and I had a two-year-old daughter, so we had more in common than outside people may think.

At that time, there was a cycle repair shop on the left side of Serpentine Road, about 70 yards from the Belco entrance, and that was where the weapons the rioters used were stored. This was nothing less than premeditated thuggery.

I will conclude by saying thank you to all of the Belco employees who, despite intimidation, came to work every day and ensured that Bermuda’s electricity supply was never interrupted during the strike.

The BIU slogan for the 50th anniversary of the Belco strike was “Lest We Forget”. I can assure the BIU that thousands of people remember the courage and professionalism of the Bermudian and mostly foreign Police who put their lives on the line for the people of Bermuda that morning.

The end result of the Belco strike was that the BIU never won recognition, and the Electricity Supply Trade Union was formed. Without the strike the ESTU would have never been formed, as most of the employees were happy with the terms and conditions of their employment in 1965.

Frank Thompson