Dear Sir,

The contrast of what I experienced as social motivation in my youth to that of my grandchildren’s generation is huge.

In my communities, there were established workmen’s clubs, churches filled with men who were financial pillars and owners of businesses. My first bank account was with Provident Bank, I could purchase lumber or sliding doors from LL Newton Butterfield, gas from Raynor’s garage. Having lived less than 100 yards from the Hill Top Farm block plant, black entrepreneurship wasn’t an ideology or message preached from a radical nationalist pulpit; it was an everyday, living reality.

The black community had its own benefactors: not only were there the lodges that existed with their gift clubs, there was enough private wealth to build sports clubs, to tutor the gifted child and to provide apprenticeship to those with an interest in trades. In short, we had a strong economic middle class. Black Americans who visited Bermuda got a boost of inspiration from us; in fact, the first black senator was once a barber in Bermuda and the famous Booker T. Washington’s best man to his wedding was a Bermudian.

Everyone has their theories. Some blame it on integration, but I don’t. Too much evidence suggests that it was a cold and vicious design, unchallenged because the power that sustained the momentum was broken by an infusion of capital by the banks. Before the mid-Sixties, much of the liquidity was in people’s hands. Businesses, in particular, held lots of cash in their vaults. As banks began to become the recipients of large tranches of American money at low interest, they had the role of boosting the local economy in whatever direction they chose.

Here is where it gets interesting, as you talk to many of those who are now of the age of departure — and most are gone. I was told by Mr Ray himself and many others were similarly called in. They were virtually handed £100,000 and told to buy up property and start a business. On the other hand, Raynor’s garage, as an example, was the first to apply for a gas station and was blocked by the planning department and hurriedly the Riddell’s Bay gas station was built and opened. Mr Raynor had to go to court to have his permit granted. The Southampton block plant was the most successful of its era but was blown up with two mighty dynamite blasts as an act of sabotage.

That’s what paved the way for the SAL and the Bierman’s Concrete and block plants. Go throughout the community and, in almost every area, ditto.

There is a law in physics that says a body will remain at rest or in uniform motion until acted upon by another force.

When we look at the social evolution and history of our people — black, white and Portuguese — and put it on a maths graph, you will see that the present position did not happen by random selection; it happened as a deliberate and sustained policy of manipulation through disproportionate economic support.

The problem that we face now is that the middle class has dwindled and is incapable of fulfilling the role it once had as vanguards.

Every community as a matter of natural tendency looks out for itself. Speaking politically, the labour ideology of the Sixties and Seventies did nothing except foster the economic genocide being conducted at the hands of the banks.

The United Bermuda Party from its inception was a false handshake and lost its mandate after Sir John Swan failed to deliver what was expected by the black community. The Progressive Labour Party, after abandoning its socialist rhetoric, took the reins in 1998, but most of the energy and distribution remained at the top, with little to no attempt at trickle-down. In desperation for a new idea in 2012, the One Bermuda Alliance was handed the mantle, but it seems it has come to finish the job of its predecessor. No society can survive without its benefactors. The black middle class is virtually destroyed and in need of serious economic recovery proportionate to their economic reality.

Only significant economic imperatives can make the kind of shift that could make a difference to this community. The task for this country is great and we need true leadership to reverse the negative course of history.

KHALID WASI