Dear Sir,

With reference to Rob Corday’s letter in your March 29 edition, in relation to my letters in your editions of February 15 and March 26, Mr Corday is, of course, mistaken in imagining that I would have written my history of Bermuda in the 1960s and 1970s without being familiar with the reports of the Wooding Commission and Pitt Commission, which are important, if flawed, artefacts of that tumultuous period.

It should be noted that neither the Wooding Commission report nor the Pitt Commission report provides any evidence that (to quote home affairs minister Michael Fahy’s unfortunate statement on page 1 of your February 8 edition) in the 1960s and 1970s “Government manipulated immigration law to maximise votes”.

Nor, it transpires from my Public Access to Information request, was Senator Fahy basing his statement on those, or any other, reports. I would certainly encourage people to read my 2015 book, Siren Songs: a history of Bermuda from 1960 to 1980, which can be purchased either directly from Lulu.com or locally, and is also available in libraries.

It is packed with factual information gleaned from extensive archival research; and in its insights, analysis and commentary, the book is also, in places, a useful corrective to the prevailing rather “politically correct” orthodoxy.

For example, to quote a pertinent footnote: “Sadly, the island’s misfortune in the 1960s and 1970s to suffer wholly unjustified race riots and other wanton criminality perpetrated by wild elements of the black community, essentially in pursuit of black power, led to Bermuda being subjected periodically to a kind of Maoist self-criticism punishment imposed on it by a Great Britain increasingly embarrassed by the vestiges of empire; the results of the various commissions of inquiry being, in essence, to pander to black youthful militancy by making Bermuda adopt often unnecessary, ill-judged measures designed to buy racial peace by pushing Bermuda on a path to a big-spending, independent nationhood never at all sensible in itself.”

Indeed, in view of the way some residents — and I do not, of course, mean Mr Corday — unfortunately seem bent on us reliving some of the traumas and turmoil of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, but without the strong economy that we enjoyed in those days, the book is, I would venture to say, timely as well.

JONATHAN LAND EVANS