THERE'S always something mystical about the annual event known as The Speaker's Dinner. And the one hosted over the weekend by Stanley Lowe was no exception.

True to tradition, the food was excellent, with the best of wines flowing like water and, of course, there was the fellowship or camaraderie as Mr. Lowe prefers to term it.

I can lay claim without fear of contradiction to having attended more Speaker's Dinners over the past half-century than anyone else around. I have come to know from personal observation what is meant by the old saying that 'when rum's in wit's out'.

I know of the over-indulgent old Front Street baron who was arrested for dangerous driving en route home from a Speaker's Dinner. He spent some time in jail. Long before my time, there was the unforgettable incident when an Attorney General discommoded himself at a Speaker's Dinner.

Speakers at this 2006 dinner showed flashes of wit and humour, although none appeared to be wine- induced or inhibited.

Speaker Lowe started the ball rolling, although he was not as bubbly as with his famous "I feel good" speeches at his election rallies before he became Speaker. Possibly he had not fully recovered from having presided over the longest sitting of the House on record, lasting just over 23 hours. It ended only hours before, at 6.30 a.m. on Saturday, to be exact, having begun the day before, Friday at 10 a.m.

It is dinners of this sort that have given Bermuda its greatest notoriety.

Also, it is a matter of historical record (as I documented in my book Freedom Fighters from Monk to Mazumbo) how Bermuda was shamefully spotlighted in the world press in 1953 when Her Majesty the Queen chose Bermuda as the first stop on her global tour of the Commonwealth after her Coronation.

The object of the tour was to cement ties between the races and peoples under the Union Jack. Bermuda's Governor and the white power structure planned a state dinner for the Queen at Government House to which not one black person was invited.

Dr. E.F. Gordon, better known as Mazumbo, in a motion before Parliament attacking the handling of arrangements for the Queen's visit, said the black people who made up 60 per cent of the population had been treated as outcasts, extremely humiliated and shabbily affronted by not having any of their representatives at the state dinner. Dr. Gordon called on the unofficial prime minister of Bermuda, Sir Henry Tucker, for an explanation.

Sir Henry said reason for the exclusion was that invitations were limited to what he called The Precedence List, members of the Executive Council (now Cabinet), and there were no blacks in Ex-Co., as it was then called.

Then why not appoint one to the Council, Mazumbo snapped back. Sir Henry, with all the eloquence he could muster, replied: "In my view there is no coloured member of this House who by reason of ability and training, experience in public life and what is just as important, business and professional life at present, who would be justified in accepting an appointment to the Executive Council."

I don't want to digress too far from the annual Speaker's Dinner which is the subject of this piece. But I must carry these quotations to reflect on the world reaction to that insulting state dinner. The Toronto Star, editorialising, said it was inconceivable that such an incident could happen anywhere in the British Empire where a British Governor was the chief executive.

Three of Britain's national newspapers featured the story on their front pages, The Daily Herald, The News Chronicle and The Daily Telegraph. The Daily Mirror headlined its comments with a "No, No, No".

Twice on successive days the Herald attacked "the blunder in Bermuda". Forty-eight Labour MPs signed a House of Commons motion protesting the Bermuda colour bar, noting "the Governor's puerile blunder" could not be overlooked.

The Mirror deplored what it termed the Governor's pathetic excuses. It demanded to know "why weren't the top 30 knocked off the stupid (precedence) list? To blazes with the first families of Bermuda and an end to blind snobbery." The Herald wanted Bermudians to know how Britain reacted about "colour discrimination, social snobbery and ham-handed Governors".

Back to the Speaker's Dinners. It was that same nefarious precedence list that impacted for years on the attendance or non-attendance of black Bermudians and females at these dinners. Also the 1930s, '40s and '50s were times when racial discrimination and bigotry in Bermuda peaked, and Negroes and Jews were blatantly barred from admission to and service in mainstream hotels; that was done under protection of The Inn Keepers Act.

The first Speaker's Dinner that I attended was in 1951. I was then pretty well-known as 'the Recorder reporter'. The editor of The Recorder at that time was lawyer David Tucker, who was also an elected MCP for Pembroke. We travelled together in his car to the Castle Harbour Hotel. By design, in order to circumvent anticipated snobbery, we decided to miss the pre-dinner reception and to arrive in the banquet hall just after everyone had been seated.

Over the next two decades or more, attendance at Speaker's Dinners was one of the perks of my being The Recorder's parliamentary reporter. Of course, The Royal Gazette and Mid-Ocean News were there too.

My one major exception was when Sir Winston Churchill was the honoured guest at the dinner held at Mid Ocean Club. I was persuaded to yield in favour of a budding young Canadian journalist named May-Ruth Vaughn. She spent summers visiting her Bermudian grandparents in Warwick and did stints at The Recorder.

In 1962 when Montague Shepard started up Capital Broadcasting Company's ZFB radio station and later Channel 8 television, as its news director and station manager, I was back in the loop covering this event until I was forced out of broadcasting in 1982, and became a politician. From 1989 upon my appointment as an Opposition PLP Senator the invitations resumed and have continued since.

I need hardly cite the many radical and revolutionary changes we have witnessed over the past half-century with special reference to the Speaker's Dinners. Of course, the Precedence List expanded, initially to permit attendance of the first and only woman, for a number of years, in the capacity of Miss Elsie Gosling, who was head of The Library. Then came Dame Pamela Gordon predominating as Bermuda's first female Premier.

So far as the 2006 Speaker's Dinner was concerned new benchmarks for the fairer sex emerged with the guest of honour being the Edna Moyle. She is the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Cayman Islands (see separate story at the top of the page).

The first toast of the evening, to the Queen, was in the hands of Dame Jennifer Smith, Deputy Speaker of Bermuda's House of Assembly. And the voice that was heard loud and clearly over everybody else was that of the Clerk to the Legislature Shernette Wolffe, functioning to all intents and purposes as the mistress of ceremonies.

Both the Clerk and Assistant Clerk betrayed any visible signs of having endured that marathon day-long and all-night sitting of the House. While most of the MPs got home around sunrise, it was a different case for the clerks and backroom staff who had to complete their routine behind-the-scenes work at the end of each sitting.

Mrs. Carolyn Todd, the Assistant Clerk, went straight from her desk on Saturday morning to a 10 a.m. hairdresser's appointment she had made earlier in the week. She got home after midday with precious little time to get ready for her night out at the Fairmont with her boss, Speaker Lowe, which she and her colleagues really deserved.