Union leader Derrick Burgess last night angrily rejected lawyer Peter Smith's claims that black families who were forced out of Tuckers Town to make way for a tourist development were paid a fair price.

Mr. Smith, whose father C.E. Smith was the secretary of Bermuda Development Company which bought the land in the 1920's, said his father would not have allowed poor residents to be swindled.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1920 to force the families off the land to make way for the Marriott Hotel and Mid-Ocean Club, and Mr. Smith said residents were paid a fair price for their land according to market values at the time.

Canadian history Professor Duncan McDowall, in his 1999 book 'Another World: Bermuda and the Rise of Modern Tourism, writes: "In terms of the due process of the law, the expropriations were probably fair and the prices paid to hold-out landowners probably at or above market value".

But Bermuda Industrial Union President Mr. Burgess, whose own family was forced off the land, said last night that no price was high enough to compensate the suffering of those kicked out.

"How can you put a price on people's feelings when they are kicked off the land they love?" he told The Royal Gazette.

"He (Mr. Smith) is talking nonsense and rubbish. He didn't feel what they felt or lose family members like I did when they were kicked out of Tuckers Town.

"He wasn't there. I had one relative (Dinna Smith) who was dragged out because she refused to go. He wasn't there and he is talking as if he had authority.

"He doesn't know how our people felt when they were kicked out of Tuckers Town. I had a great grandfather who wouldn't go back to Tuckers Town and it killed him because he loved it so much.

"How can you put a price on people's lives and the land they loved? There is never any price that was fair.

"He wasn't marched out of there. He didn't feel what they felt or lose family members because they were moved out of Tuckers Town. They got that land for a pittance and if he is saying it wasn't true, it is true."

Speaking to Hamilton Rotary Club on Tuesday, Mr. Smith, an associate at Cox Hallett Wilkinson, said: "People suggest Tuckers Town was acquired for a pittance, but that isn't true.

"They were paid plenty according to the values of the land at that time. All I can tell you is that the chair of the committee which fixed the prices was (Sir Reginald) Appleby.

"My father was the secretary and Appleby was a man of tremendous integrity, and I can't believe he would allow anyone to be cheated. That's the kind of man he was.

"I can't imagine my father, who became the Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, would have allowed anything underhand to take place.

"I just don't believe the stories it was sold for a pittance. I can't believe these men would have allowed it to happen."

In his book, Prof. McDowall said although the development company promised "liberal" payments, some residents wanted to stay regardless of price.

A petition signed by 24 freeholders and supported by an Anglican minister was presented to the House of Assembly. They argued their "natural love and attachment for their lands, houses and homes" outweighed the needs of American golfers.

Prof. McDowall writes: "Most other Bermudians disagreed. Tuckers Town was the sparkplug that would ignite the engine of post-war tourism; without it the colony would stagnate.

"As Furness Withy told the Assmebly: 'The apathetic or unreasonable attitude of a few small land holders should not be permitted to block an enterprise of such great importance to the development of the colony as a tourist resort'.

"The Tuckers Town expropriations galvanised the colony: in the space of two years, an entire community was dismantled and a new alien landscape of golf and hedonism implanted."