ELEMENTS within the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office were anxious to seize on the 1973 assassination of Governor Sir Richard Sharples as a pretext to set the stage for Bermudian Independence, newly declassified security dossiers reveal.

FCO bureaucrats had recommended to Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home that British policy be aimed at "moving Bermuda unobtrusively towards Independence" even before the March 10, 1973 murder of Sir Richard and his aide-de-camp Captain Hugh Sayers.

Following the double-slaying in the grounds of Government House, Acting Governor Ian Kinnear reported that Bermudian sovereignty should now be viewed as the "ultimate (British) objective" ? a suggestion his superiors at the FCO believed should be pursued with "quiet vigour".

In a detailed analysis of the background to ? and ramifications of ? the five politically-motivated killings that convulsed Bermuda in the winter of 1972 and spring of 1973 entitled , Kinnear said militant manifestations of Black Power on the island were perhaps inevitable given the "unnatural (colonial) relationship" between Bermuda and the UK.

"There can, of course, be no question of forcing Bermuda to move towards Independence even if we were in a position to do so," said Kinnear in the despatch, forwarded to the FCO from Government House on May 1, 1973.

"It would, apart from anything else, give the appearance of a retreat before violence and thus play into the hands of those responsible for the present violence; and Independence would not necessarily, by itself, be a cure for the cancer.

"Nevertheless, when the time is ripe I believe we must actively encourage Bermudians to consider whether colonial status is now more of a burden than an asset to them.

"The colonial relationship is an unnatural one at the best of times ? and the more so on an island as prosperous and endowed with human resources as Bermuda."

In a hand-written memorandum on what further action should be taken regarding the Kinnear report, a senior official in the FCO's Caribbean Department endorsed the remarks on Independence ? but recommended a low-key approach that would not contradict Britain's publicly stated policy of non-interference with Bermudian wishes on the issue.

"Mr. Kinnear's analysis on the present colonial relationship and his proposals for further constitutional progress are, I believe, sound and very much in line with FCO thinking . . . As Mr. Kinnear recommends that Bermuda should move unobtrusively towards Independence (coinciding with the department's recommendations to the Secretary of State), it may be that the despatch should receive very limited distribution (within the FCO) at this stage (to prevent potentially embarrassing leaks)."

Kinnear, a British career diplomat and the island's Deputy Governor in the early 1970s, became Acting Governor following the assassination of Sir Richard.

He began his comprehensive despatch on "some of the implications of the five murders for Bermuda and for British policy towards Bermuda" with a summary of the killing spree, writing at a time when Police Special Branch intelligence reports had identified the likely ring leaders and gunmen but prior to any arrests being made.

"On the night of September 9, 1972 the former Commissioner of Police, Mr. George Duckett, was shot and killed outside his home," said Kinnear. "Six months later, almost to the day, the Governor, Sir Richard Sharples, and his ADC, Captain Sayers, were assassinated outside Government House while they were taking a walk in the garden after a dinner party; and only four weeks later the Portuguese owner of (the Shopping Centre) supermarket in Hamilton, Mr. (Victor) Rego, and his Bermudian-born assistant, Mr. (Mark) Doe, were tied up and then shot in the store in what appears to have been a straightforward case of armed robbery but is part of a pattern of violence which has developed since the muder of the Commissioner . . .

"I can recollect no murder of a Commissioner of Police in a British colonial territory in recent times. The last Governor who was murdered was Sir Henry Gurney who was ambushed by a large force of bandits in the Federation of Malaya during the Emergency (which lasted from 1948 to 1960).

"Sir Richard and the Commissioner were shot and killed on an island where the murder of a person in authority had been unheard of; and where serious crime had been of so little consequence that few people took the trouble to lock their houses carefully at night.

"These crimes, therefore, represent a serious deterioration in law and order. Until there is a solution to the murders, it must remain a matter of (informed) speculation as to who was responsible, whether the murders were linked and what the motives were; and this despatch must, inevitably, be based on certain assumptions derived from such evidence as there is.

"The main assumption must be that the murders of the former Commissioner and the Governor were connected and were politically motivated attacks on the principal symbols of authority and law and order ? and of Bermuda's colonial status."

Kinnear sketched the background and history to the Black Power-inspired militancy then enjoying a vogue among some restless young Bermudians alienated from the island's political and cultural mainstream.

The Acting Governor was not entirely unsympathetic to the thinking of radicals who could only envisage change to the island's coming about as a result of sudden, violent revolution rather than peaceful, piecemeal evolution.

"After the defeat of the Progressive Labour Party at the 1968 election, the youth wing of the party was disbanded and formed into . . . a militant revolutionary body calling itself the Black Beret Cadre (BBC)," he said. "This organisation modelled itself on, and drew much of its inspiration from, the Black Panthers in the United States.

"Its attempts to gain public support failed and it ceased to function as an overt organisation in 1971. It now seems likely that perhaps half-a-dozen or so of the hard core of the organisation went underground at this stage and we lost touch with them.

"We do know, however, that they obtained a number of handguns from abroad at about the time of the Commissioner's murder and it is significant that since these arms arrived on the island there have not only been five murders but a marked increase in the number of robberies involving the use of arms."

Since Sir Richard's assassination, Kinnear reported, links had been established between the rump of the Black Beret Cadre and a small coterie of professional criminals operating out of Hamilton ? suggesting a perverse alliance of convenience between revolutionary militants and profiteering gangsters.

"This combination of revolutionary and criminal elements provides both the motive for assassination and the means to achieve it without outside assistance," he said. "To the BBC, the elimination of a Commissioner of Police and a Governor is a blow against the 'invisible (colonial) Government' against which it used to rail.

"For a criminal element, a blow against law and order, probably with political overtones, for the hardcore criminal element is black on an island where the police is 75 per cent expatriate and white.

"The fact that no outside organisation has claimed responsibility for the assassination of either Sir Richard or the former Commissioner of Police supports the view that the killings were a local affair.

"Certainly neither could have been carried out without local support and knowledge; and there has been no suggestion of outside involvement in the two murders in the supermarket. Therefore the question that has to be answered is whether there is a pattern in the killings and whether there is a long-term aim behind them. The BBC, while revolutionary and conspiratorial and attacking the 'system', had no very clear ideas about what they would replace it with. If the BBC and local criminal elements alone are involved, then there is probably no more to the murders than the wanton elimination of the (white) symbols of authority and imperialism . . .

"Whether we are faced with a small local group with no long-term objectives or with a more dangerous conspiracy with long-term aims, unless there is an early solution to the murders the immediate problem is that we must expect further attempts. Once people have killed and got away with it, they will try again."

A pessimistic Kinnear believed it only "prudent to believe the worst" and that Government House and the FCO would have to work on the assumption that further assassinations might take place ? placing the British in a no-win situation in terms of restoring the internal security they were constitutionally obliged to maintain in Bermuda.

"If there are further attempts at assassination, be they successful or unsuccessful, it is difficult to see how it will be possible to avoid being driven into taking increasingly harsh measures to maintain confidence and restore law and order, including, as a last resort, the use of emergency powers of detention without trial if it proves impossible to find sufficient evidence to take those responsible to court," he said.

Kinnear argued the imposition of emergency powers in Bermuda similar to those introduced in Northern Ireland for fighting sectarian terrorism would entangle Britain in an untenable security situation ? and the FCO needed to look at long-term solutions rather than face the prospect of becoming enmired in an increasingly unhappy, unstable mid-Atlantic Ulster.

The Acting Governor said the shifting demographics and socio-economic realities of Bermuda had to be taken into consideration by the FCO in determining Britain's future policies towards the island.

"The failure of the Progressive Labour Party to win the 1968 election or to improve its position at (the 1972) election must inevitably encourage certain elements in the community to believe that the only way to achieve change is by force," said Kinnear. "It can only be an affront to the black activist that an island whose population is two-thirds black has continued, in free elections, to elect a multi-racial Government.

"Although this contains five black Ministers, including the Premier, it still reflects the influence of the white oligarchy which has controlled Bermuda for so long and, with the support of a growing, affluent black middle class, threatens to bar the way for the foreseeable future to a black Government.

"While the influence of black culture has been considerable, the standards on the island are still essentially white. The excessive tidiness, the disciplines imposed to keep Bermuda 'beautiful' for the wealthy tourist, have little meaning for ? and are anathema to ? the young, extrovert black Bermudian. And he would like to see Bermuda Independent.

"A Constitution where responsibility for law and order is vested in the Governor, and in an island where the law officers and judiciary are still almost exclusively expatriate and the police 75 per cent so, inevitably gives an impression of a colonial regime imposed from the outside.

"This is a misconception which the unsuccessful PLP politician is happy to hide behind; and even in the United Bermuda Party there is a good deal of unrealistic thinking about the constitutional realities.

"The Governor, therefore, is not only left with the not very pleasant task of maintaining law and order on a small island but, unjustifiably, becomes the target of a frustrated minority."

The Acting Governor said Bermuda's constitutional arrangements, put in place prior to the 1968 General Election and allowing for internal self-government by the island's elected Government with Government House maintaining responsibility for both internal and external security, were impractical in the long-run.

"This is an unsatisfactory situation which, in itself, could become increasingly embarrassing to Her Majesty's Government quite apart from the problem of having to maintain law and order in the face of armed violence," he said. ". . . The present Constitution does not, of itself, make for good government and I believe that an elected Government which has to face the responsibility of dealing with law and order is likely to be more sensitive to, and respond more swiftly to, events and, above all, to be in a position to integrate what will always be a largely expatriate police force more closely with the community and take it out of the political arena.

"Bermudians have been adept at having their cake and eating it: the time has come when they have to consider whether this is giving them indigestion."

Kinnear recommended that Sir Richard Sharples' successors follow the late Governor's lead in "playing things in a lower key ? taking less visible roles in Bermudian affairs while encouraging the island's elected representatives to dominate the centre-stage of public life.

"I believe we can make some changes to play down the more obvious manifestations of the colonial presence," he said. " . . . The quiet approach could have the disadvantage of encouraging Bermudians to slip back into their traditional lethargic attitudes towards political change . . . But on balance I am convinced it is the right policy to adopt until there can be a move towards Independence."

Despite strong FCO support for Bermudian Independence, the policy of encouraging the island to move towards sovereignty does not appear to have been pursued in earnest.

Although Independence has been a longstanding plank in successive PLP election campaigns, United Bermuda Party Premier Sir John Swan is the only political leader to have launched an Independence initiative.

A referendum held on the issue of sovereignty in 1995 was rejected 75-25 per cent by the electorate.