January 27, 2013Dear Sir,It’s been 48 years since what is referred to as the Belco riot took place. Last year I read in the newspaper that Walton Brown said he had been told that the late Dr Barbara Ball threw an overly aggressive policeman over a wall. I can assure you that never happened. Seventeen police officers were injured that morning. A few months later a group of rioters were tried in the Supreme Court for their actions at Belco that morning. Dr Ball was not among them. A police officer had been struck in the back of the head with a golf club and was left with permanent brain damage. I was at Belco that day for just under 17 hours. I went to work at Belco in August 1964, at that time I was the only non-Bermudian working on the operational side of the power station. Belco management at that time was about 95 percent Bermudian. The hourly paid staff was about 97 percent Bermudian. The Belco management had been having talks with the Bermuda Industrial Union in which the hourly paid workers at Belco had no input in these talks.In late January 1965, the management at Belco changed the shift schedule in the power station. I went to work on February 2, 1965 in a taxi. The taxi stopped at the eastern works gate at around 5.45am. I noticed that Dr Ball and three men were walking up and down in front of the works gate. I remember she was wearing a heavy coat. The taxi driver asked me if I wanted him to wait and I told him no. I went across the road and the nightwatchman opened the pedestrian gate and I walked through. Dr Ball screamed ‘you wouldn’t do that in England’. I replied ‘Scotland” and went to stamp my time card.Just after 8am, I was working on a Nordberg diesel unit, when I noticed a piston was overheating. I informed the head operator and he decided to shut it down. We started the other Nordberg and I shut the faulty one down. Both these units were in the latest extension of the power plant. They had been built on the southern side of the plant and were the nearest part of the plant to the Belco office building. I could see the eastern exit of the office building from a window and I heard a commotion. I saw two policemen on the ground. As I watched, one of the policemen got back on his feet but the other one stayed on the ground. I could see about ten policemen from where I was watching and I estimate there must have been around 100 rioters in that area. I had to go back to work on the unit but a few of the other employees were at the window. The head operator came in and told me that management had called Police Headquarters.Finally the riot squad arrived and I went back to the window. It was standing room only at the window. We saw the riot squad fire a tear gas round and then they moved towards the rioters. The rioters started scattering immediately. A large group of them were running east. As they were running, they were throwing things over the fence onto the grass. In 1965, the new office had not been built so it was just a grass field to the east of the old main office building. The unit I was on was taken off load because the demand had dropped. A few days later I learned that some business and retail owners had closed and sent their employees home for their safety because of the situation at Belco. I went down to the fence and helped the police pick up what the rioters had thrown over the fence. It was quite an assortment. There were golf clubs, lengths of re-bar with taped ends, obviously this was premeditatedThe head operator told me to go up to the 22kv control room. The operator on duty told me that the operator that was supposed to relieve him had called and said he couldn’t come in. I called him and told him that I would work his shift. The arrangement the operators had at that time was although I would work the shift, he would be paid for it, and at some date in the future he would work a shift for me. I had previously moved my wife and two-and-a-half year old daughter back in with her mother, as I had started getting calls from people I didn’t know. I called my wife and told her I would be home after 10pm. Even with all that happened that day, I had a few good memories. The first was when the head operators came into the control room and gave me a sandwich that one of the men had given him for me. I sent the sandwich back and told him to thank the man who sent it because I hadn’t even eaten the sandwich I had brought with me at 6am. The second was at 10pm when the shift ended. One of the operators asked me how I was getting home. I told him I was going to go into Hamilton and try and catch a taxi. He took me home to Smith’s parish, at that time he lived next to Spanish Point Boat Club. I have always felt privileged to have worked for ten years with such a decent and hardworking group of men.The next day I found out that the rioters had all gone up to Devonshire Rec. The police had called in every man they could and watched them from the Prospect schoolyard. I guess the rioters thought better of it as I was told they eventually went home. A short time later a group of the hourly paid workers formed a committee to organise the hourly paid workers. I was invited to join this group. The person who was the driving force behind this group was the late Pat Quinn, the head mechanical foreman in the power plant. A Bermudian lawyer drew up a constitution “pro bono” and that’s how the Electricity Supply Trade Union was formed. As a matter of interest, the President of the ESTU was paid £75 per year. The secretary and the treasurer received £50 per year. The members including the three officers paid five shillings a week in union dues. I became treasurer in early 1967 and we started to buy buttress funds which were offered to depositors by the Bank of Butterfield. The president, secretary and treasurer all had to sign off on any venture involving the union members’ money. Finally about six or seven of the rioters were charged in the Supreme Court. I was the only Belco employee who went to court to give evidence on behalf of the police. They were all found guilty. I left the court and Dr Ball was already outside talking to a group of men. As I passed she screamed “I hope you’re happy now”. I just ignored her and that was the last time I ever saw her. I was far from happy, as a policeman who had been a guest at my wedding to a Bermudian in 1961 was being treated in the UK for permanent brain damage.I was still getting the phone calls. They would tell me what they thought of me, and what they would like to do to me. Finally, I would tell them that I understood but could I say something. Then I would tell them to perform an impossible sex act on themselves, then I would go outside and take the fuses’ out to the telephone feed. The above is one reason why I support people not signing their names in Letters to the Editor. The calls finally stopped as I took the fuses out. I would only put them in if I wanted to make a call then they would come out again. We had another number which we used and only our friends and a person in management at Belco knew it. I will finish by again thanking all the foreign and Bermudian Policemen who were at Belco that morning and put their lives on the line so that the Belco employees, both men and women could exercise their right to work. After all these years, I still fee a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that the hourly paid staff at Belco wanted nothing to do with the BIU.FRANK THOMPSONUK