“In front of the post office a striking postman named Alvin Williams spends his hours walking up and down the sidewalk bearing a sign that says, ‘Don’t knock us — knock our government. They put us here’. At 32 years of age Mr. Williams, the father of two children earns $204 a week as a postman and works nights as a waiter in a restaurant. “Most people in Bermuda have two or three jobs,” said Mr. Williams. “The year before last, I was a janitor and a bartender as well as a postman, no way could I earn enough to cover the cost of living with one job.”T<$>HAT is a part of a 1981 interview I gave to New York Times reporter Leslie Bennetts, who filed a report for his newspaper headlined, “Stormy Labour Scene Lays Waste Bermuda’s Season”. The New York Times<$> reporter was one of many international journalists who flew to Bermuda to cover the story of Bermuda’s worst ever labour dispute — one which in the end led to a General Strike that closed the island and perhaps changed Bermudian history.

It is indeed hard to believe that some 25 years have gone by since the momentous events that changed the nature of labour relations in this country and, in fact, created the circumstance where the labour movement was finally — albeit grudgingly — accepted as an important stakeholder and partner in Bermudian society.

Before the events of 1981 — the strike began on April 11 and rumbled on until May 5 — such was not the case as far as the role of labour was concerned. Bermuda’s oldest labour organisation, the Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT), was formed in 1919 and had the distinction of being the second oldest union in the British Commonwealth after the General Workers Union of British Guiana (now the Independent nation of Guyana).

But despite these deep roots, the reality is that since the beginnings of the mass organised labour movement in the 1940s, Bermuda experienced what could be called a series of labour wars which had, on one side, an employer class and a Government that was determined not to recognise or accept the role of a labour movement in this country and, on the other side, Bermuda’s working class. During the 1950s and ‘60s, the labour movement became increasingly sophisticated and well organised as a consequence of its role in the then ongoing Civil Rights struggle during which black Bermudians made clear that improvements in their political rights had to go hand in hand with long overdue improvements to their working conditions.

Over a period of time, beginning in the late 1950s, Bermuda began a transition that saw the island eventually grow into a fully-functioning democracy. But it was a fits-and-starts process.

On the labour front, the Bermuda Industrial Union was always in the forefront of the struggles that took place in Bermuda to overhaul working conditions and its leaders had always been the focus of hostility and demonisation by Bermuda’s economic power brokers, accused of being hot-headed militants who were attempting to pull the country down.

Former BIU leader and member of the Progressive Labour Party Government Ottiwell Simmons was constantly portrayed as something just short of a bomb-throwing radical throughout his time at the helm. And such negative characterisations probably reached their zenith during the labour crisis of 1981.

It is interesting to note that in the interviews which recently appeared in The Royal Gazette <$>to mark the 25th anniversary of the General Strike, the opinions of major participants who had leadership roles during the labour crisis were often diametrically opposed as to the causes and results of 1981 and its long-term impact on Bermuda.

This was very much unlike the uniformity of opinion arrived at following a similar retrospective which took place about two years ago regarding the Vietnam War. This retrospective featured a symposium that included major participants in that conflict such as, from the American side, the then Secretary of Defence Robert MacNamara and, from, the Vietnamese side, General Vo Nquyen Giap, credited with being the military architect behind the defeat of the French (who were once the colonial rulers of Indochina which included Vietnam) and the Americans in what was known on the Vietnamese side as the second Indochina War.

MacNamara candidly admitted that he had no understanding of the motivations that caused the Vietnamese to endure such sacrifices and suffering to fight and finally force the Americans to withdraw.

He also stated that had he understood the full cultural, political and economic contexts in which America intervened militarily in the Vietnam War and not looked at the conflict solely through the prism of America’s Cold War paranoia, he would have come to different conclusions as to the policies America should have followed during that conflict.

In fact, McNamara suggested from his new perspective he may have advised the Lyndon Johnson White House not to escalate American involvement in Vietnam in 1965 at all.

I cannot help but admire the candour of the former Secretary of Defence when reviewing the circumstances which led up to the labour crisis of 1981 in Bermuda and the lack of understanding still demonstrated by some of those involved in the General Strike.

Although former Premier Sir David Gibbons did not admit it in his interview with The Royal Gazette, months before the strikes of 1981, as Premier he made the statement that the Bermuda Industrial Union was the main adversary of his Government. Unlike MacNamara, I don’t think Sir David even now fully understands the cultural, political and economic dynamics that resulted in Bermuda’s working class downing tools en masse and challenging both his Government’s stance on labour relations and its general authority.

For there were some days during the General Strike when the centre of power and moral authority in Bermuda clearly shifted from the Government to the striking workers: Ottiwell Simmons was the de facto leader of this country, not Sir David.

And, even more remarkable, another former United Bermuda Party Premier, Sir John Swan, then Home Affairs Minister, in speaking of the economic environment in which he and fellow members of the Government made the decision to confront the labour movement led by the BIU, made this statement: “If a conservative government had capitulated and made a settlement too early, our own supporters would turn against us.”

That is an interesting statement because one could ask the question: “Who were the UBP supporters and were they aware that their Government’s hard-line stance had split the country both racially and politically and even the Bermuda Regiment was on the point of open revolt?”

Indeed, if there had been a mutiny in the Regiment, that would have prompted both British military and political intervention in Bermudian affairs, destroying the legitimacy of the UBP Government and perhaps even that of our two-party political system.

The great irony, of course, is that the 1981 conflict need never have grown to the extent it did. If the UBP Government of the day had not sought to control the labour movement in Bermuda and force its workers to bear the brunt of a difficult economic situation, a just settlement could have been reached with no strikes, no demonstrations and no convulsions to either the Bermudian political system or its then tourist-based economy.

It has been 25 years since the labour crisis of 1981. Out of it came a reluctant acceptance of the role of a labour movement and Bermuda’s current Labour Day holiday.

For a more detailed account of the events of 1981, pick up the book, Labour On The March, which I co-authored with fellow trade unionist Leleath Bailey. It tells the whole story of the development of the labour movement in Bermuda and the labour strife of 1981.

Just settlement could have avoided the 1981 strike