For Bermuda journalists, at least those of a certain age, there was no politician like Harry Viera. Mr. Viera, who died yesterday after a period of ill health, was one of the great characters of Bermuda politics from the tumultuous 1960s until the early 1990s when he retired from the House of Assembly.

A man who literally lived and breathed politics, reporters could expect to get often lengthy phone calls from him at any hour of the day or night. Full of political insight, leaks, stunningly original epithets and gossip, they always left the recipient of the call enriched and slightly exhausted.

Mr. Viera, or Harry, as he was universally known, was on the conservative wing of the conservative United Bermuda Party, but his best friend in politics was the late John Stubbs, who was on the liberal wing of the same party. One thing that bonded them was a dislike of unearned privilege. And he was never short of friends in the Progressive Labour Party, most notably the late Frederick Wade, even though their political views were diametrically opposed. That's because Harry was an irrepressible spirit who could charm the pants off anyone, and whose joie de vivre and "passion for Bermuda" was genuine.

Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Tip O'Neill once said "all politics are local", and Harry lived it, making, with running mate Ralph Marshall, the old constituency of Southampton West so impregnable a fortress for the UBP that in 1989, then-PLP leader Mr. Wade paid them the ultimate political compliment of not running one PLP candidate there.

A splendid backbencher and Parliamentary debater, Mr. Viera was never a great Cabinet Minister, and rarely spent much time in those rarefied circles. Indeed, he was as much a thorn in the side of his own leaders as he was a bête noir of the PLP. Stripped of the Whip at least twice, he was a supporter of the UBP Black Caucus that broke the late Sir John Sharpe's Premiership and he was later a vigorous critic of Sir John Swan.

But this was almost always done as a matter of principle. Mr. Viera had strong and individual beliefs, especially on law and order, rarely wavered from them, and had little time for politicians who temporised or made decisions for expediency's sake. For the most part, that made Mr. Viera one of history's good guys, although successive UBP whips might not have agreed. That's not to say that Mr. Viera's judgment was unerring. Many people will remember the night he turned the lights off on Parliament – earning himself yet another punishment.

The most notorious act, and one which in some ways ended his political career, was when he was found to have kept a gun in his home. That led to a fine, and he was very fortunate to avoid a prison sentence.

But even that decision, to keep the pistol long after he stopped receiving death threats (and he did) was somehow typical of a man who always marched to the beat of his own drum. His legacy remains. He and the late Dr. Stanley Ratteray and Dr. Stubbs were the Young Turks who helped to establish the UBP as the dominant political force of 1968 and most of the 1970s.

It was no accident that a black Bermudian and white Bermudians of British and Portuguese descent came together in that way. They had a fierce belief in integration and the idea that if the people of Bermuda were not united, then the Island would inevitably fall.

They helped to drag Bermuda into the modern era of civil rights and to create a modern economy, unshackling it from the grip of the old oligarchy and opening it up to people of all backgrounds and races. They simply don't make politicians like that any more.