THIS week I had intended to comment on the recent speech given at Warwick Academy on the occasion of its annual Sir John Sharpe Memorial lecture series. This time American professor David Northrup of Boston College gave a talk on the transatlantic slave trade entitled "Changing Perspective and Evidence".

However, I will put my thoughts on his talk aside for the moment as I wish to address what I consider to be the hypocrisy which surrounds recent debate on the Progressive Labour Party Government agreeing to the terms which officially brought an end to the British/American Bermuda bases lease agreement made in 1941.

There has never been a serious study of the ramifications for Bermuda of the lease agreement made between the British and the Americans other than the generally positive economic consequences for the island.

But in the wake of the recent debate in Parliament on the issue, can the PLP Government be blamed for accepting the terms to end the British/American lease agreement which saw almost ten per cent of the island's land given up for American military bases?

In my opinion the answer to that question is no, not if you understand the context and historical circumstances in which this agreement came about, circumstances which probably locked Bermuda into accepting the terms that recently led to the termination of the bases deal.

To begin with, Bermuda and its then-Government had no real power to influence the decision to create American bases here. Bermuda was a British colony and Britain at the time was at war. In 1941 Britain had been at war for two years and the situation was one of desperation.

In 1940 Britain had been run out of Europe, evacuating what was left of a doomed expeditionary force which had been sent to France to stop the German invasion from the French port of Dunkirk.

It then survived a massive German air onslaught on the British Isles, which history calls "The Battle of Britain", by the skin of its teeth and soon was facing an even more desperate battle for survival which history would dub the "Battle of the Atlantic".

This was in many ways the most important battle of its time. It saw the Royal Navy and the British merchant marine fleet pitted against German U-boat submarine fleets, which were sinking ships carrying much needed supplies of food and war materials to what amounted to a surrounded island off the coast of a Nazi-dominated Europe.

Hence the desperate need for US support which the Bermuda lease agreement rested on (contrary to popular belief, Bermuda was not part of the destroyers-for-bases deal struck the same year between the UK and US, a treaty under which Britain gained 50 US warships in return for bases in the Caribbean and Canada; the Bermuda bases deal was an entirely separate arrangement).

Most history books do not give you the full flavour of the times been written about but newspapers do.

And even though I had read many books on the history of World War Two, it was not until I went to the Bermuda Library to do some research on how the Bermuda bases deal came about that I got the full flavour of those dangerous times. It was all there, including the details of the Bermuda lease agreement and how people felt about it.

Bermuda could do nothing about the deal, any more than Canberra could get the British to release their troops who in the early days of World War Two were stationed in the deserts in North Africa but were needed to defend their homeland when the Japanese bombed some of their ports and it was thought Australia was in danger of being invaded.

When the first draft of what the Americans wanted in terms of Bermuda bases was released, the island, its Government and its people were horrified: the US plan involved cutting the island in two and absorbing most of Southampton Parish - including Horseshoe Bay - into the proposed American fortifications.

You can imagine the panic and concern on the part of Bermudians at the thought of their country being divided. The Bermuda Government at the time went to London to implore the British not to agree to this American plan; they offered land in St. David's as an alternative.

THE people of St. David's, however, did not agree. It would take the Governor of the day to go to St. David's and at a big public meeting he got agreement that land in St. David's would be used to build the main base in the East End.

The agreement did not state that the Americans had to stay for the full 99-year length of the lease. It did state that if they left they would have to leave the land in the condition in which they found it. But what would that mean in the true sense of things? Would it have meant that the Americans would have to blow up the airport and the causeway? How would they restore the small islands which they used to fill in the land?

The Americans are able to do a great many things but they are not God. And at the time no one was thinking of the type of pollutions that now exist in the modern world.

At any rate we did not question what the Americans were doing on their bases. In fact, we were quick to defend their presence here.

When the PLP was in Opposition and called for the Americans to pay rent for their bases in Bermuda, from the then-United Bermuda Party Government benches came shouts of "ingratitude" and claims about what the Americans had done for us.

These roles seem to have been reversed as the PLP struggles to justify its new agreement terminating the base deal.

Both parties shamelessly played politics with the issue at the end of the American presence here.

The UBP Government and the then-PLP Opposition claimed to have contacts in America who would will see to it that the Americans would not close their bases.

And then-Premier Sir John Swan made the statement that Bermuda might require foreign aid to help us run our airport.

AS a Bermudian I was embarrassed and insulted to think that my country, boasting that it was one of the richest countries in the world, was ready to take aid money out of the mouths of really poor countries that needed it far more than we did.

Now there is talk that we should sue the British for the cost of the environmental clean-up of the former baselands. But by agreeing to terminate the agreement between the US and the UK, one must assume that Bernuda has allowed Britain to walk away from any legal responsibilities in this regard.

And how is this British Overseas Territory going to sue what is now the Metropolitan power without facing years of judicial litigation and millions of dollars in court costs involving enthusiastic, even if not too effective lawyers who would be only too happy to feed on this particular pie?

But, of course, there is one way to bring the British in.

We could make the baselands and Britain's obligation to restoring them an issue when Bermuda negotiates the terms of its Independence.

But until that time comes, we cannot play at being the mouse that roared on this issue.