RG: In our opinion Just as the unswerving route of the old Bermuda Railway cuts across the landscape like a long, straight scar, so the story of controversial land expropriations mars Bermuda’s modern history.

Before construction could begin on that foredoomed single-track, standard-gauge railway in the late 1920s, what was then among the largest and most contentious land acquisition schemes in Bermuda’s history had to take place.

Rich man, poor man, black or white, every land owner with property along the proposed 21-mile route from Sandys to St George’s had to surrender some of their real estate in return for compensation from the Bermuda Railway Company. That British-backed concern was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1924 to survey and construct a modern transportation system for the then automobile-averse Island.

The Bermuda Railway Company expressly planned its line to follow a coastal route, minimising the amount of private property the firm would have to purchase (which is why the gasoline-powered trains crossed so many trestle bridges built over inlets and bays while wheezing their way from one end of the Island to the other). Nevertheless, some private property was still required for this massive public undertaking and numerous real estate transactions took place to incorporate the necessary land into the railway right-of-way. Owners were generously compensated for their sacrifices. Indeed, the original budget for construction of the Bermuda Railway more than doubled between the time the company was created and when the first rolling stock went into service in 1931, partly as a result of the cost of such acquisitions.

But property owners were faced with what amounted to Hobson’s Choice when it came to handing over their land — a nominally free decision in which only one option is offered. And Hobson’s choice, of course, means they really had no choice in the matter at all.

The Bermuda Railway project followed directly on the heels of the 1920-23 expropriation of land in Tucker’s Town earmarked for the Furness Withy Line’s exclusive enclave for the very rich. But the building of the railway was actually a far more contentious topic at the time than the shipping company’s plans for a glamorous mid-Atlantic playground for the East Coast elite. Involving as it did land owners spanning the length of the entire Island and cutting across all social and racial lines, the grumbling and griping surrounding the railway was longer-lasting and more intense than had been the case in Tucker’s Town (where, by the end of 1923, what were described as “a lunatic and three hold-out land owners” were the only title holders not to have accepted compensation packages determined either through arbitration or the courts). But Tucker’s Town, involving as it did the touchy issues of class, race and privilege, remains synonymous with what critics are calling “the historic theft and dispossession of land” in Bermuda. Meanwhile the other cases of wholesale compulsory acquisition, including the building of the Bermuda Railway, are largely forgotten or ignored.

A community, like the individuals who comprise it, is the sum total of all of its experiences: dramatic, prosaic and traumatic. Also, as is the case with individuals, the unburied aspects of a community’s past will continue to haunt the present until properly interred. There is no doubt the circumstances which led to the creation of the luxurious Tucker’s Town sanctuary remain both painful and little understood. They desperately need to be laid to rest after more than 80 years.

And the empanelment of a bipartisan commission of inquiry with a remit to study the history of land expropriations, as recently proposed by Parliament, might be the best vehicle for achieving this end.

We have an obligation not just to history but to our present and future to explain, examine and learn from our past. This requires us to place controversial subjects in their proper context because some issues cannot be properly understood without a simultaneous understanding of the times which gave rise to them.

Harry Truman once said the only thing new in this world is the history you don’t know. And the fact is too many Bermudians simply aren’t familiar with whole swathes of their own history, lacking even the most fundamental grasp of how our people and our community evolved.

Any number of myths need to be expunged, chief among them the casually levelled and quite incendiary charge that those required to part with their land because of expropriation were victims of theft. Compulsory purchase orders have certainly been used in both a cavalier and sometimes immoral manner in Bermuda and elsewhere. But the fact is compulsory acquisition by the Crown or its approved agents is not only legal, it constitutes one of the oldest traditions in British common law. Beginning in the 19th century, both Bermudian and British authorities routinely engaged in the expropriation of private property on the Island if it could be argued such acquisitions would serve the greater public interest.

Beaches once in private hands found their way into what is now the Bermuda Parks System based on compulsory acquisition. Road improvements to modernise the glorified cart tracks which served as Bermuda’s highways well into the 20th century required the shaving off of what eventually amounted to dozens of acres of private property adjoining the old Tribe Roads, trails and footpaths criss-crossing the Island. And, of course, most of the British military’s fortifications were built on large tracts of expropriated land as were the US bases constructed at the East End and in Southampton during the Second World War.

The Tucker’s Town scenario was played at a time when Bermuda was rushing headlong into the 20th century, when the foundations of our modern infrastructure were being laid. It was not a deviation from the practices of the time, rather it was an extension of them and cannot be viewed in isolation from our current perspective.

It is time to allow the scar of expropriation to begin to heal, to stop picking away at it either out of ignorance or for mercenary, short-term political gain.