Bermuda’s connection with first the 13 American colonies and then with an independent United States of America reaches back to the early seventeenth century.

Whether it involved the early assistance of the burgeoning settlement in Jamestown in 1615, the trading of salt Bermudian traders had extracted from the brine ponds in Turks and Caicos and sold along the eastern North American coast, or the Bermudian assistance to Americans during the US War of Independence, our connection with our American friends has been sustained over the centuries. In one of the most important organisations to address the social and political ills afflicting Bermuda, there is an often overlooked connection with the US.

In early December 1940, a large group of workers came together to object to the working conditions on the United States air and naval bases.

More specifically, they were displeased with the two-tier wage system, enforced by the Bermuda Labour Supply and Control Board: Bermudian workers received a wage substantially lower than their American counterparts.

At this meeting a motion was passed unanimously authorising a committee to “frame a constitution and cause an association to be made called the Bermuda Workers’ Association”.

This motion specifically stated that union methods be ruled out. And although a group of workers opposed this, they remained a minority.

The organisers of the meeting — who included David Tucker, Russell L. Pearman and Walton G. Brown, a lawyer, real estate agent and entrepreneur, respectively — felt that not only would unions fail to accomplish the desired goals, they were undesirable as it was not “the true Bermudian attitude” to want to organise in such a manner. Though inspired by unfair working conditions, this effort would soon dissipate.

The next effort at establishing an organisation to advance the interests of labour was spearheaded by Gerald Brangman, a carpenter. Brangman’s knowledge about trade unions came largely from the year he spent living in the United States — from September 1940 to September 1941 — where he recognised unions offered “a certain amount of protection”, something he noted was absent in Bermuda.

When he returned to the Island and began working at the US Naval Base, he became deeply concerned about the two-tier wage system — the same system which sparked the formation of the first BWA — and sought to address it.

Brangman would go on to organise workers at the Naval Base, but it is noteworthy that there was considerable reluctance on the part of many workers to commit themselves since “the mere mention of the word ‘union’ caused a freeze in some quarters” — and this is after the head of the base, Lt. Commander Blade, said he would welcome the organisation of a union.

Of course, the BWA would go on set out the template for change — political and social — that would eventually bring Bermuda into the 20th century.