Sometimes, in the dead of night, during the 1990s, Danny Farias? telephone would ring. On more than one occasion, while he and his wife and children slept, there would be a loud knock at the door.

Each time, according to Mr. Farias, the caller would be a white politician, a member of the then-ruling United Bermuda Party, contacting him to tell him to get out of the Progressive Labour Party.

The visits began in 1993 when Mr. Farias, a fisherman and environmental activist, became an outspoken member of the Opposition party, standing unsuccessfully for election for the PLP in the Devonshire South constituency.

He says: ?I have had people come knocking at my door and threaten me. One individual said ?we just came from a meeting and we have been discussing you and you have to get out of the PLP and if you don?t get out we are going to do you in or burn you up?.

?I couldn?t believe what I was hearing. I thought about it for a couple of days but they knocked on the wrong door and spoke to the wrong man. It made me angry when it sank in.?

He says one member of the UBP (whom he won?t name) called him two or three times.

?It got to a point that the man was so upset with me.

?The man was hoping for me to get out of the PLP because he was disturbed what would come out of an election.?

Mr. Farias, 73, believes the UBP saw him as a white man who was upsetting the apple cart, unsettling the political landscape of the Island.

?When you are a threat to power and they think that they are going to lose it all, then they rise up. They figured that I would hurt the UBP and I?d hurt the system.?

He never saw it like that. Race played no part in his decision to join the PLP ? though he acknowledges that his Portuguese Azorean heritage may have given him some insight into being a ?second, even third class citizen?.

The father-of-three entered the party after joining the union to push for fishermen?s rights.

?I never looked at it between black and white,? he says. ?I have always gotten along with my black brothers and sisters.

?I never gave it a thought. They are Bermudians just like me. When you talk about fishermen, I think they are the most integrated industry. They accept anyone.?

So did the PLP accept him? He says it would be wrong to say he was ?welcomed wholly and fully?, adding that his ?black sisters? were the first to really make him feel at home in the party.

His own family fully supported his decision to join, though he knows it was unusual.

?You look at the whites that have been in the PLP. They have been ostracised, socially, financially, family-wise.

?Any way they can knock you down and get you out of there, out of the union and out of the PLP, they will do it. That?s the way Bermuda society has been built.?

Despite this, Mr. Farias thinks there are now increasing numbers of non-blacks who support his party.

?The PLP could have never got in power just on a black vote,? he says.

Ill health has made him less active in politics than he once was but he firmly believes the party has achieved much since the 1998 election win.

And, having lived through so much of Bermuda?s volatile racial past ? he says he had his window blown out by Erskine (Buck) Burrows before the notorious murders of the police commissioner, governor and his aide-de-camp and gunshots are still visible on the shutters of his home in Fourth Avenue ? he now wishes the electorate would focus on something other than race.

?When we won the power the first time around it was a good thing and the best thing, I believe, that has happened to Bermuda.

?We have to stop all this nonsense. You have to care about your neighbour before you care about yourself. The PLP are doing that.

?You don?t look at them as black people. They are Bermudians. They are doing their job for Bermuda.?

For Jonathan Starling, the decision to join the PLP was overshadowed by a different kind of threat to that experienced by Mr. Farias.

The 27-year-old voted for the PLP in the 1998 election but waited until the party won before signing up to its ranks.

?After the election I decided it was safe to join the party,? he explains. ?They always say if you join the PLP you are going to be economically blacklisted. I wasn?t afraid of any physical threats. I figured that now the party had become the Government it was safe.

?I do not know if it still occurs, economic blacklisting. Sometimes the phantom is even worse than the reality. There is the idea that there would be repercussions.?

His reasons for joining the party ? and the Bermuda Industrial Union ? were rooted in class, rather than race.

?In Bermuda race and class have been confused,? he says. ?I voted on an ideology. I figured the UBP had served the interests of business for too long and it was time to get a better social balance. I thought the PLP was more likely to do that.?

Mr. Starling, who lives in Hamilton Parish, thinks other whites with similar political leanings may be put off joining the PLP because of the perception of it as a black party.

And he doesn?t think recent comments by leading members of his party, such as David Burch?s remarks about ?house niggers? or Ewart Brown?s refusal to answer so-called ?plantation questions?, are ?helpful?, seeing them as an electoral tactic which ?blurs the actual reality?.

?I think it opens up Pandora?s Box,? he says. ?I don?t think race is fundamental to the social problem. It?s not incidental either. Race has blurred things; it has confused things in the past.

?There is the perception, which the PLP or at least some members of the PLP, have exploited as you see with those racial comments. They have used that for political means I believe or it has been taken out of context and hyped up by the media.?

He claims there are black ?racialists? in the party who ?think purely in black nationalist terms?.

But he adds: ?Within the party I have always been treated as an equal. No one has ever said anything that I construe as racialist at all.

?In the party the person sitting next to me is a brother or a sister. There has never been any discrimination.?

He thinks the party markets itself as ?for all?.

?I think they are already saying that. I think they have been saying it for a long time. All through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

?I do not see the PLP as a black party. In the early history of the party and even today they have bent over backwards to include whites in the party.?

Mr. Starling attributes the lack of white members ? he reckons they represent about ten percent of the PLP membership ? to economics.

He says it is the party for workers and the majority of the Island?s workers are black.

?There are other white members of the PLP,? he says. ?When I first joined the party I used to go to the big meetings in Alaska Hall and usually there were about three whites in total in a room of maybe 30 people. Some were middle class whites, some were working class whites.?

He adds: ?I would be pretty sure that there are white middle class people who do support the PLP but don?t support it publicly.?

His views lead to ?interesting discussions? in the pub with his white, UBP-supporting friends.

?When I have been in those white circles and I have been defending the party I have been told that I?m being used,? he says.

?That?s the equivalent of being called a house honky. I have never had a problem within the party but I have had problems with whites who are pro-UBP.?

According to him, Bermuda?s ills can be almost solely attributed to class and power, rather than race.

?If the entire working class of a population is black and the entire upper class is white it?s very easy to confuse the problem as race.?

He is hopeful that the Government will start to focus on this and follow a more traditional labour path.

?I?m not sure if they have gone slow to begin with or if they plan creeping social reforms,? he says. ?I grew disillusioned with the party about two years after I joined it, in 2000. I?m active again now and I think they are doing more. I?m hoping they are laying the foundations for more social government.?