In a speech laced with more than a little frustration at the Opposition, Attorney General Dame Lois Browne Evans yesterday declared capitalism as the root cause of many of the world's injustices and said that she would die a socialist.

"We who have suffered through slavery cannot be the ones to endorse anybody's enslavement of another person," she said. "Capitalism and the business world has a lot to be ashamed of," she said as she questioned a system which she said allowed deplorable poverty amidst massive wealth in the western world."

"You think that's something to be proud of?" she asked. "I want to let you know, Mr. Speaker, in the name of capitalism more things have been done to God's creatures than can ever be done."

Her remarks came in the middle of the motion to adjourn during yesterday's sitting of the House of Assembly.

The motion, an opportunity for free-for-all debate on current issues, capped a short sitting in which three bills were passed. United Bermuda Party (UBP) MPs took the opportunity to criticise the Government over its efforts to develop cultural links with Cuba, a recent debacle over the use of the National Sports Centre, an ongoing shortage of speech therapists and dentists and repeated allegations that the Berkeley construction project will be hopelessly delayed and over budget.

But it was the Cuba controversy that raised Dame Lois' ire. She mocked the Opposition's Cole Simons who had praised Government's efforts to help senior citizens with their hospital insurance coverage, saying the move was part of "socialism in another form" and he was not even aware of it.

"He better watch out. He will soon be talking about taking care of people from the cradle to the grave and then he will still say he's a capitalist," she said.

"Until they take a new political label those members on the other side have to bear the burden of all the sins of capitalism."

She added: "I pride myself that if I have to be labeled I have been aptly labelled a socialist for many years. I hope to die one. I hope I will never be labeled a capitalist. I certainly done want to be labelled a capitalist."

She invited aspiring politicians and the younger members of the UBP to read a book called the `Geography of Hunger'.

"The funny thing is it was written by a Castro," she quipped. "You can't read it and not feel afterward that something is wrong. Man can split the atom. They can build the Concorde, they can do everything but they will not get together."

And she criticised the recent meetings of the G-8 nations for focusing on building wealth and doing nothing to reduce world hunger. The Opposition's objections over Government's moves to develop cultural links with Cuba were yet another example of how "small and insignificant and petty we are," declared the Attorney General.

She had returned to the Island after a one-week absence to read "same old" arguments being bandied about in the public. "I thought by the time I came back I would hear some other argument as to why we should not develop cultural relations with Cuba," she said. Dame Lois poured scorn on Opposition allegations that her party was condoning human rights violations in Cuba.

"I want this country to know that black people in Bermuda have suffered human rights (violations) and destruction of our souls and our children in education." But it had taken the Progressive Labour Party to lead positive changes. The party had abolished capital punishment on human rights grounds, she reminded the House. "Human rights were being violated for years in this country. We're not trying to violate, we are against hangings, we are against executions."

And in a reference to news that retired dance school owner Louise Jackson had been declared a UBP candidate she said that Bermuda would not be best served by new politicians who simply wanted to do something with their spare time.

"I just want for people to have a broader outlook. We don't want you with just spare time. Let's bring some political knowledge and some political understanding into this debate."