A radio show broadcast in which host Lt. Col. David Burch, newly appointed as a Government Minister and Senator, cut off anti-Independence callers and allegedly referred to them on air as the United Bermuda Party?s ?house niggers? was brought to the centre of a race row in Parliament last night.

As the issue of whether or not the Government should go ahead with its own information television channel was spotlighted, the remark and actions of Sen. Burch ? who was not part of the Government at the time of the show in August this year ? were referred to as an example of censorship.

Reading from a letter of complaint she has sent to the Director of Telecommunications and the Human Rights Commission, Shadow Works Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin said she had been listening to the show Bermuda Speaks 107.5 on August 7 which featured a discussion on Independence and one caller had said that ?anyone in Bermuda who wants Independence should go to Zimbabwe? before they were cut off by Lt. Col. Burch.

Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin said she was ?taken aback? but then another caller to the show rang in to complain and said the host?s actions in cutting off the first caller was an infringement of freedom of speech.

?The host then cut off the second caller. He said: ?This is my show and I?m not going to allow the UBP to get their house niggers to call up.?

?And what has happened? The individual gets elevated to a position in Cabinet. It was offensive that this was done on the airwaves the comment did not fit in any way with what was decent or proper,? said Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin.

The Shadow Minister said she was waiting to hear what action is to be taken as a result of her complaint to the Department of Telecommunications and the Broadcasting Commissioners.

?When we have an attitude that permits such statements to be made but there is no sanction and the individual is elevated to Cabinet,? she added, at which point Premier Alex Scott stood up and said there was no correlation between what was alleged to have been broadcast and the appointment of Lt. Col. Burch as Minister for Works and Engineering and Housing last month.

House Speaker Stanley Lowe said that, as the matter was still actively being investigated, the matter was closed and said a copy of the letter from which Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin had read and offered to put on the House record was not needed.

The Shadow Minister continued and said a former Attorney General had referred to her as a ?black buffoon? and a fellow Parliamentarian had chided her as being a maid to white masters.

?If we are talking about positive race relations on one hand and on the other hand people can make statements that are inflammatory, then the Government is paying lip service to something that is at the very core of society.?

In reply Wayne Perinchief, the newly appointed Minister of National Drug Control, said Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin was trying to ?defend a system and a group of people who brought about the system that had brought (racial) discomfort to her father?.

He said he considered himself and all blacks in Bermuda to be victims of racism and said that race may be a ?passport? to join the UBP.

He said that every time there is a mixing of the races, it is dismantled by the powers that be, the corporations and the ?families that run the country ? they have never embraced the mixing of the races. It has always been blacks trying to integrate with white people.?

He said the problem would continue until black and white met on a level playing field.

And Mr. Perinchief went further to claim that giving British Territory citizens Bermudian status, and also to those from other parts of the Commonwealth and to Portuguese settlers, had led to ?their offspring turning against us, saying ?We are going to use our vote to stop your shift to Independence?.?

He added: ?We should not be accommodating white people who continue to be racist and deny a person a job based on their colour. We have facts that black people earn less in the workplace than white people. We do not run these corporations or firms.?

Mr. Perinchief also hit out at the UBP?s ?impertinence? for criticising Government?s lack of a timetable over an Independence referendum, when he said it had failed to clearly outline its stance on the issue.

He said the PLP was now going to take control of the ship ?and take it in the direction we think it should go?, adding the country was heading towards a ?new horizon? and could not stay in the ?doldrums?.