Theatre boycott legend Kingsley Tweed yesterday reviled the actions of the rebel 11 Government MPs in ousting former Premier Jennifer Smith after last year's General Election.

“I don't like what they've done to her,” Rev. Tweed said in a forceful condemnation of the rebel 11, who forced Ms Smith to resign just days after she led the Progressive Labour Party to a second General Election victory last July.

“I don't like what they've done to her ... and Mr. Scott, if you're listening, I don't care.”

And to loud applause for himself and Ms Smith, sitting in the front rows of the congregation of the Grace Methodist Church yesterday, he said: “We've got to learn how to appreciate each other.

“We've got to learn to appreciate people like Jennifer Smith more.”

Rev. Tweed was the guest speaker at the Grace Methodist Church's 104th anniversary yesterday. Until last year he was in a 40-year self-imposed exile from the Island after taking a leading role in desegregating the Island's theatres.

Though he maintained “this is not a political broadcast”, Rev. Tweed had some other choice words for Bermuda's politicians - in both the PLP and the “BUP”.

Both Housing Minister Ashfield DeVent and his Shadow counterpart Wayne Furbert came in for criticism after they battled on the front page of last Friday's Mid-Ocean News about who was to blame for the problems facing Bermuda today.

“They both ought to shut up because they're both wrong, and this Island needs both their talents,” said Rev. Tweed, adding that it takes people from all sides to run a Country, and that Bermuda's issues cross political lines.

“What went wrong 35 years ago didn't go wrong 35 years ago, it went wrong 350 years ago,” he said.

Rev. Tweed also spoke about the environmental contamination left behind when the US closed its bases.

He called on Environment Minister Neletha Butterfield, also sitting in the congregation yesterday, to “get on a plane tomorrow and go straight to Washington, D.C. and demand to see Mr. Bush”.

Bypass both Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell, he joked. “You might as well go straight to the top. He (George Bush) ain't got too much smarts anyhow, he don't even know where Bermuda is.”

Serious again, he added: “Inform him, face-to-face, not through Caricom (or any other international organisation) ... but as a leader of this Island loud and clear, ‘Look at what you have left behind in my country. I want something done about it.'

“I wish the PLP would stay in power for a generation. But I don't believe that will be possible,” he added.

Instead, he called on the Island's different churches to stand up.

“Let there be no more war in the name of God Almighty ... where the Church remains silent,” he said in reference both to the war in Iraq and the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. “Blair, Bush, Saddam Hussein, how can you distinguish between them? I can't.”

“I'm past caring what people say,” he said - including the newspapers.

Criticising The Royal Gazette, and black journalists on the staff in particular for “merging their interests” with the powers-that-be at the paper, he said: “One day God will raise up a black newspaper ... that will go out and tell the truth about our history.”

An understanding and education of Bermudian history will give Bermudians an identity, he said.

“We need to start building some monuments to ourselves ... to say they've (our ancestors) been here, they passed this way and made this Island what it is ... They gave all they had and never got paid for it.

“Get a command of your history and who you are, and you'll be better for it.” And better equipped to inform those oppressing you, he added.

“Search amongst the rubbish heaps of history and find who you are ... Discover the lost courage of the human personality.”