I<$> HAVE always been loath to criticise people who have accepted a Queen’s honour because I have considered that is their personal right to accept or decline such awards. However, from a personal point of view, my position would be quite clear if such an award was ever offered to me.As one who supports and advocates sovereign Independence for Bermuda, then on principle, as long as the island remains a British Overseas Territory, I am bound to decline any such offer.

Now this does not mean that I am attempting to degrade the British system of national honours and awards. I am well aware that the British system of honours evolved out of that country’s historical development and therefore is a legitimate expression of the British people.

Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory. However, the island’s constitutional status is not one that sits well with me. I will never agree or accept that I am British. I do not feel British, I don’t want to be British. I am Bermudian.

I have often said that in regards to an Independent Bermuda, I will take both the flag and the responsibility. What does that mean? It means I will accept the responsibility of maintaining my country along with the new symbols of nationhood like a flag and national anthem.

But it also means something else. It means that I will forego any privilege that my former colonial ruler may have extended if my county had remained constitutionally linked to the United Kingdom.

I will stand in the other line at the airport if that is what’s required when I visit another man’s country on the passport of an Independent Bermuda. I do not expect to enjoy privileges that the citizens of that country enjoys as a matter of right of citizenship.

I do not know what was in the mind of the Progressive Labour Party Government when it floated the idea that the Bermuda Independence Commission (BIC) members should receive a Queen’s honour award from the very country that remains Bermuda’s colonial ruler (at least technically) given the Commission’s mandate was to explore the whole issue of severing our last constitutional ties with Britain.

Awarding the commissioners the Queen’s Certificate & Badge of Honour for their work would seem to be the greatest contradiction imaginable both in terms of logic and context. After all, if you appoint a commission to produce a report that has all of the hallmarks of being a pro-Independence manifesto and then you turn around and recommend honours from the very country you are seeking to break away from, it is clear something is not in sync, that the thought process has been disrupted somewhere along the line.

The PLP Government has taken a lot of stick for producing a document that has all of the appearances of being a pro-Independence policy paper (although Government will not officially admit that it is such). That is what I would have done if I was a pro-Independence advocate with a policy making role on the Government benches.

But I can understand how the PLP has found itself in its current predicament. For despite claiming to be supportive of Independence, it is in no way clear that this is, in fact, the policy of the Government. While we have heard a lot of double-talk about the fact the PLP as a political party supports the concept of Independence for Bermuda, the PLP Government has yet to announce that the quest for Bermudian sovereignty is an urgent policy objective.

To be a supporter of Independence you have to be an advocate for Independence. And, to my mind, the PLP stopped being an active campaigner for nationhood when under the leadership of the late L Frederick Wade it called for a boycott of former Premier Sir John Swan’s Independence referendum in 1995 for political reasons.

Today, we have a PLP Government that, rather than taking a clear lead on the issue, is attempting to lead from behind.Bermuda<$> may be one of the last remaining British colonial territories and the circumstances of moving the island towards Independence may — in some respects — be unique. But there is one unalterable reality that all former colonies have gone through, and that is the fact that no country has progressed towards Independence without being led by a political leadership that is clear this is their goal. Only when you have a party absolutely committed to Independence do you see the creation of a grassroots pro-Independence movement that encourages the people to move in that direction.

In a sense the example of former staunch Independence advocate Rolfe Commissiong in accepting the Queen’s honour is symbolic of the position of the PLP Government as a whole on this issue. Bermuda does not have its own system of awards, lacking both the courage and the initiative to put such a system in place.

Government attempts to claim that the twice-yearly British honours are, in fact, Bermudian awards. While it may be true that Bermuda’s Government nominates the recipients the fact remains we are awarding our people using the British honours system.

We, in fact, devalue ourselves as a country by not creating our own system of national awards which to my mind would be more meaningful than handing out those which have their origins and history in another man’s country.