politics by polling Bermudians on who should succeed him.

But Bank of Bermuda chairman Mr. Eldon Trimingham denied the charge. Bank of Butterfield chairman Sir David Gibbons was off the Island and could not be reached for comment.

Sources told The Royal Gazette that Penn & Schoen has recently been conducting a poll which included questions measuring the relative popularity of possible contenders for Premier, should the Hon. Sir John Swan resign.

Sir John has said he will step down if Bermudians vote `no' to Independence next Tuesday.

Penn & Schoen of New York has long been the United Bermuda Party's main pollster.

Interviewed yesterday after he appeared at a news conference announcing the Coalition for the Independence of Bermuda, Sir John charged that the Penn & Schoen poll was being paid for by the Bank of Bermuda and the Bank of Butterfield.

"I find it strange,'' Sir John said yesterday. "Certainly that was an organisation that did the party polling, and you wake up one day and find out they're really polling on behalf of someone else and you don't have access to the information.'' Sir John said: "It's almost like they want to run the politics from Front Street.'' Questions were being asked by party pollsters on behalf of the banks about "the internal politics of the party'' and who should "run the politics of the Country,'' he said.

It was "being paid for by the (banks') shareholders to determine the composition of the Government,'' he said. "That's a blatant form of interference.'' But Mr. Trimingham denied the Bank of Bermuda was interfering in politics. The Bank of Bermuda used Penn & Schoen "to do regular polling on all kinds of subjects to determine the public's view of what the bank is doing'', he said.

A recent poll included "a number of names of leaders in the community'' to learn "the public view of them, not to determine who would be a good Premier'', Mr. Trimingham said.

Asked if the names were all those of Government Cabinet Ministers, he said: "I don't think so.'' Asked the intention of the poll, he said it was to learn "simply the feeling of the public in general and the confidence the public in general might have in various people''.

The poll might have been conducted in conjunction with the Bank of Butterfield, but "it would have been interpreted differently'' by the other bank, he said.

A few months ago, Penn & Schoen was conducting another poll on behalf of the banks from the UBP's Chancery Lane offices.

"We put a stop to that,'' Sir John said yesterday. "That was immoral.''