Read David Waddington Memoirs Online
Authors: David Waddington
While all this was going on, a number of other people were arriving at Government House, all apparently coming to urge me to see that the law was obeyed and the referendum took place. Albert and Louise Jackson, Jim King and Eldon Trimingham were to the fore. Albert, they thought, should speak for them all and demand that if polling could not take place that day it must take place the next; and off he went to deliver that message over the air. Albert was by nature slow to stir but when he realised things were not being done properly he spoke out fearlessly; and he did so on this occasion in suitably sonorous and weighty tones. Meanwhile John Swan, who at Prospect had been protesting loudly that whether the referendum should go ahead was a matter for the civil servants, had at the same time been making it plain that his preference was for an indefinite postponement. He then had breakfast with his friend Edgar Wilkinson, who later told the waiting world what he had presumably been told by the Premier – that the referendum would be held in December.
That afternoon Ann DeCouto made an application in the High
Court for an order that the parliamentary registrar be required to carry out her function in accordance with the Independence Referendum Act 1995 and a declaration that the Secretary of the Cabinet’s purported postponing of the poll was unlawful. The Attorney-General resisted the application and refused to give an undertaking that polling would take place the following morning, but even while he was talking returning officers were setting out from the government building on the way to the polling stations.
John Swan then summoned an emergency meeting of the Cabinet. What happened there is by no means clear, but just before 7 p.m. a formal announcement was made by the government that polling would indeed take place the following day.
The next day was a bit of an anticlimax. The polling stations opened promptly at 10 a.m. and voting continued in an orderly fashion throughout the day. Due to the crazy counting system (each individual voting paper was held up for inspection by the scrutineers and, when they had all had the chance to establish that it was indeed a voting paper and not an invitation to the vicarage tea party, was placed on the appropriate pile), the final result was not announced until 6.20 on the morning of the 17th. Even then there was a discrepancy between the total votes cast and the figure arrived at by adding together the ‘yes’ votes, the ‘no’ votes and the spoiled papers; but a clear enough question had been posed on the ballot paper (Are you in favour of independence for Bermuda?) and a clear enough answer had been given by the people.
Yes: 25.6% (5,714)
No: 73.7% (16,369)
Turnout: 58.8% (22,236)
Predictably, Freddy Wade claimed a victory for the PLP and his boycott. If, however, the turnout had been 80 per cent (and it was
only 78 per cent at the 1993 general election) instead of 58.8 per cent and if every single additional voter had voted ‘yes’, the result would still have been ‘no’. In fact, in comparison with previous
referendums
, the poll was high: in 1990 only 32.6 per cent of the electorate had turned out to vote in the referendum on capital punishment.
We had to leave the Island the same day and a short time later John Swan tendered his resignation to the deputy governor.
The attention of the press was focused not only on the result but on what one journalist described as the constitutionally
jaw-dropping
shenanigans of the previous two days. When asked if Bermudian democracy had gone off the rails on the Tuesday morning, Jim Woolridge, a senior and well respected UBP member opposed to independence said: ‘I wouldn’t say “off the rails”, but it took a turn not in keeping with the best that civilisation has to offer.’ Dr Dyer commented: ‘The government is engaged in a crazy, banana republic-like activity. If there ever was an example of why this isn’t the time to go independent, this is the example.’
After the result the reaction of the British media was
interesting
. Most commentators seemed genuinely delighted at what had occurred and reflected in their pieces the pleasure felt by people in England that there were some in the world who were actually proud of and wanted to maintain the British connection.
My own role received some praise. Under the heading
‘GOVERNOR CATCHES THE BREEZE’
Mandrake in the
Sunday Telegraph
wrote:
Bermudians voted by three to one in last Wednesday’s referendum to remain a British colony, after polling was delayed twenty-four hours by Hurricane Felix. News now reaches me that the hurricane caused such confusion about what happens when the gods strike in this way on polling day that those opposed to the colony
remaining
British were able to hatch a plot which very nearly stopped the referendum taking place at all. Had the Governor not mugged up
on his electoral law, and had those intrepid returning officers not done their duty, the referendum would have been cancelled – not just postponed – until a new Referendum Act was passed.
Martin Vander Weyer in the
Daily Telegraph
wrote:
It is difficult to resist a faint throbbing of emotion at the decision of a self-contained community thousands of miles away which was offered the chance of severing its links with Blighty but chose not to do so. That says something about the way Bermuda is seen in the world, and it must be worth at least three small cheers. What Bermuda clearly thought it would lose is that intangible sense of British stability. The risk for islands within reach of North and South America is that they may become offshore hideaways for giant sums of drug money and the gangsters that travel with it; to be a satellite of Britain is to have a measure of protection against such sinister influences. Independence may bring self-esteem and a seat, somewhere below the salt, at the table of world affairs – a wishful thinking element in the pro-independence manifesto of Bermuda’s Premier, Sir John Swan, was that nationhood would allow the island to play a regional role in the UN. But for many new nations of the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, such trappings have hardly been worth the costs to citizens in terms of repression, economic mismanagement and rampant corruption, bringing in their train a decline of educational and social standards rather than the improvement which ‘progressive’ new regimes always promise, and a harvest of environmental damage.
At home in England I was surprised to learn a few days later that the dry, pedantic and white David Saul had been elected leader by the Parliamentary Party – by a clear majority of two to one over Jim Woolridge who had been billed as the people’s choice. The
anti-independence group then overplayed its hand, demanding far more in terms of offices than they could reasonably expect and, by lobbying as a team to get for their team what they thought was their due, they gave David Saul reason to say that he was not going to repeat the mistakes of John Swan and have a party-within-
a-party
. So at the end of the day, those who had won the referendum were almost entirely absent from the new government.
The PLP said they were determined to get to the bottom of the goings-on on polling day and as soon as Parliament met would move the setting up of a commission of inquiry. David Saul delivered a pre-emptive strike and advised me to set up a commission forthwith. I did so under the chairmanship of the Rt Hon. Telford Georges, retired judge of the Court of Appeal of Bermuda and Law Reform commissioner for the Bahamas, and when the commission reported I was relieved but not unduly surprised to find no criticism of my intervention on the 15th and, while there was comment on the failure of the government to make a public announcement until after the 5.30 p.m. Cabinet meeting, which magnified the suspicions that something devious was afoot, there was, the commission said, no evidence of political interference.
There was then a piece in the
Royal Gazette
on the 28 November about the outcome of the referendum in which there was reference to the work done by Governors’ wives:
There is now a long tradition of Bermuda paying the salary of a Governor and getting two hard workers for the price of one. Governors’ wives have made an enormous contribution, especially to Bermuda’s charities. Bermuda has a history of women who work hard for charity but governors’ wives do not have to do so. Wives could well play hostess and chair a few charity meetings. Nothing says they have to work hard, yet governors’ wives do work hard for Bermuda.
In the charity world it was estimated recently that the present Governor’s wife has raised charity funds the equivalent of seven times the Governor’s salary every year she has been in Bermuda. Lady Waddington has done that on top of a heavy schedule of public duties and endless demands on her time as the Government House hostess where incumbents operate a combination official entertainment centre and government guest house. Bermuda should have remembered all that when there was a recent
suggestion
to cut the Governor’s salary.
Gilly deserved this recognition.
That autumn Rastafarians on the Island had started coming up through the garden from the north shore in order to smoke pot in the shade of the princess palm planted by Haile Selassie. The police wanted to clap them in irons but, thinking that that might have unfortunate repercussions, I made a bargain with their leaders. They could come up once a month and I, while not prepared to smoke pot with them, would join them in a prayer and a dance round the tree. This happened once, but I think they found my presence embarrassing and inhibiting and they faded out of our lives.
At about this time Gilly and I went to breakfast with Norma Astwood, one of the independent members of the Senate, at her house overlooking Flatts. It was a traditional salt cod breakfast, a reminder of the days when Bermudian ships used to rake salt in their de facto colony the Turks Island, trade it for rum in Jamaica and sell some of the rum for cod in Newfoundland before
returning
home with this most sought-after delicacy. Norma was one great public servant in the black community. Marjorie Bean was another and I was delighted when in my time Marjorie became Bermuda’s first dame, with a tree in Government House garden to prove it. A teacher by profession, she was one of the first women
to be appointed to the Legislative Council. Born in 1909, she did not look anything like her age and she spoke with a clipped
upper-class
accent. There was a very rough chap who when not in gaol worked as a caddy at Mid Ocean, and one day I asked him how he had acquired his most distinguished Oxford accent. ‘From Dr Bean, sir,’ he replied with pride.
T
horold Masefield, High Commissioner in Nigeria, was named as my successor. He was to take up his duties in June after our departure at the end of April 1997. Meanwhile Gilly had taken off for Australia, Jenny having given birth to James Charles, and Victoria enjoyed herself riding in the landau to the opening of Parliament.
The regiment earned itself some bad publicity. A recruit at ‘boot camp’ who claimed to be a Rastafarian had his head shorn while handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the barrack square; a lawyer, who the previous year had himself escaped military service by claiming a conscientious objection, threatened to take the regiment to court. A hurried meeting of the Exemption Tribunal was summoned, and there the man was asked to explain why he objected to serving in the army when almost every photograph of Emperor Haile Selassie (whom the Rastifarians claimed as their leader) showed him in uniform. Indeed, when he had visited Bermuda, he had been taken to inspect a guard of honour of the Bermuda Regiment. The recruit’s somewhat feeble reply was that he would be happy to serve in an army commanded by Haile Selassie but not an army led by the Queen. The tribunal, in spite of this, held that Private Harvey had a genuine conscientious objection to serving in the regiment and when the matter came before me I was advised that (a) I had to accept the tribunal’s conclusion and
(b) I had no power to order the man to render some other form of public service.
The Mental Health Foundation (Gilly’s baby) staged the second annual Dick Wilkie Memorial Lecture at Government House. The commissioner of prisons, Ed Dyer, was the speaker, and when at Question Time there was a deathly hush, I asked Ed whether he thought there was any connection between the behaviour of prisoners and their diet, commenting that: ‘When we fill people up with junk food, hamburgers and all that rubbish, it would be surprising if there was not a connection.’ The next morning I found my off the cuff remarks were headline news in the
Royal Gazette
, having unwittingly strayed into a debate about whether a company headed by John Swan should be allowed to operate a McDonald’s restaurant on the Island. I was well on the way to being accused of taking sides on the issue.
At about this time there was an exchange between the Foreign Office and the UN decolonisation committee. The Foreign Office was rightly of the view that it was pretty cheeky of the committee not to accept that the remaining dependent territories were perfectly free to change their status if they wished and the dependent
territories
should not be on the so-called ‘Committee of Twenty-Four’ list. Officials thought that it might be possible to reach agreement with the committee that there should be one last visit from the committee to satisfy themselves that the people of the dependent territories had a free choice, after which the territories would be delisted. I was not happy with what officials proposed, fearing that we might not be able to control the agenda; and if public
meetings
were held, there would be an opportunity for malcontents to reopen what at the moment was a dead issue. No visit had been arranged by the time I left the Island.
The Bermuda Red Cross asked me to invite HRH Princess Alexandra to come to the Island to open their new headquarters
and when she and Sir Angus Ogilvy arrived, Sir Angus took me aside and said that he had only just discovered that the Bermuda Red Cross had paid for their first-class tickets. He thought many people who had worked hard to provide funds for the Red Cross might not be happy at the money they had earned being spent in this way and he was giving me a cheque for £10,000 to cover the cost of the tickets. The next day I handed the cheque to Ann Spencer-Arscott, the Secretary of the Red Cross, with Sir Angus’s instruction that only those who needed to know should be told what had happened. I fervently hoped that his wishes would be ignored.
We then visited Arcadia House which had been bought by the Mental Health Foundation which Gilly had helped to start. After that we went to Fair Havens, a home for young women who have fallen foul of drugs. There were nine residents, most still in their teens and virtually all of them with a background of prostitution. Princess Alexandra could not have handled the situation better. She sat down with the group and then questioned them,
sympathetically
but without any false sentiment or pulling of punches, as to how they had finished up homeless, destitute and dependent on drugs and how they were going to avoid drifting back into the mess from which they had so recently escaped.
It was a very successful royal visit and HRH could not have gone to more trouble talking to people and making them feel that she was interested in them and in Bermuda.
Then there was dramatic news on the political front. David Saul announced his intention not only to resign as Premier but to give up his seat. The hunt was on for a new leader of the UBP, but David Saul had prepared the ground carefully and it soon became apparent that a great effort was going to be made to avoid a contested
election
and have Pamela Gordon acclaimed leader without a contest. So it worked out. On the following Monday when nominations
closed she was the only candidate. Pamela Gordon was articulate, friendly and tough and in my view an inspired choice as leader. Her father was Dr E. T. Gordon, the Trinidad-born civil rights and trade union hero, and the fact that she had surmounted difficulties in her life of the kind faced by many women in Bermuda – she had had a child when a teenager and then after getting married had quite quickly become divorced – helped her to relate to people and, with some justice, she put herself forward as someone who really
understood
Bermuda and the Bermudians.
My remaining tasks were social rather than political and
enjoyable
if exhausting. We went boating with Ray Moore and played
boules
on a cold beach. A special concert was given in our honour by the choir of St Mark’s Church, the Thorntons gave us dinner, as did the Bishop and my splendid aide-de-camp Eddie Lamb and his wife.
We threw two parties at Government House – a buffet supper for 150 and, for the very old, a lunch. There was a golf match in my honour and a special game with the pros from both Mid Ocean and St George’s. I was hugely embarrassed when off the first tee I really whacked the ball and holed in two. But the Lord was kind to me and the tut-tutting and suggestions that I was pretending to an incompetence which I did not deserve faded away when for the rest of the match my performance was abysmal.
The Town of St George then gave us a farewell reception, as did the National Trust and Masterworks. The Dinghy Club was not to be outdone and gave us dinner, and there followed dinner with Bob Farmer, the US Consul-General. That was kind of Bob who was still smarting from Gilly’s refusal to sit down to dinner with Edward Kennedy who, as far as Gilly was concerned, was
consorting
with and apologising for IRA terrorists and was not a person to be indulged.
Tom Butterfield threw a marvellous picnic on Long Island; and the Peppercorn Ceremony at St George’s was rather special as our
friend Colin Curtis, in his capacity as Grand Master of the Lodge, was responsible for handing over the peppercorn as rent for State House. He coated the peppercorn in gold. The Premier gave a dinner for us at Camden and presented us with a fitted dinghy in a bottle.
We went out to lunch with Ann Smith Gordon and she showed us a very special walk over to the south shore. We paid our normal visits to the Agricultural Show and had a goodbye dinner with the Darlings. We were driven up to Government House in Patsy Phillips’s donkey cart. The donkeys came to a sudden halt where a line of bricks crossed the drive and took some coaxing to finish the journey.
The last Sunday involved farewells at St John’s in the morning and the presentation of a painting of the church, the St George’s Day Scouts’ service in the afternoon at St James’s, Somerset and a visit from Malcolm and Debbie Butterfield and their horse-riding son Raymonde in the evening.
On Tuesday 29 April 1997 we went down to the Senate House in the carriage for the official leave-taking. After the inspection of a guard of honour from the regiment and speeches from Pamela Gordon and myself, Gilly and I said goodbye to literally hundreds of people who were formed up in groups on the grass – politicians, civil servants, workers for charity, our own Government House staff and personal friends. We then drove back to Government House, changed and set off for the airport, and at ten past eight we were in the air on our way home.
When given the chance to be governor I did not doubt that I was being very privileged; and as I prepared to go, quite
over-whelmed
by the warmth of the leave-taking ceremony, I knew what a lucky man I had been to have spent the best part of five years in such a place. Bermuda’s history, quite apart from its present, will never cease to fascinate me. It seems so wonderful that the
passengers and crew of the
Sea Venture
under the leadership of Sir George Somers never lost sight of their duty and that in two tiny new ships they should have struggled on to Virginia to get fresh provisions to the colony. After being formally settled Bermuda did not provide an easy living for the adventurers who had braved the perils of the sea to get there. They suffered many hardships and
set-backs
but no one can doubt that in building a great little country they achieved far more than most. Of course, there are bound to be strains when so small an island is shared by people with very different backgrounds. Of course, the scars of slavery will never be entirely healed, but I met plenty of people in the black, in the white and in the Portuguese communities who found no difficulty working in harmony with people of different races; Bermuda is a pretty successful multiracial society.
I was very lucky in the two deputy governors who served with me, John Kelly who went on to be the Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Peter Willis who retired to play golf in France. I had with me a wife who carried a hefty burden of work and was a tower of strength throughout and, in particular, in times of difficulty. I look back on my time in Bermuda with great joy and thankfulness to the people of the Island.