This article was taken from our archives. It first appeared in the May 1994 issue of The Bermudian. It appears here exactly as it did originally.
In 1919, four teachers attended a funeral at St. John’s Church in Pembroke. They were paying their respects to the third of three teachers who had died in quick succession. So concerned were they about the conditions of teachers, they decided to form, right there in the graveyard, Bermuda’s first union, the Bermuda Union of Teachers (B.U.T.) Of the four founders, three were women.
Knowingly or not, Adele Tucker, cousins Matilda and Edith Crawford, together with Rev. Rufus Stovell, had rekindled the efforts of the Island’s labour movement begun 64 years earlier. It was the start of a major contribution by women that has carried through until today.
In October 1855, 536 black men signed a petition to the Legislative Council in protest against a government proposal to increase the funds aimed at attracting foreign farm workers rather than give a pay increase to Bermudian farmers.
Trouble flared again in 1863 when a group of black St. George’s residents went on strike for higher pay against their employer — the Confederate Government of the United States South.
Then in 1919, Bermudian teachers decided to organise. One grievance was pay. Recalling the segregated system of the time, Miss Tucker once said that teachers in the “coloured schools” were not paid for children they were teaching, while teachers in the white schools were paid for children they were not teaching.
On the B.U.T.’s 40th anniversary in 1959, Miss Tucker said of the union’s beginnings: “I cannot say, as is said of the Renaissance, that a new and better order of things arose — I wish I could. Many changes had taken place in the educational system in Bermuda … and the common temper called for immediate adjustments.” Miss Tucker and a host of teachers recalled, on the anniversary, how the union “struggled along for many years” in “a consistent drive to effect better and better standards of education in general and in the teaching profession in particular.”
By the time it received its charter on Feb. 13, 1947 under the Trade Union Act of 1946, Elizabeth Musson Kawaley and Marjorie Bean had, in the early and mid ’40s, been among the leaders guiding the B.U.T. through the choppy waters of what Rosalind Robinson calls the “Fighting Forties” – when all facets of social and business life remained rigidly segregated and racial discrimination was very much in evidence in housing and employment. As evidence of the tone of the times, Mrs. Robinson recounted how, as a direct result of raising their voices for change, the mortgage was called on their home even though she and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Robinson – both staunch B.U.T. activists – had faithfully made their payments on time. But these women did not navigate these waters alone.
Most notable, among many, were Ida Seager Trott, Cynthia Brown Bosfield, Louisa Gardiner Richards and Dr. Yvonne Allen Blackett. Arising out of a need, in the words of Dr. Marjorie Bean, “to create among ourselves a new social awareness or sense of oneness and apply to ourselves those famous rallying words that rang throughout the Empire in the time of its danger ‘United we stand, divided we fall'”, the adjustments called for in the Fighting Forties gave birth to the Bermuda Workers’ Association in 1944, with Alethia DePina and Doris Cholmondeley serving as midwives in their respective roles of trustee on the executive committee and assistant secretary of the Somerset branch. The women, with 16 men, including Dr. E. F. Gordon, representing a B.W.A. membership of “nearly 5,000 male and female, white and coloured working-class people,” signed the White Paper Petition to the U.K. Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1946 seeking redress for their claim that “labour has suffered and is still suffering under the present Government set-up.”
One B.W.A. member, Mrs. Iona Maxwell, went from house to house every weekend with her husband collecting dues from the members. Rosalie Douglas, Cynthia Pringle and Grace Richardson organised bazaars and operated Cup Match stalls to raise funds for the B.W.A. And, from the middle and eastern parish-es, Trew Robinson, Inez Barclay, Ivy Swan, Maude Anne Williams Pindar, Bernice Woodgate, Inez Leach and Estherveara Bryan joined the union campaign.
In providing the example of her own words that “emphasis on individual striving to the utter exclusion of the group idea in our education and upbringing is wrong,” Dr. Marjorie Bean has the distinction of being the only person to serve in an executive position of two unions. After her appointment on Oct. 2, 1949 as the first woman and the first black Bermudian supervisor of schools, she, true to her belief in “the development among ourselves of … group loyalty,” became a founding member in the early ’50s and ultimately a long-serving secretary of what is now known as the Bermuda Public Service Association.
After the Fighting Forties, the ’50s, even with the theatre boycott, can best be described as the lull before the storm in the ’60s: the decade in which Dr. Barbara Ball, Helena ‘Molly’ Burgess and Dr. Eva Hodgson mounted the turbulent waves of change that rolled through the Island’s labour and political movements.
Research officer for the Bermuda Industrial Union (B.I.U.) since 1974, Dr. Ball, who is white, is a rarity in the labour movement. “I was regarded as a traitor to my race,” said Dr. Ball, who’s also a judo expert. And what did her family think? “Well, judo was bad enough, with me being a medical practitioner; integrated judo was even worse, and joining the B.I.U. was the last straw!” Join it she did in 1961 and became vice-president of the non-classified division. She said, “I believe my parents’ attitude was prompted not so much by anti-B.I.U. feelings as by a fear of what the Establishment would do to me. Most of it was fear for me.”
The fear was not unfounded. In 1965, when Dr. Ball was secretary general of the B.I.U., the union’s efforts to secure recognition for its electrical workers division members at the Bermuda Electric Light Company (Belco) resulted in a 33 day strike that escalated into sympathy strikes all over the Island and when the police broke the picket lines, violence erupted into what has become known as the “Belco Riots.” Dr. Ball may well be the only female labour leader tried in the Supreme Court under the Criminal Code for fulfilling her role as a labour leader.
After a nine-day trial before Chief Justice Sir Myles Abbott, her lawyers, Jamaican Q.C. Dudley Thompson and Arnold Francis and Lois Browne-Evans, had argued successfully for acquittal by a jury that deliberated five and a quarter hours on June 30, 1965. Then-Solicitor General Hector Barcilon failed to convince the jury that Dr. Ball had taken part in a riot; had assaulted police constable David Garland while he was acting in the execution of his duty; had incited others to willfully obstruct police officers acting in the execution of their duty; and had aided two unknown persons to escape from lawful custody. In his summation, Thompson said, “She did a big man’s job when the country needed a big man.” Today, 48 years after the B.W.A. became the Bermuda Industrial Union, the secretary general is Helena ‘Molly’ Burgess who joined the B.I.U. the year before Dr. Ball was tried. Her career in the labour movement began as secretary to the Elbow Beach group when the hotels were undergoing unionisation. She said, “In those days, without a union you did as you were told or you went up the road. There was no protection for the workers and I wanted to see that protection — to see the workers got justice.” From 1965 to 1972, she was secretary of the hotel division and, after serving six years as chief shop steward at Elbow Beach, she was seconded to the B.I.U. for six months in 1971. On the expiration of her secondment, Ms Burgess became a full-time employee at the union as assistant organiser, then as organiser, and in 1983 became secretary general.
On the 10-member executive board of the B.I.U., Dr. Ball and Ms Burgess are joined by another long-serving member, Carolyn Young, the recording secretary. By 1981, trade unionism was 34 years old and 17 years had passed since the Amalgamated Bermuda Union of Teachers was formed out of the merger of the all-white Teachers Association of Bermuda with the Bermuda Union of Teachers. Dr. Eva Hodgson was the first president of this union and, since then, the A.B.U.T. has had the largest number of female presidents – Aurelia Burch, Rosalyn Burchell, Ellen-Kate Horton and Joann Davis.
This year marks the 75th year of women in the labour movement and it is fitting that Ms Leleath G. Bailey was elected president of the Bermuda Public Services Association in February. She said she wanted “to change things for the betterment of the association and its members.” She takes up the mantle of the first female president, the late Mrs. Verbena Daniels, elected in 1970. Mr. Donald Moore, under whom Mrs. Daniels served as vice president has said, “She braved many storms, she believes that true leadership comes from recognising the responsibilities one accepts as an elected officer and carrying out those responsibilities to the best of one’s ability in the interest of all members of the association.”
