David Waddington Memoirs

by David Waddington

  I wrote to Mr Dynes protesting at this nonsense and to my astonishment he wrote back saying that he was very much more aggrieved than I was because the paragraph about which I had complained had not been written by him at all. Without his knowledge or consent it had been tacked on by some sub-editor at The Times to add a bit of spice to his otherwise very serious piece.

  A few weeks after my arrival Captain Eddie Lamb took over as aide-de-camp, and a fine one he turned out to be. He was a St David’s islander and everyone in Bermuda will tell you that those who come from St David’s are very different from anyone else. In the old days, before the arrival of the Americans, St David’s was very cut off from the rest of Bermuda and there was a good deal of intermarriage between the comparatively few families with roots there. The best known surnames on the Island are Fox and Lamb and it was said that St David’s is the only place in the world where the fox lies down with the lamb. Anyhow, Eddie decided that we must pay a visit to St David’s, and as we were driven in the Daimler towards the centre of St David’s there were quite a few people at the side of the road waving merrily. Eddie sat proudly in the front seat helping us to wave back; and it seemed that patriotism in St David’s knew no bounds. Then we began to pay attention to what the crowds were shouting. ‘Hi Eddie,’ they cried as they welcomed home their favourite son. We visited St David’s Primary School, and events followed a similar pattern. ‘What would you like to ask the Governor, Malika?’ said the headteacher to one child. ‘Where’s your hat?’ said the little girl. ‘Now, Raymonde, you’ve got your hand up. What would you like to ask the Governor?’ and Raymonde replied: ‘I don’t want to ask the Governor anything. I just want to say “Hi, Uncle Eddie”.’

  At the far end of the US naval base was a NASA station from which in October 1992 we watched a space shuttle launch in the presence of an astronaut who had made a trip earlier that year. More memorable that autumn was a visit by Raine, Countess Spencer. I warned her that on the Saturday we were going sailing. She said she did not like sailing. I told her that I had accepted on her behalf an invitation to go sailing, that considerable offence would be caused if she cancelled, that it was a big boat and she could bring her knitting. She had to come. Reluctantly she agreed.

  The day dawned and punctually at two minutes to nine Raine came down the stairs wearing a party frock, white lace gloves and high-heeled shoes, and carrying a parasol. I had not the energy to argue and off to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club we went. The commodore looked at Raine in astonishment and queried whether she was in yachting form. He thought she looked nervous. ‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘If you have any trouble, lash her to the mast.’ But a few discreet words were exchanged, and the next thing I knew she was tottering back along the jetty to the car; she and Gilly returned to Government House. At 3 p.m. I came back from my sail with a guilty conscience. What, I wondered, had they done for lunch? The staff had been told we were going out and had been given the day off. I need not have worried. They had had a wonderful time. Raine had talked all day about her romances, and Gilly had sat alongside open-mouthed forgetting all about food. But by then the Countess was peckish and I packed them in to our little Ford and took them to a pub in St George’s for a ham sandwich.

  Our next visitor was Prince Michael of Kent. He really did want to sail and although he could not come out himself Nicky Dill* provided his boat, Dillightful, together with a skipper. We bowled down to St George’s for lunch, but by the time we set off back the wind had strengthened. In spite of that, the skipper gave the wheel to the Prince and directed him to round Spanish Point via Cobbler’s Cut instead of steering out towards Dockyard and taking the longer but very much safer way home. A gust of wind hit the boat and drove it on to the rocks. For a moment I thought we were going over but the skipper turned on the engine and threw it into reverse; and we came off and righted ourselves. That evening a local police officer said to the Prince’s detective, ‘I hear you had a near miss today.’ ‘No,’ replied the detective. ‘The Prince never misses.’ Very sportingly Nicky Dill protested that little damage had been done to Dillightful, but I have reason to think that that was short of the truth.

  I opened Parliament at the beginning of November and it took me half an hour to read the speech from the throne. It would have taken even longer had I not spotted that at page eighteen there was a long passage identical in every respect with three paragraphs on the first page. I also excised a number of Americanisms. (The government had ‘gotten’ this and ‘gotten’ that.)

  It was grand to learn that Bermuda still observed Armistice Day; indeed, it was a public holiday. A service took place at the Cenotaph below the Senate House and afterwards there was a lunch for the veterans in Number One Shed on Front Street. On parade with the veterans was a contingent from the Bermuda Regiment, a uniquely Bermudian institution. Young men of eighteen were liable for three years part-time service. They had to attend drills on one or two nights a week and while the first year’s ‘boot camp’ was fairly arduous, in the second and third years the soldiers thoroughly enjoyed a fortnight’s training abroad either in Jamaica or Fort Lejeune in North Carolina. The regiment performed ceremonial duties, but, more importantly, it was a disciplined force ready to help in national emergencies – hurricanes as well as riots. The camps in Jamaica did no end of good. Young men saw how poverty-stricken was much of Jamaica, and many must have realised how lucky they were to live in Bermuda even though it was not an independent country.

  We were joined for Christmas by various members of the family and afterwards were due to go to Barbados for a Governors’ conference. On the day we were due to leave for Barbados and Victoria was due to go back to university, Basil our Norfolk terrier, who had earlier distinguished himself playing the Government House piano, suffered a terrible misfortune.

  I was looking for him after lunch to take him for a walk and found him sitting under a chair in the little drawing room. His ears were pricked and he seemed to be saying ‘I don’t know how to explain this, but something rather embarrassing has happened.’ Indeed it had. His back looked like something on a butcher’s slab. As we rushed him to the vet, I was thinking he had been run over; but, in fact, he had been savaged by a dog or dogs and thirty-five stitches were needed to repair the damage.

  The news of his misfortune swept round the Island and the ‘get well’ cards began to arrive – scores of them. The Royal Gazette reminded the citizenry that St Basil – known as Basil the Great (330–379 AD), whose feast day is 2 January – was inclined to be headstrong and, among other ‘biting’ remarks, had voiced the opinion that a merciless attitude should be adopted towards bureaucrats; and the paper hinted that Basil possessed some of his namesake’s attributes and that might have led to his downfall. His reputation was, however, vigorously defended by a body calling itself Basil’s Press Office.

  After the conference in Barbados we flew to St Vincent and then, with the British representative in St Vincent and his wife, sailed down through the Grenadines in a small yacht with a skipper and a so-called cook. On our way home we had an unfortunate experience in Miami Airport. The queues at immigration were immense and we were going to miss our onward flight unless something was done. When I got to the immigration desk I asked the immigration officer (a woman) to be as quick as possible as we were in trouble and before you could say knife she had called to some thug standing nearby who catapulted us into a room full of Haitians and Cubans. I complained to another woman who appeared to be in charge and demanded to ring the British Consul. That resulted in our immediate release. Most of the staff at the airport seemed to know no more than a smattering of English and were thoroughly unpleasant. We decided to avoid Miami in any future travels.

  Easter was by tradition the time to send lilies to the Queen and in April 1993 off Gilly went to pick them. Then there was a St George’s Day Service in the Salvation Army Citadel in Hamilton. The proceedings commenced with the Scouts coming up to the front and handing in their banners. At the end they knelt to
receive them back and marched down the centre aisle towards the main doors. Suddenly there was the sound of circular saws and splitting timbers as each banner pole came into contact with the fans in the ceiling and was quickly decapitated. The Scouts’ motto ‘Be Prepared’ may not have been observed but the Scouts themselves did not flinch. They picked up off the floor the shattered remains of their poles and with considerable dignity processed on to the street.

  Later in the spring we visited our Consul-General in New York and then our Ambassador in Washington. I also had the opportunity to talk to American officials about issues affecting Bermuda. In Washington I was most anxious to get a feel on the future of the American base and do what I could to dissuade the Americans from a precipitate withdrawal: I spent some time talking to key people in the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. I then received an astonishing phone call from an irate John Swan who asked me what right I had to be interfering in matters which were his responsibility. I pointed out that under the Bermuda constitution I had responsibilities for external affairs, but it made me realise that I was dealing with a Premier who previous Governors and others had encouraged to believe was in entire control of Bermuda’s fortunes – which was nearly, but not quite, true. Without doubt he looked a national leader, capable of speaking with great sense and authority and he was a first-rate Ambassador for his country while travelling abroad, as well as a very able leader at home. It was, therefore, scarcely surprising that people like Ebersole Gaines, US Consul-General until the end of 1992, who probably did not understand the constitutional position, thought John of sufficient standing to deserve dinner at the White House. That might have helped to persuade John that matters like the future of the American base were his responsibility and his alone.

  In July I visited London, principally for talks with Mark Lennox-Boyd, then the minister in the Foreign Office responsible for Bermuda, but I went to the Lords to see what was going on and in the Lobby was greeted by Lord (Oulton) Wade who cried out in his broad Cheshire accent: ‘Hello, David. Are you brown all over?’ Back in Bermuda my golf was going badly but my excellent aide-de-camp, Eddie Lamb, was beginning to perform for me the function Eb Gaines had performed for John Swan. He was a morale booster, and it was as a result of his efforts that I won my one and only golf trophy. Eddie set up a regimental golf championship. Sixteen agreed to play, four teams of four. Only fourteen players turned up on the day because the second in command of the regiment and Larry Mussenden were recovering from a hangover. My team was second and Eddie had arranged for everyone in the first three teams to get a prize.

  In September I was asked to dissolve Parliament for a general election on 5 October. The campaign was not inspiring and when the result was declared, the UBP had survived with a reduced majority, winning twenty-two seats against the PLP’s eighteen, with its lowest ever share of the vote (50% compared with 54% in 1989 and 62% in 1985).

  The Opening of Parliament provided the PLP with their first opportunity to expose John Swan as a leader weakened by the election result. The Speaker in the 1989–93 parliament, David Wilkinson, had not stood for re-election. He was a splendidly laid back, some might say idle, figure from an old white Bermudian family and John Swan could not stand him. One reason for this antipathy was that on one occasion when in the Speaker’s Chair David awoke from a deep sleep and feeling something was required of him announced ‘this House is now adjourned.’ Everyone got up and left except John Swan who was just about to deliver a great oration. John was determined that he would now have a Speaker of his own choosing and he decided on a black Bermudian, Dr David Dyer. On the day before the opening of Parliament I went down to the Senate House for a rehearsal and Dyer was there, also being put through his paces. That night there was the usual eve-of-session party at Government House and from the sniggering of some members of the Opposition I concluded that something was afoot.

  The next day I arrived at the Senate House. My first duty was to inspect the guard of honour and I then went up into an anteroom on the first floor to wait for the members of the House of Assembly to answer Black Rod’s summons and begin to process down the hill to the Senate Chamber to hear the speech from the throne. I waited and waited but there was no sign of the procession, and after ten minutes or so I began to worry. Perhaps the PLP had actually hatched some plot to boycott the opening of Parliament. So I sent a messenger up the hill to find out what was going on. And, just as in 1983 Margaret Thatcher’s plan to install a Speaker of her choice had been derailed by Conservative backbenchers who thought the right man for the Chair was the Deputy Speaker – Jack Weatherill – so had John Swan’s plan to install David Dyer. A group of UBP members had sided with the PLP and they and the PLP, a party not known for its sympathy for the Portuguese, had succeeded in getting voted in as Speaker the Portuguese Deputy Speaker – all for the sheer joy of annoying John Swan.

  David Dyer of course had been made to look a complete fool and rather unfairly blamed it all on the Premier. It cannot be said that he at once set about engineering John’s downfall but I have little doubt that from that time onwards he wished it most fervently.

  * Nicky was a barrister and a partner in Conyers, Dill & Pearman. He was also the Danish Consul and Chancellor of the Bermuda Diocese.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Royal Visit

  The UBP’s election manifesto ‘A Blue Print For The Future’ had been a detailed policy statement about everything under the sun – from employment to the environment, from drugs to alcohol abuse, from crime to new steps to eliminate discrimination. There was no mention of independence and the matter was not discussed at all by the party leaders during the campaign. Furthermore, when John Swan had been asked about the subject by the Royal Gazette he had replied: ‘It’s not in the Blue Print’.

  In the light of all this there was great surprise when, just before Christmas 1993, John told the press that Britain’s announcement that it was to close HMS Malabar, the tiny shore station at the West End manned by just thirteen sailors, was a sign of the unravelling of Bermuda’s ties with Britain. And also when, after Christmas, he blandly announced that independence was back on the agenda, ‘Because of the withdrawal of the Americans, Canadians and British from the Island.’ ‘If I had made independence an issue in the campaign,’ he said with commendable frankness, ‘I would have lost the election.’

  The decision to close HMS Malabar in April 1995 for a gross saving of £1 million per annum and a net saving which had not even been quantified was really stupid. Any sensible person could have seen the advantages for Britain in at least delaying any decision about Malabar until after the American withdrawal from Bermuda which was planned for 1995. As it was, people were able to insinuate that no possible blame could be attached to the Americans for deciding to leave Bermuda somewhat precipitately because, by resolving to do away with a Royal Naval presence on the Island, Britain seemed to be up to the same tricks.

  None of this, however, seemed to be a particularly good reason for John Swan using HMS Malabar as an excuse for resurrecting the issue of independence, for the likelihood of the closure of Malabar had been known for some time. The truth was that rarely from 1982 onwards had John missed an opportunity to force independence onto the political agenda and here, after an election result too close for comfort and with demographic change working against the UBP, he could surely, he thought, persuade his Party that only by raising again the emotive issue of independence would they be able to avoid a UBP debacle five years on. And while commonsense must have been telling him that independence was a divisive issue within the UBP and might well dissolve the glue which held that precarious coalition together, one very influential member of the business community, Donald Lines of the Bank of Bermuda, was telling him that this time the furious opposition from Front Street which had followed the raising of the banner of independence in the past might well not be repeated.

  In January 1994 the Premier talked to the press about the possibility of having a re
ferendum on independence in the near future. He said this without the authority of Cabinet, and when Cabinet met, one of the members, Ann Cartwright DeCouto, complained, saying that if the Premier wished to raise these issues, things should be done properly and a paper presented to Cabinet for discussion. A paper was swiftly drafted and presented to the next Cabinet meeting, and by a majority the Premier’s plan for the setting up of a Commission of Inquiry to explain the consequences of independence and for a referendum on that issue was approved. Ann DeCouto promptly resigned as a minister.

  A Referendum Bill was then published, and in February it was passed by the House of Assembly by a majority of twenty to eighteen. At this stage, however, the PLP tabled a motion to halt the setting up of the Commission which, according to the Bill, had to report before a date was set for the referendum, and the Senate then also proceeded to put a spanner in the works.

  The Senate was composed of eleven people. Five were appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Premier, three by the Governor on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition and three by the Governor acting in his discretion. So if the ‘Opposition’ senators and the ‘independent’ senators voted together, the government could be defeated; and this time it was defeated, first on a motion that the Referendum Bill should not be discussed in the Senate until the Opposition’s objections to the Commission of Inquiry were resolved; and then when the Senate relented and did agree to discuss the Bill, it proceeded to vote for an amendment which provided that in the referendum a majority of those entitled to vote had to vote ‘yes’ for there to be a mandate for independence.