Ottiwell Simmons was president of the Bermuda Industrial Union at the time of the strike and a figurehead for the labour movement. Now aged 77 and a retired MP, he works for Government as coordinator of parish councils.“It obviously had its toll on your physical and mental wellbeing,” he says of the difficult negotiations which took place in April and May 1981.“It was a very stressful period for all of us. What made it so stressful, I think, was the gap that was created in terms of a relationship between the union and the Government as employers at the time.”He says he was urged by fellow union members to “take over the Government” but his immediate reaction was: “No, it doesn’t make sense, because we are not a political group and the PLP, in my opinion, was not on that page. I thought that the PLP quite honestly were not ready to take over government in 1981.”The union boss had studied industrial relations at Oxford and had experience of international trade unionism. “I was full of confidence, really, and fearless,” he recalls.“The economy, with respect to inflation, gave us a marker to aim for and not to fall short of that. It didn’t make me in the least bit afraid of the situation.”n Gladwyn Simmons was a kitchen porter and president of the BIU’s hospital workers’ division. Now aged 59, he is an event organiser, director of the Emperial Group and has his own blog calling for “Unity in the Community”.“I felt that, in those times, much like in these times, there’s a lot lacking in understanding with regards to the workers. Back in those days, there was a lot less respect and understanding.”He says blue-collar workers, a group of people finding it very hard to make ends meet, were treated with a “distinct condescension” and would be told by their superiors: “You’re not paid to think.”When he asked his members what kind of pay rise would really give them a living wage, he was told “100 percent”.“It was ludicrous, but it was the truth,” he says. “I had to bring it to the general council. Ottiwell Simmons told me: ‘It’s not happening.”Mr Simmons remembers a distinct change in the social atmosphere of the country at the time, as the people rose up but in a “very, very peaceful” way.n Sir John Swan was Labour Minister during the General Strike. He went on to become leader of the United Bermuda Party and was Premier for more than a decade. Now aged 75, he owns real estate company Challenger Banks and recently built multi-million dollar Seon Place.“We came through a period of very, very rapid inflation,” he says of the years immediately prior to the General Strike. “The general labour force wanted to get a settlement that was close to inflation and the then Minister of Finance [Sir David Gibbons] was recommending that they should not exceed 15 percent and they wanted something like 18 to 20. They took industrial action which basically shut down the country and shut down industry.”Sir John has no regrets about not referring the dispute to arbitration.The crisis was resolved, he says, thanks to Ottiwell Simmons’s willingness to reach a compromise with Government, when the “rank and file did not want to have a settlement”.“I, as the Minister of Home Affairs, worked very closely with Mr Simmons. The conclusion was that we could not defy the logic of the argument. We were more concerned about the consequences of the settlement.”n Jim Woolridge was Tourism Minister during the General Strike. Now aged 84, the retired MP and broadcaster is best known as the “Voice of Summer” thanks to his Cup Match cricket commentaries.His main memory is of how the tourism industry was thriving until the protests began. “1980 was our best tourism year on record,” he says. “We had 609,000 visitors who spent $651 million towards the economic life of the country. We had 13 flights a day out of the United States, we had five or six flights out of the UK a week and nine flights a week out of Canada.“We were hitting on all fours. By all of our projections, ‘81 was going to be a better year.”That didn’t happen and Mr Woolridge is still smarting from the fallout of the strike. “The airport was closed, the Causeway was closed off. All kinds of things happened. Everybody left the Island.”He says the wage row should have been quickly referred to arbitration to avoid industrial action and places the blame for the strike firmly on Sir John’s shoulders.“There’s no two ways about it,” he says. “Every destination was saying that Bermuda had it right. We were booming along. We had worked hard. So many people had worked hard. These things take a long time before you recover from them.”n Toppy Cowen was managing director of Pink Beach, one of the hotels which closed during the General Strike. He retired 14 years ago and now lives, aged 75, in British Columbia, Canada.“It was bedlam,” he recalls of the mass walkout by workers in spring 1981. “It was horrible. It was something that I would never, ever forget. We were transporting people [hotel guests] to the airport. Some [protestors] were spitting on the cars, shouting and screaming at visitors.“Everybody in Bermuda who had a car was encouraged to pick up people at hotels to transport them to the airport. It was something that you would keep in your memory for ever. It caused many people to say they would never return.”Mr Cowen says Pink Beach “had to close”. “We were forced to because just about every member of staff had walked off the property. I think we were encouraged by the Government for people to leave the Island.”He says the Hotel Employers of Bermuda and the unions were at loggerheads and remembers difficult sessions as wage agreements were hammered out.“We would sit and stare at each other for an hour or so and nothing was said. Finally, someone would crack and say something and they [the unions] would then say: ‘Right, we are walking.’ They’d walk out. Then the [Labour] Minister would get involved.”Mr Cowen says the demands of the hotel workers, such as for a five-day working week and pensions, don’t seem so unreasonable now.“In hindsight, that’s probably something that should have come to the table a long time before that. People were angry. In some ways, I feel a little bit bad that some of those issues weren’t resolved in a diplomatic way.”