RG: In our opinion

This is the first of a multi-part series

******

Bermudian politics has long been viewed as a tragedy by those who feel, a comedy by those who think. Recently, though, even those thinking men and women among us with the most extensive networks of laugh wrinkles around their eyes have found very little to amuse them in the ongoing floor show of political gaffes, gaudy posturing and misplaced priorities.

Like politicians the world over, the Bermudian variety tend to be cautious, backward looking and slow to implement even the most necessary change. Also, like their counterparts elsewhere, they tend to place more emphasis on non-stop electioneering and hail-fellow bonhomie — as the poet archly said, “It’s pleasant as it’s easy to secure/The hero worship of the immature” — than on governing and long-term planning.

And planning is what is desperately required right now. For the reality is that Bermuda is broke. Our future economic and social stability are entirely dependent on renewed investment in the Island along with a renewed sense of purpose. We must actively pursue growth if we are to emerge from our current, straitened circumstances.

Between uploading selfies to Facebook and engaging in the usual hair-splitting silliness which passes for informed debate, our political leadership does occasionally pay ponderous lip-service to the precepts of the “sustainable development” Bermuda supposedly pursued prior to the recent wrenching economic contraction.

But the fact is Bermuda’s breakneck expansion during the late 20th century and the early years of this one could not have been sustained indefinitely regardless of the 2008 economic implosion. Our headlong pursuit of international company business entirely outpaced our ability to keep up with the increasing demands it made on our infrastructure, our resources and our people.

Any recovery is going to have to be based on a more measured approach to our primary industry and an entirely more realistic understanding of Bermuda’s limited capacity to absorb new enterprises and new people.

To establish where we are going it is imperative both to know and to understand where we have come from. And events of recent weeks would certainly suggest too few Bermudians are familiar with how Bermuda successfully adapted to the changing world around us in the past and then, unhappily, opted for the quick buck over long-term stability in more recent times.

When the maritime economy which sustained Bermuda through its first two centuries finally failed with the advent of the steam engine in the 19th century, the Island turned its hand to both agriculture and supplying and servicing the British naval and military presence which continued to grow in both size and importance throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

But War Office and Admiralty spending in Bermuda came to a virtual standstill after the First World War (1914-1918) bled the British Exchequer dry. And by the 1920s, with Bermuda a victim of US tariffs and increased competition from American farmers, the Island could no longer profitably serve as a winter garden for Eastern Seaboard cities.

Our fields turned fallow until Bermuda’s pivotal role in the advent of modern resort tourism provided new uses for them. Hotels, golf courses and the exclusive Tucker’s Town colony rose on what had been farmland when the Furness-Withy Line decided Bermuda was a uniquely accessible location for its luxury liners and could be transformed into what amounted to a sumptuous pre-Jet Set enclave for the socially prominent East Coast elite.

Furness-Withy and other investors pumped untold millions of dollars into the local economy and allowed Bermuda, almost alone of all the countries in the world, to escape the worst ravages of the Great Depression entirely unscathed.

Bermuda had discovered its new golden goose and nurtured and developed tourism for decades to come. An Island which had eked out a hard-scrabble existence throughout most of its history instantly became as gentrified as its plush new amenities.

While some class and racial divisions were accentuated by this new-found prosperity, in the main Bermudians did not allow disagreements among themselves to detract from catering to our visitors. Bermudians could be found at all levels of the tourism economy — from “the board room to the boiler room” it used to be said — and directly, indirectly and through induced impacts the industry provided the Island with full-employment and an enviable quality of life until the 1970s.

Tourism was, in many ways, the perfect business for the Island — with an emphasis on quality rather than quantity in terms of visitor numbers, the Island was never overrun even after the airport and the arrival of cruise ships in place of the old liners opened Bermuda up to new markets. And Bermudians proved themselves to be natural hosts, gracious, hospitable and welcoming.

But prolonged success eventually bred complacency. We started counting heads instead of the dollars being spent and a spike in cruise ship figures was used to gloss over the fact our air arrivals were steadily declining. Bermuda stopped building new hotels and our existing ones grew increasingly decrepit and uncompetitive. The Island became viewed as something of a living fossil by a younger generation of potential visitors, a fusty and passé destination — especially when compared to the thriving new resorts opening up in newly-emerging Caribbean competitors.

And most of us sat idly by when this was happening. We came to believe the lyrics of our tourism anthem — that Bermuda was another world instead of part of the real one. We forgot we were subject to the same need for bold and creative adaptation as every other country in order to survive in an ever-changing global environment.

Meanwhile those perhaps best qualified to usher in the necessary structural changes which might have buttressed tourism beyond the late 1970s and early ‘80s were too fixated on the fortunes to be made in the nascent international sector of the economy.

Tourism was left to die of neglect. And so the groundwork was laid for the next two decades of manifestly unsustainable economic development in Bermuda.