At the outset of his political career he posed, and then proceeded to answer to his own satisfaction, what remains among the most vexing questions in Bermudian public life. In his “Am I Being Used?” speech delivered to a City Hall audience during the run-up to the 1968 General Election, the first held under the two-party Westminster system in Bermuda, Clarence James outlined a coherent and compelling vision for the island’s future.

His address was a clarion call for social and economic justice, for full racial integration and black participation in all aspects of Bermudian national life. The continuance of segregation — either sociopolitically sanctioned or of the self-imposed variety — was unthinkable to him.

Black separatism, he believed, would be as detrimental to the island’s future welfare as the existing institutionalised white racism he was committed to dismantling. Bringing about a peaceful, prosperous and inclusive Bermuda, he argued, would require us to work together towards common goals with a shared set of values, principles and practices.

The speech, co-authored with his professional and political colleague and close friend John Stubbs, was, in part, a generational call to arms — an appeal to all young Bermudians, black and white, to make progress together and leave behind a blighted, racially divided past. It was also a wake-up call to whites, an effort to galvanise them into action. Far more harmful to Bermuda’s long-term wellbeing than the unreconstructed racism of a privileged few, Dr James believed, was wider spread white indifference to the everyday struggles of Bermudian blacks. Empathy and sympathy had to be translated into a practical plan of attack against the remaining barriers of segregation. If redress to legitimate grievances was not found through political and institutional channels, he warned, it would be sought on the street.

“I, like many other Bermudians, am prepared to devote my life in serving the people of Bermuda because I love Bermuda, it is my home,” said Dr James. “I feel compelled to portray a frank, undistorted picture of race relations as I see them.

“By doing so, I sincerely hope that I can assist in saving Bermuda from self-destruction due to racial strife. I have no other motivation.”

In other words, no, he was not being used as a black frontman to help perpetuate a discredited racist status quo as some political adversaries had suggested. And, no, he would never put himself in a position where he could be used for such purposes.

The speech was a defining moment in a period jammed with dramatic events as Bermuda lurched towards a non-racial democracy. Dr James identified and explained the central pivot around which the life of this community still revolves as well as anyone ever had up until that point.

And he also left in no doubt his own strong sense of dedication to both Bermuda and the precepts of reform, reconciliation and renewal.

With a scientific cast of mind and a rigorously methodical approach to problem-solving, both in the operating theatre and the theatre of politics, he proposed a pragmatic way forward for Bermuda.

Elected to the House of Assembly in a landslide later in 1968, he spent the next 21 years in Parliament coaxing, encouraging and sometimes cajoling the island to fulfil its promise to all of its people.

Dr James was not led into politics so much by inclination as by duty and a sense of obligation. Like many of the pre-eminent public figures of his day, he was guided by principle and conscience. He was tireless in working to create the more just and equitable society he envisioned Bermuda could become, uncompromising in defending his convictions.

He had an intimate understanding of the lives and aspirations of working Bermudians, the pressures they operated under, the injustices and inequalities which rankled them, and the incentives to which they would best respond.

Raised in the deeply divided and highly conservative Bermuda of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, for him, as a young black man born without fortune or favour, to make headway against the professional and political obstacles of his day had required every intellectual weapon at his disposal and all that learning, dignity, courtesy, integrity and resolve could bestow.

And what headway Clarence James made. He became the first black Bermudian to qualify as a specialised surgeon, returning to practise at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in 1963 after completing his education at Canada’s McGill University and training at Montreal General and affiliated hospitals. He would go on to become chief of staff of the Bermuda Hospitals Board and president of the Bermuda Medical Society.

And in the political realm he held many of the major Cabinet portfolios at one time or another, serving as Bermuda’s finance, health and transport minister as well as Deputy Premier under Sir John Swan from 1983 to 1989.

Clarence James was never unequal to the prodigious scale or rapid pace of events which shaped Bermuda between the 1960s and the 1980s.

For more than two decades, both in Parliament and in the wider Bermuda community, he stood in the front rank of his times. He applied the ethical credo of medical practitioners — “First, do no harm” — to his political activities, consistently demonstrating wisdom, prudence, patience, compassion, courage and endurance, no matter how trying or challenging the circumstances.

When he died at the weekend at the age of 84, the entire island joined his wife Shirley and children Joanna and Peter in mourning a man who cared, and dared, more for Bermuda and its people than most of our political figures — a man who never was, and never could be, used.

— Tim Hodgson