An iconic Bermuda Industrial Union president credited for his part in greatly changing the island’s sociopolitical landscape was motivated by his own life experiences.

Ottiwell Simmons, known as Ottie, led the BIU during some of the most tumultuous episodes in Bermuda’s history, including the general strike of 1981.

Born in June 1933, he was raised in North Village, Pembroke, near Government Gate, one of seven children to Olaf and Audrey Simmons.

Early education included lessons at the North Village Bandroom school and The Central School (now Victor Scott Primary School).

His father and grandfather, Ambrose Simmons, ran a painting business together.

Men from the neighbourhood would often gather at Ambrose’s shop in the evening and, from the age of 10, Mr Simmons loved listening to them.

He recalled in 2019: “They would fuss and argue and debate about world affairs.

“They would talk about the war. The world was at war fighting for world domination.”

He was inspired to start reading all he could about racism and world events.

One day, E.F. Gordon, then the president of the BIU, gave a speech at Bernard Park.

“That settled with me in my heart and soul,” Mr Simmons said.

He also remembered how, at 17, he tried to take a girlfriend to the Island Theatre on Wesley Street, where he became part of a long queue outside with only a few seats left indoors when it started raining.

Mr Simmons said: “A guy came out and pointed to two people behind me.

“They were White. Everyone else standing there was Black.”

The theatre employee left the others out in the rain. The injustice stayed with Mr Simmons.

“This was unfair,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t take this. It is not right. Things should be fair for all people’.”

At 20, as a waiter at Coral Island Club, he tried to stage a walkout because of the hotel’s treatment of Black customers. The attempt was unsuccessful — his colleagues balked at the last minute — but he had stood up against injustice for the first time.

When the theatres were eventually desegregated on July 2, 1959, Mr Simmons refused to support them.

He was wholeheartedly behind BIU plans to start its own cinema and was on the committee that helped to build the Liberty Theatre on Union Street.

Mr Simmons insisted that segregation made him thoughtful and constructive rather than angry.

He said: “It is these real-life experiences that caused me to try to get people organised and do something for people.”

Mr Simmons joined the BIU at 25 and was elected president in 1974 — a position he held until 1996.

He also joined the Progressive Labour Party, and in 1976 ran successfully for Pembroke East, where he was an MP until 2007.

“I simply worked to make things better, as a union man,” Mr Simmons said. “I wanted to advance the working class and give them benefits that they were entitled to.”

The Bermudian Heritage Museum blog listed some of the events at which the “born leader” was seen battling for workers’ rights, including the Belco strike in 1965, the island-wide labour strike in 1981 and negotiations for the Trade Disputes Act in 1992.

Mr Simmons, also a father and grandfather, said in 2019: “We had more arbitration settlements during the period of the 1960s through to the 1990s than we have had since. We learnt the skills.”

The 1981 general strike — over demands for a wage increase he said was close to 25 per cent, fuelled by rampant inflation — built into a national crisis before the Government capitulated and offered workers a raise.

Sir David Gibbons, the finance minister of the day, had envisaged a figure not exceeding 15 per cent.

Mr Simmons said four years ago: “We simply held out, and before you knew it, we got the unsolicited support of hotel workers, from the Bermuda Telephone workers — it has been reported that we had no less than 5,000 workers on strike.”

On May 7, 1981, a deal was struck, with the union winning wage increases averaging 20 per cent.

Rolfe Commissiong, who attributes his own participation in politics to Mr Simmons and the late PLP leader L. Frederick Wade, said: “He is certainly one man who sits upon that pantheon of those who radically changed Bermuda from a society tightly controlled by a small, entitled and privileged White oligarchy of his youth to a Bermuda that was literally yanked into the 20th century as the thrust for racial justice and democracy took root throughout the region.

“Through the 1965 Belco uprising — in an effort to unionise the utility that ultimately failed but which in reality amounted to empty victory for the White-dominated business establishment — to the island-wide general strike of 1981 in an effort to ensure that Bermudian workers would get an equitable share in the form of decent wages and benefits for themselves and their families.”

Mr Simmons wrote Our Lady of Labour about the work of fellow union activist Barbara Ball, and spoke publicly about her efforts last September.

When it was published in 2010, he said: “While ‘Doc’ had breath in her body, I wanted to put her picture on the back of a book, and good words between the cover.”

An introduction to the text said Mr Simmons and Dr Ball were “perfectly matched” to lead their team.

It added: “Dr Barbara Ball was quiet and resolute in her quest for justice, while Brother Ottie was radical and aggressive … ”.

The BIU building on Union Street was renamed the Ottiwell A. Simmons Building as part of the Labour Day festivities on September 2, 2019.

Chris Furbert, the union’s president, said then that a dream of Mr Simmons’s had been fulfilled when the organisation moved to the building in 1987.

Labour Day was established as a holiday in the wake of the 1981 general strike and was first commemorated in September 1982.

• Ottiwell Askew Simmons, a former Bermuda Industrial Union leader and Progressive Labour Party MP, was born on June 25, 1933. He died on June 16, 2023, aged 89