The late trade union stalwart Ottiwell Simmons spent his life facing down a concerted plan to destabilise Black leadership in Bermuda and block workers’ rights, Derrick Burgess, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly, told a union audience last night.

The Progressive Labour Party MP implicated the colonial history of Government House in events up to the present court case against Ewart Brown, the former premier.

Mr Burgess, a former president of the Bermuda Industrial Union, addressed the BIU’s 39th annual Labour Day banquet ahead of the celebration of workers on Monday, when speeches are given and a march sets off from Union Square in Hamilton.

It marked the island’s first Labour Day since the death in June of the labour icon Mr Simmons, the union leader and Progressive Labour Party MP, whose passing was marked with a minute’s silence.

It was also the first banquet since 2019. Since then, the labour movement has also lost BIU stalwarts Calvin Smith, former research officer; LaVerne Furbert, former executive secretary — whose birthday it was; and Glen Simmons, former first vice-president of the union.

Mr Burgess led the BIU from 1996, when he replaced Mr Simmons as president, until 2006.

He traced the turbulent fight for justice to Sir James Willcocks in the 1920s, whom he called “probably one of the worst governors Bermuda has ever had”, joining the Establishment to hamper Black leadership.

During Mr Simmons’s tenure, Mr Burgess said members of the “40 Thieves” oligarchy insinuated corruption within the BIU, seeking to tarnish its image through charges of financial irregularities.

Mr Burgess cited his experience before a 2017 Commission of Inquiry looking into various government capital projects as part of the island’s legacy of racial discrimination dating back to Sir James.

He told the audience that he did not celebrate the Emancipation of 1834 as the true end of enslavement in Bermuda.

Mr Burgess said the real date of freedom coming to Bermuda was November 1998, when the PLP was elected to govern after beating the United Bermuda Party at the polls.

Mr Simmons, he said, “knew the history” of Government House. “It’s bad,” he added.

“The history of Government House’s chief occupant is shameful and I am sure it would embarrass Buckingham Palace,” Mr Burgess said.

“That’s why you would never see Ottie Simmons up at Government House having tea and cookies with the Governor.”

Mr Burgess invoked the use of pepper spray by police in the clash with protesters outside Parliament on December 2, 2016 — and said that “anything goes” in cases such as that against Dr Brown, and PLP backbencher Zane Desilva.

“Why does Government House treat one set of Bermudians differently from others?” he said.

Mr Burgess maintained the same campaign that Mr Simmons endured through his union tenure had been turned against PLP members while others in positions of power in Bermuda were not held to account.

“Colonialism with the abuse of power cannot be tolerated,” he said.

He told the banquet at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club: “Ottie prepared himself from the start to take on the Goliath of evil with the slingshot of righteousness, and never reconciled himself to accept the Roman system.”

Chris Furbert, the BIU president who succeeded Mr Burgess as head of the union, closed the evening by presenting Mr Burgess with a plaque for his years of service.