The scenery has changed, but Serpentine Road remains as it was 60 years ago when a young police officer, Andrew Bermingham, was swept up in the blur of violence now known as the Belco Riots.

“It was a terrifying experience,” Mr Bermingham recalled. “That day in February 1965 is embedded in my mind — I often get flashbacks about it.”

The 23-year-old was among police sent on the morning of Tuesday, February 2 to maintain order during a tense standoff with union members, Belco staff attempting to unionise, and supporters who had joined them on the picket lines.

Fed up from pressure tactics and entrenched racism, picketers had been on strike for days and were at the end of their patience.

Many who joined them brought improvised weapons such as cudgels cut from the oleander hedge outside the power station headquarters.

Today, Mr Bermingham insists: “I want to make it quite clear that I speak for myself.

“Others who were involved might not necessarily agree with my conciliatory opinion, but that’s the way I have dealt with it.”

Both sides blamed the other for instigating the violence. Many in the public blamed the Bermuda Industrial Union.

Mr Bermingham said: “There were hangers-on that arrived. It wasn’t just composed of union members.

“It was a free-for-all for many who drifted down there looking for trouble.”

He remembers trying to help a car with a White Belco employee being driven to work by his wife get through when the demonstration boiled into violence.

Mr Bermingham said: “The union always claimed police started the February 2 riot.

“I was trying to get a car containing a man and his wife in to the parking lot. If that’s starting a riot, then I plead guilty.

“There was no teargas at that stage, no riot shields, nothing. Just policemen wearing bobby helmets observing the crowd.”

After taking a blow to the head, Mr Bermingham broke free. An iconic photograph shows him rushing to a fallen officer, Ian Davies, collapsed and bleeding heavily.

He said: “There were lives changed. Ian Davies was the most badly injured. George Linnen and Tim Burch probably saved his life.”

Mr Davies, who died in England in 2005, was awarded the Colonial Police Medal for gallantry. His skull had been fractured with a golf club.

Mr Bermingham said: “Other people affected badly were Gilmour Simons, a Bermudian policeman who was threatened so much afterwards that he left the police and went to work in the prison service.

“One chap who paid a high price was Sergeant Andrew Maule, the father of Graham Maule, who was injured in the riot.

“He ran the Police Association and had strong sentiments towards working people getting representation.

“Unfortunately, the riot took its toll emotionally and mentally on Andrew.”

He added: “Derek Jenkinson was injured. He was driving the police van during the riot. It was turned over with him inside; he was quite badly hurt.”

To Mr Bermingham’s recollection, police were not ready for what they encountered outside Belco.

“The police were not well prepared,” he said. “I don’t think anyone expected spontaneous reactions like that to happen.

“People were dumbstruck, as was evident in the media coverage.”

Union members were also facing intense hostility from Bermuda’s establishment.

He said that as the island’s trade unionism grew, “the owners of Belco and the government of the day wanted to see a challenge to them”.

Mr Bermingham said those on the other side of the road had “misconceptions” that the police had recruited heavily from Britain’s former African territories.

“There is always this stigma attached to the Bermuda Police Service relying on former colonial policemen,” he said.

“If you can say 15 people is a large number then so be it, but that is not in fact correct.”

Teargas ended the chaos, and several days of uneasy peace ensued.

After an agreement was reached that same month, the Electrical Supply Trade Union was formed.

Mr Bermingham said: “What Belco demonstrated was that the union finally won.”

In the years since, Mr Bermingham has been able to make his peace with the other side.

“Over the years, a lot of people ran into one another. I got to know Kenneth Paul, who assaulted me and got a year in prison.

“He was pardoned by [Governor] Lord Martonmere within a few months.”

Another man who assaulted him that day — and who was acquitted — was Samuel Pennington Samuels. The two were able to find a cordial relationship.

Mr Bermingham believes the Belco Riots changed Bermuda as well.

He said: “It was the start of protests that became civil unrest.”

The Theatre Boycott of 1959 was a peaceful protest, he noted, and a dock strike that same year — in which the Riot Act 1905 got read for the first time — averted violence.

However, he said: “February 2, 1965 changed the psyche or mood of Bermuda.

“The police were sent down that day to protect Belco and in so doing were protecting the White vested interests in what we call the Front Street establishment.

“From 1965 until the General Strike of 1981, we had a series of incidents involving trouble.

“The culmination was 1981. It wasn’t violent, but it was the end of what I call open protest on the street. It dissipated.”

Mr Bermingham added: “The upshot was I have always been very welcome at the union. There are no hard feelings at all. It’s part and parcel of moving on.

“The key words are reconciliation and negotiation. Many things in Bermuda are dealt with by negotiation. There’s probably still more reconciliation to be done.

“From my point of view, that was the only way forward.”

• A commemoration is set for 4pm on Sunday at Devonshire Recreation Club