SPARE some sympathy for Bermuda's Housing Minister Ashfield Devent and the unenviable tasks that he faces. For at this stage in Bermuda's development there are only a handful of areas at the Minister's disposal that can be earmarked for the construction of low-cost Government housing.

Bermuda can ill afford outbursts of the Not In My Backyard Syndrome when it comes to the subject of much-needed affordable housing. But the Minister has been subjected to two concerted NIMBY campaigns in recent months ? one in Prospect, where a proposed housing development was eventually shelved after protests from area residents, and now in St. David's.

Frankly, I am incensed by the most recent protests involving residents of the East End. To be blunt, St. David's is not an Independent country nor is it an autonomous province of Bermuda that should be allowed to cast a veto over Government plans for developing the former United States baselands.

The question of land use is a serious issue in Bermuda, given the island's tiny size and finite resources. Countries have been known to go to war over living space; in fact countries are quite capable of going to war with themselves over this same question. The tragic events now being played out in western Sudan underscore my point. The civil war raging in the Sudanese province of Darfur has its origins, in part, over the question of land use.

Now, I am not suggesting for a moment that the issue of development on the former baselands will prompt a small-scale Bermudian version of what we are currently witnessing in the Sudan ? where the central government has launched a concerted military campaign against the breakaway province.

Nevertheless, East End opposition to the Housing Minister's plans is building in intensity and could well reach a crisis point in the coming weeks and months.

As a born Bermudian, I do remember a time when neighbourhoods were known for their individual and distinctive characteristics in that the same relative handful of families often dominated a specific area for generations.

St. David's is no different from any other Bermudian community in this regard. But admittedly it is different in some respects ? St. David's represents a last Bermudian frontier of sorts, one that has largely avoided the population shifts and economic development that have altered so many other Bermudian neighbourhoods beyond all recognition in recent decades.

Without its proximity of the hundreds of acres of former baselands property, remote St. David's may have continued to avoid the same fate that has befallen other Bermudian communities.

We all know that St. David's Islanders have zealously guarded their unique cultural identity for centuries. In recent years the population of St. David's have even started strengthening cultural ties to the Native American tribes from whom some of them are descended, Indian slaves having been brought to Bermuda in the early years of its settlement by the English.

There is nothing wrong with St. David's Islanders celebrating their unique lineage. But the reality is that Bermuda has always been a cultural and racial melting pot: many of us can boast of exotic and unlikely ancestries. Throughout its history Bermuda has absorbed diverse groups of people and is doing so even now with people of Filipino and East Asian descent.

Although many St. David's Islanders would probably disagree with me, from my point of view it seems that their resistance to the creation of new housing developments on the baselands is a last-ditch effort to resist a process that has longsince overtaken the rest of Bermuda ? namely, the erosion of a traditional community.

, the former baselands do have a special place in the collective memory of older St. David's Islanders who remember their community before the arrival of the US military and the island's physical incorporation into the rest of Bermuda as a result of vast American land reclamation projects during World War Two.

But the reality is that entire generations of St. David's Islanders have grown up since 1940-41 accepting the fact that their island is in fact a part of the rest of Bermuda ? not a separate community.

Do the people of St. David's have a historical claim to the former baselands? Sadly, very few Bermudians ? even those with close family ties to St. David's ? know of the historical background to the American acquisition of this land during World War Two.

I am not from St. David's but I am familiar with the story. I know how the Bermuda Government turned over property in what had been a remote fishing and farming community to the US military as a result of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill promising US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt an American base in Bermuda at the outset of the Second World War.

I have studied the contemporaneous news reports in the Bermuda Library and I also remember the oral history of St. David's handed down to me by my dear, departed grandmother.

Not all St. David's Islanders willingly accepted the Government of the day's decision to earmark their island for a US military base. In fact, just like their Tucker's Town counterparts ? fishermen and farmers who were displaced in the 1930s to make way for the luxury hotel and residential development ? the people of St. David's lost control of their land in circumstances which can still stir emotions and controversy today.

In fact, in the case of the St. David's Islanders it required the direct intervention of the Governor of the day to persuade them that they should sacrifice their land for the common good ? World War Two was, of course, raging at the time and the only realistic alternative to an East End base would have been one located in Warwick/Southampton that would literally have cut Bermuda in half.

My grandmother used to tell me the story of one St. David's Islander who resolutely refused to part with his plot of land. He would not under any circumstances hand it over to the US authorities. In fact, his neighbours held a vigil of sorts outside his house for several days after the hand-over date had expired, wondering how long he would be able to resist the Americans.

Every day, the neighbours would ask: "Is he gone yet?" Then on the day the imposing American bulldozers arrived outside his front door, the cry was: "He is gone now!" My grandmother always laughed when she told me that story but to my mind this now almost forgotten individual was a true Bermudian national hero, no matter how ultimately futile his resistance proved to be.

This brings me back to the question I posed earlier ? do the people of St. David's in fact have a special claim to the former US baselands? Well, unlike the people of Tucker's Town, the loss of their land never became a Bermudian nor could many Bermudians argue with the need to sacrifice some of our land for military installations during the global international crisis of World War Two.

It is only now, in the wake of the land being handed back to Bermuda by the United States, that controversy about its future use has arisen in St. David's.

Sadly, as is the case with descendants of the original inhabitants of Tucker's Town, the clock cannot be turned back. Bermuda is a very different society now with very different needs ? and one of the most pressing needs in modern Bermuda is affordable housing.

It is in Bermuda's national interests to create housing developments for its people. And the reality is that the former baselands, as I said earlier, do represent Bermuda's last frontier for such ambitious projects.