I CONTINUE to read theoccasional Mid-Ocean News series "Bermuda: The Secret Files" - compiled from declassified documents on the island kept by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office - with much interest.

As someone who came of age in the period now being covered, I must confess that I had no idea that Bermuda's version of the Black Power revolt - which lasted from roughly 1969 to 1973 - had caused such jitters in high places, both here at Government House and presumably at the Foreign & Commonwealth office in London, where then Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas Home was briefed by his senior civil servants more than once on the sporadic outbreaks of violence and black rage in Bermuda.

In reading through the latest instalment, which covered the activities of what was at the time the most radical black political youth group operating in Bermuda, the Black Beret Cadre, it would appear that the Powers That Be at the time had access to an informant or two.

It is significant, however, that no members of the Black Beret leadership were ever brought before a court of law, except one member who was charged with burning the British flag at City Hall over the latter's decision to sell arms to the apartheid South African regime and one or two others charged with disseminating seditious literature in the form of the Beret newsletter, Voice of the Revolutionaries.

On the question of possible informants within the Black Beret ranks, that would come as no surprise. It was the general consensus among all of us who were active in the political opposition at that time - and that umbrella term would include the Black Beret Cadre, the Progressive Labour Party and the labour movement, in particular the Bermuda Industrial Union - were being watched by the authorities.

As I recall the PLP believed that it was being both watched and reported on openly and secretly. Now who would give such orders - Government House or the Government of the day? Probably Government House for at the time Lord Martonmere (pictured top right)took his reserve powers regarding internal security very seriously; operational control of the police remained his prerogative, not the United Bermuda Party Government's.

It was not until the 1980s that effective control of the Police Service was ceded from Government House to the Government - although to this day Bermuda's British Governor retains overall authority when it comes to Bermudian internal sercurity matters.

But one thing is for sure: someone gave orders that a watching brief should be kept on Bermuda's anti-establishment political activists. And that is why many people, but in particular older supporters of the PLP, will take the "New" UBP's sudden concern for human rights abuses in Cuba with a grain of salt, if not with a great deal of cynicism. They will remember the days when audiences at Progressive Labour Party meetings would be graced (and I am being polite) by the presence of a police officer (in plain clothes, of course).

When challenged, some would deny they were at the meetings to spy on the PLP and the political proceedings conducted in a supposedly democratic country. Some officers said they were there of their own volition.

BUT Bermuda is a small place. Not too many Bermudians, if they were in the Police Force, would be willing to play the role of mole. Thus it was mostly officers from the Caribbean who were used in this way. Some were brave and remained throughout the meetings; but most would be gone before the end after finding themselves challenged by other members of the audiences.

It must be said, however, with respect to the rise of a militant black youth group like the Black Berets, it was not only the Powers That Be were concerned. It would be quite correct to say that the leadership of the PLP was very concerned, having just seen off its own budding radical group in its own youth wing.

The PLP Youth Wing had given the party's leadership quite a scare when it was discovered that we were about to undertake some radical action regarding the City Hall elections (which continues right up to this day to operate on the basis of a limited franchise and no one really knows how decisions and policies are decided upon in those halls of power, both in Hamilton and in the town of St. George's. Do we really have a right to talk about lack of democracy in Cuba?).

Perhaps only the leader of the PLP at the time, Dame Lois Browne Evans, had the stature and/or respect to pull us back, but that was the PLP Youth Wing. The Black Beret Cadre, of course, was an entirely different kettle of fish.

Perhaps the authorities were hoping to play the Black Beret Cadre off against the PLP Youth Wing. If so, they would have been disappointed. I was a member of the PLP Youth Wing. And I remember a particularly bitter war of words between some members of the Cadre and the leader of the Youth Wing at the time, Dennis Warner. Dennis is now deceased; I attended his funeral last year with some more of those who were a part of Bermuda's black youth revolt during those times. A memorial was also conducted in Victoria Park and later at the BIU Hall for Black Beret leader "Dionne" Bassett, who also died at a relatively young age in the 1990s. If I sound like some old veteran from a war, well that is how many of us feel.

To us it was a war and some of us remember the battles and conflict that took place on Bermudian streets and were very rarely reported on by the media. I freely admit that like many young black Bermudians at the time, I was influenced by the revolutionary precepts of the day, just like our black counterparts in America, who it could be said were involved in a real war in America's cities. At the time both America and Britain were reaping the whirlwinds of their racist and colonial pasts and thus were taken aback by the Black Power revolt and the emergence of groups like the Black Panthers in America and the Black Berets in Bermuda.

AS I stated, there was tension between the PLP Youth Wing and the Berets and the latter ultimately did displace the Youth Wing as the leaders of the black political youth in Bermuda. But, thankfully, that tension did not explode into communal violence as a similar divide had done in America between the Black Panthers and the Black Cultural movement led by black nationalist Ron Karenga and his group called "US".

There were many violent clashes between these two groups and other elements in the Black Power movement in America which led to many deaths and the breakdown among those groups for a concerted struggle against their common enemy, racism.

THIS feuding was also aided and abetted by the widespread presence of guns in America and, of course, the activities of a Federal Bureau of Investigation programme codenamed "Cointelpro", which not only spied on radical Americans, but used agents-provocateurs and informants to destroy the radical black movement in America led by the Black Panthers and other progressive causes.

No such fratricidal conditions existed in Bermuda. We still had a sense of being Bermudians, all one in one country. It is only today that we have seen a breakdown among black youth in Bermuda and their communal violence has nothing to do with politics and a struggle against racism.

When the Black Berets took over the struggle, the PLP Youth Wing backed away and out of the picture - no violence, no conflict; many of us remain loyal to PLP. And we all had common heroes like Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and writers like Frantz Fanon who chronicled the anti-colonial struggle in the Third World.

These were the times in which we came of age. And some of us will be forever marked for having lived through those heady times.