She was shunned socially, thrown off medical boards and was almost firebombed, but throughout the 1960s Dr. Barbara Ball worked tirelessly with the Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) to improve workers' rights.

Veteran labour leader and former MP Ottiwell Simmons has chronicled Dr. Ball's work with the BIU in a new book called 'Our Lady of Labour'.

The Royal Gazette met with Mr. Simmons at his home to discuss his memories of Dr. Ball and one of the most turbulent periods of Bermuda's history.

Dr. Ball is currently 86, and in poor health. Mr. Simmons refers to her affectionately as "Doc". "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," he said. "I call her 'Our Lady of Labour'."

Mr. Simmons said in 1962, when Dr. Ball was first elected Secretary General at a BIU conference, she stuck out like a sore thumb.

He said she was elected partly because some people at the conference thought that because she was white, she might get further with the white establishment they were battling with for things like the right to have union representation, better working conditions and better pay.

The Bermudian community was turned upside down by the appointment. "After the election, I never forgot how society reacted to it," said Mr. Simmons. "Whites seemed to reject her and push her away. Blacks suspected her as being a spy."

She was thrown out of the a local medical association not long after she joined the BIU. In those days she had an office on Laffan Street where she treated mainly Portuguese and black patients. Even this was controversial, as white people mainly saw white doctors, and black people mainly saw black doctors.

During a labour dispute where non-clinical workers struggled to be allowed union representation, Dr. Ball was suspended from seeing her patients at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

"They said she couldn't have had the patients' best wishes at heart," said Mr. Simmons. "She said 'look, there is no conflict with me, as far as I am concerned. As a medical practitioner my patients come first, and as a union representative the union comes first in that arena'."

The suspension was eventually lifted, but not until 6,000 people signed a petition on her behalf.

"Dr. Ball didn't only live through it," said Mr. Simmons. "She thrived as a leader in this type of environment. We all saw we had to kick some fences down, shake the tree and shake this country up. That's what we did."

But he said that although great leaders are usually loud, Dr. Ball was not. "She was always so serene and quiet," said Mr. Simmons. "Doc wouldn't swat a fly. We had to tell her to speak up when she was speaking publically. At the same time she was a very aggressive and determined leader."

One moment in her labour career that particularly stood out was the Belco strike of February 1965. On February 2, BIU members were picketing various gates at Belco.

"Advice for all the strikes at that time was 'picket peacefully'," said Mr. Simmons.

He said they were greatly inspired by the peaceful work of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. In fact, on that day they were singing 'We Shall Overcome'.

That day there were an estimated 400 people picketing, not just members of the BIU, but also people from other organisations who were sympathetic.

A dispute began between the picketers and the Police seeming to hinge on how fast the picketers cleared the gate so that traffic could get onto the property.

"But Dr. Ball wanted them to understand that this was not an ordinary day," said Mr. Simmons. "We were demanding our rights to have union representation on the job, and the law gave us the right to picket this place or any other place."

Violence erupted between picketers and Police. Soon construction workers who heard about the fight rushed to join, as well as hotel workers and dockworkers.

Several Police officers were injured in the melee and the picketers were eventually driven out by tear gas. Mr. Simmons estimated that the entire event lasted about 30 minutes.

When the picketers later gathered at Devonshire Recreation Club, the word was "Dr. Ball". As it happened, Dr. Ball was a karate expert, and later taught Police karate.

"People were saying, 'man she gave those police gashes, and she had them juggling in the air like they was nothing'," said Mr. Simmons. "There were stories of all kinds. That was a big thing, not just for Dr. Ball but also for the working class. It was a national issue. We weren't skylarking in those days."

Mr. Simmons' book contains the official Police report, donated by Andy Bermingham, one of the Police officers who was injured that day. Mr. Bermingham was knocked on the head.

The report blamed the attitude of the strikers on the fact that their strike appeared to be having no effect on Belco.

The report said: "Dr. Barbara Ball and other union officials, Ottiwell Simmons, Algernon (Eugene) Blakeney and Robert Johnston acted as picket supervisors, and the former (Dr. Ball) by extorting the pickets to block the entrances showed in no uncertain manner that she was determined to force the issue, ignoring the provisions of the law relating to peaceful picketing.

"There is little doubt that her militant attitude was a contributing factor in the chain of events that finally culminated in violence."

Mr. Simmons said Dr. Ball came from a relatively quiet background. She was a graduate of the Bermuda High School for Girls and her father, Carlton Ball, was a master carpenter, known for his skill at sharpening tools.

Mr. Ball and his wife, Jesse, were known for their ballroom dancing and Mr. Simmons remembered watching them dance, as a young boy while working at the old Castle Harbour Hotel.

"They were head and shoulders above Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers," said Mr. Simmons. "In the community, they were much more popular than Doc ever was."

In 1942, the young Barbara Ball went to Liverpool University in England on a government scholarship to study medicine.

After graduation she worked for five years in hospitals in Liverpool, Merseyside and Westmoreland. At the age of 30, she returned home to work as a family doctor.

She started to gain the notice of the community, in 1960 ,when she spoke at a meeting of an anonymous group called 'The Committee for Universal Adult Suffrage'. They wanted all locals over the age of 21 to have the right to vote.

Mr. Simmons said one quote he remembered from her from one of these meetings was: "Don't you people be fooled by the success of the economy. The money in this economy belongs to a precious few people. Remember it is a false economy, because the average worker does not have any part or say in it."

It was through her work with this committee that she came to work with the BIU.

Mr. Simmons said in the early days it was risky being part of the BIU, to put it mildly. The white establishment had ways of fighting back.

Union members could lose their jobs and then be put on a list so they couldn't get another job. Their mortgage could also be suddenly called in, even if they were paid up.

Mr. Simmons said this happened to his own father, although the situation was dealt with and he did not lose his house.

"Sometimes at the beginning we couldn't find people to do a shop steward's job to make sure people were treated right," he said. "So we had a lot of seminars and workshops on how to be a shop steward. We taught them social skills, and how to be equal rather than subservient. Eventually, we had a battalion of shop stewards.

"Then people were really proud to be shop stewards."

He said Dr. Ball was General Secretary of the BIU until 1974, when she resigned to give someone else a chance. She became research officer.

"By the time we ended up, we had overcome a lot of obstacles, a lot through Dr. Ball," he said. "She worked from sun up to sun down to sun up again. Sometimes we were in that office until 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. I know she was a person who made sacrifices. She gave everything she could to the union."

Dr. Ball later became a member of the Progressive Labour Party (PLP), the only white member at the time.

Of his book, Mr. Simmons said: "I wouldn't say this is a book where you read it and you understand everything there is to know about the BIU. But it has a lot of information in it. It can be a reference point."

He is currently working on a book about his own experiences. 'Our Lady of Labour' will be on store shelves, this month.