proponent claimed yesterday.

And the Governor's speech to Hamilton Lions on Wednesday stripped away any appearance of neutrality he had on the issue of Independence, Mr. Walton Brown said.

"The Government should say something,'' said Mr. Brown, who is chairman of the Committee for the Independence of Bermuda.

"The Governor is acting in what I see as a very combative manner and he is stepping on the jurisdiction of the elected Members of Parlaiment. It will be interesting to see if any of the Parliamentarians do anything about it.'' While it had been the practice of Governors "not to intervene in areas of local politics which are not of direct concern to the British Government,'' he said Lord Waddington "has decided that he will play a more interventionalist role.'' The Governor was "acting more as an irritant on the domestic front'', Mr.

Brown said. "He's not helping the issue of our settling our constitutional development question.'' The former British Home Secretary "has his pre-retirement package,'' and "he's coming here conducting politics''.

Mr. Brown said the Governor "seems to recognise some merit in Bermudians becoming full British citizens'', an achievement he described in his speech as "a prize''.

But British citizenship "stands in direct contradiction to any question of Independence''.

"Whatever neutrality he may have had has been completely eliminated by what I consider his very irresponsible and insensitive statements.'' British citizenship "does not hold out any tremendous prize for the vast majority of Bermudians'', he said. "Our standard of living is as good, if not better, than that of Great Britain.'' Mrs. Joyce Hall, a leading anti-Independence activist in the lead-up to the August 16 Independence referendum, defended the Governor's remarks.

"I don't think (he) was advocating anything in particular,'' Mrs. Hall said.

He merely said that after 1997 "there may be advantages to Bermuda if we should wish to explore having an association with Britain such as the Channel Islands have, and what the advantages would be''.

"All that to me was being forthright,'' she said. Prior to the referendum, "it would have been wonderful if Government or anyone who supposedly was educating the Bermuda public had come out and been as forthright and as helpful as the Governor was.'' In his speech, Lord Waddington gently criticised the Cabinet committee that wrote the Green Paper on Independence.

He said the Green Paper's authors "made pretty heavy weather'' of the Channel Islands example, when it concluded a similar relationship between Bermuda and the United Kingdom "would not be acceptable to either party''.

Premier David Saul, who was a member of the committee, said he took no offence at the Governor's remarks about the Green Paper.

"We had received that kind of comment'' from others, Dr. Saul said. As for the speech generally, the Premier did not feel it was improper, and he said he would discuss some of the Governor's ideas with his Cabinet colleagues.

Opposition Leader Frederick Wade said the Governor was basically saying the Green Paper authors were "out to lunch'' on possible changes in Bermuda-UK relations after 1997.

While Mr. Wade took no offence at the comments, he felt they came "three months late''.