If You Wish To See Your Future Look Behind You

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During the winter of 1636, an English ship bearing 61 men and women destined to be slaves on the plantations of Barbados slipped quietly out of Kinsale Harbor on Ireland’s southern coast. By the time Captain Joseph West’s ship arrived in the Caribbean in January 1637, eight of the 61 had died. The remainder were sold, including ten to the governor of Barbados, for 450 pounds of sugar apiece. Captain West was instructed to return to London to sell the sugar and then proceed to Kinsale to procure another cargo of Irish slaves. That first small trickle soon became a human flood. It was a lucrative but barbaric business. An Irish White slave could be sold in Barbados for between £10 and £35.

In all, more than 50,000 Irish were transported from Ireland to Barbados, more were sent to other islands in the West Indies, many of them captured and deported by Oliver Cromwell during the wars in Ireland and Scotland. The slaves became known as Redlegs, almost certainly a reference to the sunburn they picked up in the hot tropical sun.

By the mid-1700s most were free, their places taken by African slaves. However, no more than a fifth became farmers, owners, or artisans. The remainder formed a wretched, poor and isolated community. In 1689, the governor of Barbados, Colonel James Kendall, described the Redlegs as being “dominated over and used like dogs.” He suggested to the local assembly that the slaves be given two acres (0.8 hectares) of land, as was their due, but the assembly turned down the request.

Today, the few hundred remaining Redlegs in Barbados, also known as the Baccra, a name they were given as they were only allowed to sit in the back row at church, stand out as anomalies in a predominantly black population, struggling for survival in a society that has no niche for them, looked down upon by both blacks and better-off whites.

Ann Banfield proudly shows wildlife photographer Sheena Jolley the photograph of her grand daughter’s graduation. She is shown with her husband Herbert and their granddaughter who is currently studying for a Masters in law. Their granddaughter is the first to have gone to university from that community in Martins Bay in Barbados.

The Redlegs retain their racial pride and a degree of aloofness from their black neighbours, mostly marrying within their own community. They do not know much about Ireland except that some of their ancestors came from there. Though one man, Wilson Norris, is passionate about Irish music and has a collection of CDs, these people are poor and their main concentration is on survival, not the past.

Ill health, inadequate housing, little ownership of land to produce their own food, and a lack of job opportunities have locked the community into a poverty trap that has hardly improved in the last century. Poor diet and a lack of dental care have left most of the older generation with either bad teeth or no teeth at all, and young people who don’t realize that this is preventable. Illnesses and premature deaths caused by blood diseases such as haemophilia and diabetes have had a devastating effect on the community.

Erlene Downie in 2000 had been living alone for 33 years. Her home had neither electricity nor running water, which she had to carry from a standpipe. Once a week, she boiled water on fire outside so that she could wash. To earn money, she collected coconuts, splitting them with a pick-axe and supplying the husks to a local nursery for orchid cultivation.

Erlene Downie being helped back to her own house by daughters Hazel (on left) and Ann (on right) and serenaded by Willie Kerr of The Merrymen band so well known in Barbados for years. Ann is holding the hamper of food and Christmas present given to Erlene on Love Day by Terry Arthur. Terry started the Love Day charity 5 years ago visiting vagrants, homeless and sick but this is their first visit to the “poor white” community on the east coast.

Erlene, then 78 years old, still smiling but was living in even worse conditions. She had moved onto a plot beside her daughter’s house, where she lived in a wooden shack, again without running water, sanitation, or electricity. She was sharing the tiny space with a nephew and her youngest son, who is a haemophiliac.

78-year-old bachelor Chris Watson has spent his life as a fisherman. The tropical sun had taken its toll on his fair skin, and his face was half destroyed by skin cancer left untreated for too long. Although living in appalling conditions, lying on a dirty mattress in a room bare of any other furniture, his wooden house was perched high on a hill with a breath-taking view of the wild Atlantic coast.

Ann’s husband Herbert is of mixed race, and of late there has been much more integration with the black population and there are many more mixed-race children. As attitudes towards matters of colour, race, and class begin to change, those who don’t join the white middle class via better educational and job opportunities will, via mixed marriages, become absorbed into the black majority.

From left, Herbert and Ann Banfield, an American friend and grandchildren.

It is well to reflect that the same mindset as that of despot Oliver Cromwell rules Britain and much of the European Union today. Those curious about the future of their children and their children too might take a lesson from the tragedy of race-mixing purpose made to reduce peoples to an impotent slave-like existence.

Michael Walsh was awarded Euro Weekly News ‘Writer of the Year 2011’. With 60 books bearing his name, thousands of new stories and columns, Michael is arguably Britain and Europe’s most prolific author of multi-topic books.

Erlene Downie and Betty Fenty, who is the great aunt of singer Rihanna.

MICHAEL WALSH is a British born Irish journalist, author, and broadcaster whose father Patrick fought with great distinction in the Spanish Civil War. His 60 books include best-selling FORTY SHADES OF VERSE, A LEOPARD IN LIVERPOOL,  BELIEVING OF LIVERPOOL , ALL I ASK IS A TALL SHIP , FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT SPEAK, RISE OF THE SUN WEEL, EUROPE ARISE, TROTSKY’S WHITE NEGROES, MEGACAUST, DEATH OF A CITY, WITNESS TO HISTORY, THE BUSINESS BOOSTER and THE FIFTH COLUMN VOLUME I and II, and 60 other book titles.

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