0:00:00.480,0:00:05.968
...emancipation, the blacks were able to do anything they wanted,
0:00:05.968,0:00:09.966
and the poor whites had a very rough time.
0:00:12.980,0:00:15.302
Almost immediately at emancipation,
0:00:15.302,0:00:20.083
the plantation owners said "we no longer need militia tenants,
0:00:20.083,0:00:25.292
we no longer, the freed people will no longer receive clothing from us,
0:00:25.292,0:00:29.833
and so we don't need these white seamstresses any more to produce this clothing",
0:00:29.833,0:00:32.350
and they just ordered them off the plantation.
0:00:35.039,0:00:40.101
[narrator] Displaced, the poor whites were reduced to living in chattal houses like the former slaves.
0:00:40.101,0:00:42.167
Unique to Barbados, these cheap wooden houses
0:00:42.167,0:00:45.000
could be moved from plantation to plantation,
0:00:45.000,0:00:47.371
as workers chased scarce jobs. [/narrator]
0:00:51.479,0:00:53.875
"They would walk half over the island to demand alms,
0:00:53.875,0:00:57.583
or, depend for their subsistence on the charity of slaves.
0:00:57.583,0:01:01.292
Yet, they are as proud as Lucifer himself,
0:01:01.292,0:01:04.958
and in virtue of their freckled, ditchwater faces,
0:01:04.958,0:01:09.853
consider themselves on a level with every gentleman in the island."
0:01:13.917,0:01:16.875
[narrator] Robert Burns almost indentured himself in the West Indies.
0:01:16.875,0:01:19.583
The poet who wrote "A Slave's Lament".
0:01:19.583,0:01:21.958
Island paradise?
0:01:21.958,0:01:23.458
If you're lucky.
0:01:23.458,0:01:27.730
But we mustn't forget that history also has its victims in the Scottish diaspora. [/narrator]
0:01:28.583,0:01:30.958
You have the remarkable fact that, ehm,
0:01:30.958,0:01:37.458
the national poet, Robert Burns, eh, would have been on his way to become,
0:01:37.458,0:01:40.500
eh, a book keeper, that was the euphemistic phrase used.
0:01:40.500,0:01:41.773
A book keeper.
0:01:41.773,0:01:44.583
If it hadn't been for the success of his first publication
0:01:44.583,0:01:47.542
of the Kilmarnock edition of his poetry.
0:01:47.542,0:01:49.417
Probably one of the great ironies
0:01:49.417,0:01:52.750
is that the original population of Barbados and other islands
0:01:52.750,0:01:55.583
were prisoners who were coerced,
0:01:55.583,0:01:58.836
prisoners who went there you know to, through no design of their own.
0:02:00.458,0:02:02.500
So it could be argued, very ironic in a sense,
0:02:02.500,0:02:05.375
that those Scots who succeeded later,
0:02:05.375,0:02:09.083
who extracted much profit and fortunes from the Caribbean,
0:02:09.083,0:02:13.833
were building their achievements on the blood, on the suffering,
0:02:13.833,0:02:17.042
of their fellow countrymen, of the, of the, of the 17th century.
0:02:17.042,0:02:20.375
But that has never stopped any 18th century Scot.
0:02:20.375,0:02:23.667
The mo, the important thing is the profit.
0:02:23.667,0:02:27.167
The, I mean, the lust for gain in this society,
0:02:27.167,0:02:29.292
especially among the elites,
0:02:29.292,0:02:31.215
was quite extraordinary.
0:02:32.667,0:02:35.167
[narrator] And not all Redlegs remained poor.
0:02:35.167,0:02:38.125
Richard Goddard in one of the richest businessmen on Barbados,
0:02:38.125,0:02:41.833
and enormously proud of his Redleg ancestry.
0:02:41.833,0:02:44.167
His grandfather walked barefoot to town,
0:02:44.167,0:02:45.500
opened a rum shop,
0:02:45.500,0:02:47.315
and built an empire. [/narrator]
0:02:51.526,0:02:54.542
This photograph of nine fishermen on Bath Beach
0:02:54.542,0:02:56.588
was taken about 1908.
0:02:56.588,0:02:58.500
There are black and white fishermen,
0:02:58.500,0:03:03.292
and the one on the back row to the right is Thomas Henry Goddard,
0:03:03.292,0:03:06.633
and that would be my grandfather's uncle.
0:03:07.125,0:03:11.250
And you notice that they're all wearing bag, which is the jute bag,
0:03:11.250,0:03:14.125
where head and shoulders were cut out,
0:03:14.125,0:03:17.000
and they were all barefooted.
0:03:17.000,0:03:18.750
There's a bottle of rum on the ground,
0:03:18.750,0:03:24.114
I would suspect that they were probably bribed to stand still for the photograph.
0:03:26.391,0:03:28.260
I remember my brother in law telling me
0:03:28.260,0:03:31.542
that once he asked my grandfather, who is now in his 80's,
0:03:31.542,0:03:34.529
Mr. Joe, tell me about the good old days when you were a boy,
0:03:34.529,0:03:36.665
and my grandfather start to cry.
0:03:36.665,0:03:38.833
He said "No, Dennis, they were not good days,
0:03:38.833,0:03:41.125
I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy.
0:03:41.125,0:03:45.958
I knew what it was like to be hungry, sick, no job, no opportunity,
0:03:45.958,0:03:49.704
and I certainly would not wish to call those good days"
0:03:53.292,0:03:56.208
In 1834 when the police force was formed,
0:03:56.208,0:03:59.167
and the military tenants really were, were then put off the land,
0:03:59.167,0:04:00.917
they weren't needed any longer,
0:04:00.917,0:04:03.848
and these people had been on those, as military tenants,
0:04:03.848,0:04:06.195
for probably 150 years.
0:04:08.802,0:04:11.500
The biggest majority were _,
0:04:11.500,0:04:14.627
they ended up there because the land was poor.
0:04:16.833,0:04:21.208
We're at the top of Hackleton's Cliff, and in the parish of St. John,
0:04:21.208,0:04:26.708
and eh this was not only a physical barrier, but a social barrier as well.
0:04:26.708,0:04:28.750
Those who lived below, the poor whites,
0:04:28.750,0:04:34.958
they were identified as people coming from below the cliffs, so it was a barrier for them.
0:04:34.958,0:04:35.458
And there were 3 points you could get out,
0:04:37.375,0:04:41.042
either the gates, monkey jump, or the ladders.
0:04:41.042,0:04:44.500
And over there to my right, where those coconut trees are,
0:04:44.500,0:04:47.708
is the base of monkey jump.
0:04:47.708,0:04:51.917
It would come up probably about 200 hundred yards,
0:04:51.917,0:04:55.250
you had to come on all fours at times,
0:04:55.250,0:04:58.292
and then at times in crop you would carry cane on your head,
0:04:58.292,0:05:02.875
probably bundles of 8 canes, probably weighed 40 or 50 lbs,
0:05:02.875,0:05:08.154
and you got $1.44 or 6 shillings for 10 of cane.
0:05:09.638,0:05:11.292
They were living here because that's where land was cheapest.
0:05:11.292,0:05:15.250
It was very rocky, it was not suitable for cultivation for the plantations,
0:05:15.250,0:05:18.917
and they would pay about $8/acre per year rent.
0:05:18.917,0:05:22.875
But down here you really got it for $4, it was just so bad it would have been reduced.
0:05:22.875,0:05:26.267
You had to plant among the stones to get some form of a crop.
0:05:27.667,0:05:29.083
It was extremely hard.
0:05:29.083,0:05:32.161
I don't think that many of them really knew much about their forebearers,
0:05:32.161,0:05:35.505
they knew they'd come from Scotland and Ireland, or somewhere in England.
0:05:35.505,0:05:39.452
In fact England covered everything, the mother country that referred to.
0:05:40.667,0:05:44.417
Their little world, even to go to town, some people who'd lived their whole life here,
0:05:44.417,0:05:46.815
cannot go into Bridgetown.
0:05:52.000,0:05:55.333
[narrator] We hear much about Scots who've traveled abroad and found riches,
0:05:55.333,0:05:58.208
success, contributed to the progress of nations.
0:05:58.208,0:06:00.000
Not all were so lucky.
0:06:00.000,0:06:03.000
Many fled poverty only to find it again.
0:06:03.000,0:06:08.113
Barbados is an obect lesson in what happens to a people who are robbed of their identity.
0:06:10.335,0:06:13.958
St. Margaret's Anglican Church is on the hill above Martin's Bay.
0:06:13.958,0:06:17.958
I'm 3,000 miles away from home, from Scotland,
0:06:17.958,0:06:21.125
yet outside that church I meet an elderly man,
0:06:21.125,0:06:24.299
a man with whom I've more in common than I could ever have guessed. [/narrator]
0:06:33.875,0:06:35.075
[narrator] Just down there, there's a Glenburnie?
0:06:36.405,0:06:37.621
I live quite near Glenburnie in Scotland.
0:06:41.055,0:06:42.363
What did your grandfather do?
0:06:48.542,0:06:50.127
And that must've been really hard...
0:07:23.484,0:07:24.665
This is yer country.
0:07:24.665,0:07:25.876
This is yer home.
0:07:25.876,0:07:28.256
You're also Barbadian, but do you feel Scottish as well?
0:07:33.917,0:07:38.750
[narrator] Irish photographer Sheena Jolley has known the Redlegs of Martin's Bay for years.
0:07:38.750,0:07:41.577
Now she's back, photographing this diminishing population [/narrator]
0:07:42.583,0:07:45.740
Initially I went in, and they were quite suspicious of me,
0:07:47.017,0:07:49.833
but I was on my own, I was female, and I had worked there,
0:07:49.833,0:07:54.417
so, ehm. they allowed me to talk to them,
0:07:54.417,0:07:58.125
and the more time I spent with them, the more I got to know them.
0:07:58.125,0:08:02.208
The poor whites have been suppressed since the 17th century,
0:08:02.208,0:08:06.208
and really, nothing has changed.
0:08:06.208,0:08:10.958
They were looked down upon by the blacks, and by the better-off whites.
0:08:10.958,0:08:12.875
That hadn't changed in 2000,
0:08:12.875,0:08:15.167
I'm pleased to say that since I've come back,
0:08:15.167,0:08:17.167
I think there's a huge change there.
0:08:17.167,0:08:22.146
And I think before there was very little integration between the blacks and the whites.
0:08:28.471,0:08:32.333
When I photographed Aileen Downey in 2000,
0:08:32.333,0:08:34.500
she actually lived in a stone house,
0:08:34.500,0:08:37.167
but there was no running water, no electricity,
0:08:37.167,0:08:40.962
and once a week she boiled water to wash herself.
0:08:45.839,0:08:46.625
Life was hard.
0:08:46.625,0:08:49.369
She was collecting coconuts, splitting the husks,
0:08:49.369,0:08:53.875
and, and selling those to a nursery to grow orchids.
0:08:53.875,0:08:56.625
She was in her 70's, she was very fit.
0:08:56.625,0:09:00.750
So it was interesting for me to re-photograoh her.
0:09:00.750,0:09:02.975
Perhaps her life was easier in some ways,
0:09:02.975,0:09:05.855
but her living circumstances were dreadful.
0:09:05.855,0:09:07.000
They were worse.
0:09:07.000,0:09:08.270
But she was still happy.
0:09:08.270,0:09:09.500
In spite of all that adversity,
0:09:09.500,0:09:12.352
she was still smiling, still telling jokes.
0:09:37.625,0:09:40.333
[narrator] Joyce and Nita are Aileen Downey's sisters,
0:09:40.333,0:09:42.371
who also live in a chattal house in Martin's Bay.
0:09:45.583,0:09:47.106
What kind of fishing?
0:09:55.081,0:09:56.050
Fantastic.
0:09:56.473,0:09:58.119
Did you sell the fish or...
0:10:12.450,0:10:14.121
No that hard a life!
0:10:14.121,0:10:15.644
Eating lobster, that sounds great.
0:10:30.468,0:10:33.487
The Redlegs of Barbados run a barter economy.
0:10:33.487,0:10:34.917
Everyone helps one another.
0:10:34.917,0:10:38.750
Some breed pigs, others grow breadfruit, some still fish.
0:10:38.750,0:10:43.075
Between them, they survive as a unit, a community.
0:10:49.333,0:10:50.948
So that's a really Scottish name!
0:10:52.583,0:10:54.491
Do you know about your Scottish connection?
0:11:09.042,0:11:10.396
That's a shame isn't it...
0:12:53.583,0:12:56.750
My name is Eustace Norris.
0:12:56.750,9:59:59.000
_ my old parents, my family...