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...emancipation, the blacks were able to do anything they wanted,
2
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and the poor whites had a very rough time.
3
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Almost immediately at emancipation,
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the plantation owners said "we no longer need militia tenants,
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we no longer, the freed people will no longer receive clothing from us,
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and so we don't need these white seamstresses any more to produce this clothing",
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and they just ordered them off the plantation.
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[narrator] Displaced, the poor whites were reduced to living in chattal houses like the former slaves.
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Unique to Barbados, these cheap wooden houses
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could be moved from plantation to plantation,
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as workers chased scarce jobs. [/narrator]
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"They would walk half over the island to demand alms,
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or, depend for their subsistence on the charity of slaves.
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Yet, they are as proud as Lucifer himself,
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and in virtue of their freckled, ditchwater faces,
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consider themselves on a level with every gentleman in the island."
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[narrator] Robert Burns almost indentured himself in the West Indies.
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The poet who wrote "A Slave's Lament".
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Island paradise?
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If you're lucky.
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But we mustn't forget that history also has its victims in the Scottish diaspora. [/narrator]
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You have the remarkable fact that, ehm,
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the national poet, Robert Burns, eh, would have been on his way to become,
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eh, a book keeper, that was the euphemistic phrase used.
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A book keeper.
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If it hadn't been for the success of his first publication
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of the Kilmarnock edition of his poetry.
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Probably one of the great ironies
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is that the original population of Barbados and other islands
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were prisoners who were coerced,
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prisoners who went there you know to, through no design of their own.
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So it could be argued, very ironic in a sense,
33
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that those Scots who succeeded later,
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who extracted much profit and fortunes from the Caribbean,
35
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were building their achievements on the blood, on the suffering,
36
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of their fellow countrymen, of the, of the, of the 17th century.
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But that has never stopped any 18th century Scot.
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The mo, the important thing is the profit.
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The, I mean, the lust for gain in this society,
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especially among the elites,
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was quite extraordinary.
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[narrator] And not all Redlegs remained poor.
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Richard Goddard in one of the richest businessmen on Barbados,
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and enormously proud of his Redleg ancestry.
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His grandfather walked barefoot to town,
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opened a rum shop,
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and built an empire. [/narrator]
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This photograph of nine fishermen on Bath Beach
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was taken about 1908.
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There are black and white fishermen,
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and the one on the back row to the right is Thomas Henry Goddard,
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and that would be my grandfather's uncle.
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And you notice that they're all wearing bag, which is the jute bag,
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where head and shoulders were cut out,
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and they were all barefooted.
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There's a bottle of rum on the ground,
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I would suspect that they were probably bribed to stand still for the photograph.
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I remember my brother in law telling me
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that once he asked my grandfather, who is now in his 80's,
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Mr. Joe, tell me about the good old days when you were a boy,
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and my grandfather start to cry.
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He said "No, Dennis, they were not good days,
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I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy.
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I knew what it was like to be hungry, sick, no job, no opportunity,
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and I certainly would not wish to call those good days"
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In 1834 when the police force was formed,
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and the military tenants really were, were then put off the land,
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they weren't needed any longer,
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and these people had been on those, as military tenants,
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for probably 150 years.
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The biggest majority were _,
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they ended up there because the land was poor.
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We're at the top of Hackleton's Cliff, and in the parish of St. John,
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and eh this was not only a physical barrier, but a social barrier as well.
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Those who lived below, the poor whites,
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they were identified as people coming from below the cliffs, so it was a barrier for them.
77
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And there were 3 points you could get out,
78
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either the gates, monkey jump, or the ladders.
79
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And over there to my right, where those coconut trees are,
80
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is the base of monkey jump.
81
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It would come up probably about 200 hundred yards,
82
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you had to come on all fours at times,
83
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and then at times in crop you would carry cane on your head,
84
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probably bundles of 8 canes, probably weighed 40 or 50 lbs,
85
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and you got $1.44 or 6 shillings for 10 of cane.
86
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They were living here because that's where land was cheapest.
87
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It was very rocky, it was not suitable for cultivation for the plantations,
88
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and they would pay about $8/acre per year rent.
89
00:05:18,917 --> 00:05:22,875
But down here you really got it for $4, it was just so bad it would have been reduced.
90
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You had to plant among the stones to get some form of a crop.
91
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It was extremely hard.
92
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I don't think that many of them really knew much about their forebearers,
93
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they knew they'd come from Scotland and Ireland, or somewhere in England.
94
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In fact England covered everything, the mother country that referred to.
95
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Their little world, even to go to town, some people who'd lived their whole life here,
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cannot go into Bridgetown.
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[narrator] We hear much about Scots who've traveled abroad and found riches,
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success, contributed to the progress of nations.
99
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Not all were so lucky.
100
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Many fled poverty only to find it again.
101
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Barbados is an obect lesson in what happens to a people who are robbed of their identity.
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St. Margaret's Anglican Church is on the hill above Martin's Bay.
103
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I'm 3,000 miles away from home, from Scotland,
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yet outside that church I meet an elderly man,
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a man with whom I've more in common than I could ever have guessed. [/narrator]
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[narrator] Just down there, there's a Glenburnie?
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I live quite near Glenburnie in Scotland.
108
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What did your grandfather do?
109
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And that must've been really hard...
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This is yer country.
111
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This is yer home.
112
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You're also Barbadian, but do you feel Scottish as well?
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[narrator] Irish photographer Sheena Jolley has known the Redlegs of Martin's Bay for years.
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Now she's back, photographing this diminishing population [/narrator]
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Initially I went in, and they were quite suspicious of me,
116
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but I was on my own, I was female, and I had worked there,
117
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so, ehm. they allowed me to talk to them,
118
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and the more time I spent with them, the more I got to know them.
119
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The poor whites have been suppressed since the 17th century,
120
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and really, nothing has changed.
121
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They were looked down upon by the blacks, and by the better-off whites.
122
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That hadn't changed in 2000,
123
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I'm pleased to say that since I've come back,
124
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I think there's a huge change there.
125
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And I think before there was very little integration between the blacks and the whites.
126
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When I photographed Aileen Downey in 2000,
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she actually lived in a stone house,
128
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but there was no running water, no electricity,
129
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and once a week she boiled water to wash herself.
130
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Life was hard.
131
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She was collecting coconuts, splitting the husks,
132
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and, and selling those to a nursery to grow orchids.
133
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She was in her 70's, she was very fit.
134
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So it was interesting for me to re-photograoh her.
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Perhaps her life was easier in some ways,
136
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but her living circumstances were dreadful.
137
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They were worse.
138
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But she was still happy.
139
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In spite of all that adversity,
140
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she was still smiling, still telling jokes.
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[narrator] Joyce and Nita are Aileen Downey's sisters,
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who also live in a chattal house in Martin's Bay.
143
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What kind of fishing?
144
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Fantastic.
145
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Did you sell the fish or...
146
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No that hard a life!
147
00:10:14,121 --> 00:10:15,644
Eating lobster, that sounds great.
148
00:10:30,468 --> 00:10:33,487
The Redlegs of Barbados run a barter economy.
149
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Everyone helps one another.
150
00:10:34,917 --> 00:10:38,750
Some breed pigs, others grow breadfruit, some still fish.
151
00:10:38,750 --> 00:10:43,075
Between them, they survive as a unit, a community.
152
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So that's a really Scottish name!
153
00:10:52,583 --> 00:10:54,491
Do you know about your Scottish connection?
154
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That's a shame isn't it...
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My name is Eustace Norris.
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_ my old parents, my family...