Mama say, “She shoulda tole me she was pregnant!”
“Jezus, Mary, you didn’t know, I knew, the whole building knew. Are you crazy—”
“Don’t tell me nothin’ about my own chile—”
“Nine-one-one! Nine-one-one! Nine-one-one!” Miz West screamin’ now. She call Mama a fool.
Pain walking on me now. Jus’ stompin’ on me. I can’t see hear, I jus’ screamin’, Mommy! Mommy!”
Some mens, these ambulance mens, I don’t see ’em or hear ’em come in. But I look up from the pain and he there. This Spanish guy in EMS uniform. He push me back on a cushion. I’m like in a ball from the pain. He say, “RELAX!” The pain stabbing me wif a knife and this spic talkin’ ’bout relax.
He touch my forehead put his other hand on the side of my belly. “What’s your name?” he say. “Huh?” I say. “Your name?” “Precious,” I say. He say, “Precious, it’s almost here. I want you to push, you hear me momi, when that shit hit you again, go with it and push, Preshecita. Push.”
And I did.
Claire Shepherd
Born in Bequia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, she came to England as a child with her parents in 1960. She later became involved with the Keskidee Centre in Islington, the first Black Arts Centre in London, doing theatre arts. She studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London, obtaining a BA in Anthropology/Sociology and an MA in Communications, Culture and Society. She worked as a journalist on several of the first Black British newspapers, including the West Indian World, Caribbean Post, Voice and Caribbean Times, and has written for a number of other publications, among them African Woman, Happy Home and London Arts. She was also a researcher on a number of documentaries, including The People’s Account, a film commissioned by Channel 4 from Ceddo Film and Video Workshop on the 1985 uprisings in Birmingham, Brixton and Tottenham. She currently spends time between London and St Vincent.
Unforgotten
As I write this in St Vincent and the Grenadines, where I was born during the colonial era, it is “Black History Month” in the UK, where I spent much of the past few decades. It is also one hundred years since the end of the First World War, and it is hard not to revisit the contributions made by African and Caribbean people to the British war effort.
An estimated one million people died in East Africa alone during the First World War when thousands of African and Caribbean people went to war to defend the interests of their colonial masters in the trenches of Europe and even more gave support from their homelands.
More Africans were economically worse off by the end of the war in 1918 than in 1914 at its outset, and to date there is still no comprehensive record of the names or ranks, and of the thousands of African and Caribbean men who gave their lives no names appear on memorials. Their sacrifice has been largely forgotten.
The role of Africa and the Caribbean in the First World War has generally been overlooked and untold for decades by western colonial historians. Was this “turning a blind eye” by accident or amnesia or by carefully crafted intentional design?
In recent years, through the diligent efforts of African and Caribbean historians and researchers, together with the observance of Black History Month—October in the UK—there is an increasing interest in excavating African and Black British History, accompanied by social movements calling for reparations for slavery and colonialism.
There is a growing awareness of some of the true horrors and brutality of colonial rule and of the immense contribution made by people of African heritage to Europe, notwithstanding the often violent European aggression in Africa during the nineteenth century conducted against African societies to enslave people and later to conquer territory—resulting in the “Caribbean” people.
A couple of years ago I was part of a group visiting the Imperial War Museum in London for a session on the involvement of Africa and the Caribbean in World War I, a session that was illuminating on a number of levels. My initial thoughts and reaction on entering the building were that this institution was created as a monument to war, and the Imperial War Museum through its war memorabilia largely tells the stories of white people’s experiences of modern war from WWI to conflicts today. But in the interpretation of texts, whether through words or the artefacts collected and displayed at the museum, what truths are really told about the now independent ex-colonies and their contributions?
The group who visited the museum on the day in question had an opportunity to discover for themselves the story of the war through the eyes of people in Britain and its acquired Empire, both on the home front and the fighting fronts, and through this gain a better understanding and personal insight into how the war started, why it continued, how the Allies “won”, and the war’s global impact that still reverberates today.
The Great War was a drain on many African countries, which never fully recovered from the horrendous effects. Removing young men in their prime from their role in agricultural production to serve as soldiers and carriers created many local problems, increasing the need for women to take over in many cases. These countries remain “under-developed” today.
My visit was eye-opening for several reasons. First, it was a unique opportunity to see film clips and to touch some of the 1,300 objects drawn from the Imperial War Museum’s First World War collections—the richest and most comprehensive in the world. These included weapons, uniforms and equipment, diaries and letters, keepsakes and trinkets, photographs, and art. Each object displayed gave a voice to the person who created them, used them or cared for them, revealing stories not only of destruction, suffering and loss, but also of endurance and innovation, duty and devotion, as well as comradeship and love.
However, to be candid, the “comradeship and love” so glowingly described in parts of the literature of the Imperial War Museum appear not to have touched the many Africans who were still subject to the social psychology of colonialism yet sacrificed their lives for white Europeans.
As we thumbed through the memorabilia, including dozens of written cards and photographs with descriptions of the people and their situations in Africa—what we saw and felt repeatedly was a nascent racism and the lack of any deep knowledge or understanding of what Africa’s role in this largely European escapade truly was.
It is argued that not since the American War of Independence had such a huge number of people of African descent been involved in fighting for Europeans. But what is not commonly known is that most of these “volunteers” were used as “beasts of burden”—forced recruits used to carry the heavy weapons and supplies needed by the Europeans, and to do other menial work—although by necessity some were at the heart of battle. The majority of these men were poorly fed, given substandard food with which they were not familiar and for which they had no stomach.
As World War I progressed, more than a hundred nations worldwide joined the conflict, with seven African territories directly involved in the fighting, including: (Belgium) Congo, (British East Africa) Kenya, (German East Africa) Tanzania, (Northern Rhodesia) Zambia, (Nyasaland) Malawi, (Portuguese East Africa) Mozambique, and Uganda. Millions of people on the African continent made the ultimate sacrifice for the Europeans by losing their lives. The precise number who lost their lives for the British Empire, and were among the estimated overall total of 40 million who died, is still undocumented.
With hindsight, we can say that the fighting started in Africa, with, and because of, the Berlin Conference of 1884, when representatives of some thirteen European countries, and America, began the carving up of the African continent—without any African being present: no political leader, no delegate, nor ambassador from Africa was at the Berlin Conference. The Berlin Conference regulated European colonization and trade in Africa, and is usually referred to as the starting point of the “scramble for Africa”—the occupation, division, and colonization of African territory by European countries that led to the partitioning of Africa and in effect began the competition among Europeans countries, who avoide
d warring with each other over Africa.
This European imperialist push was motivated by three main factors: economic, political, and social. The goal was to dominate the African peoples completely, with each of the countries who sat at the Berlin Conference taking a slice of the continent and its incredible resources.
By the outset of World War I most of Africa was under the control of various colonial powers, for trade and profit and also because of prestige. The spoken and tacit understanding was that the duty of the Europeans in Africa was not to fight each other, but to keep control of the Africans.
War, as most of us now recognize, is a multi-national industry where huge profits are made and lives are lost in the thousands. Yet many of us are still rather naive about the huge financial profits and other material motivation involved.
Glenford D. Howe, author of Race War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War, in his PhD thesis “West Indians and World War One: A social history of the British West Indies Regiment” (University of London, 1994) documents the involvement of the colonies.
He states that “15,600 men of the British West Indies Regiment served with the Allied forces. Jamaica contributed two-thirds of these volunteers, while others came from British Honduras, British Guiana (now Guyana), the Leeward and Windward islnds of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent. Nearly 5,000 more men subsequently volunteered to join up, and so by the outbreak of war in 1914, centuries of alienation and the suppression of the remnants of African cultural practices, and the proliferation of British institutions, culture and language, had created staunchly loyal Black Britishers in Barbados and other colonies.”
The expression of support for Britain from the West Indian population was therefore, “not surprisingly, quite overwhelming”, according to Howe: “Donations were often made in spite of severe hardships. Gifts to the value of several thousand pounds were contributed by the colonies to the war effort; these included sugar, rum, oil, lime, cotton, rice, clothing, log wood, and aeroplanes. A total of eleven ambulances and adequate funds for their maintenance were donated, and approximately two million pounds sterling was given to the British government and charities. These donations were made in spite of severe hardships caused by major increases in the cost of living throughout the region which occurred with the proclamation of war.” A 2008 report in The Guardian by Simon Rogers noted: “The islands donated some £60m in today’s money to the war effort—cash they could ill afford.”
Howe points out that this generosity was sometimes contested locally, as when the Grenada liberal newspaper The Federalist described it as “extravagance” on the part of the local legislatures. And while “it is claimed that even Marcus Garvey encouraged young Jamaican men to join the war effort . . . in several colonies including Trinidad, Grenada, Jamaica and British Honduras, a number of people of African descent later adopted the position that it was ‘a white man’s war’ and therefore black people should not get involved.”
There were also ambiguous feelings among some white people about the involvement of Africans. According to one source some whites thought “it would be dangerous to train African men . . . to fight, in case they might rise up and use it against the colonial powers”.
After the war, African delegates were not welcomed to take part in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, so “Africa’s demands were not represented and the continent received no rewards for its contribution and neither were the efforts of the men and women who served mentioned”.
There was, in the UK, no memorial dedicated to commemorating the contributions to victory made by more than two million servicemen and women from the Caribbean and Africa in both world wars, until the initiation of a project by the Nubian Jak Community Trust, which set out to remedy the neglect and oversight. In 2017, in Windrush Square in Brixton, London, an African and Caribbean War Memorial was finally erected to honour the brave men and women who fought for Britain in the wars, and a growing movement continues today, to have “colonial history” taught in schools in Britain and elsewhere.
By contrast, and sad to say, in StVincent and the Grenadines, we still have a statue of what is clearly a white man standing erect on a plinth near the Central Market in Kingstown that was unveiled on 11 November 1925, and was erected in honour and in memory of those who fell in the First World War, stating: “To the glory of God and in memory of the sons of Saint Vincent who gave their lives for King and Country in the Great War, 1914–1918”. Yet, controversially and ironically, an obelisk stands at Dorsetshire Hill outside of the city in memory of Joseph Chatoyer, Carib chief, and first National Hero of St Vincent and the Grenadines, who died in 1795 in the course of leading the indigenous resistance against early European colonists. That is a history deserving of being claimed from the margins.
Verene A. Shepherd
A social historian, and the current Director of the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies, she is author, co-author, editor, co-editor and compiler of a number of books, including: Women in Caribbean History (1999); Engendering Caribbean History: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1995); Livestock, Sugar & Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica (2009); Maharani’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean (2002) and I Want to Disturb My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Post-Colonial Jamaica (2000). Her most recent book is The Gibson Relays: History and Impact on Jamaica’s Sports Culture and Social Development (2017). She is host of Talking History on Nationwide 90 FM in Jamaica, and a member of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Historicizing Gender-Based Violence in the Caribbean
My father’s house was full of female slaves, all objects of his lust; amongst whom he Strutted like Solomon in his grand seraglio, or like a bantam cock upon his own dunghill . . . By him my mother [Rosanna] was made the object of his brutal lust . . .
—Robert Wedderburn, The Horrors of Slavery (1824)
After abusing me with every ill name he could think of, and giving me several hard blows with his hand, he said ‘I shall come around tomorrow morning at twelve on purpose and give you a round hundred.’ He kept his word . . . He tied me up upon a ladder; Benjy stood by to count them for him. When he got weary he rested, then beat me again. An earthquake interrupted, and in the confusion, I crawled away, my body all blood and bruises.
—The History of Mary Prince (1831; 847)
These two startling quotations—one from 1824 by Robert Wedderburn whose father owned plantations in Jamaica; and the other from 1831 outlined by Mary Prince, enslaved in Bermuda and Antigua before being taken to England, where her experience of enslavement was used to fuel the anti-slavery cause—are apt because a long historical view of the contemporary scourge of domestic and gender-based violence is necessary to link the past and present.
These flashbacks from the nineteenth century, these references to the totality of the exercise of male power over women in the form of rape, sexual exploitation, verbal abuse, physical violence, threats, cruel and inhumane treatment and general female unfreedom—all illustrate the Caribbean region’s long genealogy of gender-based violence, which has been defined in the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women as any act that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life. In 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the UN expanded the definition to include: violations of the rights of women in situations of armed conflict, including systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy; forced sterilization, forced abortion, coerced or forced use of contraceptives; prenatal sex selection and female infanticide. It further recognised the particular vulnerabilities of women who belong to minorities: the elderly and the displaced; indigenous, refugee and migrant communities; women living in impoverished rural or rem
ote areas, or in detention.
What circumstances in history brought us here? The answer is embedded in our past. During the period of slavery, gender-based violence normally encompassed three sets of acts:
a)Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring as part of human trafficking and perpetrated by crew against women and girls on the Middle Passage, when captive Africans were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade.
b)Physical, sexual and psychological violence, including battering, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse of females in the household, and violence related to exploitation on the plantation and other spaces during the slavery period.
c)Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated in the home against men and women and children in the post-colonial period and at times condoned by law enforcement officials.
Gender-based violence also has roots firmly embedded in patriarchal ideologies that continue to have contemporary manifestations. Historically, as now, sexism, power and hegemonic masculinity were features of patriarchal societies, combined with notions of a gender hierarchy, race/ethnicity and class. In addition, religious orthodoxy, gender inequity, the lack of education around gender relations and the economic situation in which many men find themselves today feed the problem, as they empower men and keep women subordinate.
Research has shown that violence is instrumental in maintaining those power relations, and that men are responsible for most of the systematic, persistent, and injurious violence against women and under-report their own experience as victims.
From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, such power was manifested in various forms of violence over indigenous, enslaved and later indentured labourers. From the late nineteenth through to the twentieth century, the Victorian gender order, along with the male-as-breadwinner ideology, clashed with women’s claims to socio-economic and political power to act as justification for violence. This link between violence and power has been highlighted by the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993), which states:
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