Government to help Irish in Barbados?

Will the Irish government come to the assistance of the so-called “Red Legs”, the descendents of Irish (as well as English and Scottish) people transported 400 years ago to Barbados to act as slaves? As many as 50,000 Irish people were transported to Barbados as slaves and indentured servants during Cromwell’s time; the community that survives numbers about 400, and suffers from poverty and ill health.

Their plight was the focus of a written question in the Dail, which has appeared on KildareStreet.com. The Q and A is below. In it, Minister Martin notes that Irish Abroad Unit officials have met with representatives of the community, and expresses and openness to funding projects as part of the normal emigrant support funding round.

This kind of outreach is yet another sign of the Irish government’s innovative commitment to strengthening and developing its relationship with the Irish diaspora. How many countries are working to re-establish relationships like this one between Ireland and this small community, which was  so cruelly severed four centuries ago?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

Question 674: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he has assisted the Redleg people of Irish slave decent in Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada and other Caribbean states; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1475/10]

Micheál Martin (Minister, Department of Foreign Affairs; Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

The Irish Abroad Unit within my Department maintains a keen interest in all aspects of the Irish experience of emigration, both forced and voluntary, and has active programmes aimed at strengthening our links with Irish communities overseas; including in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa, Europe and Asia.

While we have no active programme in the Caribbean at present, officials from the Irish Abroad Unit have held a number of exploratory meetings since 2008 with representatives of the descendents of those Irish people who were deported by Oliver Cromwell to Barbados in the 17th Century. During these discussions, the group were encouraged to maintain contact with the Government and to reflect further on the most appropriate way to recognise this unique community within the Irish Diaspora.

Representatives of the community are welcome to submit an application for funding under the Emigrant Support Programme when the 2010 grant round is launched in March by my Department.

It was, presumably, a recent TG4 programme  that highlighted the plight of this deprived outpost of the Irish diaspora and prompted Mr Varadkar’s question. The Irish Times also has a great article on this community.

Related websites:

• Moondance Productions: To Hell or Barbados
• Irish Times: Remnants of an indentured people
• Barbados Underground: Red Legs in Barbados
• To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland by Sean Callaghan
• Damien Dempsey: To Hell or Barbados

A reminder of the Irish in Barbados

An Irish Independent article on property investment in Barbados also reminds us of the dark days of the sugar plantations of the seventeenth century.

Many of the Irish arrived there after Oliver Cromwell took them off their land and sold them into slavery or indenture to British planters. Estimates of the numbers of Irish transported in this way range from 12,000 to 60,000, according to a Yale University web page.

The article says:

The historic plantation houses and old churches like St John’s, which holds the graves of some of the many Irish who helped build the sugar trade, offer something very different from the usual sun, sand and sea. . . and a stark reminder of just how far both countries have travelled since the dark days of slavery and colonisation.

Read the whole article: Barbados: Mix history with sun, sea and sand for perfect holiday home

Related web pages and resources:

• “Barbadosed”: Africans and Irish in Barbados
• Irish Echo: Cromwell’s legacy of Irish slavery
• White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh

Of course, there were a smaller number of Irish who benefited from the slave trade in the Caribbean; historian Donald Akenson’s If the Irish Ran the World tells the story of an Irish colony that  participated in imperialism.