Category: Diversity

Titus Okere

Titus Okere,

Once captain of Lagos Railways FC,

Made history in 1953,

When he signed for the Railwaymen

Of Swindon Town FC,

Leaving what was still a colony,

Of the British Empire,

To plough a lonely furrow down the wing,

As the first Nigerian to sign up

For a football club in the continent of Europe.

Titus had already made a name for himself

In the dour days of austerity back in 1949

And, of course, in the wake of Windrush,

When he starred on the left wing,

For what was, in effect, the Nigerian team;

But in those colonial post-war days,

The team was named the ‘UK Tourists’;

Titus also scored against Sierra Leone,

In what was, in effect, an international fixture.

After leaving Swindon in 1953,

Titus lived in the county of Kent,

No doubt, wistfully recalling his early life:

His birth in March 1929 in Ngor Okpala,

His education at the Okrika Grammar School,

His teenage athletic and football skills,

His captaincy of Lagos Railways,

The cups and trophies won by him and them,

His captaincy of the Nigerian team against the Gold Coast,

In those far off days of King George the Sixth,

And a bomb-site Britain still with its Empire …

I was just one year old when Titus joined Swindon Town,

Signing as a professional early in the year of 1953,

Before moving elsewhere in Wiltshire,

To Chippenham United,

In the summer of that Coronation year.

And what do we know of Titus Okere in Swindon?

We’re told he, ‘Struggled with the British winter’,

And found those heavy studded football boots

More of a leathered hindrance than a help

The only recollection that appeared

When I appealed for recollections:

‘I watched him play for STFC in 1953,

A fast and tricky left winger …

as I vaguely remember it.

I was only twelve’.

But Titus was the first Black professional

At Swindon Town F.C., a trailblazer

Who should be remembered publicly,

Even if he didn’t make the first team,

Just appearing twice for the reserves,

And in Gloucestershire’s Northern Senior League,

Before playing elsewhere in Wiltshire football,

Making, again, a unique contribution

To the history of ‘the Beautiful Game’

Both nationally and in the county.

Journalists such as Edgar Kail once of Dulwich Hamlet FC,

(The last amateur footballer to play for England,

Memorialised with a blue plaque)

Thought so much of Titus that it was imagined that

Titus’ skill and speed could open doors

Into almost any European football team,

But barefoot in 1949 was different

To heavy boots in 1953 …

But how did Titus end up at Swindon Town?

Here the legacy of the GWR comes into play …

How right and proper and fitting it feels,

That Titus, a clerk on the Nigerian Railways,

And captain of the railway football team,

Should meet a coach who hailed from Swindon

(Who in a case of seemingly improbable

Nominative determinism,

Bore the so-apt name of Leo Robins) …

The coach sent a letter to Louis Page,

Swindon Town’s manager,

When time and circumstance permitted

(Leo was on railway work in Nigeria as well),

Discussions followed at board room level,

A letter followed from the manager …

And Titus left the sunshine of Nigeria

For the frost and rime of winter

And a keen Wiltshire wind blowing from the east.

The journalist, Dennis Hart, was keen, too,

To cover the tale of Titus’ odyssey,

How ‘I certainly miss the’ sun of Nigeria,

‘But I’ve already made lots of friends here.

The players and the staff … have done everything

to make me feel at home, and so too, my landlady, Mrs Wakeley.’

Alas, it didn’t work out the way we hoped it would,

As we gaze back through the looking glass,

But there’s more to life than football,

And Titus returned to railway work again,

A loyal servant at Parcel Force,

Until retirement in the autumn of his days.

And this year, in the summer of 2023,

Titus left this life but left us memories,

And Swindon Town remembered Titus too,

As Francis Okere (Titus’ grand-daughter) said from Kent,

After the service at the Bluebell Hill crematorium:

‘It was a lovely service.

Swindon Town paid tribute to him and sent him a tie.’

This is the textual tribute from STFC:

‘Although he only made a few first-team appearances for Swindon Town, he was held in the highest regard by supporters and colleagues of the club alike. He had come to the club’s attention when he toured England with the Nigerian international team. An outside left, he was nicknamed “the golden boy” – – because of his ability to create chances out of nothing. The credit for signing him for Swindon must go to Mr Louis Page, the manager. He was obviously keen to sign him as in January, two Board Meetings received reports on whether or not he would arrive by January 20th before he managed to get to this country and sign on in February …’

But a heavy pitch, cumbersome boots,

Loneliness – the directors would not think

Of paying for Mrs Okere to come over

Until Titus became a first team regular –

All conspired against Titus at Swindon;

But surely the time has come for Swindon Town

To acknowledge further the importance of Titus:

Their first Black professional player:

Perhaps with a plaque at the STFC Museum?

Post-Script

‘’I recall a game against Walsall that we lost 5-0, and so it went on. Boys, like everyone else, like to be associated with winners and I was drawn into a crowd that cycled up to Blunsdon each week for the new thrills and wins at Speedway.

Football wasn’t entirely forgotten for there was ‘The Adver’ and ‘Pink’ to keep us informed so we were aware that ‘Town’ had signed the Nigerian Titus Okere. I didn’t see him play for I was into Speedway at that time – did he ever get a first team outing?

We were all aware of his nickname, ‘Nutty Slack’, given to him by the crowd which included a great many railwaymen. In those days, war-time rationing was still in place and if you worked ‘Inside’, one of the perks was coal. Coal of very poor quality made up of small nuggets of dust and bits of slate amongst it, the infamous Nutty Slack. Of course, railwaymen’s humour picked up on this and Titus became “Nutty Slack”. There was no malice in it, that’s just how it was in those days.’

‘Golden Boy’ …

‘Sunny disposition’ …

‘Nutty Slack’ …

‘That’s just how it was in those days’ …

 

 

Lancaster and the Slave Trade

What’s in a Name?
The Naming of Parts
The Grave at Sunderland Point

There’s an embarrassment in walking to the grave,
Out there at causewayed Sunderland Point,
From where ships once sailed the seven seas,
Now a desolate mudflat skyscape,
A couple of miles beyond the last post village –
But once all seascape hustle and bustle,
Shipshape and Lancaster slavery fashion.

There are still two pubs there in Overton,
The Globe and The Ship –
Cottages bear dates coeval with the slave trade.

The signposts curtly say: ‘Sambo’s Grave’,
It’s out there at windswept Sunderland Point;
The steps he climbed at the brewhouse are still there –
He climbed to pine and die in lonely isolation,
Or so the story has it;
The building – now a house – was up for sale,
When I visited in late summer 2021;
It’s history, like a name, silent.

What’s in a Name?
The Naming of Parts
The Grave at Sunderland Point

There’s an embarrassment in walking to the grave,
Out there at causewayed Sunderland Point,
From where ships once sailed the seven seas,
Now a desolate mudflat skyscape,
A couple of miles beyond the last post village –
But once all seascape hustle and bustle,
Shipshape and Lancaster slavery fashion.

There are still two pubs there in Overton,
The Globe and The Ship –
Cottages bear dates coeval with the slave trade.

The signposts curtly say: ‘Sambo’s Grave’,
It’s out there at windswept Sunderland Point;
The steps he climbed at the brewhouse are still there –
He climbed to pine and die in lonely isolation,
Or so the story has it;
The building – now a house – was up for sale,
When I visited in late summer 2021;
It’s history, like a name, silent.

An information board tells the tale in detail,
But there is no mention of the provenance
Of the word ‘Sambo’ and its cognate
Racist associations and lineage;
I looked at the well-tended imagined grave,
Decorated with painted pebbles
And children’s keepsakes.

I took out Dorothea Smartt’s book,
Ship shape and studied these descriptions:
‘Sambo, any male of the negro race …’;
‘Sambo: A pet name given to anyone of the negro race’;
‘Sambo … A colloquial or humorous appellation for a negro …’;
‘Sambo: a stereotypical name for a male black person
(now only derogatory) …’;

What’s in a name?
The Naming of Parts.

In Lancaster, there is a memorial,
The triangular trade represented in 3-D,
And also italicised and etched down a column,
Four headings to collate information,
Under the title Captured Africans:

Ships Master Depart Africans
Expedition Strangeways, James 1745 188
Jolly Batchelor Hinde, Thomas 1749 154
Africa Hinde, Thomas 1752 170
Bark Millerson, Richard 1754 140
Swallow Ord, William 1755 100
Lancaster Paley, Thomas 1756 90
Castleton Lindow, James 1756 120
Gambia Dodson, Robert 1756 180
Cato Millerson, Richard 1759 360
Thetis Preston, John 1759 212
Molly Dennison, William 1760 228
Marquis of Granby Dodson, Robert 1762 240
Eagle Millerson, Richard 1762 220
Hamilton Saul, William 1762 270
Norfolk Innes, Isaac 1763 202
King Tom Read, John 1764 230
Antelope Paley, Thomas 1764 150
Phoebe Macky 1764 296
Prince George Addison, John 1766 160
Pearl Maychell, James 1771 300
Stanley Absob, John 1773 160
Nelly Maychell, James 1741 250
Sally Sawrey, James 1775 153
Old England Garnet, John 1783 181
John Nunns, John 1806 280

Twenty-five names of ships;
The surnames and first names of the ships’ masters;
I counted 5,034 captured Africans,
Names unknown;
I looked at synonyms for nameless;
I looked at synonyms for chattel;

I took out Dorothea Smartt’s book,
Ship shape and studied these descriptions:
‘Sambo, any male of the negro race …’;
‘Sambo: A pet name given to anyone of the negro race’;
‘Sambo … A colloquial or humorous appellation for a negro …’;
‘Sambo: a stereotypical name for a male black person.

What’s in a name?
The naming of parts.

Stroud and a Hidden Colonial Landscape Number

Chalford and the East India Company

Updated: Jul 7

Chalford has such a labyrinth of weavers’ walks and footpaths –
And on a mid-winter’s day, with plumes of smoke rising from Chalford Bottom
Mistletoe in the trees, light folded in envelopes of cloud,
It’s hard to imagine that this picturesque Cotswold village
Was once hand in glove with the East India Company,
As at Sevill’s Upper Mill,
Now a select residential development,
With the stream, now private and sequestered,
Between houses and a car park.

This landscape was once a fretwork of
‘Scarlet, Crimson, Blue and a variety of other delightful colours’,
A fretwork of profits and prices and exports and wages
And strikes and patterns of trade slumps and booms,
Linking the Thames and Severn Canal and the River Frome –
With the Ganges Valley, Bengal, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Canton,
And with Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, the Marquess Wellesley,
And with muskets, cannon, Stroud Scarlet, slavery, opium, cotton, coffee and tea:
‘Gloucestershire seems to have had
almost the sole custom of the East India Company’.

Chalford and the East India Company

Updated: Jul 7

Chalford has such a labyrinth of weavers’ walks and footpaths –
And on a mid-winter’s day, with plumes of smoke rising from Chalford Bottom
Mistletoe in the trees, light folded in envelopes of cloud,
It’s hard to imagine that this picturesque Cotswold village
Was once hand in glove with the East India Company,
As at Sevill’s Upper Mill,
Now a select residential development,
With the stream, now private and sequestered,
Between houses and a car park.

This landscape was once a fretwork of
‘Scarlet, Crimson, Blue and a variety of other delightful colours’,
A fretwork of profits and prices and exports and wages
And strikes and patterns of trade slumps and booms,
Linking the Thames and Severn Canal and the River Frome –
With the Ganges Valley, Bengal, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Canton,
And with Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, the Marquess Wellesley,
And with muskets, cannon, Stroud Scarlet, slavery, opium, cotton, coffee and tea:
‘Gloucestershire seems to have had
almost the sole custom of the East India Company’.

Contemporary websites project a multicultural,
Almost spiritual, perspective, however:
On Stroud cloth and the East India Company:
‘Red is a colour of great symbolic importance to many cultures. …
Indian rulers copied the red coats of the East India Company,

Or
‘The indigenous communities trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the East India Company adapted the cloth and integrated it into their own traditions of material culture.’

There is no hint of oppression, imperialism, asymmetrical power, war,
Or the ideology of racism,
But rather more a projection of fair exchange and mutuality,
No hint of the fact that ‘trading and political power were closely interlinked’,
Nor that the East India Company was also involved in the slave trade
In Madagascar, St Helena, Bengkulu and Angola,
Exchanging guns, gunpowder, cutlasses, cloth, and piece goods,
No hint that Bristol merchants bought textiles from the Company
To exchange for slaves in West Africa,
No hint of the fact that the East India Company, in effect,
Governed on behalf of the British government,
For over a century,
Exploiting and contributing to the decline of the Mughal Empire,
No hint of the fact that the Company sold Indian grown opium,
To be smuggled to China, to flout the Imperial ban,
The profits paying for tea for domestic consumption;

Instead a comforting emphasis on: “Trade in spices, pepper, cloth, cloves, nutmeg,
Cinnamon, silks, tea, cotton, coffee, and so on”,
Instead a typical information plaque in Nailsworth:
‘Gigg is so small and tucked away that it is hard to imagine that it was once the generator of great wealth. In the 1790s John Remmington bought it and other mills. From the profits he added a sumptuous wing to his house up the hill at Barton End. His cloth was bought by the East India Company for sale to China.
An entry in the Company books briefly records the final settlement
after his retirement:
December 1811 Broadcloth J Rimmington £180

But our conclusion acknowledges a different final settlement:
These cottages clambering up the Cotswold hillsides, this Golden Valley harmony of water, wood and stone is derived, in some degree, from war,
slavery, racism, opium and imperialism.

We have written before of Raphael Samuel’s point that Heritage and Tradition can too easily morph into ‘an expressive totality … projecting a unified set of meanings which are impervious to challenge … a fixed narrative which allows neither subtext nor counter-readings’; but, ‘History is an allegorical as well as … a mimetic art … like allegorists, historians are adept at discovering a hidden or half-hidden order. We find occult meanings in apparently simple truths.’

Stroud and a Hidden Colonial Landscape Number 5

Stroud and strouds and the Atlantic Archipelago

Updated: Jul 5

From Stroud to Strouds:
The Hidden History of a British Fur Trade Textile
Cory Wilmott
Textile History Journal November 2005
These rough notes are derived from this article and this section of the article is derived from Samuel Rudder, 1779.
Stroud scarlet’s ‘inland trade’ also included cloth sold to merchants who sold the cloth to ‘our colonies and other foreign markets’.
These merchants included those in London and Bristol.
Cloth also clad the British army and was also sold to the East India Company.
Questions derived from reading this article:
1. The article focusses upon the fur trade. But if we go beyond the confines of this article and think. Cloth went to ‘our colonies’. London and Bristol were the chief slaving ports involved in the triangular trade in southern England.
2. It would be counter-intuitive to think Stroud cloth wasn’t involved with the slave trade.
3. Turnpike to Bristol? Colin Maggs in The Nailsworth and Stroud Branch: ‘…cloth manufacturers found their trade hampered by the high cost of road transport to ships at Gloucester and Bristol. It is recorded that in 1763 Daniel Ballard ran stage waggons to both these ports’.
4. Stroudwater Navigation to the Severn and thence to Bristol? Thames & Severn Canal and then the Thames to London?
5. We need empirically minded historians with the time to research the unique archive of the Stroudwater Navigation. See the prose-poem below:

Stroud and strouds and the Atlantic Archipelago

Updated: Jul 5

From Stroud to Strouds:
The Hidden History of a British Fur Trade Textile
Cory Wilmott
Textile History Journal November 2005
These rough notes are derived from this article and this section of the article is derived from Samuel Rudder, 1779.
Stroud scarlet’s ‘inland trade’ also included cloth sold to merchants who sold the cloth to ‘our colonies and other foreign markets’.
These merchants included those in London and Bristol.
Cloth also clad the British army and was also sold to the East India Company.
Questions derived from reading this article:
1. The article focusses upon the fur trade. But if we go beyond the confines of this article and think. Cloth went to ‘our colonies’. London and Bristol were the chief slaving ports involved in the triangular trade in southern England.
2. It would be counter-intuitive to think Stroud cloth wasn’t involved with the slave trade.
3. Turnpike to Bristol? Colin Maggs in The Nailsworth and Stroud Branch: ‘…cloth manufacturers found their trade hampered by the high cost of road transport to ships at Gloucester and Bristol. It is recorded that in 1763 Daniel Ballard ran stage waggons to both these ports’.
4. Stroudwater Navigation to the Severn and thence to Bristol? Thames & Severn Canal and then the Thames to London?
5. We need empirically minded historians with the time to research the unique archive of the Stroudwater Navigation. See the prose-poem below:

A cabinet of curiosities,
and an almost infinite, irresistibly unique, archive:
Ledgers and Journals of Imports and Exports
Books of Tonnage at Brimscombe and Wallbridge,
Rent Account Books, Traffic records,
Cash Books and minutes of Arrival
and Dockage and Departure of Vessels,
Correspondence,
Wharf accounts from the Severn to London,
Repair Books and Journals from boat yards,
Memorandum Book, Letter Books, Coal Books,
Workmen’s Ledgers, Poor Rates, Land Tax etc.
Payments received from boat owners for freights:
where from, where to, master’s name, tonnage,
Land and Petty Ledgers, Disbursements, Plans,
The Thames and Severn Canal Plan Book, Maps,
Acts of Parliament, Surveys, Shares, Bye-Laws,
River Thames, Acts and Reports, Lechlade Wharf,
Relationships with the Severn and Wye Railway,
The illusory Thames and Severn Canal,
Local Mills, the Wilts and Berks Canal,
Manchester and Southampton Railway,
Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway,
Swindon and Cheltenham Extension Railway,
The Stroudwater Canal,
Agreements, Deeds,
Shares, Certificates,
Bonds of Indemnity,
Contracts for purchase of land for the Canal Navigation, Debentures,
Acts of Parliament.
A cabinet of curiosities,
and an almost infinite, irresistibly unique, archive …
A democratic and inclusive archive
For academics, scholars, schools, historians,
Story tellers, family historians, and weavers of fables.

Stroud and a Hidden Colonial Landscape Number Four

Decolonising Gloucestershire’s Landscape

Gloucester Docks:
Revealing a hidden Colonial Landscape and Waterscape

It was pouring February rain,
When I visited Gloucester Docks:
The Severn was swollen and turbid,
But the bell of the Atlas was silent
In the strengthening Severn wind;
The Atlas, a voyager to China and India –
For the East India Company,
The plaque told us on the warehouse wall –
But no mention of slavery, war or opium
(Standard East India Company practice),
Or the Stroudwater-East India Company nexus;

The Maritime Walk, as it is termed,
Takes you on past Phillpott’s Warehouse,
And the unmentioned Thomas Phillpotts:
Owner of some seven hundred enslaved people,
Nearly three hundred of whom were shared ‘investments’
With Samuel Baker of Bakers Quay fame;
Samuel Baker of Lypiatt Park, near Stroud,
Paid £7,990 compensation
For 410 slaves in Jamaica.

The compensation paid to slave owners in 1834,
Is close to £17 billion in today’s values,
Fully forty per cent of the national budget back then,
The interest on which we have only just ceased paying –
This gives a hint to the bounty paid to Baker and Phillpotts,
A bounty that led to the development
of Baker’s Quay, and High Orchard,
The locus of Gloucester’s industrial revolution;

Decolonising Gloucestershire’s Landscape

Gloucester Docks:
Revealing a hidden Colonial Landscape and Waterscape

It was pouring February rain,
When I visited Gloucester Docks:
The Severn was swollen and turbid,
But the bell of the Atlas was silent
In the strengthening Severn wind;
The Atlas, a voyager to China and India –
For the East India Company,
The plaque told us on the warehouse wall –
But no mention of slavery, war or opium
(Standard East India Company practice),
Or the Stroudwater-East India Company nexus;

The Maritime Walk, as it is termed,
Takes you on past Phillpott’s Warehouse,
And the unmentioned Thomas Phillpotts:
Owner of some seven hundred enslaved people,
Nearly three hundred of whom were shared ‘investments’
With Samuel Baker of Bakers Quay fame;
Samuel Baker of Lypiatt Park, near Stroud,
Paid £7,990 compensation
For 410 slaves in Jamaica.

The compensation paid to slave owners in 1834,
Is close to £17 billion in today’s values,
Fully forty per cent of the national budget back then,
The interest on which we have only just ceased paying –
This gives a hint to the bounty paid to Baker and Phillpotts,
A bounty that led to the development
of Baker’s Quay, and High Orchard,
The locus of Gloucester’s industrial revolution;

Now Gloucester Quays,
Where modernity and heritage coalesce,
And where plaques abound on warehouse walls,
But where there is no mention of the provenance
Of the money that paid for the initial development,
Where there is no mention
Of a hidden colonial landscape and waterscape.

When I got home, I contacted www.bakersquay.com
(‘Waterside luxury at its best’;
‘Founded on the spirit of affordable luxury’;
‘It is the final piece of the jigsaw in the regeneration of the City’s Docks’),
To ask if it might be possible to put up a plaque,
To remember the source of Baker’s and Phillpott’s money,
And to connect Maritime Walk with the seas of the world,
To reveal a hidden colonial landscape and waterscape,
For that would be a fundamental piece
In the jigsaw of the history of the ‘City’s Docks’,
And only then would the jigsaw be fully complete,
With Maritime Walk and Heritage,
With Maritime Walk and History,
With Maritime Walk and the oceans of the world,
All fully interlocked together,
At Bakers Quay.

No reply.

Stroud and a Hidden Colonial Landscape Number 1

A comparison of Island Man and Limbo with a formal piece of writing as an assessment, if wanted. There then follows a piece about Rodborough. Obviously, this guide is written for a very mixed audience. Please adapt to suit. You are all very different!

Firstly, download a copy of Island Man by Grace Nicholls and Limbo by Edward Kamau Brathwaite. (There are copies below, if required, after all the questions.)

Read Island Man three times. The first time without making any notes. Just get the gist. After the second reading, try to write a two or three sentence summary of the meaning of the poem. After the third reading, make some annotations on your poem or notes on another page, with responses to the prompts below. Or if you feel confident, then just think these questions through or discuss them.

  • What happens in lines 1-10?
  • What happens in lines 11-19?
  • How do the descriptions vary between London and the Caribbean?
  • How is the language a bit dreamlike?
  • How is the poem irregular in structure? Why do you think this is?
  • What emotions and outlooks on life do you find in the poem?
  • NOW WRITE DOWN TWO OR THREE WORDS OR PHRASES FROM THE POEM. Explain why you have chosen these.
  • What do you read into the title?
  • What is interesting about the first line?
  • Can you find a metaphor?
  • Which senses feature in the poem?
  • What do you read into the last line?
  • Find out about the poet, Grace Nichols, with a quick internet search. GCSE Bitesize might still have this poem up in the English (Literature) area.

A comparison of Island Man and Limbo with a formal piece of writing as an  assessment, if wanted. There then follows a piece about Rodborough.  Obviously, this guide is written for a very mixed audience. Please adapt to suit. You are all very different!

Firstly, download a copy of Island Man by Grace Nicholls and Limbo by Edward Kamau Brathwaite. (There are copies below, if required, after all the questions.)

Read Island Man three times. The first time without making any notes. Just get the gist. After the second reading, try to write a two or three sentence summary of the meaning of the poem. After the third reading, make some annotations on your poem or notes on another page, with responses to the prompts below. Or if you feel confident, then just think these questions through or discuss them.

  • What happens in lines 1-10?
  • What happens in lines 11-19?
  • How do the descriptions vary between London and the Caribbean?
  • How is the language a bit dreamlike?
  • How is the poem irregular in structure? Why do you think this is?
  • What emotions and outlooks on life do you find in the poem?
  • NOW WRITE DOWN TWO OR THREE WORDS OR PHRASES FROM THE POEM. Explain why you have chosen these.
  • What do you read into the title?
  • What is interesting about the first line?
  • Can you find a metaphor?
  • Which senses feature in the poem?
  • What do you read into the last line?
  • Find out about the poet, Grace Nichols, with a quick internet search. GCSE Bitesize might still have this poem up in the English (Literature) area.

Now read Limbo three times. The first time without making any notes. Just get the gist. After the second reading, try to write a two or three sentence summary of the meaning of the poem. After the third reading, make some annotations on your poem or notes on another page, with responses to the prompts below. Or if you feel confident, then just think these questions through or discuss them.

  • What happens in lines 1-19?
  • What happens in lines 20-36?
  • What happens in lines 37-51?
  • Note how the poem uses extended metaphor interlinking the voyage, the dance, and slavery.
  • Note use of rhythm and repetition.
  • Is there more than one emotion expressed in the poem?
  • NOW WRITE DOWN TWO OR THREE WORDS OR PHRASES FROM THE POEM. Explain why you have chosen these.
  • Is the poem one extended sentence? What do you read into this?
  • What is the effect of using the first person and using short syllable words?
  • Is there a turning point in the poem?
  • Which senses feature in the poem?
  • What contrasts do you see?
  • Find out about the poet, Edward Kamau Brathwaite with a quick internet search. GCSE Bitesize might still have this poem up in the English (Literature) area.

If you want to develop your skills at writing an essay where you compare two poems, here’s your chance.

How do the two poems, Island Man and Limbo, present differing perspectives on black identity?

You could answer by using the SPIDER technique:
SITUATION: context, where and when and what’s going on etc.
STRUCTURE: stanza, line length, form etc.
PERSON: who is speaking/writing; voice used etc.
IDEAS and IMAGERY
DICTION: type of vocabulary/language etc.
EXPRESSION: figurative language – simile, metaphor etc.
RHTYHM and RHYME and READER RESPONSE

Here is an essay guide that you can use if you wish or ignore as you wish. It gives a guide to paragraph structure, if wanted.

  • What is happening in Island Man? What is happening in Limbo? What does each say about black identity? One quote for each.
  • How do the poets speak with their voice? One quote for each poem.
  • How is imagery used? One quote for each poem.
  • Is there a pattern to each poet’s vocabulary? Is the vocabulary simple and straightforward or elaborate? Is there a mix of formal and informal? One quote for each poem.
  • Can you find examples of figurative language? One quote for each poem.
    An analysis of structure: number of lines; rhyme; rhythm; free verse; blank verse; syllables; punctuation. How does the chosen structure convey the meaning of the poem?
  • Conclusion: what do the titles indicate about the poems? What does each poem say about black identity? How are they similar and how are they different?

Here are some good words and phrases that you might want to choose from when comparing poems in an essay:

On the one hand/ on the other hand
However/ differs from/similarly
Whereas/share/both/contrast
Have in common/although

Here are some good words to use in your PPE paragraphs to show analysis/evaluation of your chosen quote:

Reveals/shows/conveys/emphasise/stresses/captures/reflects/
echoes/implies /suggests/indicates

 

Now go to this link:

http://radicalstroud.co.uk/the-last-words-of-thomas-jubiter/

Read Thomas’ story and then study the quotation at the end. Discuss with a partner. Do you agree or disagree (or a bit of both) with the statement about facts and metaphor? Explain your reasoning.

Now look back at the parish register entry for William Jubiter on the link above. We know nothing about his life apart from the terse entry in the parish register.

Perhaps you would like to visit Rodborough churchyard for a walk and remember William. Perhaps you would like to recreate his life with a poem. You will need to use your imagination for the content of the poem via the 5Ws (who, where, when, what, why) and the H (how).
Here is a poetry writing guide for the form of your poem:

POETRY WRITING SKILLS

Use the information sheet for ideas about the CONTENT of your poem and this checklist for poetry writing SKILLS.

  • What is your title?
  • What is your structure? Stanzas (verses) or one connected piece? If you choose stanzas, will they have the same number of lines?
  • Rhyme or not?
  • Will your lines have the same number of syllables a line (for example, 10) or not? This can give rhythm.
  • Blank verse doesn’t rhyme but has a regular number of syllables per line.
  • Free verse doesn’t rhyme and doesn’t have a regular number of syllables per line.
  • If you write a haiku, it only counts as a starter.
  • If you write an acrostic poem, it only counts as a second starter.
  • Will you include ONOMATOPOEIA?
  • Will you include SIMILES?
  • Will you include METAPHORS?
  • Will you include IMAGERY?
  • Will you include PERSONIFICATION?
  • Will you include ALLITERATION?
  • Will you include ENJAMBMENT?
  • Will you include CAESURA?
  • Will you include A VARIETY OF PUNCTUATION? ANY COLONS OR SEMI COLONS? COMMAS? FULL STOPS? DASHES? ELLIPSIS? PARENTHESES?

HOW WILL YOU SHARE YOUR POEM?

Island Man

Morning
and island man wakes up
to the sound of blue surf
in his head
the steady breaking and wombing

wild seabirds
and fishermen pushing out to sea
the sun surfacing defiantly
from the east
of his small emerald island
he always comes back            groggily groggily

Comes back to sands
of a grey metallic soar
to surge of wheels
to dull north circular roar

muffling muffling
his crumpled pillow waves
island man heaves himself

Another London day

Grace Nichols

Limbo

And limbo stick is the silence in front of me
limbo

limbo
limbo like me
limbo
limbo like me

long dark night is the silence in front of me
limbo
limbo like me

stick hit sound
and the ship like it ready

stick hit sound
and the dark still steady

limbo
limbo like me

long dark deck and the water surrounding me
long dark deck and the silence is over me

limbo
limbo like me

stick is the whip
and the dark deck is slavery

stick is the whip
and the dark deck is slavery

limbo
limbo like me

drum stick knock
and the darkness is over me

knees spread wide
and the water is hiding

limbo
limbo like me

knees spread wide
and the dark ground is under me

down
down
down
and the drummer is calling me

limbo
limbo like me

sun coming up
and the drummers are praising me

out of the dark
and the dumb god are raising me

up
up
up

and the music is saving me

hot
slow
step

on the burning ground.

Edward Kamau Brathwaite

Stroudwater and Empire (and Morris Dancing)

Stroudwater and Empire (and Morris Dancing)
(Written after reading The Cloth Industry in the West Country 1640-1880
J. De L. Mann)

Chalford has such a labyrinth of weavers’ walks and footpaths –
And on a mid-winter’s day, with plumes of smoke rising from Chalford Bottom
(‘A remarkable place for the great number of clothing mills and the great quantity of cloth made there and in the neighbourhood’),
Mistletoe in the trees, light folded in envelopes of cloud,
It’s hard to imagine that this picturesque Cotswold village
(This ‘little Commonwealth of Cloathiers and Clothworkers –
not like in the Nation’, said John Aubrey in the 17th century)
Was once hand in glove with the East India Company,
As at Sevill’s Upper Mill,
Now a select residential development,
With the stream, now private and sequestered,
Between houses and a car park.

This landscape was once a fretwork of
‘Scarlet, Crimson, Blue and a variety of other delightful colours’,
Uley, Dursley, too, and Nailsworth and Painswick
(‘The land of clothiers, who in these bourns building fair houses
because of the conveniency of water so useful for their trade’),
A fretwork of profits and prices and exports and wages
And strikes and patterns of trade slumps and booms,
Linking the Thames and Severn Canal and the River Frome –
With the Ganges Valley, Bengal, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Canton,
And with Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, the Marquess Wellesley,
And with muskets, cannon, Stroud Scarlet, slavery, opium, cotton, coffee and tea:
‘The increase in soldiery in India, either European or under European command, provided a much larger market … India was the only country which remained
a preserve for West of England cloth throughout the 18th century.’
‘Gloucestershire seems to have had
almost the sole custom of the East India Company’,
And ‘Up to 1833 the East India Company was still taking for China
a large proportion of Gloucestershire’s production.’

Contemporary websites are not so different from Aubrey’s 17th century
View of felicitous harmony:
They project a multicultural, almost spiritual, perspective
On Stroud cloth and the East India Company:
‘Granted a fifteen-year Charter in Elizabeth the First’s reign, the Company mostly traded for textiles, spices, and tea, ¾ Red is a colour of great symbolic importance to many cultures. For example, Hindus believed that the spirit of red cloth could transform a person’s soul so that a “red one” might become a sorcerer. Soldiers wore red turbans in battle, women wore red clothes and reddened their hands and hair during marriage and fertility festivals. Indian rulers copied the red coats of the East India Company, clothing their own armies in scarlet broadcloth to make them more impressive.’
Or
‘The British East India Company traded widely in Asia from the late 17th century. The East India Company sustained the Gloucestershire broadcloth industry,
as others declined in the late 18th century in the face
of competitive Yorkshire mills.’
Or
‘The indigenous communities trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the East India Company adapted the cloth and integrated it into their own traditions of material culture.’

There is no hint of oppression, imperialism, asymmetrical power, war,
Or the ideology of racism,
But rather more a projection of fair exchange and mutuality,
No hint of the fact that ‘trading and political power were closely interlinked’,
Nor that the East India Company was also involved in the slave trade
In Madagascar, St Helena, Bengkulu and Angola,
Exchanging guns, gunpowder, cutlasses, cloth, and piece goods,
No hint that Bristol merchants bought textiles from the Company
To exchange for slaves in West Africa,
No hint of the fact that the East India Company, in effect,
Governed on behalf of the British government,
For over a century,
Exploiting and contributing to the decline of the Mughal Empire,
No hint of the fact that the Company sold Indian grown opium,
To be smuggled to China, to flout the Imperial ban,
The profits paying for tea for domestic consumption;

Instead a comforting emphasis on:
“Trade in spices, pepper, cloth, cloves, nutmeg,
Cinnamon, silks, tea, cotton, coffee, and so on”,
Instead a typical information plaque in Nailsworth:
‘Gigg is so small and tucked away that it is hard to imagine that it was once the generator of great wealth. In the 1790s John Remmington bought it and other mills. From the profits he added a sumptuous wing to his house up the hill at Barton End. His cloth was bought by the East India Company for sale to China.
An entry in the Company books briefly records the final settlement
after his retirement:
December 1811 Broadcloth J Rimmington £180

But our conclusion acknowledges a different final settlement:
These cottages clambering up the Cotswold hillsides, this Golden Valley harmony of water, wood and stone is derived, in some degree, from war, slavery, racism,
opium and imperialism.

We have written before of Raphael Samuel’s point that Heritage and Tradition can too easily morph into ‘an expressive totality … projecting a unified set of meanings which are impervious to challenge … a fixed narrative which allows neither subtext nor counter-readings’; but, ‘History is an allegorical as well as … a mimetic art … like allegorists, historians are adept at discovering a hidden or half-hidden order. We find occult meanings in apparently simple truths.’

Which leads ineluctably from the impact of the East India Company on our parochial landscape, to Morris dancing.
Just as a landscape can mask an asymmetry of power, imperialism and racism in a celebration of red cloth heritage, so can blackface Morris deceive.

Stroud has its unique anti-slavery arch, of which we are justly proud.
We perhaps feel more ambivalent about the Blackboy Clock in Nelson Street:
‘A clock called the Blackboy Clock, with an explanatory plaque,
That foregrounds horology rather than slavery –
Indeed, there is absolutely no reference whatsoever to the Age of Enlightenment,
And the engendering of an ideology of justificatory racism,
Nor to the symbolism of the black boy being the relentless slave of Time …’
We might also be surprised at our parish register references to ‘ye blacks’
in Stroud-water in the 17th and 18th centuries:

Bisley, 1603, John Davies, ‘ye black’ was buried

Nympsfield, 1719, Daniel, ‘a black stranger’ was buried

In 1773, Francis London, ‘a servant to the Rt. Hon. Lord Ducie supposed to be 17 years of age – a native of Africa’ was baptised;
In 1778, in Rodborough, ‘William Jubiter – black’, was buried;
In Stroud in 1786, Adam Parker, Negro, 32, was buried with a parish funeral;
In Frocester in 1790, William Frocester, ‘supposed to be 11 or 12 years old, born on the island of Barbados, and now a servant of Edward Bigland Esq. residing in Jamaica, was baptised’;
Stroud, 1801, ‘William Ellis, son of Qualquay Assedew, a Negro of Guinea, aged 12 years, was baptised’;
1815, Bisley Testimonial from Richard Raikes, for John Hart, Writing Master, to the post of master at Bisley Blue Coat School:
‘Unfortunately he is a Mulatto, a native of the West Indies’;
Minchinhampton, 1826, Thomas Davis, ‘an infirm travelling Black’ was buried, 67 years old.

We might also feel surprised at the Stroudwater residents who received compensation for the liberation of their slaves in 1834:

Rev. Joseph Ostrehan, Sheepscombe Parsonage: 3 slaves in Barbados and £85 8s 11d compensation; Samuel Baker (Lypiatt Park): 410 slaves in Jamaica and £7,990;   John Altham Graham Clarke (Frocester Estate):  482 slaves in Jamaica and £8, 934 8s 8d;   Mary Elizabeth Clarke (nee Parkinson) (Frocester): 214 slaves in Jamaica and £3,879 4s 0d; Mary Wilhelmina Lindsey (nee Jarvis) (Minchinhampton): 276 slaves in Antigua and £4,194 12s 7d; William Chacon Lindsey – as above – ‘Springfield’, Forward, Minchinhampton; Walter Maynard (Uley): 154 slaves in Nevis and £2, 720 9s 9d.

The Age of Augustan Elegance, the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment,
And the Grand Tour all have a partial provenance
In the profits of slavery and racism,
They are writ in water in our landscape as well as writ in stone,
But self-evident truths, ideologies and traditions change
With the passage of time and with changes in values:
Sometimes on the part of the elite, and sometimes
On the part of the ‘swinish multitude’.
And as some Morris dancers have said – just like Eric Hobsbawm –
That traditions can be invented and re-invented:
Like ‘blackface’.
It’s true that blacking up has some history of subversion:
Poachers tearing down enclosure fences,
Or citizens at toll house turnpikes;
And I know that some folk see the Morris blacking up
As having pagan connotations;
It isn’t about racial oppression, they say.

But it does have a racial connotation for many of us,
It makes us feel uncomfortable to be in its Morris presence,
It’s not ‘political correctness gone mad’,
It’s a feeling of embarrassment and unease –
Coupled with the fact that, as with the presentation
Of the East India Company,
It can delude, deceive and distort:
The Truth that dare not speak its name…

A morris dancer goes into a bar and the bar keeper says, “Why the black face?”

I have been a fan of Border Morris for many years. I am old enough to have seen it in the early years of its revival, the 1970s.  This exuberant and dynamic form of dance had a major impact on me and I was soon smitten. I fully accepted the “orthodox” explanation that the use of full blackface make-up had no racist connotations and that it was traditionally used merely as a disguise to protect the dancers’ identity so that they would not get into trouble for begging. Indeed, I have repeated this explanation to others over the years, most notably in my many (and mostly unsuccessful) attempts to persuade non-folky friends that Morris Dancing was “cool” and they really should watch it.  This was the answer I would have given to the barman in the title of this piece – until recently.

 I feel that I can no longer give the “disguise” explanation.

There is some unavoidable evidence that the use of blackface in Border Morris might be linked to many sides adopting the trappings of 19th century minstrel shows.  It seems that the use of blackface may actually have been intended to be a caricature of a black face.

In addition to this there does not seem to be evidence of a blackface tradition in Border Morris that predates the pre-minstrel era.  As Stuart points out, blacking the face has been used for disguise, criminality and subversion at certain points in the past but it is questionable that this was the case in Border Morris.

In some folk circles there has been considerable resistance to accepting that blackface could well have racist roots. I can understand this.  At first I was reluctant to consider it.  I dearly wanted their to be a clear subversive tradition of blackface as disguise in Border Morris as a authentic link to the past.  However, it is just not supported by the evidence.

There has been a great proliferation in Border Morris in the last 10 years or so.  Many sides have adopted face painting styles to make it clear that there can be no racist connotations.  Colours other than black or non-full face patterns are used.  However many sides persist in using full blackface, presumably on the grounds that it is “traditional”.  The problem with this is that very little about the current manifestation of Border Morris could be said to be traditional. Certainly not the very elaborate (and beautiful) costumes and almost certainly not men and women dancing together!  Why do some sides feel it is ok to adapt tradition for so many aspects of their art, but stubbornly stick to using full blackface in a
way that might be linked to a racist caricature of black slaves?

The next time a sceptical friend or a hypothetical bar keeper asks the question about blackface what do I say?  The best I can manage is a it MIGHT be a tradition of disguise but it MIGHT ALSO be the perpetuation of a racist caricature of black slaves….

To all sides still using full blackface – please change.  Please.

Mark Hewlett.

Black and British (and Stroud)

Black and British a Forgotten History Cover

Black and British A Forgotten History David Olusoga

Bunce Island in Sierra Leone was once an early British slaving headquarters: ‘In exchange for slaves and other valuable commodities the British offered glass beads, bundles of cloth, gunpowder, European metal goods, tobacco pipes, bottles of liquor and European weapons. Until a few years ago the ground was … littered with tiny glass beads and fragments of pottery … Most of these grim souvenirs have been hoovered up by tourists … but many more relics of the trade lie beneath the soil, along with iron nails used to attach shackles and chains to African arms …’

Stroud’s Triangular Trade

‘Bundles of cloth’:
Stroud Scarlet
Shuttles and looms:

Shuttles and looms:
Stroud Scarlet
Shackles and chains:

Shackles and chains:
Stroud Scarlet
Bundles of cloth:

Bundles of cloth,
Shuttles and looms,
Shackles and chains:

Stroud’s Triangular Trade

Broadway Elegy

When you’re a slightly star struck English tourist,
Visiting NYC for the very first time
(‘It’s that Broadway Melody!’),
It’s easy to forget the Paris Situationists:
‘Underneath the paving stones, the beach!’
You might stare at the skyscrapers or the stars,
But sometimes you have to be in the gutter to know the truth.

So make a pilgrimage along Broadway
(‘It’s that Broadway Melody!’)
To number 290, NY10007,
To the African Burial Ground National Monument,
Where in a reverse echo of past city expansion
Of new plots, lots and infill on the site in 1795,
Federal construction work revealed the remains
Of over four hundred people,
Their coffins and their artefacts;
A fragment of a seven-acre burial ground,
A remnant and a revenant
Of the fifteen to twenty thousand
Slaves and free black citizens,
Interred there in the 18th century,
A shrunken fraction
Of the decorated coffins,
The beads, shells, coins and cuff links,
Remembering
And invoking
Life
Liberty
Happiness
Family
And distant African shores.

Building work ceased.
Memorialisation was planned.

The monument comprises seven grave like grass mounds;
A smooth polished Ancestral Chamber
(Standing in water, a mirror to the Atlantic),
Skyscraper modernity reflected in its glassy surface,
The past symbolised by its cardinal positioning,
Eastwards to the Door of No Return
In Dakar, Senegal,
A spiritual odyssey across the Black Atlantic;

There is also a Circle of the Diaspora,
With motifs and sankofa,
Beneath the level of the paving stones,
Our footsteps moving across a maritime imagination,
The anonymity of slavery detailed in a catalogue
Of dates and descriptions, such as:
‘Burial 99 Child between six and ten years’,
Reminding us that when we walk down Broadway,
Along the ticker tape sidewalks near Wall Street,
Underneath the pavement is a cry of exile and slavery,
Perhaps another twenty thousand imprisoned souls,
Mourning for their homelands in a rainbow lexicon,
In a landscape once mapped as The Negro Burial Ground,
Alongside Palisades, Fresh Water, and The Road to Boston:
A resonant counterpoint of history
And a present day corrective
To the modish hipster graffiti on Williamsburg Bridge:
‘Anonymity is king’,
And ‘We will be ephemeral’.

Instead:
‘For all those who were lost,
For all those who were stolen,
For all those who were left behind,
For all those who were not forgotten’.

When you’re slightly star struck English tourists
From Stroud and London and Bristol,
Walking through the lights on Broadway,
Put your ear to the paving stones:
Some of those cries you hear from the past –
The Broadway Elegy –
Are only there because of

Stroud Scarlet,
The Triangular trade,
The Bristol slavery ships,
And the capital of London:

Forget ‘Singing in the Rain’
And ‘It’s that Broadway Melody!’
Here, beneath your feet,
Is a Broadway Elegy:
Partly home spun.

Mocking Birds Don’t Do One Thing Except

We were walking the New York High Line,
The old freight line of lower Manhattan,
On the hottest October day since 1928 –
So Trish took a breather on a bench
Beneath some tangled autumn branches;
A mocking bird immediately began to sing
‘Melodious at the noontide of the day’,
A couple of feet right above her head:
“It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”…
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing
except make music for us to enjoy.”

We were walking the New York High Line,
The old freight line of lower Manhattan,
On the hottest October day since 1928 –
So Trish took a breather on a bench
Beneath some tangled autumn branches;
A mocking bird immediately began to sing
‘Melodious at the noontide of the day’,
A couple of feet right above her head:
“It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”…
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing
except make music for us to enjoy.”

A crowd gathered to watch and listen,
Cameras clicking, selfy snapping,
Lost in the moment of preserving the present,
Oblivious to its elegy and lament:
Ghosts of the Lenape tribe slipped
Scarlet legged through the trees, and edgelands,
Through the penthouses, warehousing and freight yards:
Some harvesting squash, maize and beans,
Some foraging for wild leeks and onions,
Blueberries, walnuts, chestnuts and acorns;
Some hunting, some chanting:
Their songs echoing among the skyscrapers,
Their song of beaver, muskrat, otter,
Mink, marten, deer, elk, moose, bison, bear,
Fox, wolf, cougar, bobcat, lynx, crane, osprey,
Wild turkey, eagle, curlew, whale, wild oyster,
And the teeming shoals of spawning fish.

Trish got up and we resumed our walk;
The mocking bird stopped its song.
The Lenape disappeared,
The selfies stopped,
The crowd moved on.