From Argyll to Jamaica

Carolyn Manson

At a recent meeting in London I met a woman whose family were from Jamaica. We got talking about how she was tracing her ancestors, in particular, a member of the Campbell family who had emigrated from Argyll; she was particularly keen to gain an understanding of why he had gone to Jamaica in the first place. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scottish people were the largest minority ethnic group in Jamaica. I remembered something about this on the Argyll and Bute Council website.

Back home I looked it up and found that Argyll and Bute Council had just published a book of correspondence between members of the Campbell family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first part of the book contains letters between Campbell settlers in Jamaica and family members in Argyll. I duly bought a copy of Letters by the Packet edited by Marion Campbell of Kilberry, Argyll, who died in June 2000. Marion researched, read and deciphered the letters, and provided an introduction and notes which put the letters in a historical context.

But the book is so much more than a historical description of the period. By publishing the source materials the analysis is left to the reader. This material consists of exchanges of letters to and from men (of 30 letters in part I, only one is by a woman) mainly concerning business and exchanges of money and debts. Being mostly from the managerial middle class of the time, they are concerned with making money, developing their plantations in Jamaica and making enough money to develop land and property back home.

They do however also look out for each other financially, including the women members of the family, and ask after each others well being. It is hard therefore to keep reading when black people are referred to in exactly the same way as stocks of animals and crockery; they are bought, sold and listed with their monetary value. In her introduction Marion's only reference to this is "if the crofters bore the highland economy; slaves

We should not be proud of the British Empire and the racism it perpetuated but that should not stop us learning and understanding the whole story of that time. Just as feminists argue history is his story, history is also often just the white person's story or the bourgeoisie's story. Migration is a large part of Scotland's In the late eighteenth and nineteenth cen1uries Scottish people were the largest minority, ethnic group in Jamaica story. We need to understand it all and this book is a great start.

While I am reading about Argyll's emigrants to Jamaica 200 years ago, the Conservatives announce they want a quota on immigrants to the UK and tighter controls on asylum seekers, playing to the racism that exists in our society; they want votes at humanity's expense.

The UK has tried different means to deal with racism. The assimilation route, whereby black people, are assimilated into white culture by a great big 'melting pot', ignoring what black people have to offer. The multi-cultural route, which begins to recognise the strengths of black peoples lifestyles and the anti-racist approach where we attempt to tackle racism through both personal and organisational change (anti-racist training, the Lawrence enquiry etc).

It's no use to anyone if white people become paralysed by guilt, we need to acknowledge what went on during the Empire and move on. In order to enter the UK, non-UK citizens need a work permit to get a visa and for this you need evidence that the job can't be done by someone in the UK. After working for 4 years you can apply for residency or alternatively you need a family connection. Britain is already strict on immigration. Under the 1951 UN Convention the UK accepts legitimate refugees and we should be proud to play our part in this.

An easy target of racists today are Muslim people or people who by their appearance can be identified as coming from the Middle East yet the reality is that our main immigrant groups in Scotland are from Ireland and Australia. Recently in response to innovative advertising by the Isle of Jura community for a replacement G.P. applications were received from as far as Australia. I don't think the people of Jura would be too pleased if they couldn't fill the post because of immigration quotas.

The people of Argyll and Bute have poured out their hearts to the victims of the tsunami disaster, and they playa major part all year round in supporting organisations like the Red Cross and sending practical and financial support to projects overseas. Are the Conservatives suggesting that the people of Argyll and Bute, who do so much for international relief efforts, would want the UK to send asylum seekers back to their deaths?

Young people still migrate from Argyll and Bute to seek work, and overall more people are leaving the area than move in. In truth the area is still recovering from the Highland Clearances. We need to continue to do all we can to increase employment in the area and so maintain or better still increase the population.

The people of Argyll and Bute can build on what has been achieved by the publication of Letters by the Packet. A centre could be developed that tells Scotland's story of migration. Jamaica could be the first part, displaying the letters and papers from the archives and more than that, explaining the politics, economics and social history of the day. It would also tell the stories not in the archive, the stories of black women and men bought and sold as slaves in Jamaica, the crofting women and men in Argyll and the women of the middle and upper classes. We know enough about upper class men, my history books were full of them. If we take Marion's ability to show it like it was as inspiration then an important resource could be created for the country. We may start to accept our continuing part in the migration of the world's peoples and refuse to listen to the politics of racism.

Carolyn Manson is the Labour PPC for Argyll and Bute Labour Constituency