Award-winning journalist Nadine White’s debut film, Barrel Children: The Families Windrush Left Behind, a five-year labour of love, premiered last month in London to packed audiences. A national tour of the film will commence this summer. (1)
The term barrel children was coined by Jamaican academic Dr Claudette Crawford-Brown in the 1990s, and is defined as those who, while waiting in the Caribbean to follow their parents to America and the UK, received food and clothing “in lieu of direct care”. (2) They are also considered the “forgotten” children of Windrush, often left out of celebratory and even “bittersweet” narratives. (3)
Yet the story of the barrel children was often a conjunction of multiple traumas – the separation from parents at an early age; the separation from established carers when leaving the Caribbean; the challenge of adjusting to the new family set up in the the UK (or not as the case may be) and of course the pervasive hostility experienced at a personal and institutional level from British society on arrival. Similar patterns have been identified even when the destination is places like the USA and Canada. (4)
The consequence is a case study in generational trauma, compounded by the lack of public discussion not only in the larger public space but within the community itself. (5) Thus, for Sis. Nadine the documentary as raising the profile of the issue and the discussions around it as well as “a tool to help with the healing within part of our communities, black communities across the UK, but also the diaspora who would benefit really from having open and honest conversations among one another about the effects of separation through the barrel children.” (6)
She is also clear about the wider context in which the phenomenon of barrel children exists:
“It isn’t possible to discuss the Windrush migration and its impact on black families in any meaningful way without delving into the complex and painful legacy of slavery. Centuries of captivity at the hands of colonialists prevented the formation of close black family relationships while also making stable, secure family life very difficult because enslaved Africans, who were bought, sold and viewed as property, lived with the constant possibility of separation through the sale of one or more of their own.” (7)
There is also a case for the Barrel Children issue to be cast in the framework of reparations given that the economic conditions that made the migratory imperative a necessity were deliberately imposed on the region. As acedemic Dr Hilary Beckles asserts “European governments have systematically suppressed economic development in their former colonies and have refused to accept responsibility for the debt and development support they owe the Caribbean.” (8)
Indeed, Sir Ellis Clarke, who was the Trinidadian Government’s UN representative to a subcommittee of the Committee on Colonialism in 1964, also proclaimed:
“An administering power … is not entitled to extract for centuries all that can be got out of a colony and when that has been done to relieve itself of its obligations by the conferment of a formal but meaningless – meaningless because it cannot possibly be supported – political independence. Justice requires that reparation be made to the country that has suffered the ravages of colonialism before that country is expected to face up to the problems and difficulties that will inevitably beset it upon independence.” (9)
The Barrel Children film provides some powerful personal testimonies of the intergenerational impact of this issue on families hailing from a region that has lost over ten percent of its population to migration in the last fifty years. (10) We will have to see if it can be developed to become a significant strand of the reparations narrative.
(1) Courtney Pochin (22/06/23) ‘My dad was one of 90,000 forgotten ‘barrel children’ of Windrush left behind by parents’. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/my-dad-one-90000-forgotten-30294723
(2) Nadine White (27/01/22) Barrel Children: Windrush families and the emotional burden of migration. https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/barrel-children-windrush-black-families-b1958518.html
(3) Pochin. Op. Cit; Aine Fox (22/06/23) ‘Bittersweet’ Windrush 75th anniversary marked. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/caribbean-windsor-itv-news-james-cleverly-amber-rudd-b2361955.html
(4) Sylvia Hui (22/06/23) Exhibition shines light on Caribbean’s ‘barrel children’ left behind by Windrush migrants to UK. https://apnews.com/article/britain-windrush-barrel-children-exhibition-caribbean-gifts-c9d217620f5929ec6015a41d0af37c28; Melissa Noel (27/12/17) Jamaica’s ‘barrel children’ often come up empty with a parent abroad. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/jamaica-s-barrel-children-often-come-empty-parent-abroad-n830636
(5) Sam Delaney(01/07/23) Barrel Children: The kids left behind by Windrush. https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/barrel-children-the-kids-left-behind-by-windrush/
(6) Pochin. Op. Cit.
(7) White. Op. Cit.
(8) Jomo Thomas(16/12/22) How Britain Underdeveloped The Caribbean. https://thevincentian.com/how-britain-underdeveloped-the-caribbean-p25425-110.htm;
(9) Ahmed Reid & Verene Shepherd (02/03/18) St Thomas, St Mary paid heavy price for freedom. https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/focus/20180304/ahmed-reid-and-verene-shepherd-st-thomas-st-mary-paid-heavy-price-freedom
(10) Noel. Op. Cit.
we ask the question:
Who are the Barrel Children?
1) Are you or family members Barrel Children? How did it impact you?
2) Is it an issue that is discussed enough?
3) Is a healing process necessary? How would we go about it?
4) How does the Barrel Children issue fit in to the reparations narrative?
Our Special Guests:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and an Afrikan-Centred Education Consultant. Bro. Ldr is a veteran activist of almost 40 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An African-Centred Approach To Excellence.
Sis. Nadine White: is an award-winning journalist and film maker and was appointed the UK’s first dedicated race correspondent at The Independent in 2021, having previously worked at The Voice , the Weekly Gleaner UK and the HuffPost.
Sis. Nadine’s work has been shortlisted for awards including, in 2018, the Hugh Cudlipp Student Journalism Prize, an Amnesty Media Award and was the first black reporter to be shortlisted for the Paul Foot Award, together with Emma Youle for their SPAC Nation Expose. Other commendations include a Mischief + MHP 30 To Watch: Young Journalist Award in 2020 for her Covid-19 coverage and the inaugural Paulette Wilson Windrush Award, from the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival in the same year.
In April 2021, White was included by Forbes magazine on their annual 30 Under 30 list of “young visionary leaders brashly reinventing business and society”. In October 2021, she was named on BBC Radio 1Xtra Future Figures list as one of 29 individuals, groups, and organisations from across the United Kingdom who are “Making Black History Now”. In November 2021, White was appointed as a Visiting Industry Fellow at Birmingham City University.
This year has seen Sis. Nadine curate the Over the Barrel: Windrush Children, Tragedy and Triumph exhibtion at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton and the release of her debut film Barrel Children: The Families Windrush Left Behind.
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