Society
Urban life - Darcus Howe remembers his roots
Published 22 May 2006
I now understand my own journey to Britain 44 years ago more as a family trait
A Barbadian daily paper carried a full-page article on 14 May headlined "Under the Rudder family tree". I am part Rudder, as were my grandmother, my mother, several aunts and uncles - and, of course, my children and grandchildren are additions to this extended tribe. The article reported that members of the clan had gathered in the capital, Bridgetown, "to honour their lineage and celebrate family". Twenty-five Rudders came from overseas.
The Rudders of Trinidad and Tobago presented a paper on our strand of the family, and an exhibition was mounted to illustrate the clan's movements over the generations. Migration, as it is with most West Indians, is perhaps the most consistent feature of our lives. Originating in Barbados, the Rudders moved to many lands, including New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, the US and Venezuela. I now understand my own journey to Britain 44 years ago, not as a personal eccentricity, but more as a family trait.
Joshua Rudder, my great-grandfather, left Barbados for Trinidad in 1873, at the age of 16, after completing part of his apprenticeship as an engine mechanic. He settled in Princess Town, which hummed with the activity of the sugar industry, and died in 1937, having sired 25 children (as far as the researchers could ascertain). Here, perhaps, was the first generation of the skilled working class in the Caribbean after the abolition of slavery. He seemed determined to lift himself out of the dirt and grime that had engulfed communities at that time.
My paternal grandfather migrated to Trinidad from St Vincent. There he piloted a barge at the Port of Spain wharves - another skilled worker laying the foundations for social life in the Caribbean and beyond.
To this day, I carry traits that owe much to the Barbadian and Vincentian experiences. They reside in my children and grandchildren as well, not to be wiped out by the definitions "Caribbean British", et cetera. A fact of migration is that we migrants are always in the process of becoming something else.
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