Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Laceta Reed from the Back-a-Yard project. This project collected stories from older African-Caribbean people who came to live in Newport from the 1940s onwards, including their recollections of the Caribbean and reasons for coming to the UK. The eighteen-month project was run by the South East Wales Racial Equality Council (SEWREC) and supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project ran from October 2014 to March 2016.

Early childhood in Jamaica: Running the two miles to and from his Mile Gully school was part and parcel of young Earl's life. With eight brothers and two sisters, things were tight at home. His father worked on Jamaica’s roads and cultivated crops like corn, peas, yam, banana and pumpkin to support his family. With no running water or a cooker in their rural home, it was up to the children to collect water and gather wood for the fire. Cricket was a popular pastime and was played with a kendeh ‘a hard wooden ball made by the young people as a substitute for a more expensive cricket ball’ and a bat made from the coconut bough. Harvest festivals were popular with the children, who would run races to win candies. Best of all, on Sundays Earl’s favourite meal – rice and peas – was always served.

Struggling to find work: When his father became unable to work, Earl found himself assuming the role of family breadwinner. He was just fourteen and jobs were scarce in the 1940s, but he had no choice but to grow up quick. The only employment available in a rural community was on the railway, the public works or a local farm. On Monday mornings, Earl would go along to one or the other in the hope that there would be work available. All too often the answer was ‘no work this week’. One time Earl was lucky enough to secure three weeks work as an assistant porter on the railways but after Hurricane Charlie hit in 1951 he mostly found casual work on the farm. His hectic life included taking over his father’s cultivating duties at home to make sure his younger siblings were fed.

Playing dominoes: There was little to do in the rural Jamaica of the 1930s and 1940s so it was natural that the men should find their own form of amusement. Earl enjoyed watching the older men play dominoes from an early age; however, it wasn't until he reached his teens that he was finally allowed to play.
Dominoes is played in teams of two and Earl remembers how players would go crazy with their team mates if they believed the ‘wrong’ domino had been placed. Fortunately, their anger only lasted as long as the dominoes match and they would soon cool down and be friends again.

Hurricane Charlie: Hurricane Charlie hit Jamaica on August 18 with 125-mile winds, killing 154 people and leaving 50,000 homeless. The Reid family survived the hurricane; however, the high winds ripped off the top of their house. The whole family moved into the next-door neighbour’s house and he and Earl set about rebuilding the property themselves. They cut down trees and created a makeshift kiln in which to make the necessary limestone. Friends came from nearby homes to help.

Travelling to the UK: Earl imagined Britain to be a gloomy place where the sun didn’t shine and it was always cold. Leaving his white shirts behind, he travelled here by ship and his older brother, Alderman helped to pay the £75 fare. Nevertheless, he was excited to be coming to post-war England along and remembers how men and women from all over Jamaica would sit around tables on the top deck playing dominoes for days on end. The journey wasn’t uneventful. Halfway through, Earl developed a nasty boil under his arm and ended up spending a week in the ship’s hospital bay. Like the majority of Jamaicans who came to the UK, he sent money and clothes parcels to his family – five shillings might not sound a lot but it stretched a long way back home.

Settling in Newport: Earl first lived in Brixton, London, where the destruction of factories and other buildings in the London Blitz was still very evident over a decade later. His first ‘proper’ job was in a candle factory, followed by a stint in an oil heater factory. Earl married and a family followed. By now it was 1962, he was living in Battersea and having problems finding suitable accommodation to rent. Llanwern Steelworks had just opened in Newport and a friend said there were jobs aplenty so Earl moved his young family to Wales. He was turned down for Llanwern but found work at Young’s Accumulator (later Crompton Batteries) alongside many other Caribbean and Asian people, including women. The close-knit Afro-Caribbean community in Newport knew how to party, dancing to calypso, low beat and reggae music in each other's homes. Nine of men would meet at the Waterloo Hotel in Pill and Earl found the friendliness in Wales very different to London.