Holding the Fort

by Mark Cassidy

In April 1802, African slave soldiers took over the Fort Shirley garrison (on the Cabrits peninsula of Dominica) for three days in protest over conditions there and for fear of being sent to work in the canefields. Their action resulted in all slave soldiers being made free in 1807 – the first act of emancipation in the British Empire.

White feet climb from the bay,
taking a tourist trail to explore this outpost.
In well-groomed lawn the officers’ quarters
stand, restored to Georgian elegance.
Memory is a plaque:
On this spot the mutiny of the 8th
West India Regiment broke out.
Under a mango’s shade, there’s more to learn.

***

Cane bills were the trigger.
A broad iron blade, with hooked tip heavy
on long handle, to strip and lift the stems.
Familiar enough – like erratic food
and clothing – yet unforeseen,
as the swindling of due allowances had been.
Cane bills. Plantation’s badge:
handed out, like shame, for clearing swamp of bush.

***

Did the Colonial Office weigh up the risk
of putting arms in reach,
as manpower short, they bought a regiment?
For Redcoats fell to more than yellow jack.
Where they hanged the rebels, history doesn’t say.
We imagine them dangling
from Fort Shirley’s ramparts, overlooking
black sands and blue, contested Caribbean.

***

Black hands built these dark walls:
carried the cut boulders, hauled cannon
to the heart of a volcano, long dead.
The garrison track heads inland, stumbles
on empty magazines, barracks half-swallowed
by forest. Windows choked with Strangler fig.
Imperial footing undermined
by spreading Bloodwood root.

By the end of the 18th century, the British government calculated that a garrison of 20,000 soldiers was needed to defend its Caribbean possessions. Yet in 1793 the entire British army totalled fewer than 40,000 men. Moreover, disease (malaria and yellow fever) was taking its toll of soldiers stationed in the region.

To solve the problem of manpower for defence, the Colonial government launched a plan for a Black West Indian Regiment, since it was considered that Africans would better survive the climate.

the last ex-pat in Costa Del Sol turns his thoughts homeward

with apologies to Leonard Cohen

by Mark Cassidy, with image above by Martin Gollan

Come, my sisters and brothers,
let us govern Britain,
let us apply our best minds,
let us discharge sewage in Downing Street,
let us make the Lords a torture chamber
     until – one by one – they all confess,
let us purge the Labour Party,
let us make Europeans speak English
     not only here but everywhere,
let us promote the dark races
     so – when they take control –
     they shall be magnanimous,
let us make content for TikTok,
let us all be tourists,
let us float across the Channel on a Li-Lo,
let us whisper sweet nothings to the enemy,
let us cast bullets in men’s sheds,
let us sell Irn-Bru to the Third World,
     (Do they know three of our national leaders were women?)
let us terrorise our colonies,
let us merge republican with royalist,
let us not show a white flag,
let us demand a written constitution
     sponsored by Bet365,
     with prize for the most ground-breaking suggestion,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.
     then chicken out in the nick of time,
my sisters and brothers, come,
     our best minds are waiting for us
     like sleeping bags abandoned in shop doorways,
let us give them purpose soon,
let us keep a world-leading silence
     beside the Thames.

Until Further Notice

by Mark Cassidy

the sky will be yellow. Regardless how you squint at it,
tomorrow shrivels up

and men in branded, hi-vis tabards will have permission.
Don’t ask what for, or why,

or seek to demonstrate some other way. There are new
laws they’re not afraid to use.

Until further notice you will be crippled with bunions, grow
deaf from ear wax.

Your teeth – on a diet of kitsch and fakery – will rot in your
head and fall out.

As you wait you can watch the concrete crumble, while
grievances congeal like old chip fat.

Until further notice you must guess your best line through
the flooded potholes, trusting

your tread will ride the shameless lie beneath – the one
untold. Do not be deflected,

none of this is your fault. Blame loafers by Prada,
Timberland boots, the endless drone

of glib apology. Round the corner, a shadow cabinet of
wax figures –

you will hear from them soon. Until further notice there
may be no better choice.

Not Going Home – ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ *

by Mark Cassidy

It is not done, they said,
to chain yourself to palace railings.
Go breaking window glass
or hatchet works of art.
Slash telegraph wires,
fire-bomb post boxes, railway stations
and Great Yarmouth pier.
Or burn your slogans in golf courses.
Not the done thing at all.

It is not done, they said,
to slice through miles of fence
and with your supine bodies
blockade our missile base.
Nor enter there as teddy bears
to dance on the silos, keening.
And when evicted, your camp destroyed,
to return, rebuild at night.
Not the done thing at all.

Not the done thing at all
to hang your banners over highways,
hijack state TV news,
rip down his face and stamp on it.
To whirl your hijabs like a black flag sea.
Or burn them on sticks held high
then cut your unscarved hair.
They say it is not done.
Not yet, we say, not yet.

Notes

* ‘Women Life Freedom’ was first chanted by the Kurdish Women’s Movement in 2006 to give voice to their revolutionary philosophy. Jina (Mahsa) Amini, whose murder at the hands of Iran’s ‘morality police’ triggered the uprising there, was Kurdish. Her name in Kurdish - Jina - was not officially recognised, and she may well have been more brutally treated because she wasn’t Persian.