Foreigners (20 page)

The Booma Boys

The Nigerian warriors came home from the Burma
war filled by the same impatience with the past that
flung their English comrades into Clement Attlee's
grim embrace. Among them was a residue of restless
souls whose misconduct in Lagos won them the name
of 'Burma Boys'. When the late forties raced into
Nigeria (as they never did to war-sodden, static,
'welfare' England), this name became 'Booma,' and
the 'Boys' really boys: for a new generation of goodbad
lads sprung out of the Lagos pavements, who
were too young to have fought overseas but old enough
to demand that the future happen quickly now. Many
of these vivid scamps, innocent as rogues under
twenty-three can be, were suddenly gripped by a deep
urge to know the world; and as swallows do, they
took off from Africa for England with nothing but
a compelling instinct as their baggage, stowing away,
signing on and deserting, sometimes cajoling minimal
fares from rightly reluctant families. Their landfall
was in the big English dock cities, and they loped
ashore blithely confident that the world loved them
and owed them a treasure.

Colin MacInnes, 1960

My second memory of meeting David was at a dance at
the Jubilee Hall in Chapeltown. Today the place is some
kind of a media centre, but it was originally built in the
thirties as a Jewish social centre back when the Chapeltown
area was rather grand and somewhat Jewish. The Jubilee
Hall would allow us to rent rooms for dances and here, as
in the pubs, the African students mixed with the African
workers. With the West Indians there were actually more
workers than students, but it was the other way around with
the Africans. However, I do seem to remember that quite a
few of the Trinidadians were doing medicine, dentistry, law,
and accounting and so on. The second time I saw David
was at the Jubilee Hall dance and I noticed him because he
was smarter than most in his dress sense. David always wore
cool suits, always a collar and tie, and when he began to
dance he danced as though he had music in his soul. In
fact, when David walked he did so as though he was walking
to music. There was a great rhythm to his steps. The kind
of music they played at Jubilee Hall dances was Hi Life
and Steel Pan, and David was in his element. I noticed him
that first time because he turned the wrong way. I noticed
him the second time because he was such a great dancer.

I never saw David standing alone by himself either in
the pub or at a dance. Aside from his living arrangements,
which meant that he lived a little way off from all the
others, he appeared to me to be fully integrated into the
African group. In fact, sometimes the university held dances
and I saw him there, and again I noticed his skill at dancing.
This would have been around 1951. He was very bouncy,
and very young and slim. David wasn't really a political
type and he never joined in with any of that. I tried to
talk to him about the racial situation, especially as I had
just formed the Chapeltown Commonwealth Citizens
Committee. This was a difficult time for a white woman
to be seen with a group of coloured men. I would be at
risk, but the greater risk would be to them. People would
often say things to me – nasty things – and naturally the
men would want to defend me, although I'd try to encourage
them to say nothing. But it wasn't easy. The Labour Party
wouldn't officially support us in our work with the coloured
immigrants; some individuals within the Labour Party, yes,
but not the Labour Party as a whole. We – the members
of the Chapeltown Commonwealth Citizens Committee
– leafleted places and tried to make them take down their
discriminating signs. We postered offices and pubs, and
we also went to estate agents and tried to convince them
that property prices actually went up when coloureds moved
in. We told them that initially some whites might want to
move out, but we reminded them that the housing demand
from coloureds was such that the prices would inevitably
rise back up. We also tried hard to get coloureds registered
to vote, and we were forever dealing with the nuisance
of the police. David was interested in what we were doing,
but he didn't take part. He would always ask how we
thought we were going to change things, and I would try
to convince him that it was worth collecting evidence of
systematic racism and challenge it head-on. However, David
preferred to talk about what he was doing then, which was
working in engineering across at a foundry in Hunslet.

*

It was called West Yorkshire Foundries, not because of
the county of West Yorkshire (which actually didn't exist
back then), but because the owner was a certain Mr Wallace
West. The company began in the Second World War
making castings for aircraft, then it eventually got involved
in car manufacture. I was the personnel officer and I
remember David as a short man who smiled all the time
even though he didn't seem to have much to smile about.
People in the factory used to call him 'Alliwalli' and he
was known for reading educated newspapers. He spoke
with a thick West African accent, I remember that, and it
was sometimes difficult to understand what he was on
about. But I was the one who led him from his formal
interview to his department in the foundry itself. We put
him in Department 87, which was then run by Percy
Chainey, whose employees were required to help out with
any department that had a labour shortfall. If no shortfall
existed, Department 87 members were expected to sweep
and clean the factory in general. Oluwale would have been
among the first of hundreds of immigrant workers who
eventually passed through the foundry's doors. They used
to queue outside the interview room, three or four deep,
and the line would often stretch right down the street. We
attracted immigrants because the pay was competitive, but
the conditions were terrible and safety was non-existent.
We always had Lithuanians, Hungarians, and Poles, then
Asians and West Indians, but Oluwale was the only West
African I remember. In fact, in those days we had multilingual
signs in the factory, but I'm not sure it helped
anybody. The day used to begin at 7:30 a.m. In fact, the
hooter sounded three minutes before work was to start,
and that's when the men would assemble in the streets and
begin to clock in. They had an hour for lunch and worked
right through until 5:30 p.m., but it wasn't easy. In fact, to
many it was worse than being down the pit. Mr West liked
his employees to wear 'whites', like he'd seen workers wear
in India. Well, they might look nice, but they were useless
as protective gear. And there were no safety shoes or
anything. In the aluminium and iron foundries you'd walk
in and it would be completely black except for the light
of the molten metal, a white light which was dazzling.
Things were pretty bad back then, and even the area around
the factory was rough with no grass in sight. The river
was black, like oil. You sometimes see fish in it now, but
back then the only living things in it were leeches. No, it
wasn't a great job with all the heat and the sheer physical
graft involved. But when overtime was available hours could
easy double from the forty-four-hour basic.

And so there you were, David, working in the white-hot
heat of the foundry, without protective clothing, vulnerable
to spills and accident, hard grown men's work that
only the strong and the skilled could survive and then, at
the end of the day, out again, away from the filthy black
river, out on to the windswept streets lined with redbrick
factories. 'Hey you, nigger boy. Did you come out of your
mam's arse?' A slow journey back in the direction of Belle
Vue Road and a room called 'home', and the next morning
back to work where the company doctor gave you your
lightning-fast check-up. After he tapped your chest and
looked quickly into your mouth, he had a suggestion. 'Cheer
up, sunshine. Perhaps you should try going to the cinema.
That'll make you feel better. Everybody's the same colour
in there.'

I arrived in England from Nigeria as a stowaway in January
1951. Takoradi to Middlesbrough. There was one foot of
snow on the ground and all I had were tennis shoes and
dungarees, that's all. And a shirt with Sugar Ray Robinson
drawn on the back of it. It was winter and I was freezing.
I'd never been so cold, and to me it was like living in a
freezer. But eventually I made my way to Yorkshire and
that's where I met David. The way I see it, Yorkshire
people are friendly, hard-working men. Socialists. You get
the occasional problem here and there but they're generally
okay. There were not many of us coloureds in those
days. It was like you could basically count the number
of blacks in Britain on one hand back in 1951. The only
West Indians we really knew were a few ex-RAF guys
with half-caste children, but there were no West Indian
or African women there. We didn't mix much with the
West Indians to start with; that came later. Eventually I
got a job working at William Graves Foundry. We made
shipping equipment. Then, around about this time, I met
David. David was short and stocky-like. He looked like
a jockey. He wasn't really a drinker or smoker, but he
loved to dance. However, he was mostly by himself. Always
alone. I never went to David's flat because I never knew
where he was living. He'd say, 'Goodnight, I'll see you
tomorrow', and then he'd be gone. He never invited
anybody to his place, but you didn't ask him about it
because you knew it would be an argument. The problem
with David was he didn't understand the colour-bar situation
and he would get very wound up. 'I'm from a British
colony and I'm British,' he would say. 'So why do they
call me "nigger"?' This was the attitude David couldn't
deal with. He wasn't able to think around a situation and
do something else. He was always in trouble and in
conflict with the police. He wasn't crazy, he just didn't
understand the system, that's all. He was a good guy.
He'd never fight anybody, never draw a knife, but verbally
he could be very abusive, especially against the police.
He was always telling them to 'fuck off '. The only time
David would cool down was when he was with his mates.
On his own he couldn't handle these situations. David
needed somebody to sit down and tell him what was
happening to him. Some of us nearly went mad in England
because the environment was new. We spoke the same
language and we thought everything would be okay, but
we soon found out. David really was a smart cat who
could always think fast if he had to, but he was a loner
who wanted to do everything by himself. The guys tried
to help him, because we knew the situation, which is why
we always walked out in twos or threes or fours. On your
own you had to be very careful. However, David was
never a troublemaker. He could be very foul-mouthed,
but he wasn't a troublemaker. We knew that the police
were against us because we could see it, and we had to
work around them. But not David. He was determined.
He never discussed his ambitions or any idea of going
back to Nigeria. But then again, the majority of us didn't
want to go back to Africa again.

And then David just disappeared and that was that. At
first nobody thought it was unusual, for we were used to
people leaving or just moving on. But after a while I
remember asking people, 'Has anybody seen David?' And
then I was told, 'Didn't you hear? He's been arrested.' A
lot of my own work with the Chapeltown Commonwealth
Citizens Committee involved having to deal with the police,
who were very much in the habit of picking up people
just because they were coloured. The word on the street
was that one night, while walking home and minding his
own business, David had been arrested and he had been
sent to Armley jail. I thought okay, this is not good, but
I suppose we'll see him when he comes out. But we never
did. He just disappeared.

There they stand, majestic, imperious, brooded over
by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined,
rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside,
the asylums which our forefathers built with such
solidity.

The Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, Minister of Health,
1961

You can see it from the road; a large Gothic building and
a sprawling estate of outbuildings. Built in 1888, this is a
deeply depressing complex. The West Riding Pauper
Lunatic Asylum; a place of grim, Victorian nightmares set
in 200 acres of land. Once you turn off the road, and
pass the sign that reads 'Treatment Centre', the gloom
deepens. Another sign reads 'Welcome to High Royds
Hospital'. The asylum. Thereafter, the sheer scale of the
place soon becomes apparent. The buildings begin to
multiply and it is clear that High Royds Hospital (as it
became known in 1963) is the size of a village. In its heyday
over 2,000 people could be 'treated' at any one time in
the dark stone buildings which huddle together beneath
the sinister turrets and towers. Lights are burning in the
windows but there is nobody in sight. Imagine. Inside.
Dirty rooms with plastic armchairs and filthy carpets. Walls
and windows stained with years of nicotine, burn marks
on the floor, ashtrays overflowing with crushed fag ends.
Inside ex-patients sleep in the corridors for they have
nowhere else to go. Some wear daisies in their hair and
bluebells for earrings.
(My friend, you spent eight years from 1953
to 1961 in this asylum. Doing what? What were they doing to you?
Were there any others like you?)
The main building resembles
a large stately home. Above it there is a clock tower which,
somewhat cruelly, serves only to remind you that in this
place time no longer matters. Your time has been taken
away from you. Farewell time. (
What were they doing to you?
Were there any others like you?)
Inside the front door one tiled
corridor leads into another. One wing quickly gives way
to another wing. A crazed maze. Neither dignity nor privacy.
Eating with spoons. Male and female wander abroad.
Through a double door there is a huge ballroom with a
mirrorball nestled high in the ceiling. On Monday nights,
the cinema. On Friday evenings, between seven and nine,
the weekly dance. Male and female mixing. Just after
Christmas the Annual Asylum Ball. The social event of
the season. On New Year's Eve, the patients' Fancy Dress
Ball, where the staff present a music-hall-style pantomime,
and the asylum band play on and on.
(Did you dance, David?
Or did they simply sedate you into submission?)
Beyond the immaculate
lawns, and through the trees, one can glimpse the small
Yorkshire village of Menston. Civilisation. In the grounds
a truck trundles into view. The driveway curves around
the bend. Deliveries? Of food maybe, or perhaps towels?
Or medicine? Or needles? Or straps? Cruelly sedated and
now ready for electro-convulsive therapy. One man remembered.
'It was like going to the gas chamber, you walked
in and saw this horrendous cap that they put on your head
and this bed that they asked you to lie on and the injection,
to this day I can taste and smell it, and that was to
me horrific.'
(Did they sedate you into submission?)
The tranquil
picture must not be disturbed. Cruelly sedated. Perhaps
the screams of the patients are too high-pitched for the
human ear?
(What, my friend, were you doing here for eight years?
Really, were there others like you?)