Nightmares

A history lesson

Last week I woke up in a sweat. I dreamt that I had been travelling somewhere with one of my nieces and we had both been apprehended and imprisoned in some kind of facility. I know this dream was prompted by current events in America.

Yesterday I sent two parcels to the US. There are a handful of Americans who I follow on Instagram who also buy books from me, usually Virago books, and every day now I think about those women. I’m guessing that like many Americans, they are just normal people going about their ordinary business, working, spending time with their family, reading books, and all the time living under a threatening cloud with no idea how difficult things might become.

A few years ago during Trump’s first reign I visited Washington D.C. with my friend Amanda. It was the first time I’d visited and I hadn’t realised how many museums and art galleries there are in the centre of the city. We were really lucky to get day tickets to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture. At that time the tickets were sold out months in advance but every day they released some tickets which could be used on the same day. Amanda had a work call at some ungodly hour of the morning so she got in there really early and we were lucky enough to be allocated two tickets. The visit to that museum was really memorable not least because it was one of the few times in my life when I was in a museum and as a white person was in a minority. I think lots of people came in groups, many of them organised by churches. Most of the visitors were quite elderly, some old enough to remember segregation. Amanda and I spent a long time in the museum reading every label and I realised how limited my knowledge was particularly of events in the first half of the 20th century.

At a really basic level what the museum is doing is acknowledging that the history of black people in America is equally important as the history of white people and that all Americans should be aware of where their country’s wealth came from and also that generational trauma is a real thing.

Yesterday I read this article in the Guardian about the Trump regime’s assault on culture and in particular the Smithsonian Institution. It was grim reading. I imagine that every time Trump is driven past the museum he is infuriated that such a “woke” institution exists within a few blocks of the White House. It probably doesn’t help that the building was designed by David Adjaye, a black British architect, and was opened by Obama.

Recently when watching videos of ICE officers I kept thinking that they reminded me of something but I couldn't place what it was and then it came to me, ICE are the US’s Black and Tans.

When I was a child growing up in a Catholic home we all knew about the Black and Tans even though they had been disbanded in the early 1920s. During the struggle for Irish independence the Royal Irish Constabulary were significantly under-resourced and unable to deal with insurrection. The British Government decided to recruit Englishmen into the RIC. Most of these men were unemployed veterans from the First World War and they were attracted by the salaries which were high. There was a shortage of uniforms so the new recruits wore a mixture of black and brown uniforms and became known as the Black and Tans. They received very limited training, were heavily armed and quickly began to carry out retaliatory attacks on innocent civilians. They murdered people at will and burnt down homes and businesses. As children we were told all kinds of stories about them. I have no idea whether these were true or not. It was widely believed that the Black and Tans were recruited from prisons although there is no evidence of this. Eventually the authorities began to realise that they had lost control of the Black and Tans and they were disbanded. The country had been partitioned and a new police force was established in Northern Ireland so some of the Black and Tans were welcomed into the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Another 700 joined the police force in Mandatory Palestine and over the next 25 years Britain went about the business of creating “a little loyal Ulster state” in the middle-east. If you have ever wondered why people from the north of Ireland identify so strongly with Palestinians this is one of the reasons.

I find myself constantly checking the news at the moment wondering what is going to happen next. I know this isn’t vey good for my mental health and really I should just keep reminding myself that in a country where lots of people buy Virago books there’s still hope.

(I promise my next post will be more cheerful.)