By Steven Mackie
There's a story doing the rounds from Fife Police about someone who was
electrocuted trying to pinch some copper cable, and it seems the consensus
is that he had what was coming to him. Quite often from people who, if
pressed, would be against child poverty, the bedroom tax, shocked at food
banks and aghast at the thought of a bairn sitting down to watch his or her
mother cry because they only had Pot Noodle for Christmas dinner.
Preconceptions are the womb of prejudice, so I'll tell you a wee Christmas
story that is as true as anything I can ever say.
Many many years ago, when I was but a wee toddler, around three I think, I
lived in a fairly poverty stricken farm cottage with four elder siblings.
My Mother was a farm labourer (a job that helped kill her in the end), but
at least she coulnt be accused of being a sponger. On the weather beaten
fields all around Glasmount Hill and the Binn and Banchory she toiled,
picking tatties, going to the dressing, thinning neeps - manual labour. So,
when I was the wee-est one, she had no choice but to be taken into the
fields with her. Swaddled in as much warm clothing as I could carry on my
tiny bones, there I tottered in the tattie fields as the squads bent to
their work.
Now, about this time a black man arrived, blown in on the trade winds from
the West Indies; a man called Larry. And Larry became the man in charge of
the squads at Tyrie farm (just outside Kirkcaldy on the Kinghorn road). I
cannot for the life of me remember his face, as much as Ive tried these
past 47 years since. But I DO remember the feel of peculiar feel (to a
Scottish child) his afro hair, the thrill of being lofted on his giant
shoulders, the welcoming warmth of his greatcoat. I can half 'see' him in a
field at the side of the Jawbane road. I sadly cant recall him fully but I
DO know that we were inseparable. How do I know this?
Well, it came to pass that the work ended as crops do and the land slumbers
beneath our feet through winter. The money dried up and, as there were no
benefit entitlements -especially for Black immigrant workers - like there
are now, Larry must have found himself in a very unenviable position:
Thousands of miles from what the slave traders had told his grandparents to
call home, in a strange country. A country growing colder as the season
progressed, with no-where to turn to - and no-one to care even if he
arrived there. So, he took himself over to Seafield Colliery, maybe to get
some sea coal to sell (a common enough practice, believe me) and saw some
cables laying on the ground. There are no coal mines in the Caribbean,
which might have led him to think of it as defunct ... I cannot say. But he
decided to cut it up and heft it to the scrap yard. And thats where they
found him the next day, dead, on the cold wintery shores of the River
Forth.
Now, few people will know the 1960s farming life, but as it was, a lot of
our purchases came via by Butcher and Bakers van. There was a fair stream
of men in suits selling brushes and polishes, Insurance, Rent men, Ticky
men etc. In effect, a whole network of people who could bring and carry
news from far and wide. Of course, as a toddler, I cant remember the actual
events themself, nor was I there. But I DO remember a man in a suit coming
to see us - Mum - at what must have been just after the funeral. I remember
the gist of the conversation too, in which he said to Mum, in front of me
that as Larry was a pauper (legally) and the only thing he had of value
when they found his body was a pocket watch. The Farmer at Tyrie had known
how fond of each other we were, and arranged 'through the grapevine' to
have it brought to our cottage and he gave it to Mum saying "He'd want
Steven to have it".
Ive always been secretly pleased that, despite my many, many mistakes in
life, I possess a redeeming kernel of truth in the fact that the first
black person I even met loved me, and I loved him ... And I still have the
watch to prove that every adult for miles in every direction knew it.
Preconception is the womb of prejudice - so before you condemn this
unfortunate to an eternity of Hell for cutting through some bits of wire,
take a moment to consider that it might have been sheer, heart rending
desperation that drove him to do so, and not the callous greed that suits a
negative preconception.
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