Barbado'ed

When Cromwell transported fifty thousand Scottish slaves to Barbados during an unprecedented act of ethnic cleansing they disappeared from the history books. Broadcast in English on BBC Scotland, in this one hour documentary we uncover the facts of the “Barbadosed” Scottish and discover whether the island’s Redlegs, a small reclusive community made pallid and weak from 300 years of inbreeding, strong rum and insufficient food, is the living legacy of those white slaves.

This fascinating documentary explores this neglected episode in Scottish and Irish history and unravels the mystery of these forgotten people by reconstructing the conditions which greeted the Irish when they arrived in Barbados, the horrific labour they had to perform in the sugar fields, the branding irons with which they were labeled like cattle, and how they had to build their own shelters or perish, following the redlegs’ plight right up to their modern day descendants, most of whom still live in neglected impoverished conditions.