The Redlegs – Ireland’s Sugar Slaves

The Redlegs is the untold story of over fifty thousand Irish men, women and children who were transported by Cromwell and sold as slaves to rich English planters in Barbados.

So what happed to these white slaves? Could it be that their descendents are among the small white population known by the derogatory title of Red Legs, a dwindling group of whom still live on the island? Can this underclass, historically shunned by the white planters, reluctant to work alongside the African population, and affected by 300 years of inbreeding and subsistence living, trace its ancestry back to the Barbadosed Irish?

In this fifty minute documentary, we explore this neglected episode in Irish history and unravel the mystery of these forgotten people by reconstructing the conditions which greeted the Irish when they arrive in Barbados, the horrific labour they had to perform in the sugar fields, the branding irons with which they were labelled like chattels, and how they had to build their own shelters or perish