In October 2023, we welcomed Alex Wheatle to speak at Bath Central Library about his novel Cane Warriors.
Cane Warriors is based on the true story of an eighteenth-century slave uprising, centring on the teenage Moa and the decisions he must make as a ‘cane warrior’ fighting for freedom from the Jamaican plantations.
![A black man wearing dark clothing against a dark background.](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/VL-image-Square-26-e1712830122760.png?resize=1000%2C665&ssl=1)
“Cane Warriors is one of the most important narratives I have ever written because it focuses on a part of world history that has been ignored and understated. It’s time that Tacky and his fellow Cane Warriors are remembered…”
– Alex Wheatle
Alex has been working in partnership with State of Trust and The Beckford Tower Trust, with the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund on linking the story of Cane Warriors and Tacky’s Rebellion with the history of Beckford Tower, Bath through dance.
As well as welcoming Alex, we were also fortunate to host an exhibition reflecting on the journey taking Cane Warriors from page to performance through dance and music.
We reflect on the audience’s conversation with Alex Wheatle and explore some of what was discussed with the Q&A below. This content is an edited version of an audio recording of the event.
Alex, tell us about your inspiration for writing Cane Warriors?
The first seed was planted when I was serving time after the Brixton uprising of 1981. Brixton was very volatile in those days… tension built up not just over weeks and months but for several years and it all exploded in April 1981.
I found myself serving time in prison. My cellmate, a Rastafarian by the name of Simeon, was very well read. He had a little bookshelf in the cell that I shared with him. One of the books that he offered me to read was the Black Jacobins by the great Trinidadian writer CLR James.
This planted the first seed in my head when it came to Cane Warriors. I had that in my mind for many years.
Later, when I was finally reunited with my father in Jamaica in 1987, we had this blazing row because I had discovered he was the person who placed me into care and so I wanted many answers from him. That first meeting was very tense but the next morning we were both civil and he asked where I would like to go on a day out.
So, we took a day trip to Firefly house where Noel Coward once resided, near Fort Haldane. I later discovered that this was once a British Garrison. At the time, I didn’t link that this was one of the places the legendary Chief Tacky attacked; where he got his arsenal of weapons from to fight the English in his attempt to free the slaves.
When I was at school, I wasn’t really taught anything about Caribbean history. I was told that my ancestors were slaves with no context. So after I became an established author, I really wanted to write something about Jamaica and the history of slave revolt.
I picked this one out because my mother, a James Bond fan, grew up in Richmond which is in the St Mary parish. Ian Fleming only lived about 6 miles away on the North coast. She remembers him emerging from his compound Goldeneye that overlooked the Caribbean Sea.
I didn’t realise at the time, and my mother didn’t realise that where she lived and was raised was where the plantations were. The Frontier and Trinity plantations that Chief Tacky and other cane warriors descended on.
So that compelled me –
“OK I’ve got to write this story now … all the bits are falling into place… I must now complete the puzzle.”
– Alex Wheatle
Cane Warriors is fictional piece based on real events. What can you tell us about Cane Warriors and the value of storytelling vs fact?
For me, it was important that I write Cane Warriors, to make young people aware of what empire was all about and to educate people. We can watch news reels and we can be shown Edward Colston’s statue being pulled down, but I think we need the storytelling and the facts too.
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We need young people to be aware of what happened. How slavery made so much money, who was involved in it, who suffered because of it and who benefited.
Before the pandemic, I went on tour in Germany (my books do well in Germany!). What impressed me was that school pupils were obliged to learn about the Holocaust as part of their curriculum. For me, Germany have accepted the horrors of the past much more readily than we do in the UK.
I’m really hoping that a project like Cane Warriors will prompt those people who decide what should be taught in schools to look at stories like this but also the whole experience of slavery in the Caribbean.
There are many things that we need to aware of and in my own way, I am writing about an untold history about my ancestors. I have been ill for the last year but when I am out and able, I hope to visit schools to talk about the book, to introduce them to this history which I feel has been denied to schoolchildren for so long.
Stories come to us from the past. I felt I could attract more of a readership if I turned Cane Warriors into fiction, to dramatize it, rather than spending 5 or 6 years trying to make it completely correct.
“I have the bare facts, the basic structure of the story, let me build on that with my own fictional storytelling.”
– Alex Wheatle
By offering a moving, dramatic story, people are more likely to read it [more than if I wrote a textbook]. To see a story performed on stage really does help young people to see the context of a story, to dramatize it. This is what led me to contact Deborah and State of Trust.
Dance is a perfect way to tell a story. We hope to take the Cane Warriors performance around the country, to engage people with the storytelling through dance.
![Nine adults dressed in dark clothes stood against a dark background. Posed as a group and looking at the camera.](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/VL-image-Square-25-e1712830032860.png?resize=1000%2C578&ssl=1)
Alex, can we explore the past, family connections and your education?
My mother escaped a violent marriage in the early 1960s. She had five children with her husband in Jamaica. She left her children with her parents in Richmond, St Mary and came to the UK to make a new life for her, and supposedly eventually her children. She settled in Brixton in 1961, where she met my father who is also from Jamaica. They had a relationship, and I was a product of that relationship.
When my mother’s husband had discovered what had happened, my mother had to return to Jamaica and sort out her affairs and I was left with my father. There wasn’t the help there is now for single parent families, so my father tried to raise me by himself. In the end I was taken into care, and he also returned to Jamaica believing that I would be raised by decent people but that was not the case.
The way I was raised, I was always informed that I was inferior to anyone else because I was black. When I asked about my parents and family, I was told they were ‘back in the jungle’. I grew up with low esteem, feeling inferior to my white counterparts.
When I moved to Brixton, I started to learn about African culture and the civilisations. All that was denied to me growing up. That is why I campaign that when history is taught in our schools. It should not just be about Kings and Queens, it should be varied especially now in the UK we have so many children in schools whose parents and grandparents come from all over the globe.
I attended quite a number of schools, but I remember one history teacher- he was so excited about his role in life and that excitement was picked up by the kids. He dramatized it, the way he presented the stories and I believe that is the way history should be taught. To enthuse the young people in front of you.
“Children should be able to see themselves in history. I never saw myself in history.”
– Alex Wheatle
If you want to hear more, watch this video of Alex Wheatle talking about Cane Warriors and his own life story: https://vimeo.com/859207894.
Use the buttons below to find out more from Deborah Baddoo MBE, Artistic Director of State of Trust and The Beckford Tower Trust, about a project established with the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to link renowned author, Alex Wheatle’s story of Cane Warriors and Tacky’s Rebellion with the history of Beckford Tower, Bath through dance.
Keep up to date with the project: