The Lamplighter, стр. 12
(MACBEAN in this part could experiment with the accents of the cities: Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, London.)
(The women should speak fast in this section and overlap each other, to give a sense of the city being built, brick by brick, in words.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
Sea, city, harbour, port
Sugar city, sugar ship,
Tobacco city, tobacco lips.
My story is the story of the city.
ALL:
Boom! Boom! Boom!
CONSTANCE:
Liverpool, Bristol, London, Manchester, Lancaster, Glasgow
BLACK HARRIOT:
Brass!
LAMPLIGHTER:
Glassware!
MARY:
Banking!
BLACK HARRIOT:
Cotton, striped cotton, coloured cotton!
MARY:
Manufactured goods!
LAMPLIGHTER:
Canal expansion!
ALL:
Boom! Boom! Boom!
BLACK HARRIOT:
Banking!
MARY:
Ship building industry!
CONSTANCE:
Banking infrastructure!
MARY:
Guns, shackles.
ALL (more sinisterly):
Boom! Boom!
LAMPLIGHTER:
Insurance!
CONSTANCE:
Investments from merchants!
MARY:
Timber, iron!
CONSTANCE:
Slave ships!
LAMPLIGHTER:
Houses, banks, buildings, businesses
Carriages, horses, cobbles, dresses.
In the night, the city grew.
ALL:
Boom! Boom! Boom!
LAMPLIGHTER:
By the morning there was another new
MARY:
Pub, coffee house, bank, merchant’s house,
Art gallery, Customs house, Venturer’s House.
MACBEAN:
The Ship Building Industry. Shipping.
CONSTANCE:
Ship bread, ship biscuit, ship breaker, slaver, ship broker, ship fever, ship store, slaver, ship cargo, ship stowage, stow away, ship rat, slaver, ship days.
MACBEAN:
Ship: to put or take (person or things)
Ship: to shoulder a burden
CONSTANCE:
HardSHIP, WorkmanSHIP, WorSHIP, relationSHIP, authorSHIP!
(She sounds very excited.) AuthorSHIP!
MACBEAN:
The British System is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen.
BLACK HARRIOT:
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Lancaster, Hull.
LAMPLIGHTER:
I put those cities on the map.
SONG:
(Folksong.)
MARY:
Virginia Street, Tobago Street, Jamaica Street, Ingram Street, Glassford Street
MACBEAN:
John Glassford, partner in Thistle Bank
Owned twenty-five slave ships.
His annual turnover was half a million sterling.
SONG:
(Folksong.)
BLACK HARRIOT (sings):
I’m only a common old working slave.
SONG:
(Protest song.)
ALL SING:
But the banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the people sweated for.
CONSTANCE:
Ten twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty one hundred pounds, ten twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty. Two hundred thousand pounds. (And so on.)
FX:
(We hear the sound of money being counted.)
BLACK HARRIOT:
Buchanan Street is my main shopping street, apart from Sauchiehall Street.
That’s where I get my bling!
MACBEAN:
Bishop Pococke visted Glasgow in 1760. He remarked, ‘this city has above all others felt the advantages of the union in the West Indian trade which is very great especially in tobacco, indigoes and sugar’.
CONSTANCE:
I put that city on the map.
SONG:
I belong to Glasgow, dear old Glasgow town.
There’s nothing the matter with Glasgow,
For it’s going round and round.
BLACK HARRIOT:
The ships are being built, the buildings are going up, banks, shops, houses, bakers, pubs, coffee houses, streets, canals,
FX:
(We hear the sounds of port cities, foghorns, ships coming in, iron-works, etc.)
CONSTANCE:
Share prices going up! Up up up! Invest now!
MARY:
I am collapsing.
ANNIWAA:
Keep me company.
MACBEAN:
There is not a brick in this city but what is cemented with the blood of a slave.
CONSTANCE (sings):
Glasgow belongs to me!
LAMPLIGHTER:
My blood
MARY:
My sweat
CONSTANCE:
My tears
LAMPLIGHTER:
In the first year of the
CONSTANCE:
Quote
LAMPLIGHTER:
Free
CONSTANCE:
Unquote
LAMPLIGHTER:
Trade.
Bristol alone shipped 160,950 Africans to the sugar plantation.
CONSTANCE (sings):
Bristol Belongs to Me
MACBEAN:
Bristolians depend for their subsistence on their West Indies and African Trade which employs great numbers of people in shipyards and in the manufacture of wool, iron, tin, copper, brass, etc.
Fellow citizens of Bristol. Do not lay the axe at the root of your own prosperity by supporting the abolition of slavery!
FX:
(Quay.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
I stood there on the cobbles,
At the Port in the pouring rain.
I couldn’t believe it was
Happening all over again.
I was brought to England
From the Plantation,
I managed to run away.
I was hiding in the hole of a roof
When I heard a bell ringer calling out
For me
FX:
(We hear the bells ringing.)
MACBEAN:
Guinea reward for black girl!
LAMPLIGHTER:
They found me.
And I was sent back to the Plantations.
I remember what was going through
My head as I stood on those cobbles.
I knew exactly what I was going back to.
I remember
Standing there as if I had stopped time.
CONSTANCE:
I remember.
ALL:
West Indian Trade! East Indian Trade!
Baltic Trade!
CONSTANCE:
Money makes the world go round.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Money makes the man.
I remember once hearing BigCheese say
I would rather have my money buried with me
Than give it to the slave.
MARY:
And alas! I am weary, weary O.
CONSTANCE:
Money sets the world in motion.
MARY:
I came under the hammer for money.
I was money for old rope.
CONSTANCE:
My children were sold for money.
MARY:
The BigMan made millions out of me!
CONSTANCE:
Guinea, shilling, penny, florin.
Ingot, silver, copper, farthing.
Buck, fiver, tenner, pony.
Copper, sovereign, nickel, crown.
Quid, bob, bit, pound.
MARY:
Bigbelly made a mint out of me.
BLACK HARRIOT:
His ships came home.
MARY:
Bigbelly laughed all the way to the bank.
BLACK HARRIOT:
His ships came home.
MARY:
BigCheese raked it in.
CONSTANCE:
I cut the cane.
MARY:
Fatface made a fortune.
ALL:
And alas I am weary, weary O.
BLACK HARRIOT:
His ships came home.
SONG:
LAMPLIGHTER (sings):
Look at the sugar ships cross the water.
ALL:
Hey nanny, ho nanny hey nanny no
BLACK HARRIOT:
Look at the big ship taking away my daughter
ALL:
Hey nanny, ho nanny, hey nanny no.
MARY:
There is not a brick in this city
CONSTANCE:
Huff puff. Blow your house down!
BLACK HARRIOT:
Bristol, London, Liverpool, Glasgow
MARY:
There is not a brick in this city
LAMPLIGHTER:
But what is cemented with the blood of a slave
CONSTANCE (sings):
Bristol belongs to me.
MACBEAN:
I put them all in leg irons; and if that not
Be enough, why then I handcuff them;
If the handcuff be too little, I put
A collar round their neck, with a chain
Locked to a ring-bolt on the deck; if one chain
Won’t do, I put two, and if two won’t do, three,
You may trust me for that. These are not cruelties;
They are matters of course. There is no carrying on
The trade without them.
LAMPLIGHTER:
May 22, 1731, the slave ship Neptune
Of Port of Glasgow, dropped anchor in
Carlisle Bay, Barbados.
On board were 144 enslaved Africans
Who had been shackled for nearly a year
With leg irons.
MARY:
And alas! I am weary, weary O
BLACK HARRIOT (sings):
I belong to Glasgow and Glasgow belongs to me!
LAMPLIGHTER:
Some stories don’t have a name to their voice.
I built those houses, brick by brick.
BLACK HARRIOT:
My head is on the red brick Customs House in Liverpool in between the elephants.
LAMPLIGHTER:
The Tobacco Merchant’s House, The Trades Hall,
The Gallery of Modern Art, Venturer’s House:
BLACK HARRIOT:
London, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow belongs to me!
CONSTANCE:
William Cowper,
BLACK HARRIOT:
the poet
MARY:
wrote
CONSTANCE:
I pity them greatly
BLACK HARRIOT:
meaning me
CONSTANCE:
I pity them greatly but I must be MUM
For how could we do without sugar and rum.
MACBEAN:
Instructions sent by the Bristol firm of Isaac Hobhouse. Let your knetting be fix’d breast high fore and aft and so keep ’em shackled and hand bolted. We hope this will find you with a fine parcel of Negroes ready to be put on board. Endeavour to purchase