Gus

Because we didn't have this concept of a nuclear family in the way that we do in this country. We never imagined that your child is your child and your husband's child. And all my cousins I grew up with as my brothers and sisters. And we still have that relationship, now. I mean, some of them are as miserable as sin. But that's another story.

You can buy the straight tobacco leaves or you can buy the cured tobacco, now what does cured mean? It meant that my father used to put the tobacco leaves in a vat with white rum. Now, when you smoke that over proof white rum, it blew your head off, okay. Those elders used to come and they was smoke that thing and they would talk for England, and America and Grenada.

September, there was the most horrendous hurricane in the island. Hurricane Janet, 22nd of September 1955. I remember as if it was yesterday, I was 10 and a half years old. And it was utterly amazing.

And I couldn't understand why those houses were so close to one another. I said, “why do people want to live jammed up against one another like this?” So it took me a long time to understand how people's lives were structured in the country. I thought the place was ugly. Even in August, I thought it was cold.

You can't come out of an Imperial past like Britain, like Britain had, or has, and not use education and schooling as an instrument, a vehicle, for dealing with racism, dealing with issues of social justice and of human rights and, and what have you. But in my experience as an educationalist, all that there has been is people tinkering and throwing crumbs to black people

What fascinates me if not angers me about Britain and all that stuff. Few white people in Britain ever stop to think what it must be like to have your whole identity reshaped, by being taken out of your natural situation and your roots, plunked somewhere else. Have a different culture imposed upon you, a different religion imposed upon you, different ways of doing everything imposed upon you.

I remember all kinds of people beating a path to our door for medicines of one sort or another, because he could, he seemed to be able to heal everything from abdominal problems, women who couldn't have children, fractures, all sorts of things. I mean, he was the most incredible man and so in our house there were always rows of shelves, with jars on each of them where he kept barks and roots and leaves.

So, we have to understand issues to do with class, and how those operate independently of issues to do with race. But how toxic it becomes when race and class get combined, to impact upon people's lives. That’s the fundamental issue.

How we make sure that the gift the universe has given to us can be used for the benefit of all? So that you have a concern about rights, you have a concern about entitlements, especially educational entitlements. You have a concern about the distribution of wealth.

What its consequences were for those who were colonised and annihilated and what have you, and how that helped to shape British culture, cultural expectations, beliefs about other peoples around the world. And how it helped to order economic relations within Britain itself.