An Introduction to the Tree Fellers

By Kamala Santos, Researcher for the Tree Fellers documentary.

The British Honduran Forestry Unit

During the 1940’s around 1,000 men came from the Caribbean country of Belize (formerly known as British Honduras) to work as lumberjacks in Scotland’s forests. They worked in 11 different locations, from Golspie in the North, to Duns in the South.

I was sitting in the library in Lewisham when I first read about the lumberjacks. It was a single, casual sentence and it astonished me. I pictured an army of young black men tramping through deep highland snow, axes on their shoulders. Why had I never heard about this before?

I was preparing to write a screenplay for a Black filmmakers collective, so I was at the library searching for a story from British history. Ideally something I could relate to from my own experience of growing up mixed race in Edinburgh.

Some time later I tracked down a book written by one of the lumberjacks, Amos Ford, and learnt the full story: the young men, eager to make the treacherous journey across the Atlantic to do their duty; warmly welcomed by the Scots – but treated as second-class citizens by their employers.

I got to meet Amos himself, and he introduced me to other lumberjacks, wonderful men – Eric Tatum in North Shields, lifelong Hibs fan Sam Martinez, as well as the amazing Nadia Cattouse – a folk singer who had travelled to Scotland as a war volunteer.

At the Public Records Office I read endless correspondence between the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Supply. The Colonial Office had highly recommended the lumberjacks to the Ministry; Britain was facing a wartime timber crisis and the British Hondurans were among the most skilled woodsmen in the world. But some of the Scottish landowners, who had donated their land to the Ministry, wanted the lumberjacks sent back. They cited reasons of ‘colour-mixing’ with the local girls (who apparently welcomed the men a bit too warmly) and the men’s alleged laziness.

I wove this true story into a screenplay about a Scottish boy who can’t fight in the war because of his disability. He lives on an estate where his father is head forester – and his world is turned upside down when the lumberjacks arrive. The screenplay has never been produced (yet!) but Asylum Pictures picked it up and produced a documentary called Treefellers. It was nominated for a Scottish Bafta.

The story of the British Honduran Forestry Unit is important for many reasons. It’s a crossing point for multiple strands of Scottish history. It looks back to Scotland’s role in colonialism and slavery, and forward to immigration and institutionalised prejudice.

It demonstrates the openness and love that the ordinary Scots had for the Caribbean visitors – something beautiful that local media and government officials warped into a different narrative.

It is important because of its ability to explore these subjects with a wider audience, and because of its tangible and everlasting presence: the many descendants of the lumberjacks living in Scotland today.