Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill campus, has received an unexpected boost for his call on CARICOM states to press rich Western nations for reparations for slavery.
Less than a month after he used the first of a series of lectures arranged to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1763 Berbice Slave Revolt in then British Guiana to call for an “informed and sensible conversation” on what was perhaps “the worst crime against humanity”, Sir Hilary received support from a treasure trove of previously unseen documents which were released a few days ago in London.
The detailed records indicated that the descendants of thousands of prominent British families might owe some of their present-day wealth to the compensation their ancestors received when slavery was abolished in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean in 1833.
On the list of recipients of large sums of money for slavery in the 19th century was the Earl of Harewood, a relative of the British monarch who once owned The Mount and The Belle plantations in Barbados.
In all, more than 3 000 families received the modern day equivalent of at least BDS$60 billion, or £17 billion. Actually, the British treasury paid out £20 million in the 1830s, about 40 per cent of the country’s annual spending budget, the documents and a database showed.
Dr Nick Draper, a scholar at the University College of London and head of a team of academics who spent three years studying 46 000 records of compensation given to the British owners of 700 000 slaves in Barbados, Jamaica, British Guiana, Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere in the West Indies, said the findings could have implications for the “reparations debate” in the West Indies being spearheaded by Sir Hilary and Barbados.
“Barbados is currently leading the way in calling for reparations from former colonial powers for the injustices suffered by slaves and their families,” stated the Independent newspaper in London.
Just as important, the revelations could turn out to be a huge embarrassment for Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron; Henry Lascelles, the second Earl of Harewood and a cousin of Queen Elizabeth; former British cabinet minister Douglas Hogg; the scions of one of Britain’s leading banking families, the Barrings; and the authors Graham Greene and George Orwell.
Some of them used the compensation to invest in railways and other ventures that fuelled the industrial revolution. Others used the money to acquire and maintain lavish mansions in England and across the Caribbean. It is believed some of the funds went into stately homes in Barbados.
Draper contends the compensation programme accounts for the wealth of some of England’s richest families, who still directly enjoy the proceeds of slavery.
Interestingly, the Lascelles family displayed a strong link to Barbados up until the 1970s, so much so that a representative attended the island’s Independence celebrations in 1966. Some of the Queen’s relatives were frequent visitors to Barbados and before they sold the Mount plantation house, they stayed in the St George property for years.
“There was a feeding frenzy around the compensation,” was the way Draper put it about the money handed out to the slave owners in the West Indies.
The scheme was structured to reward slave owners according to the levels of productivity in Barbados, Jamaica and British Guiana.
For example, the amount paid in compensation for slaves in British Guiana was higher than the “value” placed on slaves in Jamaica because of a decline in productivity at the time of Emancipation.
In effect, the price paid for human beings was determined by colonial officials in the West Indies and London and worked out in government offices but not by the slave market.
The documents indicate that:
• Half of the overall amount of compensation went to slave-owning Brits in the West Indies and Africa.
• The largest single payout to slave owners in the West Indies was the equivalent of £83 million in today’s money and it went to James Blair who owned 1 598 slaves in British Guiana.
• David Cameron, the current British prime minister, had a great-great-granduncle, the Second Earl of Fife, who received a sum equal to more than $12 million today for the 202 slaves he forfeited on a sugar estate in Jamaica.
The British prime minister declined to comment on the disclosure that his ancestors owned West Indian slaves.
• The Hogg family, who gave Britain and its empire two lord chancellors in the 20th century, got some its wealth from the labour of slaves on plantations in British Guiana. • Some of the slave owners channelled much of the compensation into philanthropy.
• John Gladstone, father of Britain’s 19th-century prime minister William Gladstone owned nine plantations and 2 508 slaves in the West Indies. His son, who served four times as England’s leader, was very much involved in his father’s claim for compensation for the slaves.
“Seeing the names of the slave owners repeated in 20th century family naming practices is a very stark reminder about where those families saw their origins being from,” said Draper.
In his lecture, Sir Hilary insisted that the reparation he had in mind wasn’t about people getting handouts, but about repairing historical damage and how to find a way forward.
He said the issue of slavery had in recent times been viewed as a crime against humanity and those types of crimes had attracted calls for reparations for victims in various forms.
Sir Hilary urged CARICOM states to come together to address the issue of slavery and the question of reparations, which he argued would lead to peace, justice, reconciliation and future harmony.
