When the British government abolished slavery in 1833, around 47,000 individuals involved in the slave trade were compensated for the ‘property’ they had lost overseas.
The property in question referred to the men, women and children whom they owned as slaves, as well as the plantations.
To compensate for their loss of slaves, the UK paid out £20million – which is around £2.4billion adjusted at today’s prices – and financed it by borrowing.
An illustration showing slaves on board a slave ship. When the British government abolished slavery in 1833, around 47,000 individuals were compensated for the ‘property’ they had lost
The debt was only paid back in 2015. Academics at University College London have created a database which tracks the slave-owners who benefited.
Many of them had links to or founded some of the UK’s biggest companies including Greene King, P&O, RSA Insurance, Barclays and even the Bank of England.
The sums paid out are not to be sneezed at: Benjamin Greene, founder of the Greene King brewery and pubs chain, was granted nearly £500,000 in today’s money when he surrendered rights to three plantations in the West Indies.
Simon Fraser, one of the founder members of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market, was given nearly £400,000 to surrender an estate in Dominica.
The Bank of England apologised for its part in the kidnapping and transportation of thousands of slaves, promising to remove portraits of those involved in this ‘unacceptable part of English history’.
Greene King and Lloyd’s of London were also quick to apologise for their past role in the slave trade after news of their links were published.
They have offered to make amends for their slave legacy, saying they will fund projects to help black and other ethnic minorities. They are right to do so, and to have reacted so promptly.
Cynics might say they did so to avoid any damage done to the brand if those same protesters who have been pulling down statues of slave-owners were to boycott their pints or insurance services.
That view seems unfair. Greene King’s boss, Nick Mackenzie, sounded genuinely mortified by the brewery’s ‘inexcusable’ past.
More pertinently – and more importantly for future generations – he said the company’s website would be updated to include the history of its slave-owner founder.
Similar contrition has been shown by Lloyd’s of London, and the insurer will also be contributing to charities. But the banks, which also have links to the slave trade – Lloyds, RBS, HSBC and Barclays – have yet to comment on the UCL report.
Many will question where this thirst for raking over history will take us. Should every company in Britain, which was in existence at the relevant time, go through its archive to see what lies buried?
There are all manner of skeletons they would prefer did not come rattling out of the cupboard. The fortunes of many of our Victorian ancestors were built on the labour of women and children in the workhouses of the industrial revolution. Should their relatives be compensated?
And what about recent transgressions?
The list of corporates with dodgy not-so-distant pasts is long: clothing giants that make their fortunes from sweat-factories in Asia, banks such as HSBC laundering money for Mexican drug lords, or Standard Chartered channelling funds for Hezbollah.
Should they pay back their victims – assuming they can be identified?
Will there be boycotts as there was of Barclays in the 1980s over apartheid in South Africa? What about buying oil from rich Middle Eastern states which didn’t stop slavery until the 1960s?
When people drive their Porsche, do they worry about the Nazi past of its founder? These are delicate issues.
This is not a cop-out but one way for firms to look at the past is to identify whether there are direct victims, or heirs to those victims. If so, make reparations to them.
If Lloyd’s and Greene King, now owned by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-Shing, want to give something back, that’s good.
What is of more importance is that they spend their charity money wisely on those who are truly disadvantaged.
The cash should go to help those who face barriers to opportunity because of race and because of deprivation. Otherwise, companies should apologise and move on.
Signs of a bounce
The Bank of England has moved quickly to pump an extra £100billion into the economy after April’s shocking GDP numbers, the biggest one month drop on record.
Policymakers voted 8-1 to increase the size of the bond-buying programme but also to keep interest rates at a record low of 0.1 per cent.
It would be silly to be too cheerful but the Bank also said the latest demand numbers are not quite as ‘negative’ as expected.
Translated into ordinary lingo, that sounds like the Brits have rediscovered shopping again and spending figures for May and June look better than could possibly be hoped for.
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