AliceWilby

This story might help those who struggle to understand the moral case for reparations - those who query why people today, who have had nothing themselves to do with slavery, should have any responsibility to people who were never enslaved. Conservative MP Richard Drax is worth £150 million. Much of his fortune is inherited, coming down the family line from ownership of the Drax sugar plantations and the 30,000 enslaved people who worked them as Drax property for 180 years before emancipation in Barbados. The Barbados government would now like to acquire some of this land to house 500 low and middle income families, mostly descendants of enslaved people, who were emancipated in 1834, with no assets to pass down through the generations. As these people were freed from the Drax family’s ownership, the Draxs were paid a further £3 million in compensation for their loss of ‘property’. As the direct beneficiary, Richard Drax could, if he felt any sense of responsibility, simply transfer the land. This would be a form of reparation. But no, he is demanding that they pay him another £3million to add to his fortune. The line of inter generational responsibility could not be more direct or stand out brighter in Drax’s case. It may be more diffuse and indirect for British society as a whole, but at least doing the right thing where it stands out so strongly, in both individual and institutional cases like Drax’s would be a start. @axrenton @LauraTrevelyan @heirsofslavery