LONDON (Labour Buzz) - Conservatives have spent much of 2020 grappling with the UK’s track record in the slave trade. For one MP things got more personal as he’s directly profited from the trade. Now people are suggesting he makes reparations.
Anyone who knows Dorset will also be familiar with the three miles of wall running alongside major roads. Known as the great wall of Dorset this is the barrier separating the opulence of Charborough Park with the outside world. This is the ancestral home of Dorset MP Richard Drax and at the centre of a massive grade one listed mansion.
Drax is probably the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons and is so posh even Jacob Rees Mogg might be tempted to tug a forelock. However, his Downton Abbey lifestyle hides a sinister past. His wealth is ‘soaked in the blood’ of slaves.
In 2017, after his father died, his inheritance included the Drax Hall plantation, a place which the Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) Reparations Commission has termed a killing field. Here, tens of thousands of slaves met their end in appalling conditions between the 17th and 19th century.
The Commission thinks he should recognise where his wealth came from and make reparations.
“There have been centuries of looting and siphoning off the wealth which should have remained in Barbados,” David Comissiong, the Barbados ambassador to Caricom, said on Friday. “This was a crime against humanity and we impose upon him [Mr Drax] and his family a moral responsibility to contribute to the effort to repair the damage.”
Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of Caricom and vice-chancellor of the UWI, told the Guardian that his family has done more violence to the people of Barbados than any other family.
According to sources in Barbados he has been farming the plantation and has applied to register it as a business. Aside from this he owns around 125 properties personally or through family trusts and could be worth as much as £150 million.
However, getting a true grip on his wealth can be tricky. The estate’s finances are extremely opaque and involve six trusts and other disconnected financial entities. Drax himself says he does not yet formally own the plantation as it is still undergoing the probate process. However, he will register it when it has transferred to his name.
Drax has a reputation as a highly outspoken politician and has the kind of attitudes you might expect from someone who lives behind a giant wall. He’s a hard line on Brexit and was among those rebels who opposed lockdown restrictions. He’s anti-immigration and has also criticised Black Lives Matter
The one thing he doesn’t like talking about much is his family’s slaving past. When he was elected he told the Mirror that “I can’t be held responsible for something that happened 300 or 400 years ago.” However, he is more than happy to profit from it. Anyone hoping he does the decent thing and apologises for his family’s murderous past, let alone make reparations, maybe waiting a long time.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)