Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

James Drax was the first – or one of the first – planters in the British empire to move to a workforce of enslaved Africans where the children of slaves were held in perpetuity.

His descendant is the Tory MP Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax...

In June, the Brattle Group, a respected global financial consultancy, produced a landmark report that attempted to quantify the amount of reparations that should be payable for the violations of international law arising from and caused by transatlantic chattel slavery.

Chattel slavery refers to the trade in human beings, their enforced labour, & the breeding of generations of people born into captivity. It researched the enslavement of 19M people over 4 centuries, involving what the report referred to as “802M years of life to be compensated”.

The report estimated that Britain’s share in that compensation would amount to £18.5 TRILLION, an almost unimaginable amount, just less than twice what the UK – its land, infrastructure & everything in it - was worth in 2022 as estimated by the Office for National Statistics.

Paul Lashmar, Reader in Journalism, at the University of London, has spent three years researching a book about just one family - the Drax family.

He shares his findings in his book & in this article, reproduced in this thread, & discusses reparations.

theconversation.com/tory-mps-histo…

“Reparations have been paid for other wrongs and obviously far more quickly, far more speedily than reparations for what I consider the greatest atrocity and crime in the history of mankind: transatlantic chattel slavery.” - Judge Patrick Robinson.

theguardian.com/world/2023/aug…

Jamaican international jurist Judge Patrick Robinson launched the Brattle Report in June 2023.

It states: "The harm caused by transatlantic chattel slavery was vast, & its repercussions resonate in the lives of descendants of the enslaved to this day."

brattle.com/wp-content/upl…

The economic consultancy, The Brattle Group, was asked to draw up a report estimating the scale of reparations that should be paid for the chattel trade between 1510 to 1870, covering 31 countries that engaged in transatlantic slavery, uprooting millions of people.

The repartitions would include compensation for loss of life and liberty, uncompensated labour, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence.

These harms were inflicted on 19 million people over the span of four centuries.

The Brattle Report estimates the UK – the biggest slave trading nation up to 1807, which did not abolish slave ownership in the empire until 1834 – should pay a reparations bill of £18.5 trillion.

For context, the estimated annual GDP for the UK for 2023 is about £2.5 trillion.

People struggle to process the amount & scale of wealth involved.

The entire worth of the UK – its land, infrastructure, and *everything* in it, was estimated by the Office for National Statistics at £10.7 trillion in 2020.

ons.gov.uk/economy/nation…

But then centuries of value derived from the trade in human beings produced for Britain an equally unimaginable sum. The British government borrowed £20 million in 1833 to compensate slave owners.

bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/…

This borrowed £20 million amounted to a massive 40% of the Treasury’s annual income or about 5% of British GDP.

According to the Treasury, the loan was only finally paid off in 2015.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/1…

The wealth created by the slave trade and the plantations continues to shape British society to this day and, in some cases, remains in the hands of families whose ancestors were involved in buying and selling slaves and running enterprises based on slave labour.

One example is the Drax family of the Charborough Estate in Dorset, which is now owned by Conservative MP, Richard Drax.

theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…

For the past three years, Paul Lashmar has been researching – & has just completed – an unauthorised history of the Drax family. The family appears to be unique in having an unbroken history of owning sugar plantations in the Caribbean from their inception until the present day.

Their ancestor James Drax (c.1609-1662) was one of the first settlers in Barbados in 1627 & is credited with inventing the British sugar industry in the 1630s.

househistree.com/people/sir-jam…

Around 1640, Drax developed the integrated sugar plantation. It was a highly efficient industrial process, but required a coordinated workforce working from before sunrise to sunset.

oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docume…

As stated at the top of this thread, James Drax was the first – or one of the first – planters in the British empire to move to a workforce of enslaved Africans where the children of slaves were held in perpetuity. His descendant is the Tory MP for South Dorset, Richard Drax.

Tory MP Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (who prefers to be known as Richard Drax) heads the family that owns the vast Charborough Estate and the Drax Hall Plantation in Barbados.

Although he is a public figure, Richard Drax and his family are very private.

The Drax family are particularly private about their wealth, which is locked into a number of trusts. As head of the family, the MP lives in the 17th-century grade 1 listed Charborough House with its 1,500 acres of parkland behind the three miles of the “Great Wall of Dorset”.

Writing for The Observer and Sunday Mirror in 2020, Lashmar & his co-writer revealed that Drax is the wealthiest landowner in the House of Commons.

theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…

Lashmar was able to estimate that the MP and his family owned at least 15,000 acres of farmland, heathland and woodland in Dorset plus a farming estate and grouse moor in Yorkshire.

His 125-plus properties and 23.5 square miles of Dorset land are worth at least £150 million.

Lashmar also revealed that Drax had personally inherited the Drax Hall plantation in Barbados, which was valued in 2020 as worth £4.7 million. In April 2023 they cropped sugar there, as they had done since the 1630s.

Richard Drax has resisted engaging with the reparation debate.

His “slavery was wrong” comments have not sufficed for the ancestors of people enslaved in Barbados.

In 2020 when Lashmar raised the question of slavery and his ancestors with him, Drax responded by saying:

Barbadian historian of slavery & Caribbean Reparations Commission Chair Sir Hilary Beckles told the Sunday Mirror: “It is no answer for Richard Drax to say it has nothing to do with him when he is the owner and the inheritor. They should pay reparations.”

caricomreparations.org/caribbean-camp…

In the three years since Lashmar first wrote about Richard Drax MP, the call for reparations has gotten much louder. Globally, Drax has come to symbolise those whose families benefited from slavery but rebuff formal apologies and paying reparations.

Pressure has grown on him and in October 2022 he flew to Barbados to meet with the country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley.

theguardian.com/world/2022/nov…

The Barbados government believes that – as a descendant of a founder plantation owner, a British MP – his wealth and his attitude towards responsibility for reparations symbolises everything that was wrong with the way Britain treated Barbados and the colonies.

In the meeting between Drax & Mia Mottley, he was offered two options, one a package of reparations including all or a substantial part of Drax Hall. If he refused, Mia Mottley said they could take legal action over the issue.

time.com/6290949/barbad…

Meanwhile, other families such as the Trevelyans and the Gladstones from the Heirs of Slavery group have come to represent those who recognise where their family wealth came from and feel the need to apologise and make some kind of reparations payment.

heirsofslavery.org

The Brattle report is described as the most comprehensive financial analysis of transatlantic slavery. It estimates that the 31 enslaving countries procured 801.58 million life years of free labour on which they were able to prosper.

theguardian.com/global-develop…

The momentum for reparations grows. Judge Robinson says the UK Govt needs change from its position of refusing to apologise: “I believe that the UK will not be able to resist this movement towards the payment of reparations: it is required by history. & it is required by law.” 👊