Should English slave owning families pay reparations for slavery?

 

On Sunday evening I watched BBC Question Time. One of the questions that was put to the panel, was whether Britain should pay reparations to some countries for its involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade over 200 years ago.

One of the panel members was the journalist Emily Sheffield, the sister of Samantha Cameron, and the daughter of Sir Reginald (8th Baronet) Sheffield. What Emily failed to mention was that one of her ancestors, William Jolliffe, was a slave owner who owned 164 slaves on a sugar plantation on the Ballenbouche Estate in St Lucia. Jolliffe was paid £4,000 in compensation by the British government when slavery was abolished in 1833. This is equivalent to £3.25m today.

Nobody on Question Time including the panel, Fiona Bruce, or the audience, suggested that the English slave owning families like the Sheffield's, the Beckwith's and the Drax and Trevelyan families, should be held responsible for paying reparations for slavery and not the British taxpayer. In 1835, the Trevelyan family received £26,898 in compensation from the British government for the abolition of slavery a year earlier. The enslaved men, women and children, on the plantations, received nothing. The Drax family who owned 189 slaves in Barbados and Jamaica were paid over £4,000 in compensation.

I don't really see why some people think that Britain's alive today, who have no connections with the Transatlantic slave trade, should feel culpable for what happened in past history. Nevertheless, Germany has paid reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors since the 1950s. If anybody is responsible for paying reparations for the Transatlantic slave trade it has got to be the descendants of the slave owners. Some already recognise this and others resist it. The Trevelyan family have already paid some reparations to the people of Barbados.

I don't feel any personal responsibility for slavery or for any of the horrors connected with English colonialism. I wasn't alive then and my family have no connection with slavery. They were all English wage slaves. Richard Drax is one of the biggest landowners in Dorset and owns 14,000 acres in Dorset. A great deal of the family's wealth was made from sugar plantations and slavery. It's people like Drax who should pay the reparations and not the British taxpayer. And what about making Tate & Lyle cough up for slavery reparations?