Barbados seeks damages for sins of colonial past
A year on from becoming a republic, ministers go after British owner of island’s largest former slave estate
Finding the Drax estate is no easy task. Tucked among rolling hills in the south east corner of Barbados, it takes some time to locate it. A rusty sign points to a rough road with rain-filled potholes that are hard to avoid, while the sugar cane crops that flank it make it impossible to turn back. The back road into Drax Hall has become unnavigable, while the front entrance is trickier to find for one obvious reason: the welcome sign has been removed in recent months and replaced with an oil can bearing the words “private road: do not trespass”.
There’s a reason why visitors are deterred from making the journey to the oldest of only three remaining Jacobean manors in the Caribbean and the Americas. Drax Hall was the largest plantation in Barbados and the only one still in the hands of the family of the original slavers. Its current owner is Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset, who is at the centre of a hate campaign over the deeds of his ancestors.
A year on from Barbados ditching the British monarch as head of state, the island has Mr Drax in its sights. It wants him to pay reparations for the sins of his forefathers, including the option of forfeiting the estate and turning it into a slave museum.
Barbados isn’t stopping there. Emboldened by its newfound republicanism, it’s now going after the Royal family too. It’s a strategy not without risk. An island dependent on the hundreds of millions of pounds in tourist revenue brought in by Britons every year is pursuing institutions like Lloyds of London, Oxford University and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Mia Mottley, Barbados’s prime minister is leading the charge.
She is hailed in diplomatic circles as the “new voice of the global south” – the cheerleader for the developing world – despite being prime minister of a country with a population of just 300,000.
In Ms Mottley’s republican Barbados, once dubbed “Little England” for its rolling hills, churches, manor houses and red post boxes, new friends are being sought in Africa, the Gulf and China to fund her vision of a country that will rely less on “sun, sea and sand” tourism.
If she succeeds, then the rest of the Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, Grenada and Saint Lucia, where King Charles remains head of state, will follow. In government circles, they believe it is inevitable and the King is said to be relaxed about the move.
Ms Mottley is the favourite to become the next general secretary of the UN but her political opponents suggest she would do better to concentrate her energies on domestic issues such as solving the island’s sharp increase in gun crime. Also, with 85 per cent of food imported, the cost of living crisis is hitting impoverished islanders hard.
Worryingly, too, tourism numbers for the last winter season were 47 per cent down on pre-covid levels.
Back on the Drax estate, Philip Whitehead, 66, who has run the sugar plantation for the past 39 years, said: “To me it’s crazy they have vilified Richard Drax. It’s not right. Of course no one can condone slavery in any form. But back in the 1600s, slavery was not viewed as it is now. We know it’s a crime now but it wasn’t looked at like that then. I think of it this way: if I committed a crime in my lifetime, why should my children have to pay for it when it wasn’t even a crime at the time?”
The five-bedroomed manor house remains imposing, its dark grey walls (it wouldn’t look out of place in Scotland) set against the tropical lush greenery. Scattered across the farmyard are the remnants of the sugar industry, including the ruins of a windmill. The farm covers 600 acres, making it highly valuable real estate on an island that is a favourite of the super rich. To give it up is unthinkable to the Drax family but the pressure is on. There are concerns that the transition to a republic, announced in November last year, could shake up the island’s rock-solid foundations. “The Queen gave us a stability, a link to the past,” said Mr Whitehead, adding: “I am not worried so much for myself but maybe the younger generation.”
Historians estimate as many as 30,000 slaves lived and died on the Drax estate between the 1620s and the abolition of slavery in 1833.
In the capital Bridgetown, Ms Mottley’s closest adviser on slave reparations, who also happens to be her cousin, sits in his office in the foreign ministry planning his next move. The question of how to deal with the Drax estate is being discussed at the highest levels of government; Barbados would prefer Mr Drax gave up the estate but does not rule out a court case or a change in the legislation. David Comissiong, ambassador to the Caribbean community and deputy chairman of Barbados’s national commission on reparations, said: “I think ultimately the British Royal family will have to answer a reparations claim. We have not reached there yet but I am sure it is coming. We cannot say the Drax family is involved and not also say the British Royal family as an institution was also very much involved. Now we are a republic it makes it easier to see the British Royal family as just another family like the Drax family. The royals were heavily involved in slavery. You only need to look at the Royal Africa Company, which was the world’s greatest slave trading company. It was established during the reign of King Charles II and was run by James II.”
His pursuit doesn’t stop there. “We are just beginning,” said Mr Comissiong, naming relatives of the late Queen Elizabeth II who owned plantations. He believes a formal reparations demand will have to be made to the Drax family and others may follow. Mr Drax, he says, “needs to show a sense of justice. The moral situation is so clear. You couldn’t have a more clear-cut case than this one”.
Without a deal, international litigation is on the cards with talk of “an international tribunal to adjudicate the matter”.
The numbers are potentially huge. The British Government paid slave owners £47million to compensate them for the loss of their workforce, equivalent to £170billion in today’s money, claims Mr Comissiong. The Government took out loans to raise the money, which were finally paid off in 2015.
Down in the villages that sit beneath Drax Hall, the locals wonder what the fuss is all about. “David Comissiong is trouble,” says Ordeen Duke, a beautician. “We are living quite peacefully here. The plantation still employs people from the neighbourhood. It is not a problem. The Drax family were slavers but that was a long time ago. Leave it alone.”
Drive 15 minutes either east or west from Drax Hall and a new vision of a Barbados republic emerges, one with closer links to China than to Britain.
Chinese labourers can be seen working on a resort at Sam Lord’s Castle on the rougher east coast, a giant four-storey concrete hotel that dominates the previously pristine stretch of coast. The historic residence of Sam Lord, a buccaneer, remains an
‘If I committed a crime in my lifetime, why should my children have to pay for it when it wasn’t even a crime at the time?’
unloved ruin. West of Drax Hall and close to Fortress Hill, dormitories to house 150 Chinese workers with the Shanghai Construction Group have been erected on land that will one day become “Barbados’s Centre of Food Security and Entrepreneurship”, according to the sign at the side of the road. “It is a gift from the Chinese government to the Barbados government,” said a consultant working on site.
He said the Chinese workers were paid less than the Barbados minimum weekly wage of about £175. Critics wonder how the country leading the Caribbean call for slavery reparations is now doing deals with China, where modern slavery is reportedly rife. A report released by the UN this year condemned Beijing for the forced labour of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Ms Mottley has branded reports highlighting the link of being “disingenuous”. Friends say she is a pragmatist and after two years of Covid will seek investment where she can find it. Dr Shantal Monroe-knight, Barbados’s culture minister, defended the prime minister’s domestic record: “She has a global vision but she also has a national vision. She is just as focused on what is happening in Barbados and what she is saying on the international scene is really about also addressing the challenges we have at home.” But Dr Ronnie Yearwood, leader of the opposition, said: “There is a disconnect between her global image and her local management of the country. You can’t be saving the world when you should be minding the shop floor.”
On Wednesday, Barbados will do what it does best and party when it celebrates its annual independence day. On the same day a year ago, the country formally replaced Queen Elizabeth II with a president, Sandra Mason, a popular lawyer.
King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, attended the handover, acknowledging the “appalling atrocity of slavery” that “forever stains our history”.
The UK Government, perhaps mindful of future reparations claims, is adamant that his comments were not an apology. The King and Ms Mottley, both passionate about climate change, remain close and hers was one of the first calls the new King took after his mother’s death.
The 2021 handover was a grand affair and gave Barbados an opportunity to declare Rihanna a “national hero”, adding glamour to the proceedings and securing international coverage. The singer was educated at Combermere School, one of the finest on the island. And who founded the school originally? Colonel Henry Drax, the slaver and ancestor of the now beleaguered Tory MP.