Among those revealed to have benefited from slavery are ancestors of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, former minister Douglas Hogg, authors Graham Greene and George Orwell, poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the new chairman of the Arts Council, Peter Bazalgette. Other prominent names which feature in the records include scions of one of the nation’s oldest banking families, the Barings, and the second Earl of Harewood, Henry Lascelles, an ancestor of the Queen’s cousin. Some families used the money to invest in the railways and other aspects of the industrial revolution; others bought or maintained their country houses, and some used the money for philanthropy. George Orwell’s great-grandfather, Charles Blair, received £4,442, equal to £3m today, for the 218 slaves he owned.
Cameron and Orwell doesn’t surprise me. I am surprised by a lack of other conservative politicians.
Were the reparations for taking away their slaves?!
Yes.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-collection-of-slavery-compensation-1835-43
paid slave owners £20 million as compensation for the loss of their “property”Ah yes, sit with your comfortable view of hindsight.
Buying the slaves back at the time was the best option. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best guaranteed way of freeing the slaves without bloodshed.
History is grimy. Sure, this wasn’t the most justice-wielding action at the time, but was probably the best option for freeing the slaves in the first place, which is arguably the priority.
