The government of Barbados wants to make a wealthy Conservative member of The British Parliament the first person to pay reparations for his ancestor’s role in slavery, The Guardian reports.
Richard Drax reportedly traveled to the Caribbean country for a private meeting with Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who has since presented a report outlining the next steps to her cabinet. Those plans include taking legal action if an agreement is not reached, according to The Guardian.
Drax’s family created the plantation system in the 17th century and played a pivotal role in the development of sugar and slavery across the Caribbean and the United States. They were able to generate extraordinary wealth through the cultivation of sugar by enslaved Africans.
When slavery was abolished across the British Empire in 1833, the Drax family reportedly received the equivalent of what would be over $3.5 million for freeing 189 enslaved people, according to the BBC.
Barbados became independent from the United Kingdom in November 1966, more than three centuries after the English arrived and got wealthy off the free labor of thousands of enslaved people. The island nation became a republic on November 30, 2021, one year after it removed Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state.
Mottley has made slavery reparations a major focus of her agenda since becoming Prime Minister in 2018, according to The Daily Mail. In addition, several member countries of the Caribbean Community known as CARICOM have been campaigning for reparations by former colonial powers and institutions that profited from slavery. However, this is the first time a family has been singled out.
“The case against the Drax family would be for hundreds of years of slavery, so it’s likely any damages would go well beyond the value of the land,” said Barbados MP Trevor Prescod, chairman of Barbados National Task Force on Reparations, The Guardian reports.
Plans include turning the island’s 17th-century Drax Hall plantation into an Afro-centric museum and housing for low-income Barbadian families. There is also a recommendation that Drax foot some of the bill for these plans.
The politician first came under fire in 2020 when it was revealed that he did not declare his inheritance of the 617-acre Drax Hall Plantation from his father. According to the Guardian, Drax only disclosed the information when official documents that named him as the property owner surfaced.
“The Drax family had slave ships. They had agents in the African continent and kidnapped [B]lack African people to work on their plantations here in Barbados,” Prescod said.
“It is now a matter that is before the government of Barbados. It is being dealt with at the highest level,” said David Comissiong, the Barbados ambassador to CARICOM and deputy head of the reparations task force.
Comissiong also said that “Drax is fabulously wealthy today” and that the Drax family “is the central family in the whole story of enslavement in Barbados” who have a deep historical responsibility.
“If the issue cannot be resolved, we would take legal action in the international courts,” Prescod said.