Barbados considers lawsuit against descendant of slave-owning family

The Barbados government is considering going to court to force a descendant of a British slave-owning family to pay compensation. Who writes The Guardian. The British newspaper has had access to an article due out tomorrow in the Sunday newspaper The Observer. It is the first time attempts have been made to force a private individual to pay compensation for an ancestor’s involvement in slavery, according to The Guardian.

The descendant in question is Richard Drax, a wealthy Conservative member of the House of Commons. According to The Observer, he recently visited Barbados, an island nation and republic in the Caribbean and a former British colony. His family has had a plantation there since the 17th century and played an important role in sugar cultivation and the slave trade in the Caribbean and the United States.

Drax is said to have had a meeting with Prime Minister Mottley in Barbados. A report on this is now with his cabinet. It lists follow-up steps, including legal action, if an agreement with Drax is not reached, according to The Guardian.

“If the matter is not resolved, we will go to international tribunals,” the chairman of the Barbados Reparations Task Force told the newspaper. “The case against the Drax family involves hundreds of years of slavery. The damage is likely to far exceed the value of the land.”

The working group is affiliated with Caricom, a partnership of countries in the Caribbean region that supports reparations by former colonial powers and institutions. Suriname is also a part of it.

Other families who became wealthy from slavery in Barbados, including the British royal family, are also being examined, according to the task force’s deputy chair. “The matter is now with the government.”