British actor meets the descendant of royal who owned his ancestors

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Thursday, Oct 21st 2021
Moment actor David Harewood meets the Queen's godson Viscount Lascelles whose ancestors enslaved his four-time great-grandparents -


Actor David Harewood discovered the names of his four-times great grandparents while having an extraordinary conversation with The Earl of Harewood, whose ancestors enslaved them.

The Homeland star, 55, who was born in Birmingham to Barbadian parents, travelled to Barbados to see the plantations his relatives worked on and to Harewood House in Yorkshire - the home of an aristocratic British family which was built with the profits made from slavery.

He met with Viscount David Lascelles, 70, the 8th Earl of Harewood who is the Queen's godson and first cousin once removed. The actor's surname is taken from the name of the home. Slaves, who had no record of their ancestry, were given their master's names.

In scenes captured by Channel 5's cameras for the documentary 1,000 Years A Slave, which aired last night, the aristocrat explained that he doesn't feel guilty about his family's past, but does feel 'accountable' to make his family name a force for good today.


The pair first met in 2007, during celebrations to mark the bicentennial of the Abolition of Slavery Act, but at the time David didn't know the names of his enslaved ancestors. David also visited the home - near Leeds - in his 20s but had no idea of his family's connection to it.

But after meeting with genealogists in Barbados, he discovered that his paternal great-great-great-great grandfather Richard Harewood was born in 1817 at the Fortescue Plantation in St Phillip which helped to fund the English country home.


While David had explored some of his family tree, he had never known the names of his enslaved ancestors until meeting with local genealogist Pat Stafford in St Philip.

Before 1834 and the abolition of slavery, enslaved people weren't included in the registry of births and deaths, meaning David couldn't find the names through conventional methods

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But Pat was able to find name's of David's relatives by looking through slave records, which were introduced in 1817 following the Bussa's rebellion - the largest slave revolt in Barbadian history.

'I'm finding out about my family, it just helps to colour in my identity, and the history of my people. I'm sure it could get a little emotional, it's a very dark chapter in British history,' David explained, adding he was never taught about slavery in schools.
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Sitting overlooking a cluster of sugar plantations with Pat, David explained 'I'm aware of some of my family tree.

'These plantations were owned by Leo of Harewood,' Pat explained.

'We found a record for a lady called Betty who had a son called Benjamin.

'I found Richard - aged 17 in 1834 - these people we believe are your four times great grandparents'.

Tearing up, David said 'that's incredible', adding 'it's quite a sad thing to know'.

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While David had explored some of his family tree, he had never known the names of his enslaved ancestors until meeting with local genealogist Pat Stafford in St Philip, Barbados (pictured together)

In further upsetting scenes, the father-of-two read the Barbados Slave Code of 1661, a piece of colonial legislation with instructions to slave owners on how to control their 'chattels' with torture. The document instructed plantation masters to whip enslaved people and brand initials into their faces with hot irons.


David is one of many British stars exploring their past that featured in the Channel 5 show.

Others included British-Ghanaian actor Hugh Quarshie, Tottenham MP David Lammy, who is of Guyanese and Barbadian descent and Lenny Henry who was born in Dudley to Jamaican parents.

Upon returning to the UK, David went to Harewood house to meet with Viscount David Lascelles, 8th Earl of Harewood, 70.

The Earl is a first cousin once removed of the Queen and a great-grandson of King George V.

Describing the palladium mansion - which was built on the profits of sugar and slavery as a 'monument to white supremacy', David explained the 'emotional toll' of the building up to the meeting as leaving him 'wasted'.

'The opulence, the grandeur, it's like a monument to white supremacy. What I don't see is the other side of the story,' the actor explained.

'I didn't sleep last night, I was thinking a lot about this meeting. I think the emotional toll of building up to it has left me pretty wasted, to actually meet the 8th Earl when it was the 2nd Earl who owned my grandparents, it's quite huge.

Speaking to the Earl, he went on: 'My great-great-great-great grandparents were slaves on your family's plantation, this is a beautiful house, but it was built on the proceeds of slavery, do you feel any guilt or shame about that?

'No, not in a personal way,' Viscount Lascelles replied.

'I don't feel feeling guilty about something you had no involvement with is helpful. I think you need to take responsibility for your own actions.

'But in this day and age I don't feel responsible, but I feel accountable. There's nothing you can do to change the past but you can be active in the present.

'We did a lot in 2007 for the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade and subsequently and the programmes we have here.

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Upon returning to the UK, David went to Harewood House (pictured) to meet with David Lascelles, 8th Earl of Harewood, 70. The home was built on the profits of slavery

'What I try to do about that legacy, to try in a small way to make that a force for good today.

Breaking down after the meeting, David explained how he was grateful to be able to tell his daughters Maize, 18, and Raven, 16, about their ancestry.

'I underestimated the psychological toll of it, and knowing how much pushback there has been against Black Lives Matter in the press and social media, it's exhausting to deal with the ignorance because it's tangible to me.

'It's something I'm dealing with and working through. And my daughters will be able to know where they came from and understand where they came from in a way that I didn't.

'It's a sense of history and story and longevity and understanding of who I am I now understand who I am, I'm not just this kids that comes from Birmingham - I'm more than that.

'It makes me proud, very proud, I can say to my children, this is your grandparents, this is what happens to them, they survived, they must hold their heads up, they must continue the story, that's a proud line of strong people
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@BigMoneyGrip @trillanova
@*~bigg~vvvave~*


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@DaRealness @Barbados Slim @YourMumsRoom did you guys watch this series?

 

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RELATED STORY FROM TWO DAYS AGO


Slavery history documents to be digitised – PM Mottley


October 19, 2021
Barbados’ role in the 200-year-long transatlantic slave trade, recorded here in the world’s second-largest cache of documents on the cataclysmic era is to be preserved digitally, the Prime Minister announced Sunday.


While speaking at a meeting of the governing Barbados Labour Party’s St. Philip West branch, Mottley told party supporters that the time was right to safeguard the records for future discussion and research, as the island’s past formed part of an important foundation to the current democratic society.

The Department of Archives at Black Rock is considered a treasure trove for historians documenting the unique value of Barbados to the British Empire as an early jewel in sugar and slaves.

Among its artefacts is the landmark 1661 Barbados Slave Code. The first comprehensive law in support of slavery, it established that Black slaves would be treated as chattel property in law. The document was highly influential in the development of slavery legislation through the West Indies, Virginia and other English colonies that later became the United States.

Mottley said: “There is a major project that we are undertaking with respect to the archives – Barbados has the second-largest transatlantic slave records in the entire world… the only country that has larger records of transatlantic slavery than us are the British. In terms of those of us who were the subject of exploitation, we have the [second] largest in the world.

“Earlier this year, the ones in South Africa, quite a few of them burned and it sent chills through my body. I called John [King, minister of culture and St Philip West MP] and said this project has to move now because this goes beyond our generation. This goes now to the legacy of this country, this goes now to the foundation this country must have.”

The transatlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance forced movement of people in history. From the sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, the enslavement of African people by five European nations to grow cash crops, in particular sugar, cotton and tobacco, fuelled the development of Europe into economic powerhouses.

Historians consider the Atlantic economy in which human beings, processed products and food were exchanged between North and South as the spark for the biggest change in modern economic history.

The slave trade was outlawed by Britain in 1807 and slavery in Barbados and all other British colonies was abolished in 1834 but slavery continued in the Americas throughout the 19th century, ending in the United States in 1865 and as late as 1888 in Brazil.

Mottley announced to the audience that King, who will not stand for re-election, will be part of a team tasked with safeguarding these records among other heritage-focused projects to be announced in the future.

“There are a series of projects that are interrelated that I have asked John to work with me on, to make sure that day by day, along with the other ones that I have others working on,” she said. (SB)

 

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Barbados plans to make Tory MP pay reparations for family’s slave past​

Richard Drax reported to have visited Caribbean island for meeting on next steps, including plans for former sugar plantation

Paul Lashmar and Jonathan Smith in Barbados
Sat 26 Nov 2022

The government of Barbados is considering plans to make a wealthy Conservative MP the first individual to pay reparations for his ancestor’s pivotal role in slavery.
The Observer understands that Richard Drax, MP for South Dorset, recently travelled to the Caribbean island for a private meeting with the country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley. A report is now before Mottley’s cabinet laying out the next steps, which include legal action in the event that no agreement is reached with Drax.


Barbados became a republic a year ago after it removed Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.
The Drax family pioneered the plantation system in the 17th century and played a major role in the development of sugar and slavery across the Caribbean and the US.
Barbados MP Trevor Prescod, chairman of Barbados National Task Force on Reparations, part of the Caricom Reparations Commission, said the UN had declared slavery to be a crime against humanity: “If the issue cannot be resolved we would take legal action in the international courts. 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.”
Countries in the Caribbean community (Caricom) have been campaigning for the payment of reparations by former colonial powers and institutions which profited from slavery. This is the first time a family has been singled out.
Among the plans being considered are that 17th-century Drax Hall is turned into an Afro-centric museum and that a large portion of the plantation is used for social housing for low-income Bajan families. There is also a recommendation that Richard Drax pays for some of the work.
David Comissiong, the Barbados ambassador to Caricom and deputy chairman of the task force, said that besides Drax, other families whose ancestors benefited from slavery are being considered including the British royal family: “It is now a matter that is before the government of Barbados. It is being dealt with at the highest level.

Conservative MP Richard Drax speaking in the House of Commons in 2020. Photograph: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor/PA
“Drax is fabulously wealthy today. The Drax family is the central family in the whole story of enslavement in Barbados. They are the architects of slavery-based sugar production. They have a deep historical responsibility. The process has only just begun and we trust that we will be able to negotiate. If that doesn’t work, there are other methods, including litigation.

“Other families are involved, though not as prominently as the Draxes. This reparations journey has begun. The matter is now for the cabinet of Barbados. It is in motion. It is being dealt with.”

Drax came under the spotlight in December 2020, after the Observer revealed he had not declared his inheritance of the 250-hectare (617 acres) Drax Hall plantation. He did so only after official documents surfaced which named him as the owner. He had inherited the plantation, valued at Bds$12.5m (£5.25m), from his father, Walter, in 2017.

Drax, 64, lives at the family’s mansion in Charborough Park, Dorset. He and his family are worth at least £150m and own 23.5 square miles in Dorset, and an estate and grouse moor in Yorkshire. The family also own 125 Dorset properties personally or through family trusts and a £4.5m holiday villa on nearby Sandbanks.

Drax’s ancestor, Sir James Drax, was one of the first Englishmen to colonise Barbados in the early 17th century. He part-owned at least two slave ships, the Samuel and the Hope.

The Drax family also owned a plantation in Jamaica, which they sold in the 19th century. When slavery was abolished across the British empire in 1833, the family received £4,293 12s 6d, a very large sum in 1836, in compensation for freeing 189 enslaved people.

Prescod added: “The Drax family had slave ships. They had agents in the African continent and kidnapped black African people to work on their plantations here in Barbados. I have no doubt that what would have motivated them was that they never perceived us to be equal to them, that we were human beings. They considered us as chattels.”

 

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Barbados

Anglican group launches £7m ($9.1million) project in Barbados to atone for slavery atrocities​

Fri 6 Sep 2024


An Anglican church group is to launch a £7m reconciliation project in Barbados to atone for the atrocities of transatlantic slavery and compensate descendants of enslaved people.
United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), a UK-based missionary organisation created in 1701 to convert people in the colonies to Christianity, will work with local and regional partners in the Caribbean to allocate money to education and entrepreneurial grants and historical research. It will also support land ownership among descendants of enslaved people.

The project, which launches on Saturday, will focus on communities living on the Codrington estate in eastern Barbados. Once the site of two thriving sugar plantations, generating an estimated income of £5m a year in today’s money, the estate was owned by the planter Christopher Codrington. He bequeathed it to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), which would later become USPG.
Codrington’s will stipulated he wanted 300 enslaved people to work on the plantation and the establishment of a theological college. Today, the college and the estate are managed by a government-established trust that is working with USPG on the project.
Dr Duncan Dormor, an Anglican priest and the general secretary of USPG, described the initiative as a critical step in addressing the injustices and crimes of the church during the transatlantic slave trade. He added that previous apologies from Anglican institutions needed to go further.
“Back in 2006, then archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, made a very public statement apologising on behalf of the Church of England for what went on at Codrington,” he said. “That apology included and covered USPG. However, I felt that we had not expressed our regret and remorse with enough seriousness and detail. Just to say, ‘we’re sorry’ – sorry for what, and what are we going to do about it?”

Rest of article

Anglican group launches £7m project in Barbados to atone for slavery atrocities

Funds will help communities living on the Codrington estate, which was home to two sugar plantations

www.theguardian.com