Actor Benedict Cumberbatch finds himself in trouble as Barbados is planning to demand reparations from his family for slavery. AFP
He played the role of a plantation owner in the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave. Now the reel seems more real. English actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s ancestors reportedly ran a slave plantation in Barbados during the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Now the Cumberbatch family is likely to pay for the action of its forefathers. It faces a possible legal battle after Barbados declared that it was seeking reparations from families of slave owners, reports The Telegraph.
Also read: Explained: Why Netherlands’ formal apology for slavery fell flatA plantation with 250 slaves
The seventh great-grandfather of the actor bought a sugar plantation in St Andrew on the island nation in 1728 and made a fortune over it. It housed 250 slaves until slavery was abolished 100 years later. After the plantation was forced to close, the Cumberbatchs were given ?6,000 in compensation for their loss of “human property”. It amounts to ?3.6 million (Rs 35.95 crore) today, according to a report in Daily Mail.
The government of Barbados is seeking reparations from those who indulged in slavery. Barbados’s National Task Force on Reparations, part of the Caricom Reparations Commission (Caricom), earlier campaigned for the payment of reparations from former colonial powers and institutions that profited from slavery. It is now targeting families and the Cumberbatchs are among the first whose name has come up.
The nation became a republic a year ago after it removed Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.
Benedict Cumberbatch played the role of a plantation owner in the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave. AP
David Denny, a leading campaigner for reparations and the general secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, told The Telegraph, “Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefitted from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family.”
Benedict Cumberbatch says
The actor has known about this family’s dark history and has spoken about it in the past. He told The Telegraph in 2018, “We have our past… you don’t have to look far to see the slave-owning past. We were part of the whole sugar industry, which is a shocker.”
He also said in 2015 that his mother had urged him not to use his last name professionally. She feared it would make him a target of the campaign by the Caribbean to get compensation for the descendants of those who were enslaved.
Benedict Cumberbatch first spoke about his family’s past when he appeared in the 2006 film Amazing Grace about the campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire. Back then, he half-joked that he took the part of William Pitt the Younger “as a sort of apology” for his ancestry, reports Daily Mail.
It is not known if the ancestral wealth helped the actor, who was educated at Harrow School.
British MP’s connection to slavery
However, Cumberbatch is not the only one who finds himself embroiled in the controversy.The first family to be singled out in the United Kingdom was that of wealthy Conservative MP Richard Drax.
The Drax clan reportedly started the plantation system in the 17 Century and played a big role in the development of sugar and slavery across the Caribbean and the US, according to a report in The Guardian.
The politician reportedly travelled to Barbados and met the country’s prime minister Mia Mottley recently. The island nation is mulling legal action if Drax refuses to pay the compensation.
Barbados and Jamaica are demanding compensation from British MP Richard Drax. His family played a big role in the development of sugar and slavery across the Caribbean and the US. Wikimedia Commons
David Comissiong, the Barbados ambassador to Caricom and deputy chairman of the state’s task force, told The Guardian last month that Drax and other families could face litigation if they don’t agree to pay reparations. “It is now a matter that is before the government of Barbados… It is being dealt with at the highest level,” he said.
Barbados MP Trevor Prescod and chairman of Barbados National Task Force on Reparations said that the United Nations had declared slavery to be a crime against humanity, adding that the country would approach international courts if the matter remains unresolved. “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,” he told the publication.
In December 2020, Observer reported that Richard Drax did not declare his inheritance of the 250-hectare Drax Hall plantation in Barbados, valued at ?5.25 million (Rs 52.5 crore). He admitted to it only after official documents surfaced naming him as the owner.
Repartation campaigners have been calling for Drax to donate the property to Barbados. The island nation is considering plans to turn Drax Hall into an Afro-centric museum and use parts of it for housing low-income Bajan families, The Guardian reports. There is a recommendation that the MP pay for some work.
After Barbados, even Jamaica is considering seeking compensation from Drax. The politician has previously said his family’s slave-trading past was “deeply, deeply regrettable”, but “no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago”.
With inputs from agencies
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