Category Archives: Reparations and reparative justice

Barbados leader halts £3m payout to UK MP for Drax Hall plantation

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Government U-turn as PM Mia Mottley acknowledges anger from reparations movement over plan to buy Barbados land from Dorset MP Richard Drax

The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has halted plans for a multi-million-pound payout to the British Conservative MP Richard Drax for the purchase of 53 acres of the Drax Hall plantation, which he owns.

As revealed in the Observer last Sunday, the payout plan had angered those involved in the Caribbean reparations movement, who said Drax, the MP for South Dorset, should hand over all or part of the 617-acre plantation to the people of Barbados.

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Tory MP from slave-owning family set to gain £3m from sale of former plantation

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Caribbean historians want Richard Drax to pay reparations – but now Barbados plans to buy his land for homes

The Conservative MP under fire for his ancestors’ role in Caribbean slavery is in line for a multimillion-pound payout from the Barbados government.

Despite threats to make Richard Drax pay reparations and seize his family’s plantation – described by one historian as a “killing field” of enslaved Africans – the government is now planning to pay market value for 21 hectares (about 15 football pitches) of his land for housing.

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France urged to repay billions of dollars to Haiti for independence ‘ransom’

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Coalition of civil society groups says Paris should return harsh reparations imposed on Caribbean state two hundred years ago

France should repay billions of dollars to Haiti to cover a debt formerly enslaved people were forced to pay in return for recognising the island’s independence, according to a coalition of civil society groups that is launching a new push for reparations.

The Caribbean island state became the first in the region to win its independence in 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people. But in a move that many Haitians blame for two centuries of turmoil, France later imposed harsh reparations for lost income and that debt was only fully repaid in 1947.

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