Tory MP who owns a Barbados sugar plantation still silent on reparations
Tory MP Richard Drax who owns a Barbados sugar plantation refused to back Black Lives Matters protests
The Observer has revealed that the Tory MP for South Dorset Richard Drax, whose ancestors were paid £3m (in 2020 money) in compensation when slavery was abolished in the 1830s has inherited and now farms the same Barbados sugar plantation.
When the compensation payment was revealed in 2013 Drax made no comment but he has now told the Observer that it was all a very long time ago and nothing to do with him
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-21591814
He has now, very belatedly added his plantation to the register of MPs interests. There have been further calls for him to pay reparations but from Mr Drax, silence on the matter:
When asked to support Black Lives Matter’s protests last summer, Drax declined. His response is clearly in the ‘all lives matter’ area refusing to recognise the realities of racism from which his family benefited in the past.
The group (Weymouth Stand Up to Racism) also asked Dorset’s MPs to sign a call for the House of Commons to support the Black Lives Matter campaign, and a call for the UK to stop selling teargas, riot shields and rubber bullets to the United States, where police forces have been clashing with protesters following the killing of Black man George Floyd by police.
Both Richard Drax MP and Chris Loder MP said they would decline, each saying that they “do not sign Early Day Motions.”
Mr Drax added: “I should not have to say this because any decent-minded person would already think and act on it, but I will always stand up against discrimination, wherever it is found and whoever it is directed at.”
Dorset Echo 18th June 2020
In an opinion piece in the Dorset Echo two days later Drax refers to a Black Lives Matter in London and claims that ‘rioters’ defaced the Cenotaph. This did not happen on that protest or any other BLM protest. There was an occasion in 2010 when it did about another matter entirely.
It suggests that Drax the plantation owner is keener on attacking anti-racist activists than he is in promoting anti-racism and certainly not at all keen on making amends for his own family history of gathering wealth from slavery.
https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18523827.stand-racism-dorset-calls-councillors-mps-take-action/
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