Benedict Cumberbatch and his household may very well be requested to pay reparations as a result of their ancestors ran a slave plantation in Barbados, it has been claimed.
The Caribbean island’s authorities is already pursuing Richard Drax, a Conservative MP who has inherited his household’s ancestral sugar plantation.
There is now strain within the former British colony, which turned a republic in November 2021, to hunt reparations from the descendants of different slave proudly owning households.
The Oscar-nominated actor’s seventh great-grandfather Abraham purchased the Cleland plantation in Barbados in 1728, after his eighth great-grandfather Joshua settled on the island along with his household three a long time earlier.
By the mid-18th century, the Cumberbatches have been one among Britain’s wealthiest households, proudly owning a minimum of seven Barbados sugar plantations and a stately dwelling close to Taunton, Somerset.
It is claimed that this wealth, trickling down via generations, meant the actor may attend a $58,000 AUD-a-year boarding college Harrow.
Cleland is reported to have been dwelling to 250 slaves, till the abolition of slavery in 1833.
David Comissiong, Barbados’s deputy chairman of the island’s nationwide fee on reparations, was requested if descendants of the Cumberbatch property could be pursued.
He informed The Daily Telegraph: “We are just beginning. A lot of this history is only really now coming to light.”
David Denny, of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, informed the newspaper: “Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefited from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family.”
Mr Denny, who has been campaigning for Mr Drax to pay reparations, stated: “The money should be used to turn the local clinic into a hospital, support local schools, and improve infrastructure and housing.”
Cumberbatch, 46, nominated for finest actor ultimately 12 months’s Oscars, was praised for his portrayal of plantation proprietor William Ford within the critically acclaimed 2013 film 12 Years A Slave.
He additionally performed the position of William Pitt the Younger within the abolition movie Amazing Grace in 2006. At the time, he commented he took the position as a ‘sort of apology’ for his ancestry.
He was reportedly requested by his mom, the actress Wanda Ventham, to not use the household identify for his appearing profession in case it made him a goal for reparation claims.
Mr Drax, MP for South Dorset, is underneath strain at hand again a whole bunch of acres of property in Barbados.
If he refuses, the island authorities stated it can search to use for compensation from a world arbitration courtroom.
A ruling in its favour may set a precedent to pursue different rich descendants of slave house owners.
A consultant of Cumberbatch stated the actor had no remark to make.
