Support Village Voice News With a Donation of Your Choice.
A top official in Barbados does not deny that the Cumberbatch family could face a claim for damages over its historical links to slavery on the island.
The family of Oscar-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch is reportedly facing the prospect of legal action over its historical links to the slave trade in Barbados.
A top official on the Caribbean island, who has a leading role on its national commission for reparations, has told the Daily Telegraph it is in the “earliest stages” of efforts to seek damages from ancestors of the Cumberbatch estate.
The paper described how Joshua Cumberbatch, the seventh great-grandfather of Benedict Cumberbatch, bought the Cleland plantation in the north of the island in 1728.
It was home to 250 slaves until the abolition of slavery more than 100 years later.
The decision resulted in the family, and other slave-owning operations across the British Empire, being compensated by the UK government.
Slavery has been at the forefront of debate across many Caribbean communities in recent years, largely prompted by the build-up to the decision of Barbados to become a republic in 2021.
Campaigners in Barbados are urging Tory MP Richard Drax, who inherited a sugar plantation on the island that was established with slave labour in the 1620s, to hand it back. (Sky News)
