Barbados wants to nationalize a sugar plantation belonging to the rich British conservative deputy Richard Drax, descendant of a family of settlers enriched by the slave trade on this Caribbean island. The case extends to Jamaica, against the backdrop of multiplication of compensation requests for slavery in the region.
by Jean-Michel Hauteville (Bridgetown (Barbade), sent special)
At the bend of a small country road, between two hamlets in the town of Saint George, in the center of the Barbados, a narrow gravel track sinks in the middle of the sugar cane fields already at the start of Flowering, a sign that harvest approaches. At the edge of the Cahotux chemin, a sign dissuades the curious: “Private Property – No Trespassing” (“Private property, defense to enter”), warns the sign.
It is there, behind this banal appearance, hides Drax Hall, a prosperous sugar plantation founded by English settlers several centuries ago.
Due to its slavery past, the estate is now at the center of a controversy that swells between the Barbados and the United Kingdom, against the backdrop of more and more pressing memory claims in the fifteen former British colonies Located in the Caribbean archipelago.
In the Saint George valley, after the unwelcoming sign, the stony track with palm trees and mango trees, then leads to an improbable manor. With its gray plaster walls and guillotine windows, this two -story austere building would detonate less in the mists of the Scottish Highlands than in the middle of a lush tropical garden flooded with sun.
At the end of this afternoon in December, calm reigns over the farm. “Thirteen people work here. With me, that makes fourteen,” says, designating the vestiges of a windmill and agricultural machinery of almost new appearance, a man affable to silver hair who presents himself as the manager of the planting. “The owners? Ah, it’s been a long time since they live here. At least a century. They don’t come very often either,” added the sixty -something shoulder.
yield Planting for repairs
It is in London that we must look for the current owner of Drax Hall. In Westminster more specifically: former officer in the British army and ex-journalist at the BBC, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Aernle-Erle-Drax-or, more simply, Richard Drax-Headquarters in the Chamber of Commons since 2010. In 2017, On the death of his father, Henry, this conservative deputy, now 64, inherited the 250 hectare domain and the mansion built in the 1640s by his distant ancestor, Sir James Drax, one of the first English colonists to settle in the Antilles.
But after four centuries in the same family, the plantation could soon change from owner. In any case, this is the wish of the Government of Barbados. The authorities of this country of 290,000 inhabitants have, in fact, started talks with the British aristocrat in order to convince him to give them Drax Hall as repairs. The case is serious: in September, the owner of the estate went personally to Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, where he met the Labor Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, as well as the Barbadian deputy Trevor Prescod.
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