The Guardian and slavery: what did the research find and what happens next?
The Scott Trust has apologised and announced a programme of restorative justice after identifying the Guardian founders’ links to transatlantic slavery
The Scott Trust commissioned the research in 2020, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Hubbard & Mix, photographer
Community affairs correspondent
THE GUARDIAN
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 28 Mar 2023
What is the Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement report?
It is the result of independent academic research commissioned by the Scott Trust, the Guardian’s owners.
The research began by investigating historical links between John Edward Taylor, the journalist who founded the Manchester Guardian in 1821, and transatlantic slavery – as well as researching the investments and business activities of the 11 other men who loaned money to start the newspaper.
What is the Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement report?
It is the result of independent academic research commissioned by the Scott Trust, the Guardian’s owners.
The research began by investigating historical links between John Edward Taylor, the journalist who founded the Manchester Guardian in 1821, and transatlantic slavery – as well as researching the investments and business activities of the 11 other men who loaned money to start the newspaper.
What did the research discover about John Edward Taylor?
The review found that Taylor had links to slavery through partnerships in cotton manufacturing and merchant firms that imported raw cotton produced by enslaved people in the Americas.
How did they find this?
Researchers identified links to plantations in the coastal islands and Lowcountry regions of South Carolina and Georgia after reviewing an invoice book showing that his firm, Shuttleworth, Taylor & Co, had received cotton from the Sea Islands region of the US, which included the initials and names of plantation owners and enslavers.
What about the Guardian’s early financial backers?
Nine of the 11 men who loaned Taylor money to found the Manchester Guardian had similar economic links to transatlantic slavery through their commercial interests in Manchester’s cotton and textiles industry.
One of these men, Sir George Philips, was an enslaver of people as co-owner of a sugar plantation in Hanover, Jamaica. In 1835, Philips unsuccessfully attempted to claim compensation from the British government for the loss of his human “property”. However, his business partner’s claim for 108 people enslaved on the plantation was successful.
Researchers were unable to find more information in the stipulated timeframe on two of the backers, although they are likely to have been cotton merchants.
Did the research identify the enslaved Africans whose labour enriched the Guardian’s founders?
The third stage of research focused in part on investigating links with plantations in the south-eastern US and Jamaica, and identified some of the enslaved people connected to the Guardian founders.
Researchers were able to find records from 1862 with the names of people enslaved on a Sea Islands plantation that had sold cotton to Taylor’s firm. They include 90-year-old Toby, 50-year-old Clarinda, 36-year-old Billy and seven-year-old Nancy, who were enslaved on the Spanish Wells Plantation on Hilton Head Island.
Records from the Success plantation in Jamaica, partly owned by George Philips, had slightly more information on enslaved Africans, including details about the incredible life of one resistance fighter. Granville, who was enslaved on the Success plantation, was a freedom fighter who was persecuted for his involvement in Jamaica’s Baptist war from 1831 to 1832. He was one of 60,000 enslaved Jamaicans to take part in the uprising.
The uprising, also known as the Christmas rebellion, is considered the largest slave rebellion in the West Indies and played an important role in the abolition of British slavery.
Why did the Scott Trust commission this research?
The review came in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, during which a record-breaking number of people protested in the US, UK and around the world after the murder of George Floyd.
In the UK, the tearing down of Bristol’s Edward Colston statue prompted many organisations to examine their own histories regarding transatlantic slavery and colonialism. The Guardian was at the forefront of reporting on this extraordinary movement, but it could not do so without looking at itself as well.
Who were the researchers involved?
The research was carried out in three stages, first by Dr Sheryllynne Haggerty and Dr Cassandra Gooptar, then of the University of Nottingham’s Institute for the Study of Slavery, and later by Gooptar and Prof Trevor Burnard of the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation.
How did the Guardian respond to the research findings?
The owner of the Guardian has issued an apology for the role the newspaper’s founders had in transatlantic slavery and announced a decade-long programme of restorative justice. The Scott Trust said it expected to invest more than £10m, with millions dedicated specifically to descendant communities linked to the Guardian’s 19th-century founders.
What is restorative justice?
The term “restorative justice”, which is often used interchangeably with “reparations”, is a process that focuses on repairing harm. The practice seeks to facilitate an acknowledgement of the harm caused, collaboration on how to make things right, which can include compensation, and healing.
What will this programme do in the regions identified?
The restorative justice fund will support community projects and programmes in the south-eastern US Sea Islands and Jamaica over the next 10 years. The plans will be subject to consultation with reparations experts and representatives of communities in the Sea Islands region and Jamaica and will be overseen by a programme director.
What else will it do?
The fund will increase the scope and ambition of Guardian reporting on the Caribbean, South America and Africa, and on Black communities in the UK and US (up to 12 new editorial roles within the Guardian).
It will also expand the Guardian Foundation’s industry-leading journalism training bursary scheme. The Scott Trust bursary currently funds three journalism masters courses and paid training placements at GNM each year for aspiring journalists in the UK from underrepresented backgrounds. The additional funding will create three new places each year for Black prospective journalists in the UK, and create equivalent schemes in the Guardian’s offices in the US and Australia.
The programme will also explore and fund a new global news sector fellowship programme for mid-career Black journalists.
Will the restorative justice programme focus on increasing awareness of transatlantic slavery?
As part of the programme, the Scott Trust has also committed to helping improve public understanding of transatlantic slavery’s history and legacies in Manchester and Britain – and of the debates around reparations and restorative justice, through partnerships and community programmes, with a strong focus on Manchester, the city in which we were founded.
The Trust has announced it will also continue to fund research of these histories, through a three-year partnership with the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull.
How much money has the Guardian committed to this programme?
The Scott Trust expects to commit more than £10m to this programme of work over the next 10 years. The Scott Trust said it will announce a precise figure after consulting experts and community groups in the Sea Islands and Jamaica over the next 12 months.
What is Cotton Capital?
Cotton Capital is a new Guardian journalism project that will explore the findings of the research, as well as reporting on how transatlantic slavery shaped Manchester, Britain and the rest of the world. This continuing series will explore the history and its enduring legacies today.
A special Cotton Capital magazine will be published on Saturday 1 April. To order copies from the Guardian bookshop visit guardianbookshop.com/cotton-capital
Cotton Capital is a new Guardian journalism project that will explore the findings of the research, as well as reporting on how transatlantic slavery shaped Manchester, Britain and the rest of the world. This continuing series will explore the history and its enduring legacies today.
A special Cotton Capital magazine will be published on Saturday 1 April. To order copies from the Guardian bookshop visit guardianbookshop.com/cotton-capital
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