Exclusive: The British companies that made money when slavery was abolished

In the early 19th century, Benjamin Greene was running his brewery in Bury St Edmonds when, according to reports, he became friendly with his neighbour Sir Patrick Blake, the owner of sugar plantation holdings in the West Indies.

Their friendship became a business relationship and Greene helped manage Sir Patrick’s affairs, eventually becoming the manager of the plantations.

Over the following years, Greene became an enthusiastic advocate of slavery. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, he “threw himself ‘with enormous vigour into representing the interests of the West Indian slave proprietors at a critical juncture of their affairs'”.

When slavery was abolished by the British Government in 1833, he was one of 47,000 people who benefited from the Government’s decision to compensate Britons who had lost property – in this case men, women and children.

According to academics at University College London (UCL), he was awarded compensation worth £98, 17s, 3d for the Montserrat estate, £1,262, 15s, 1d for the Turtle Island estate and £2,672, 3s, 4d for the Phillips St Kitts estate – £483,308 in today’s money. 

Greene handed control of his Suffolk brewery to his son Edward in 1836, and it was renamed Greene King after merging with Frederick King’s nearby brewery in 1887.

Since then, Greene King has gone from strength to strength and is now one of the most successful breweries in the UK, employing 38,000 staff across 2,700 pubs.

Yet on the page of the company’s website devoted to its “200 years of rich heritage”, no mention is made of Benjamin Greene’s slaving past.

Nick Mackenzie, Greene King’s chief executive, said on Wednesday that the company would update the website on Thursday and offered an unqualified apology for this element of its past.

He said: “It is inexcusable that one of our founders profited from slavery and argued against its abolition in the 1800s.

“We don’t have all the answers, so that is why we are taking time to listen and learn from all the voices, including our team members and charity partners, as we strengthen our diversity and inclusion work.”

Mr Mackenzie added that Greene King would make a “substantial investment to benefit the BAME [Black Asian and Minority Ethnic] community and support our race diversity in the business as we increase our focus on targeted work in this area”.

But Greene King is not the only company to have benefited from money linked to the abolition of slavery. In all, £20 million – almost £2.4 billion if adjusted for inflation – was borrowed by the Government from financial markets. The debt was finally repaid in February 2015.  

UCL has now collected these names into a major database which allows us to look back through history and see how parts of corporate Britain benefited directly or indirectly from slavery.

A Telegraph investigation of the database found that nine UK businesses, many of them high street banks, benefited directly or indirectly from the compensation.

There are 18 former companies associated with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) with links to claimants or beneficiaries, including Smith, Payne and Smith – a bank that later became part of Natwest. Two partners in the company are listed as being claimants or beneficiaries from the compensation fund.

Investments were made in Smith, Payne and Smith by two known claimants, Abel Smith and George Robert Smith, who were involved in claims relating to estates in Jamaica and British Guiana worth a combined £2.2 million today.

James Cheyne, a director of the National Bank of Scotland, which later became part of RBS, received a share of three claims over estates in Tobago, worth £375,141 today.

RBS has been wrestling with its legacy and links to slavery for well over a decade.

A company report in 2009 admitted that individuals “who were partners or directors of RBSG [Royal Bank of Scotland Group] predecessors may have owned slaves themselves or been otherwise directly connected to slave enterprises in the British West Indies…

“There is also evidence that other partners of RBSG predecessors may have been part-owners of ships involved in slave trading voyages during the 18th and 19th centuries.”

In 2006, RBS’s US arm, Citizens and Charter One, pledged $5 million to support local economic and educational initiatives for African-American communities. A further $2 million will pay for scholarships for African-Americans over the next four years.

On Wednesday, a spokesman said RBS “has looked into its past links with slavery very extensively and thoroughly” over the past 15 years.

“Championing the potential of BAME employees and customers is a priority for us, but we also know that, too often, there are extra barriers faced by people from BAME backgrounds,” the spokesman said. “We have a substantial role to play in tackling those inequalities and have recently set up a taskforce which will look at what more we can do as a bank.”

Eight former companies associated with Lloyds Banking Group also have links to claimants or beneficiaries in the UCL database.

John White Cater, a president of London and Brazilian Bank, which Lloyds bought in 1923, received compensation for five claims relating to estates in Jamaica. Lloyds also acquired Berwick, Lechmere & Co, whose founder, Joseph Berwick, was the mortgage holder for slavery estates in the Virgin Islands.

His son-in law, Sir Anthony Lechmere, was awarded compensation for 286 enslaved people in the Virgin Islands, totalling £489,985 in today’s money, and was an investor in the bank.

A Lloyds spokesman said: “Like any institution that is so interwoven with our country’s history, we must acknowledge and learn from our past.”

Barclays’ links are through five senior figures at the Colonial Bank, which it bought in 1917, who were listed as claimants or beneficiaries of the compensation fund.

One of them – William Tetlow Hibbert, who founded the bank in 1839 – was paid £4.5 million in today’s money for compensation over nine claims relations to estates in Jamaica, two as a mortgagee.

A Barclays spokesman said: “The history of Barclays, like other institutions, is being examined following recent events. We can’t change what’s gone before us, only how we go forward.”

HSBC is linked to the compensation scheme through George Pollard, the first manager of London Joint Stock Bank, which was later absorbed by Midland Bank and eventually merged into HSBC.

Pollard was a trustee over a claim regarding Colhoun’s estate in Nevis, for which compensation totalling £289,586 in today’s money was paid out. HSBC had not commented at the time of going to press.

In Northern Ireland, Danske Bank has links through Frederick Hervey Garraway, who was awarded compensation for eight claims over estates in Dominica at the equivalent sum today of £905,150. Garraway made an investment Belfast Banking Company, which became Northern Bank and was then acquired by Danske Bank.

Danske Bank said it had “a zero-tolerance policy against all forms of discrimination, disrespectful behaviour, bullying, and harassment of any kind”.

Insurer Lloyd’s of London, with founder subscriber Simon Fraser, was the former owner of the Castle Bruce estate in Dominica, which was handed compensation totalling £397,451 in today’s money.

A Lloyd’s spokesman said: “We are sorry for the role played by the Lloyd’s market in the 18th and 19th century slave trade. This was an appalling and shameful period of English history, as well as our own, and we condemn the indefensible wrongdoing that occurred during this period.

“We will provide financial support to charities and organisations promoting opportunity and inclusion for black and minority ethnic groups.”

Modern-day insurance giant RSA Insurance also has links through the database through five company directors and a governor of London Assurance – which was merged into Sun Insurance in 1959 and eventually RSA Insurance in 2008 – who received money from the database.

An RSA spokesman said: “There are aspects of that history that don’t reflect the values we hold today.”

Shipping company P&O, now owned by DP World, can also trace its routes to slavery in the database through Joseph Christopher Ewart, who later became a director of P&O Steam Navigation Co and received £334,336.

A company spokesman said: “These records relate to a time before P&O was incorporated. Also, P&O ships did not trade on the Atlantic in this era and first went to the West Indies almost 100 years later, in 1932.”