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 (US$12.3m, A$18.4m), with millions dedicated specifically to descendant communities linked to the Guardian’s 19th-century founders.
It follows independent academic research commissioned in 2020 to investigate whether there was any historical connection between chattel slavery and John Edward Taylor, the journalist and cotton merchant who founded the newspaper in 1821, and the other Manchester businessmen who funded its creation.
The Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement report, published on Tuesday, revealed that Taylor, and at least nine of his 11 backers, had links to slavery, principally through the textile industry. Taylor had multiple links through partnerships in the cotton manufacturing firm Oakden & Taylor, and the cotton merchant company Shuttleworth, Taylor & Co, which imported vast amounts of raw cotton produced by enslaved people in the Americas.
Researchers from the universities of Nottingham and Hull were able to identify Taylor’s links to plantations in the Sea Islands, along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, after reviewing an invoice book showing that Shuttleworth, Taylor & Co received cotton from the region, which included the initials and names of plantation owners and enslavers.
Another of the Guardian’s early financiers, the West India merchant Sir George Philips, co-owned the Success sugar plantation in Hanover, Jamaica.
He unsuccessfully attempted to claim compensation from the British government in 1835 for what he regarded as the loss of his human property, which was 108 people. His partner, however, successfully claimed £1,904 19s 10d in compensation, which, according to the most conservative estimate, is worth approximately £200,000 today.
Alongside an apology “to the affected communities identified in the research and surviving descendants of the enslaved for the part the Guardian and its founders had in this crime against humanity”, the trust also apologised for early editorial positions that served to support the cotton industry, and therefore the exploitation of enslaved people.
The restorative justice fund will support projects in the Gullah Geechee region and Jamaica over the next decade after consultation with reparations experts and community groups. The Scott Trust will appoint a programme director and is establishing an advisory panel to guide and review the work. The Scott Trust said a precise figure and allocation of funds would be reported in the next 12 months.