The family of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch could be facing the prospect of legal action over its historical links to the slave trade in Barbados.
The Oscar-winning actor himself has expressed remorse for his own family’s links to slavery.
He suggested it was the reason why he took the role of William Pitt the Younger in the film Amazing Grace which is about the abolition of the trade.
And he also received critical acclaim for his leading role as plantation owner William Ford in 12 Years a Slave more than a decade ago.
Now a top official on the Caribbean holiday island, who has a leading role on its national commission for reparations, said it is in the “earliest stages” of efforts to seek damages from ancestors of the Cumberbatch estate.
Joshua Cumberbatch, the seventh great-grandfather of Benedict Cumberbatch, bought the Cleland plantation in the north of the island in 1728, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.
It was home to 250 slaves until the abolition of slavery more than 100 years later.
The decision resulted in the Cumberbatch family, and other slave-owning operations across the British Empire, being compensated by the UK government.
The Cumberbatch family were handed £6,000 in compensation for their loss of ‘human property’ - in today’s money that amounts to around £3.6 million.
And campaigners in Barbados, which voted to become a republic in 2021, have been 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.
He could face an application for compensation if he refuses.
If the legal ruling goes in the island’s favour, Mr Drax will be the first descendant of slave-owning families to be successfully pursued, opening the doors for more ancestors of plantation owners to pay up.
General secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, David Denny said: “Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefitted from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family.”
The Royal Family even faces the prospect of a claim, though they have stressed there is no sense of blame to be attached to living relatives for the actions of their ancestors.
David Comissiong, deputy chairman of the national commission on reparations, said he would want to see ancestors of slave-owning families pay damages.
He said: “This is at the earliest stages. We are just beginning. A lot of this history is only really now coming to light.”
