Cleo Lake and Alex Renton explore the inheritance passed to the descendants of slave owners and of the enslaved and how to make reparations for the past.

Through the story of his own family's history as slave and plantation owners, Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery across parts of the British Empire. The newly liberated received no compensation but tens of thousands of enslavers were paid millions of pounds in government money. The descendants of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today.

A group of Caribbean countries is calling on ten European nations to discuss the payment of trillions of dollars for the damage done by transatlantic slavery and its continuing legacy. Cleo Lake, Green Party Councillor in Bristol, led the successful calls in Bristol City Council to lobby national government to set up an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice which would discuss reparations for the trafficking and enslavement in African people. And Black Lives Matter and other activist groups are causing increasing numbers of white people to reflect on how this history of abuse and exploitation has benefited them.

In conversation with Bristol Ideas director Andrew Kelly.

Alex Renton’s Blood Legacy is published by Canongate. Buy a copy from Waterstones, our bookselling partners.

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Festival of Ideas: Cleo Lake and Alex Renton, How Are We to Repair the Historic Damage Done by Transatlantic Slavery?