Many British companies have a dark past. This Bank has benefited from the lucrative slave trade. Baclays acquired many banks than laundered slave trade money among them Heywood’s Bank of Liverpool, founded by slave traders, Arthur and Benjamin Heywood.
Liverpool Football Club is deeply connected to the slave trade as well. Liverpool was the European capital of the slave trade from the 1780s right up until slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807. The city’s maritime history played a crucial role in bringing Liverpool to a position of global power and prominence.
However, among the maritime trade flowing in and out of the city was a thriving slave trade that made traders rich off the back of human suffering.
Mersey ships forcibly carried nearly 1.5m Africans into slavery, as people were transported to the Americas and the Caribbean.
But what does it matter right now. For examples, if right now Absa is not involved in any slave trade money laundering, why should we go after them? Slave trade was big business back then, if you were an owner of capital you’d yourself be selling fellow bonobos, don’t you think.