The Hindu : Slave descendants to file suit

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 29, 2004

International

International

Slave descendants to file suit

London: Centuries after Africans were beaten, chained and transported in their millions across the Atlantic, Britain's role in the slave trade is set to resurface in sensational manner in a New York courtroom. Descendants of black American slaves are preparing a multi-billion dollar action against Lloyd's of London, the best-known name in world insurance, for allegedly financing the trading fleets that uprooted them from their homelands and condemned them to generations of slavery in the New World. The dramatic claim, to be filed on Monday, is the latest in which `UK Plc' is being forced to confront allegations of a murky past. The sharp-suited brokers and cutting-edge technology that now characterise Lloyd's are only the latest incarnation in a long and controversial history. It was founded by Edward Lloyd in a London coffee shop in 1688 to provide cover for merchants whose ships were regularly lost at sea. Just like today, it was the centre of the insurance and shipping world in the 1700s and early 1800s, when many ship-owners were making vast fortunes by shipping slaves from Africa to America and Britain's colonies in the Caribbean (in the picture, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a black activist at a news conference in New York recently). - Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004.

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