The scandal of the £20bn bailout to slave-owning Brits

In 1833, Britain took out a loan to compensate slave owners – only recently paid off. Juliet Gilkes Romero reveals the shameful history that inspired her play The Whip

‘This gives me goosebumps,” says playwright Juliet Gilkes Romero. We’re looking at a sign offering a two-guinea reward for Peter, a runaway “negro manservant”. Gilkes Romero marvels at this lost figure from the 19th century, whose plight is chronicled in the Museum of London Docklands. “Who was Peter?” she says. “Where did he go?”

Gilkes Romero’s work pursues the history that falls through the cracks. After exploring the first world war’s Caribbean soldiers (At the Gates of Gaza) and Mexican disappearances (Day of the Living), her new play for the Royal Shakespeare Company excavates the messy alliances that produced Britain’s slavery abolition legislation in the early 19th century, in particular a bill compensating slave owners for their loss of human property.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2O09HhD