The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) has appointed Prof Keon West, a social psychologist, as its head of reparations, with his role beginning later this month. According to multiple reports, JRCT said it was deeply sorry for historical connections to abhorrent practices and for previously overlooking them. The trust stated such actions caused extreme and enduring harms and recognized their role in embedding systemic racism that persists in the UK and globally. JRCT added it would be strengthening its contribution to racial justice.
Historical research triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement found African and Asian workers had been exploited in the production of goods at the heart of Rowntree businesses in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2021, the Rowntree Society said it had found no evidence the Rowntree family had owned or traded in enslaved people, but it identified that Rowntree business interests had sold commodities of empire likely to have been produced by enslaved or unfree workers going back to 1822. Multiple reports indicate Rowntree enterprises benefited from indenture – the system of bonded labour in which Asian workers were recruited to plantations in the Caribbean after slavery ended. In the 1890s, Rowntree & Co bought plantations in Dominica, Jamaica and Trinidad to cultivate cocoa, limes, bananas, coffee and coconuts. In the early 20th century, Rowntree & Co bought cocoa and other goods produced by enslaved Africans in the Portuguese-colonised West African islands São Tomé and Príncipe. There were also Rowntree interests in colonial Nigeria, Ghana and apartheid South Africa.
Prof Keon West, a Rhodes scholar who grew up in Jamaica and is the critically acclaimed author of The Science of Racism, brings a background in social psychology to his new role. More recent labor issues include the early 1980s, when Black workers at South African subsidiary Wilson Rowntree were suppressed by oppressive labour practices.