LLOYDS OF LONDON, the insurance giant who paid slavers for throwing kidnapped Africans into the ocean, was accused of ‘white supremacy’ after the company announced an inclusion drive in response to new research about their historic role in Transatlantic enslavement.

Millions of enslaved Africans were dumped in the Atlantic during the Middle Passage, with Lloyds paying out to slave ship owners for loss of ‘cargo’. 

Numbers of captured Africans who ended up in the sea vary enormously, with estimates ranging from 1.2 million to 14 million.

Men, women and children who became ill or died during the journey, and those who took part in many rebellions en route, were tossed into the cold ocean.

“Nothing about us, without us. And if it’s something about us, without us, then it’s against us.”

Jendayi Serwah

Insurance was key to transporting stolen Africans. The Maangamizi arguably may not have happened to the extent that it did without a system which underwrote losses for slave ship owners, incentivising them to throw Africans overboard who they did not think would fetch a good price in the Americas. 

Lloyds of London were arguably the biggest insurer in the horrific ‘trade’ at a time when Britain was the worst slave trading nation.

Today, Lloyds of London announced an ‘inclusive futures’ programme targeted at all ethnic minorities to develop talent in Lloyd’s market, and bring in new anti-racism policies.

But the market has resisted making direct payments to the descendants of the enslaved, saying it would be too difficult to identify them.

Lloyds of London were not able to say how many stolen Africans they insured or how much they paid out, claiming that information was “fractured” and hard to piece together.

Jendayi Serwah, co-chair of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee, accused Lloyds of London of using a “typical paternalistic controlling approach” rooted in “white supremacy.”

She said: “First of all we are Africans, not ethnic minorities. They’ve also decided what they’re going to do without engaging with grassroots campaigners. They haven’t learned a thing.

“Nothing about us, without us. And if it’s something about us, without us, then it’s against us.

“We, as African people, are very clear on what we need to repair ourselves. We just need resources relinquished from them and restituted to us.

“So it’s utter, total white supremacist, paternalistic, dehumanising nonsense all over again.”

In the aftermath of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Lloyds of London issued an apology, writing: “This was an appalling and shameful period of British history, as well as our own, and we condemn the indefensible wrongdoing that occurred during this period. 

“In acknowledging our own history, we also remain committed to focusing on the actions we can take today to shape our future.”

However, the 2020 statement failed to make any mention of how their insurance led to countless Africans being thrown into the ocean.

In a new statement today, Lloyds of London chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown reiterated that apology but once again stopped short of recognising the countless Africans tossed overboard.

He said: “We’re deeply sorry for this  period of our history and the enormous suffering caused to individuals and communities  both then and today. 

“We’re resolved to take action by addressing the inequalities still seen and experienced by Black and ethnically diverse individuals: which is why we’ve launched Inclusive Futures, a comprehensive programme of initiatives to help these individuals and communities progress from the classroom to the boardroom.”

After 2020, Lloyds of London entered a collaboration with John Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, with support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to publish information from the company’s archives related to slavery on a website called Underwriting Souls.

The project included an advisory board of Black British academics, historians and activists.

Dr Alexandre White, assistant professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the Black Beyond Data project told The Voice: “The goal was to hopefully produce something that really shifts the discourse through educational means on slavery and the making of the modern Atlantic world in particular.

“The Lloyd’s market was a central point for the insuring of slaving voyages and insuring of people as cargo on those voyages.”

Asked how many slave ships and Africans Lloyds insured, Dr White said: “That’s a complicated question because the nature of Lloyld’s market is such that while they kept records from 1771 onwards, most of the records of the actual business activities within the market were held by individual syndicates. So, we had to do significant research beyond just the Lloyds archive.

“It’s certainly fair to assume that Lloyds was insuring a very large proportion of the traffic of the slave voyages.”

On the question of payments for Africans who were thrown overboard, Dr White said they did not have that material due to the nature of the Lloyd’s insurance market.

“Particular prices, costs, the sorts of information you would have from the Bank of England relating to the Slavery Compensation Act, that information is not available [for Lloyds market].

“But what we’ve been able to trace very clearly are the business and financial networks between London, Liverpool, and the wider Atlantic world that made Lloyd’s a very central site for the insuring of slaving voyages and also subsequently for the maintenance of the slave trade itself.”

Lloyd’s Head of Culture, Mark Lomas, was asked why there was no explicit mention of insurance payments for Africans thrown overboard. He responded: “Our statement is explicit in acknowledging [our] role in Transatlantic slavery.”

On the question of reparations, Lomas added: “There’s nothing we can do to change the past but we want to ensure that we focus on building a more inclusive future. The consultation we’ve done with 200 diverse people in the market has asked us to focus on that.”

Since 2020, Lloyds has hired over 3,000 “ethnically diverse” people. They now plan to support “Black heritage and ethnically diverse groups from the classroom to the boardroom” in a series of initiatives including bursaries, talent pools, and expanding their ‘accelerate programme’.

Earlier this year a landmark study calculating what Western governments owe in reparations found that Britain owed £18 trillion to the descendants of enslaved Africans.