The Guardian's owner apologises for historical slave trade links

The newspaper's owner had commissioned research into possible historical slave trade links in 2020

The trust which owns The Guardian has apologised for its Mancunian founders' links to the slave trade.

The Scott Trust said in the newspaper millions of pounds would be dedicated to "descendant communities linked to the Guardian's 19th Century founders".

Researchers had been investigating the paper's original Manchester financial backers.

They found partnerships within the textile industry linked to cotton produced by enslaved people.

The Scott Trust commissioned independent academic research in 2020 to investigate whether there was any historical connection between chattel slavery and John Edward Taylor and other Manchester businessmen who funded its creation.

Mr Taylor was the the journalist and cotton merchant who founded the newspaper's forerunner, The Manchester Guardian in 1821.

The commissioned research followed worldwide anti-racism protests and renewed calls for British institutions to examine possible historical links with slavery.

The Scott Trust's Legacies of Enslavement report, published on Tuesday, revealed that Mr Taylor, and at least nine of his 11 backers, had links to slavery, mainly in textiles.

'Crime against humanity'

According to the report, Mr Taylor had multiple links through partnerships in the cotton manufacturing firm, Oakden & Taylor, and the cotton merchant company Shuttleworth, Taylor & Co, which imported vast amounts of raw cotton produced by enslaved people in the Americas.

The trust's board issued a statement which read: "The Scott Trust and Guardian apologise unreservedly for their roles in this crime against humanity."

It said it expected to "invest more than £10m" during a decade of restorative justice.

The trust pledged to set up a new global news sector fellowship programme for mid-career Black journalists.

It also said it would "consult widely with Black communities and other stakeholders beginning later in 2023, in the UK and in the Americas, to assess what types of projects the trust may fund".

Research into the newspaper's links with slavery would continue, it added.

The Manchester Guardian was founded in 1821 by Mr Taylor, who had witnessed the Peterloo massacre in the city

His prospectus for the paper said it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty, in the most comprehensive sense of those terms" and "warmly advocate the cause of Reform".

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