The Drax estate—built off the blood of slavery
For anyone who grew up in Dorset, a familiar sight is the “Great Wall of Dorset”. The wall shelters the estate of the Drax family from public view, and they are scrupulous in protecting their privacy.
Paul Lashmar’s new book Drax of Drax Hall does a great job of metaphorically taking us over that wall to see what lies beyond.
Drax of Drax Hall is a major contribution to the history of transatlantic slavery. Lashmar approaches the subject through one specific example—the actions and words of one family over nearly 400 years.
The current head of that family, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax was the richest MP until his ousting last year. How that ascent came about is the subject of this excellent book.
The family’s status is the product of the labour of enslaved, indentured, tortured and abused, worked-to-death and just straightforwardly poverty stricken people.
The existence of these people is blithely ignored by successive generations of the Drax family.
The unravelling of the history of these extractive capitalists is laid out in an astonishingly detailed fashion that indicts the family, generation after generation.
That they were ruthless in the quest for power becomes obvious as time passes. The Drax’s carefully aligned themselves with the dominant political force at any one time. That ruthlessness, though, becomes much more apparent when we discover that the family produced not one but two manuals of instruction for running a slave plantation to maximise profits.
What that meant changed as slavery changed.
This is one of the great advantages of this book. Its focus allows the shifting and altering of the atrocity to be charted, even as the atrocious nature of chattel slavery remains front and centre.
Brutality and disregard for the indentured and the enslaved as human beings remained. But it varied from physical brutality to paying women to have children after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
That disregard continues to the present day. The sugar plantation on which the Drax wealth was founded is still owned by the family. Any discussion of reparations or compensation is brushed aside.
It is fitting, then, that the illustrations for the book finish with a photograph of a local Stand Up To Racism demonstration outside the gates of the estate.
An analysis of inequalities in women’s healthcare
Sophie Harman’s book is a thorough and balanced analysis of global inequalities in women’s health.
Much of the first part of the book focuses on the facts as they are. Women’s healthcare is shaped by a sexist system that oppresses women. She showcases how women’s day-to-day health is only prioritised for political gain.
Women are often used in a tokenistic manner within decision-making bodies and are never taken seriously.
Harman reflects on the impact of Donald Trump’s first term on global reproductive care and the damage inflicted on women by the later overturning of Roe v Wade.
The ruling class views women as mere baby machines, whose only purpose is to produce more workers to be exploited within a capitalist system.
But Harman fails to effectively call out this goal of the capitalist class to use anti-abortion laws to increase the population. Instead, Harman focuses on the argument that anti-abortion policies were due to traditional family values and religion.
Yet Harman makes a good case for calling out racism within the capitalist system, for example, writing about the forced sterilisation of black women.
And she highlights that despite the claims that governments are working to improve women’s healthcare, not much has changed in the last few decades. And in some ways, society has regressed.
But I wonder why there is no encouragement for a mass movement from below. This is needed to empower working class women to come together to challenge the oppression we face.
- Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women’s Health, by Sophie Harman
Pauline Brady
