Sugar cane cutters in Jamaica in 1891 — Sugar cane cutters in Jamaica in about 1891. Britain abolished slavery 58 years earlier. Photograph: Alamy

How do we know David Cameron has slave owners in family background?

This article is more than 8 years old

Research examining compensation payments made following the abolition of slavery linked the PM to an army officer who kept 202 slaves

David Cameron was revealed to have slave-owners in his family background in 2013 when researchers from University College London examined compensation payments made to Britain’s most powerful families following the UK abolition of slavery in 1833.

Jamaica calls for Britain to pay billions of pounds in reparations for slavery

The records showed Gen Sir James Duff, an army officer and MP for Banffshire in Scotland during the late 1700s, was Cameron’s first cousin six times removed. Duff, who was the son of one of Cameron’s great-grand uncles, the second Earl of Fife, was awarded £4,101 – equivalent to more than £3m today – to compensate him for the 202 slaves he forfeited on the Grange sugar estate in Jamaica.

The British government paid out £20m to compensate some 3,000 slave-owning families for the loss of their “property” – some 40% of the Treasury’s annual spending budget. Sir John Gladstone, the father of the 19th-century prime minister, William Gladstone, received £106,769 (about £83m today) for the 2,508 slaves he owned across nine plantations.

The research also showed that Cameron’s wife, Samantha, has slave-owning links as she is descended from the 19th-century businessman, William Jolliffe, who received £4,000 in compensation for 164 slaves after owning an estate in St Lucia.