Why the Joseph Rowntree Foundation needs to address its historic links to slavery
This piece is maybe a little too parochial for the CGD blog where most of my writing goes, and is gated on the Yorkshire Post, so re-posting here for all those of you both interested in historical links between York and Africa and who also don’t subscribe to the Post.
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This year the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) is marking the centenary since Joseph Rowntree’s death. But there is a dark side to its history. In 2021, the trustees of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) acknowledged and apologized for the organization’s historical connections to slavery. The trustees expressed that they were “deeply sorry that the origins of our endowment have roots in shameful practices that caused deep suffering and created enduring harms.” This apology is important but not enough. The foundation today works exclusively to tackle poverty in the UK. While its wealth was built in part by perpetuating poverty for others. This legacy demands more than words – it needs concrete action to address the continued impacts of slavery.
The Foundation’s endowment is from the Rowntree family chocolate business. Rowntree was one of three major chocolate-makers run by Quakers in Britain in the early 20th century. Quakers have a proud history of opposition to slavery, and played an important role in its abolition. Naturally they were concerned at the time about allegations of abusive labour practices. Rowntree’s, Cadbury’s, and Fry’s, all sourced cocoa from Sao Tome and Principe, where slave labour was used. And they knew about it at the time. William Cadbury himself commissioned an independent investigation, and even travelled to the islands. This ultimately led to all three firms boycotting the islands, but only after they had found new cocoa suppliers in Ghana and Nigeria with better labour practices.
While the chocolatiers were opposed to slavery and took steps to avoid it, they did still nonetheless profit from it, for at least a decade. Those abusive labour practices a century ago can be linked directly to poverty today. Around 1 in 6 people in São Tomé and Príncipe still live in extreme poverty – that is less than $2.15 per day. The definition of poverty used in modern Britain applies to 99 percent of the population in São Tomé and Príncipe. And research shows a link between historical slavery and modern poverty. The places in Africa from which the most slaves were taken 100 years ago are still poorer today. Slavery eroded trust of strangers, undermining the social capital essential for progress.
The Rowntree family’s work on poverty in York and the UK is laudable, but it doesn’t erase the debt owed overseas from the use of slaves in chocolate production. Joseph Rowntree stipulated that his trust should be used solely in Britain, but surely if he was alive today he would recognise the scale of this injustice.
What would meaningful reparative action look like? More research on the extent of JRF’s connection to slavery is a good starting point. But ultimately the foundation should be spending some of its money in São Tomé and Príncipe to help tackle the deep poverty there.
Some would argue that charities today shouldn’t be held accountable for historical wrongs. But JRF’s endowment – the money it uses for its anti-poverty work today – grew directly from capital accumulated through the chocolate business, reliant in part on slave labour. The foundation continues to benefit from this history. The harms from this history endure. So the foundation has an ongoing ethical obligation to address it.
This is all personal to me as my children play in Rowntree Park in York where I live. This park was built with the same profits, derived in part from slave labour. The same argument applies equally to Fry’s and Cadbury’s. One difference is that they don’t have prominent foundations engaged in the national debate on poverty. Since their 2021 statement JRF don’t appear to have actually done anything to redress what their own trustees called “deep suffering and enduring harm”. In this year 2025 in which the foundation is marking the centenary since Joseph Rowntree’s death, the Foundation has the opportunity to set an example for other institutions grappling with similar histories. The question is whether they will seize it.