Keypoints:
- 280 former civic officials identified
- Linked voyages transported 250,000 Africans
- Findings intensify reparations pressure
THE City of London’s historic governing elite has been linked to voyages that transported at least 250,000 enslaved Africans, according to a leaked study examining how slavery became entwined with the political and commercial foundations of Britain’s financial centre.
The research identifies 280 former civic office-holders but finds no evidence that the Corporation invested in the trade as an institution. Its more consequential conclusion is that the City’s political influence, business relationships and financial networks helped Britain’s trafficking system expand.
The unpublished report, titled Assessing the Connections between the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved African People and the City of London Corporation, was written by historian Professor William Pettigrew and dated May 18, 2026.
Published extracts from the report show that the connections ran through the Royal African Company, the South Sea Company and independent merchants who combined public office with slave-trading interests.
The City Corporation commissioned the research in December 2024, approving £34,400 to investigate lord mayors, sheriffs, aldermen and common councillors who served between 1640 and 1807.
The Corporation told the BBC and Local Democracy Reporting Service that it was disappointed the document had leaked and planned to publish the completed report later in 2026. It maintained that the authority itself had no direct link to the trade, although some former members did.
Civic elite helped launch trafficking
Pettigrew’s research traces the relationship to 1562, when serving Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Lodge helped finance England’s first recorded voyage trafficking enslaved Africans. Future Lord Mayor Sir Lionel Duckett also backed the expedition.
Later voyages associated with English mariner John Hawkins received financial support from former or future lord mayors, including Sir William Chester, Sir William Garrard and Sir Rowland Hayward.
Between 1640 and 1807, the report identifies 41 of 176 lord mayors—about 23 percent—as traffickers. It also names 129 of 830 aldermen and 193 of 3,975 common councillors as having connections to the trade.
Those categories overlap because lord mayors usually also served as aldermen or common councillors. They cannot be added together to produce a larger total.
Of the 280 members identified, 209 invested in the Royal African Company, while 75 served as company assistants—the equivalent of directors. Seventy-two of the company’s 203 original subscribers were Corporation members.
Voyages carried 250,000 Africans
The study identifies 69 Corporation members as independent traffickers involved in 301 Atlantic crossings.
Those voyages transported approximately 80,000 enslaved Africans, about 12,000 of whom died during the crossings.
When voyages linked to members through the Royal African Company and other enterprises are included, the report connects Corporation office-holders to more than 950 crossings.
Those operations transported roughly a quarter of a million African men, women and children to plantations across the Americas. An estimated 37,000 died during their incarceration or forced transportation.
The report does not claim that the Corporation organised the voyages. They were financed, directed or promoted by merchants who also occupied influential positions within London’s civic government.
Some reportedly used their positions in Parliament to support expansion of the trade. Access to the City’s networks may also have helped traffickers secure credit, ships, captains and insurance.
No proven corporate investment
The researchers found no evidence that the Corporation bought shares in slave-trading companies in its institutional capacity or received confirmed legacies from traffickers.
That qualification prevents the findings from being presented as proof that the Corporation itself operated ships or invested public money directly in slavery.
However, the report challenges attempts to separate the private business activities of City officials entirely from their public authority. It concludes that the Corporation functioned as a governmental structure and powerful social network that helped Britain’s trafficking system develop.
Service in the Royal African Company could improve a merchant’s path into civic leadership, while Corporation membership provided commercial credibility, political access and valuable financial contacts.
The Corporation also owns portraits of three confirmed traffickers: Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Richard Levett and Sir John Robinson. How those works are labelled, displayed or stored could become part of the wider debate over London’s commemoration of people who profited from slavery.
Findings sharpen reparations demands
The disclosure comes as African and Caribbean governments attempt to move reparations from historical recognition towards international action.
A Ghana-led resolution recognising the trafficking and enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity secured support from 123 countries at the UN General Assembly in March. The vote intensified the global diplomatic battle over slavery reparations.
The African Union has made reparations for enslavement, colonialism and apartheid a flagship continental project, with Ghanaian President John Mahama serving as its reparations champion.
African and Caribbean leaders meeting at the Accra reparatory justice conference called for the campaign to move beyond apologies and symbolic acknowledgement.
Proposals under discussion include compensation, debt relief, development financing, cultural restitution and investment in education and healthcare.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has rejected suggestions that reparations amount to charity. She noted that Britain compensated slave owners after abolition while giving nothing to enslaved people, strengthening CARICOM’s demand for formal negotiations with Britain.
The City report does not automatically establish modern legal liability. Its names, statistics and institutional connections could nevertheless strengthen the historical and political evidence underpinning African and Caribbean claims.
What happens next?
The completed report and its supporting Register of British Slave Traders are expected later in 2026, allowing historians to scrutinise the underlying records and individual names.
Attention will then turn to whether the City Corporation offers an apology, changes how implicated figures are commemorated or supports reparative programmes.
The question is no longer whether London’s civic elite participated in trafficking enslaved Africans. It is how institutions that celebrate their centuries-old traditions intend to confront the African lives consumed in building that history.
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