The former Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach has threatened the University of Cambridge with legal action after a historian named her as a descendant of merchants who enslaved his ancestors.
Malik Al Nasir, a third-year PhD history student at St Catharine’s College, has spent the past 20 years exploring his family’s history of slavery and the wealth that was built from those who enslaved them.
He discovered his ancestors were enslaved in plantations in the former colony of British Guiana (now known as Guyana) during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Al Nasir claims a substantial amount of the wealth from plantation slavery was brought to Liverpool by Samuel Sandbach and his business partners – the same city Al Nasir grew up in.
Al Nasir claims he has been pressed to remove a reference in his work to Antoinette Sandbach, a former MP for Eddisbury in Cheshire, who is a descendant of Samuel Sandbach and beneficiary of his estate.
Sandbach has said she supports and appreciates the importance of Al Nasir’s work but raised concerns that she was being singled out in an online Ted talk given by him.
The Guardian understands Sandbach’s lawyers have threatened to sue the University of Cambridge over the Ted talk.
“My cultural identity has been obscured by slavery and colonialism,” said Al Nasir. “Searching for my roots, I uncovered the connection to these people.
“The fact that Antoinette Sandbach descends directly from Samuel Sandbach, one of the richest and most prolific slave merchants in Britain, in the 18th and 19th century, is a fact that emerged from the research.”
