'My daughter was able to go to university thanks to a Lloyds of London bursary'
18 June 2020, 21:46 | Updated: 18 June 2020, 21:48
Caller says her daughter went to university thanks to Lloyds of London
This caller told Iain Dale that her daughter went to University via a bursary from Lloyds of London who she knew "made their money basically off the back of slaves."
Karen called LBC to tell Iain Dale her daughter was the first person to win the scheme and even met with the Queen.
The call comes after Lloyds of London pledged to make payments to representatives of black people as part of a scheme to address their founders’ roles in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, it comes amid a wave of racial equality protests across the globe sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in the USA.
Karen told LBC "we've always known that these people made their money basically off the back of slaves," she said of the bursary from the firm.
She said the only way she could compare it was to the Jewish Holocaust, which was "awful, horrendous and evil."
But she said because America was made "off the back of" slavery there needed to be change.
She said she hoped that the tragic death of George Floyd would lead to everyone coming together and facing up to the issue of racial equality.
Karen revealed her daughter was now a history teacher, who wanted to ensure that her pupils had a better knowledge of the history of slavery, and Britain's involvement with it.
She revealed to Iain she is white and has mixed-race children but has "received more racism from white people" than people of colour.
"What goes through someone's mind," Iain exclaimed.
George Floyd laid to rest
Lloyd's, which announced plans a week ago to "build an inclusive" Lloyd's marketplace, said in a statement: "We are sorry for the role played by the Lloyd's market in the eighteenth and nineteenth Century slave trade - an appalling and shameful period of English history, as well as our own."
"Recent events have shone a spotlight on the inequality that black people have experienced over many years as a result of systematic and structural racism that has existed in many aspects of society and unleashed difficult conversations that were long overdue."
Lloyd's said it would invest in programmes to attract black and minority ethnic talent, review its organisation's artefacts to ensure they are not racist and provide financial support to charities and organisations promoting opportunity for black and minority ethnic people.
