1/1
AN investigation into the history of the Rowntree chocolate company has produced shocking evidence that the famously philanthropic family business may have profited from slavery and forced labour.
Research by the Rowntree Society prompted partly by the Black Lives Matter movement has also uncovered allegations of racial discrimination and anti-union tactics at the firm’s South African subsidiary Wilson Rowntree during the apartheid era as recently as the early 1980s.
A statement by the Rowntree Society today stressed that it had found no evidence that Rowntrees, which donated Rowntree Park to the people of York and also set up the New Earswick 'model village', directly owned or traded in enslaved people.