Antoinette Sandbach’s relatives owned slaves – and so did mine. We have to atone for that as best we can | Alex Renton

The former MP's quest to break the public link with her ancestors is misguided. Better to accept our legacy and work for change

The sins of the fathers," according to a stinging verse in the Bible's Book of Exodus, shall be visited upon the children, even unto the third or fourth generation." Is that remotely fair? Can we - should we - be held responsible for crimes committed by our ancestors? The question underpins Antoinette Sandbach's protest at her outing as a descendant of Samuel Sandbach, a 19th-century mayor of Liverpool who amassed a fortune through enslavement of African people, and from compensation payments at the end of British slavery in the 1830s.

Sandbach, a former Tory MP, has threatened to sue Cambridge University over the work of the historian Malik Al Nasir, who has named her in his research on British enslavement in what is now Guyana, where he has heritage. Sandbach has said she is appalled by the actions of her ancestors, and that she is supportive of Al Nasir's work - but there is no public interest in identifying her as a descendent of Samuel Sandbach, who died in 1851. This is about a right to privacy, she contends - the right not to be held publicly accountable for acts in which she played no part.

Alex Renton is author of Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family's Story of Slavery (Canongate)

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