Northern Ireland town hall funded by slave trader 'should be renamed'

McGarel was paid £81,280 (£9.7million in 2019) in compensation by the government for more than 1,000 slaves held by him and his firm when the trade in human beings was abolished in 1833.

He was also a key figure in resisting the abolition of slavery in the colony in which he had his lucrative plantations as freed slaves "would be a burden on society".

Patrick Corrigan, head of nations and regions for Amnesty International UK, told Sunday Life the people of Larne need to be aware of the true origins of McGarel's wealth and make a decision on the hall's name.

"He would have been one of the biggest recipients of compensation and I'm not sure there are many locally who would have been as involved in the slave trade," he said.

"There's an opportunity here, to think is that the message they want to send out today, are those the values we share and celebrate?

"Ultimately it's a matter for local people but I would hope that they would come to the conclusion that McGarel simply shouldn't be remembered as a local philanthropist but as somebody who earned his riches on the backs of enslaved people."

McGarel was born in the Co Antrim port town in 1788 to parents who ran an inn but as a young man set off with two brothers to make his fortune in the booming sugar, coffee and tobacco trade in South America.

In Demerara, then a Dutch possession, he became a successful sugar merchant and a prominent person in the society of the main settlement, Georgetown.

He died in Brighton in 1876 aged 88 and left a significant estate thanks in part to government compensation.

Along with the town hall he also left land on which his heirs built Magheramorne House, now a hotel.

In 1826, the secretary for the colonies, the Earl of Bathurst, sought to allow slaves to purchase their freedom.

McGarel was among the slave owners who petitioned King George IV via the Privy Council to intervene as it would be "enabling a slave population of Demerara and Berbice to obtain their freedom without the consent of their owners".

Among the reasons lawyers for McGarel and his pro-slavery fellow businessmen gave were that freed slaves would spend their time in "indolence and dissipation", that they wouldn't work "without the incentive to do so" and would be a burden on society in the West Indies.

According to slavery records collected by researchers at University College London, when the abolition act was passed by Parliament his company, Hall McGarel, was paid £48,112 for plantations on which there were 936 people enslaved when the firm applied for compensation.

McGarel was personally paid £23,168 for estates owned with his brothers on which there were 437 people enslaved.

An award of a further £10,000 to McGarel and one of his brothers was made for enslaved workers on another estate but it is not recorded how many people were kept there.

Part of this huge wealth would eventually come back to Larne upon McGarel's death to fund the building of the town hall with a plaque put in place just 16 years ago commemorating the benefactor.

The dedication, by the Larne and District Historical Society, reads: "This town hall was built with monies generously provided by Charles McGarel.

"The son of a shoemaker, he became a successful merchant in the sugar industry of the West Indies."

It goes on to mention he also funded the cemetery at Old Glenarm Road and alms houses, a form of charitable accommodation for the poor.

There is even a window memorial to him in St Cedma's Church of Ireland parish in the graveyard of which he is buried.