Robert Beckford, who has researched slavery, welcomed the the campaign.

An international NGO which represents the interests of people from the African diaspora, is investigating British companies which may have benefited from the slave trade in the Caribbean.

The Global Afrikan Congress says it has started detailed investigations in the region, to establish which firms were operating during the slave trade and what became of them following the abolition of the trade 200 years ago.

Cikia Thomas, chair of the organisation, told BBC Caribbean that their research shows that at the end of the slave trade the British Government paid compensation to plantation owners, yet the slaves themselves and their descendents were never compensated.

He said: "The families, companies and governments which were involved in the slave trade should be held responsible. All African people throughout the world including those in the Americas whose ancestors were victims of this crime against humanity should be paid compensation."

Economic Development

The organisation is taking encouragement from a decision made in the US courts last December, which gave leave to Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a descendant of slaves, to sue some of America's biggest banking institutions under consumer fraud law.

Robert Beckford, a reader in theology at Oxford Brookes University in the UK, told BBC Caribbean he welcomed the move.

"People have become a lot more aware of how much the brutality and dehumanisation and the wickedness that was associated with the slave trade, has set Africa and the diaspora back, in terms of both human and economic development."

Cikia Thomas said the Global Afrikan Congress will be discussing the matter with Caribbean government leaders and other NGOs with the aim of taking the case for reparations to the new British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.