Former slave colony eyes the path to true autonomy

Removal of the British monarchas head of state would represent important milestone in nationhood

- Oliver Laughland

When Dr Harold Young, an eminent Belizean political scientist, takes visitors around Belize W City, the first stop is an unremarkable building whose basement entrance is partly shrouded by creeping pink bougainvillea. Its padlocked gates and broken windows back on to a car park in the city's historic centre.

The building is known in the former British colony as the erstwhile headquarters of a TV station and production company once owned by the Conservative peer Michael Ashcroft, who has sprawling investments around Belize. But the building also serves as a reminder of the brutality of British rule. "It's the last remnants of a holding dungeon for slaves," Young said. "Before they were put out for sale."

Unlike the island states in the Caribbean, where plantation slavery underpinned the colonial economy, enslaved labour in Belize revolved around the logging of mahogany.

The main settlements in British Honduras, as it was known until 1973, were sparsely populated, and the remnants of violent enslavement are mostly absent from public view.

The building's story has been passed down and is noted in some tourist literature. But a plaque outside, while acknowledging the building's role in the timber trade, presents its connections to slavery as "local folklore".