TORY Richard Drax has defended claims in the national press that his ancestors made their ‘considerable fortune’ in the slave trade.

The Labour-backing Daily Mirror has listed South Dorset as one of eight key constituencies that will help decide which party gets into 10 Downing Street.

Describing him as an ‘extraordinarily privileged landowner’, the Mirror says Richard Grosvenor-Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax is so ‘desperate’ to be ‘one of the people’, he is calling himself plain old Richard Drax.

Mr Drax, Conservative candidate for South Dorset, has described it as a ‘Labour smear’ and a ‘desperate’ move in the final days of the election campaign.

The story says: “Mr Drax, a twice married 52-year-old, lives deep inside a 7,000-acre estate in Charborough House, his family’s seat since Elizabethan times.

“The huge brick wall surrounding it is known locally as ‘the Great Wall of Dorset’.

“Six of his ancestors have served as MPs, including Henry Drax, who made the family’s considerable fortune in the late 17th century by running slave plantations in Barbados.”

Mr Drax said: “The scare tactics have been tried by Labour now.

“I can’t be held responsible for something that happened 300 or 400 years ago. They are using the old class thing and that is not what this election is about, it’s not what I stand for, and I ignore it.

“I think it shows how desperate they are if all they can do is pick at bits of my family history.”

The Mirror describes the margin in South Dorset as ‘wafer thin’ where a handful of votes could see privately-educated Mr Drax on his way to Westminster.

It continues: “While Labour MP Jim Knight has opened five new schools, six Sure Start children’s centres, a further education college, a hospital and an NHS centre in the area, Mr Drax is pounding the streets spouting right-wing views that make Margaret Thatcher look like a liberal.”

Mr Drax added: “I don’t dig around in Mr Knight’s past, I don’t know what his past is and I don’t care.”