British family sorry for role in slavery

St George’s, Grenada CMC – Surviving relatives of a family in the United Kingdom, who in the 18th and 19th centuries jointly owned approximately 1 200 slaves on six plantations in three different parishes in Grenada on Monday apologized for the actions of their forefathers.

“To the people of Grenada, we the undersigned write to apologize for the actions of our ancestors in holding your ancestors in slavery,” said the opening paragraph of a letter presented to Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell during a ceremony at the Grenada Trade Centre.

Signed by seven members of the Trevelyan family, including well-known BBC correspondent Laura Trevelyan, the letter describes slavery as a crime that was and continues to be a crime against humanity.

“Its damaging effects continue to this present day. We repudiate our ancestor’s involvement in it, we apologize to the surviving descendants of the enslaved on those estates for the continuing impact on their daily lives, their health, and their well-being,” the correspondence stated.

The complete letter which was then handed over to Prime Minister Mitchell was in turn presented to members of the local Reparations Committee. It is expected to be handed over to the regional committee.

Monday’s ceremony which was attended by Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Committee Professor Hilary Beckles, Vice Chair of the Grenada National Reparations Committee Dr. Nicole Dowe, Cabinet ministers, heads of regional reparations committees and students, was to launch a fund in which Laura Trevelyan has personally committed to giving £100 000 (US$ 120,596) to the local reparations committee.

“I came up with that figure because at this moment in time that is what I can afford to give. I am 54 years old and when I turn 55 in August that is the moment when I can actually give this money because I will come into a pension from the BBC, and so I am taking a portion of the pension as a cash payment to give to the people of Grenada,” she said when a student asked her how she had arrived at the donation figure.

“But I hope in years to come…I will be in a position to give more money and I hope that it works and achieves what all of us here want it to achieve.”

Trevelyan also pointed out that the 2020 George Floyd situation in the US, where she resides, played a role in her accepting that her family contributed to the enslavement of Africans and the devastating effects it has had on African descendants.

She learned in 2013 that her family had owned slaves on the island and was battling with the guilt of that reality.

Arley Gill, chairman of the local reparative committee, described the day’s event as a day of remembrance.

“It’s a day to remember our ancestors and their descendants and it is finally a day of recognition of the harms of slavery and a moment of global reckoning that is long overdue,” he said in his welcome remarks.

“This apology and financial commitment from Laura and the Trevelyan family should serve as a clarion call to other families, institutions, and other governments in Europe to acknowledge wrongs, apologize and commit to repairing the harms done by their ancestors.”

Gill, a former government minister, added that Caribbean governments “must do more for the struggle for reparative justice and come together using, of course, the CARICOM Reparation Commission as the vehicle through which the battle for reparative justice is waged and must be won”.

“Further, our governments must consistently and publicly with one voice call on European nations to engage in a conversation with their counterparts in the Caribbean region.

“The results of these conversations must be the creation of a comprehensive social and economic development plan that creates a stronger and sustainable and striving Grenada and the Caribbean region,” he said.

Gill also called for the topics of slavery and reparation to be included in the curriculum at educational institutions from primary to tertiary level.

“….Because it’s only through education rooted in the truth about our past, our present, and our future that we will truly liberate ourselves from the lies and falsehoods that we have been taught. This movement for reparative justice must utilize our education system as a place to realize true liberation, I call it education for liberation,” he asserted.

Gill, who is an attorney, said the financial commitment from the Trevelyan family is part of a process that is undergirded by truth, transparency, and repair.

“The truth of the matter is that for 400 years, Europeans including the Trevelyan family benefitted from the inhumane and illegal trafficking of human beings for profit and generational wealth building,” he said.

While the ceremony was taking place, a group of protestors gathered.

They were not in support of the financial donation promised or the ceremony, contending that the event was tokenism to the reparations initiative.

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