A BBC reporter from the aristocratic Trevelyan family has said she hopes her family’s payment to Grenada over slavery would be an example to others who profited.
A donation of £100,000 will be given by the family to establish a community for economic development for Grenadians.
The BBC’s Laura Trevelyan said giving the funds almost 200 years later might seem “inadequate”, but she hopes it would set an example for others.
The Trevelyan family owned six sugar plantations and owned more than 1,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean country.
According to Ms Trevelyan, her family received approximately £34,000 in compensation for their loss of “property” in 1834.
That sum is estimated to be worth £3m in today’s money.
“The truth of the matter is that for 400 years, Europeans, including the Trevelyan family benefited from the inhumane and illegal trafficking of human being for profit and generational wealth building.”
Chair, Grenada National Reparations Commission Arley N Salimbi Gill
Ms Trevelyan was at an event this week in Grenada, where the comments from the Grenada National Reparations Commission (GNRC) were made.
Chairman of the GNRC Arley Gill, acknowledged the gesture from the Trevelyan family and said other European families, governments and institutions should also seriously take note.
Mr Gill said: “This apology and financial commitment from Laura Trevelyan [and] family should serve as a clarion call to other families, institutions and governments in Europe to acknowledge their wrongs, apologise and commit to repairing the harms done by their ancestors.
Mr Gill said no amount of financial compensation can ever repair what was stolen and lost because of slavery, but expressed that it is the responsibility of those who benefitted from slavery to “commit to stopping the bleeding of the many wounds caused by indigenous genocide, the slave trade and slavery!”
He said: “The truth of the matter is that for 400 years, Europeans, including the Trevelyan family benefited from the inhumane and illegal trafficking of human beings for profit and generational wealth building.”
“Descendants of Enslavers and profiteers of slavery must clearly and fully understand the social, economic and devastating public health impacts that hundreds of years of economic disinvestment and social neglect have had on individuals and families as well as on our nation,” he added.
Mr Gill added the lingering legacy of slavery continues to manifest itself in poor quality education, illiteracy, high rates of unemployment, poor health outcomes and overall stalled national development and nation building.
Speaking at the event at the Grenada National Trade Centre Annex, Mr Gill described slavery as a “crime against humanity”.
He added: “We are here today because millions of our African ancestors survived this perilous journey!”
Mr Gill also paid tribute to the countless Africans who “fought back or chose death over subjugation and enslavement by making the floors of the Atlantic Ocean their burial ground.”
In 2022, Ms Trevelyan visited Grenada – to make a documentary – where she discovered her ancestors were compensated when slavery was abolished.
Previously speaking to the BBC in a personal capacity, she said: “I felt ashamed, and I also felt that it was my duty. You can’t repair the past – but you can acknowledge the pain.”
The subject of slavery and its legacy continues to be an important topic with several leaders in the Caribbean calling for formal apologies and reparations.
In September 2022, leading Jamaican politician Lisa Hanna urged Britain to pay reparations for its role in slavery.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has also told The Voice that now was the time for reparations.
In March last year, The Advocates Network, wrote an open letter signed by up to 100 Jamaican organisations and leading figures in opposition to the Prince William and Kate’s tour of the Caribbean.
The letter called for an official apology about slavery to be made.
Comments Form
4 Comments
Well done Grenada for the nation’s efforts in questioning why RAPARATIONS has been paid by the United States Congress, to Japanese Americans, for the Japanese interwar persecution they endured in the 1940s.
Why His Majesty’s English Parliament; with the vigorous consent of England’s last five Prime Ministers, paid REPARATIONS of £75m in 2017 to honour Caucasian-Jewry’s wartime German persecution; an event His Majesty’s Parliament held no jurisdiction; direction or involvement.
Whilst Sir Tony Blair, and David Cameron in their role of His Majesty’s Prime Minister, have used their authority to prevent and frustrate African and Caribbean people’s United Nation’s supported demand for REPARATION in South Africa in 2001; and when David Cameron instructed the Jamaican people to “move on from the painful legacy of slavery.”
£100,000 from the Trevelyan family is a drop in the ocean considering the sociological and psychological rehabilitation that African-Caribbean Subjects desperately require; a welcome drop nonetheless.
I don’t see how it would work reparations. How do Africans or Caribbean people/Nations judge from slave owners to non-slave owners if you get the meaning.
The wealthy Britons owned slaves but I doubt the poor Brits did. The British wealthy Elite will never pay up or admit the African Holocaust.
What a load of nonsense this is.
I come from a slave background and have the name of the Norwegian slave master who enslaved my ancestors.
I have no intention of going to Norway to find the ancestors of my family’s slave masters to ask for reparations as they are not to be blamed for their ancestors action as this is just stupid to me.
Many people from many races have been done wrong throughout history so where do we draw the line.
Enough of this nonsense that is more about money than anything else it’s embarrassing as a black man to see this. Keep your money keep your money I wouldn’t take a penny as it will never make up for what has been done to my people, I just thank my lucky stars I wasn’t around to endure what they went through and I wear my dreadlocks as a mark of remembrance and pride.
Slave owners profited greatly and hence contributed to the generational wealth of their descendants. So technically, the current members of the families had nothing to do with enslaving your ancestors, but they are most likely receiving the benefits even today.
Descendants of slaves around the world, like yourself, continue to be disrespected as human beings and have had to struggle greatly in life as free citizens with little to nothing.