Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

De­scen­dants of John Trev­e­leyan, part own­er of six plan­ta­tions in Grena­da, apol­o­gised yes­ter­day for the role the fam­i­ly played in slav­ery and made do­na­tions to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Open Cam­pus.

At a repa­ra­tion fo­rum host­ed by UWI and the Grena­da Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mit­tee (GN­RC), BBC re­porter Lau­ra Trev­e­leyan said she hoped the ges­ture would be the first of such moves for Grena­da and the Caribbean.

Trev­e­leyan said her fam­i­ly dis­cov­ered its dark past when the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Lon­don pub­lished lega­cies of British slave own­er­ship which showed they re­ceived the equiv­a­lent of £3 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for los­ing their slaves. The fam­i­ly pre­sent­ed a let­ter of apol­o­gy signed by 104 de­scen­dants of the plan­ta­tion own­ers to Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell.

Trev­e­leyan read from the let­ter which stat­ed: “We apol­o­gise to the sur­viv­ing de­scen­dants of the en­slaved on those es­tates for the con­tin­u­ing im­pact on their dai­ly lives, their health and their well­be­ing.”

Al­so read­ing from the let­ter, her cousin John Dow­er said: “Slav­ery was and is a crime against hu­man­i­ty. Its dam­ag­ing ef­fect con­tin­ues to the present day. We re­pu­di­ate our an­ces­tors’ in­volve­ment in it.”

Trev­e­leyan do­nat­ed £100,000 to­ward an ed­u­ca­tion fund at the UWI Open Cam­pus in Grena­da and oth­er mem­bers of her fam­i­ly do­nat­ed bur­saries and gave sup­port to the Grena­da Ed­u­ca­tion and De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (GRENED).

“I’m sure that £100,000 seems gross­ly in­ad­e­quate when you think that in 1834 our fam­i­ly re­ceived the equiv­a­lent of £3 mil­lion in to­day’s mon­ey for the loss of what was termed our prop­er­ty here on Grena­da. So I ap­pre­ci­ate that it seems in­ad­e­quate, that it seems like a to­ken or maybe it seems al­most in­sult­ing and I apol­o­gise for that...that it’s not more but I would say that it’s what I, at this mo­ment, am able.

“I hope this is the be­gin­ning of a re­la­tion­ship with Grena­da. I hope that in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Repa­ra­tions Com­mit­tee and the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da and UWI that we can be guid­ed in­to how fu­ture mon­ey can be do­nat­ed and spent,” she said.

The let­ter from the Trev­e­leyan fam­i­ly called on the British au­thor­i­ties to fol­low suit and en­gage the re­gion in repa­ra­tions “to Cari­com and bod­ies such as the Grena­di­an Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion.”

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell ac­cept­ed the apol­o­gy on be­half of his peo­ple and an­ces­tors and in­vit­ed mem­bers of the GN­RC to re­ceive the let­ter on be­half of Cari­com. He al­so com­mend­ed Trev­e­leyan and her fam­i­ly for tak­ing the step.

“I have no doubt that if my an­ces­tors were part of such a sys­tem that I would be hor­ri­fied, that I would be ashamed and per­haps the easy de­ci­sion would have been to pre­tend that since I didn’t do it I ought not to take any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it. So it is tes­ti­mo­ny to your courage, it is tes­ti­mo­ny to your brav­ery, to your will­ing­ness to con­front no doubt what is a dark and dif­fi­cult past, that you are here to­day to apol­o­gise in per­son,” Mitchell said.

He called on the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment to en­gage the Caribbean in dis­cus­sions on repar­a­tive jus­tice in an “open, trans­par­ent, frank and dig­ni­fied man­ner.” He al­so asked the UK gov­ern­ment to ex­tend that in­vi­ta­tion to their Eu­ro­pean coun­ter­parts who played a part in the atroc­i­ties in the Caribbean, such as France and Spain.