The Trevelyan family has expressed regret to the people of Grenada for the part their forefathers played in the enslavement of numerous Africans on their estates.
The apology was presented by Laura Trevelyan and her family members today at the University of the West Indies Reparations Forum and the Grenada National Reparations Commission (GNRC).
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Around a hundred family members were represented by Laura, a journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and her cousin John Dower as they read the apology.
Laura remarked before reading the apology, “I’m so sorry about our painful, shared past and for the role of our ancestors in it.”
The Trevelyans have promised to donate £100,000 toward the creation of a community fund for economic development, which will be run by The University of the West Indies. Other family members have also promised to contribute financially and volunteer their time to community-based initiatives in Grenada.
Almost 1,000 slaves were under the ownership of Sir John Trevelyan and his wife Louisa Simond on six plantations. They got $26, 898 as payment for releasing their slaves, which is around $3 million in today’s currency.
Although Laura acknowledged that the donation was little compared to what her family had received, she insisted that it was all she could afford to make at the moment. She will use the money from her BBC pension to fund the contribution.
She has encouraged the UK government to meet with its former Caribbean colonies to explore how to make up for historical wrongs.
Laura also expressed her gratitude to the University of the West Indies Vice-Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles for assisting her family in pursuing reparatory justice.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said that Laura and her family were not required to provide an apology.
“I appreciate that some of our fellow citizens may see this as tokenism, as an attempt to pacify us, but I am satisfied that sometimes even tokenism is a step in the right direction. They did not have to do this” Mitchell noted.
Arley Gill, the chairman of the GNRC, praised the Trevelyans for taking a “brave step” toward reparative justice.
“Today is a day of remembrance, 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 reckoning that is long overdue,” he noted.
“This apology and financial commitment from Laura Trevelyan and her family should serve as a clarion call to other families, institutions, and governments to acknowledge their wrongs, apologize and commit to repairing the harm done by their ancestors.”
Gill continued by saying that Grenada does not anticipate that the Trevelyans will make up for the wrongs perpetrated by European colonizers.
