(Trinidad Guardian) 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 Commit-tee 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.
