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‘I hope we’re setting an example’: BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan’s family to donate £100,000 to Grenada as an apology for aristocratic ancestors keeping more than 1,000 slaves on their sugar plantations
A BBC correspondent whose ancestors kept slaves in Grenada says her family hopes to “set an example” by apologizing and paying reparations.
Laura Trevelyan’s aristocratic relatives owned more than 1,000 slaves on six sugar plantations on the Caribbean island in the 19th century.
The New York-based BBC journalist said her family apologized “for the role our ancestors played in slavery.”
Now they will give £100,000 to establish a community fund for the economic development of the island.
Ms Trevelyan, 54, said seven relatives will also travel to Grenada this month to issue a public apology.
Laura Trevelyan said she was ‘ashamed’ of her slave-owning ancestors
Trevelyan in action as a presenter for BBC World News America
She told the BBC that her ancestors had received around £34,000 in 1834, the year after slavery was abolished in the UK, as compensation for the loss of “property”.
This equates to around £3 million today. He acknowledged that giving £100,000 almost 200 years later might seem “inappropriate” but said: “I hope we are setting an example.”
Ms Trevelyan visited Grenada for a documentary last year and said: ‘I felt ashamed and also felt it was my duty. You can’t repair the past but you can recognize the pain.’
Historian David Olusoga told The Observer: “While governments stubbornly refuse to commit to the growing calls for reparations… there are families, businesses, universities, charities and other organizations that acknowledge their historical links to slavery and empire”.
A portrait of Sir John Trevelyan with his wife Louisa Simon (centre couple) who owned over 1000 slaves in Grenada
Historian David Olusoga in his BBC television series Britain’s Forgotten Slaveholders said that governments have stubbornly refused to “commit to mounting calls for reparations”.
But Alan Smithers of Buckingham University said: “These are days gone by and it’s not a route I think we should go down.”
He said that the reparations offered would be a “drop in the ocean” and risked “fomenting further demands in other countries of the world that are engaged in the slave trade.”
A statue of William Gladstone has been removed from outside a church in Merseyside due to its links to slavery.
The former prime minister’s wealthy father, Sir John Gladstone, used slaves on his sugar plantations in the Caribbean.
The Archdiocese of Liverpool said the statue, at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church, was removed because questions were raised about its ‘suitability’, but said no decision had been made on its long-term future.