By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
February 28, 2023
kramkhalawan@caribmagplus.com
Grenada saw its first reparations payment and apology on Monday from a BBC Journalist based in New York, Laura Trevelyan, who traced her roots to find out that her family played a heavy role in the slave trade to the island.
She among seven others of her family paid a visit to the island even as her payment was used as a talking point for the island’s reparation committee and its importance to the thousands of humans who were brought from Africa and enslaved to work on plantations owned by colonizers who derived much wealth from their labour.
Arley Gill, Chairman of the Grenada Reparations Committee described the move as a “clarion call to other families, institutions and governments in Europe to acknowledge their wrongs, apologize and commit to repairing the harms done by the ancestors”.
He said governments in the region needed to do more for the struggle of reparative justice and come together using the CARICOM Reparations Commission as the vehicle for which the battle for reparatory justice must be waged and be won.
Gill says what the Trevelyan family is doing is saying sorry for what their families did to our families, opening a door which they appreciate. And while he does not expect them to pay for all the debt of all the British families, but appreciate that the hands they have now stretched forth. He told members of the Grenada Government that “achieving reparatory justice must become a central development strategy for the nation, as it cannot be seen as a side project, investing in it and committing to the plans and processes needed to get it on a solid path toward securing what is owed to their ancestors and descendants”.
Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission described shackled slavery as something never seen in humanity which erupted from the depths of hell and was brought to the Caribbean. Depicting what Chattel Slavery meant, Sir Hilary sought to emphasis what it really meant, as a system which “allowed humans beings to be viewed as property and real estate, a people defined and used for such purposes, property is that thing, that you can buy, sell, mortgage, lease, rent and use as currency, pass it on to children, use it in transactions, all of the characteristics of property, while the British were the first to commit this system to legislation, where Africans were deemed to be non-human.”
He went on to explain that “the economics of the system dictated that it was more profitable to buy an African on an auction block and use them intensively for seven to ten years, until death and then replace them. The investment of seven years of wealth extraction, and replacement of that person”. The economics, Professor Beckles says, “did not support the concept of an old African or aged, as it was viewed as a cost, to which he says why 3,000,000 people were reduced to 600,000 at the end of slavery”.
And while he welcomed the Trevelyan family to the spice isle, Professor Hilary Beckles, vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies described their ancestors as “leading architects” among the leading advocates and beneficiaries of this system while Grenada was the place from which their enrichment came” as owner of 1004 enslaved, “from which at the end of emancipation were compensated at full market value, which allowed it to consolidate and launch into its future into today”. He went on to add that during his time studying abroad in England, he came to know them as an “essential part of the slavocracy of this world” that used their wealth amassed from slavery to support the British economy.
Beckles says while slavery was over, the British found many ways to torment the Africans, to which he shared his upcoming publication titled “a thousand ways to punish rebellious Africans in the Caribbean”. And while he went on to list the many atrocities and heinous things done to their men and women, he says apart from the ones often seen in the movies, there were hundreds of other ways well documented to see what was done, while he went on to specify that slavery was one that could not go without mentioning the cruelties that women faced during this period. The Professor went on to add that the system of Chattel slavery was built upon the identity of the woman, as the carrier of the status of slavery, as a child birthed, took status from its mother, while every child derived from an enslaved female, was seen as profit.
In the same breath of welcoming the Trevelyan family, Sir Beckles says the committee was preparing to welcome several African kings and queens in Jamaica next week to discuss what slavery did to their families, how they survived and were implicated in slavery history.
He says these are developments that are transforming the world and require courage and commitment, to look into your history and recognize your past, through a crime that has led to your own enrichment and privilege, to say it was wrong and inhumane.
Laura Trevelyan thanked Sir Hilary for helping guide her family in what she says was a difficult process, while persuading people that it was important to standup and be counted to come to Grenada, and confront what her ancestors did to yours.
While thanking those on the island for assisting them, she says it was a first step, as an apology could not be the end of the process, and with no idea as to where it will lead, they have taken a leap of faith, with further encouragement from other British families in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, who have privately written to her asking how they have gone about seeking to do something.
She says prior to 2013, when University College London published information on the Trevelyan legacy in the slave trade, they had no idea. In sharing her open apology on behalf of her ancestors, Trevelyan said “To the people of Grenada, we, the undersigned, write to apologise for the actions of our ancestors in holding your ancestors in slavery,” while her relative, John Dower, who stood next to her in delivering the apology, added “we repudiate our ancestors’ involvement”.
He added that “We urge the British government to enter into meaningful negotiations with the governments of the Caribbean in order to make appropriate reparations through Caricom, and bodies such as the Grenada National Reparations Commission.” In handing over the apology letter signed by 104 descendants of part owners of six Grenadian plantations, Dower says each vowed to offer their time to ongoing projects on the island, along with funds set up as bursaries at the UWI open campus Grenada. Seven family members attended Monday’s ceremony, and were present to sign their names on the letter presented.
Accepting the apology on behalf of Grenadian people, Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell says it comes a profound place of recognizing that since we benefit from the legacy of British colonialism in the vast majority of us are Christians, we all seek redemption, and there can be no redemption, if we are not prepared to forgive.
He says while he appreciates that some of his citizens may see this move as one of tokenism, as an attempt to pacify us, he is satisfied, ‘that sometimes even tokenism is the beginning of the step in the right direction’. Mitchell added that he was cognizant of the fact that they had chosen to do so, and be recognized for doing so, but as head of government, he takes the opportunity to join in a public request in asking Britain’s head of government to commence dialogue in an open transparent and frank dignified manner to talk of the need for reparatory justice for the citizens of CARICOM. The Grenadian PM also urged for other European nations to step up particularly the French for acknowledging Haiti.
According to The Guardian Family research revealed that Sir John Trevelyan obtained slaves and sugar cane plantations on Grenada through marriage in 1757, while in 1835, the Trevelyans were among 46,000 families the British government compensated when it abolished slavery. It showed that the Trevelyans received £26,898 an equivalent of about £2.7m or US $3.25m in today’s currency, for their 1,004 slaves and six plantations on the island, allowing that wealth to compound over the course of generations.