Trevelyan’s apology reignites reparations debate

It was a short tweet that reignited a powerful conversation about reparations and justice. US-based BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan launched a powerful conversation in just a few words.

“The Trevelyan family is apologising to the people of Grenada for the role our ancestors played in enslavement on the island and engaging in reparations.”

Now, the behind-the-scenes discussions regarding the Trevelyan family had spanned a longer time frame and included more members of the family than just the most recognised descendent, but it still felt like a seismic moment in pushing the reparations agenda forward.

The Trevelyans, a British aristocratic family, had laid bare its personal association with enslavement in the Caribbean, owning and operating six sugar plantations on the island of Grenada. In 1835, the family received £26,898 in compensation from the British government for the abolition of slavery a year earlier. This sum would roughly equate to around £3m in today’s money.

Forty-two members of this family (with more expected) have signed an official letter of apology which reads in part, “We, the undersigned, write to apologise for the actions of our ancestors in holding your ancestors in slavery.

“Slavery was and is unacceptable and repugnant. Its damaging effects continue to the present day. We repudiate our ancestors’ involvement in it.”

The formal apology also goes on to ask the UK to join them in apologising for their wider role in slavery. After all, across British colonial territories, the abhorrent and unjust practice of profiting off the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Africans was state-sanctioned.

I’m not a betting person, but I can’t see this Conservative administration falling over itself to take the Trevelyan plea 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”.

Not that past administrations of a different hue have done much better when it came to paying more than lip service to the evils of slavery and its generational aftermath. In March 2007, then British Labour PM Tony Blair (during talks with former Ghanaian president and ahead of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery) stated, “I have said we are sorry and I say it again…” No talks on reparations followed, no real attempts to address the systemic fallout. Nada. Just a dry apology. ‘Sorry’ seems to be the hardest word, yet cutting a cheque and implementing policy changes seem even more out of reach.

The reaction to the Trevelyan story has been an interesting one. As a daughter of Jamaica, the remnants of slavery, disused estates, tales about the ghosts at Rose Hall Plantation, and one million and one other reminders have helped to shape the narrative about how reparations could and should work.

Having the same discussions in the UK are more difficult ones as historically, Britain was very good at outsourcing the ugliness of it all. Aristocratic families, wily investors and even opportunistic ‘Everymen’ invested - as they saw it - in ‘vibrant economic trade’ abroad. ‘Trade’ is such a neat, euphemistic term for the subjugation of a people and the cruelty that followed, but that didn’t stop the money rolling in.

By the time the spoils of slavery made it back to British shores, those profits would have been cleaned of all the blood and gore attached to it.

It’s becoming more difficult to ignore the prominent families, who, like the Trevelyans, profited from slavery. In fact, if you’re ever curious, there is an entire project dedicated to archiving those who were compensated when slavery officially ended.

According to The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (located at UCL) the British government paid out £20m to compensate some 3,000 families that owned slaves for the loss of their “property” when slave ownership was abolished in Britain’s colonies in 1833. This figure represented a staggering 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual spending budget and, in today’s terms, calculated as wage values, equates to around £16.5b.

Among those revealed to have benefited from slavery are ancestors of: former UK Prime Minister David Cameron; former Minister Douglas Hogg, authors Graham Greene and George Orwell; poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There are names that literally spell WEALTH, like banking dynasties the Barings, and the second Earl of Harewood, Henry Lascelles, an ancestor of the Queen’s cousin. It really highlights the old adage ‘behind great wealth is a great crime’.

The fallout from the announcement by the Trevelyan family has gone off in various directions, including the expected tut-tutting from the right-wing corner of the British press, describing it as “vain virtue signalling” and “another example of white people being made to feel guilty for something they personally haven’t done”. Then, of course, there is the other conversation about this gesture feeling like “another rich white liberal trying to assuage their guilt”, and my favourites, “maintaining the narrative that we are better than you” and “this move perpetuating the victim mentality for black people”.

What this particular case highlights for me is the sheer breadth of the conversation that needs to happen about pushing forward the narrative of reparations. It can all seem an insurmountable idea to even wrestle with. Who should pay? Who should be rewarded? How does this work in practice? Should it be a policy shift? Is it cutting every black person a cheque? I know it won’t be my limited brain power that resolves these issues, but I do know that there are existing blueprints and razor-sharp minds that have answers.

When the Trevelyans submit their apology in person in the weeks ahead to the people of Grenada, let’s focus less on one family with a delayed guilty conscience. Instead, let’s use this as a jumping-off point to remind the others - alongside the states and institutions that propped them up - that there’s no expiration date on the quest for reparations and justice.

- Amina Taylor is a journalist and broadcaster. She is the former editor of Pride magazine and works as producer, presenter and correspondent with Press TV in London.