Laura Trevelyan on the Importance of Reparations

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Next, we turn to history and its aftermath. Nearly two centuries after its abolition, reparations are long overdue for the descendants of the slave trade. In a historic move, former BBC journalist, Laura Trevelyan, and her family have recently publicly apologized for their ancestral ownership of over 1,000 slaves on the Caribbean Island of Grenada. Trevelyan says that she will make a 100,000 pound donation and is now a full-time advocate for reparative justice. And, most recently, she’s requested apologies from the new king of England, Charles, and the British government for their past ties to slavery. Here she is with Michel Martin.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Laura Trevelyan, thank you so much for talking with us.

LAURA TREVELYAN, TREVELYAN FAMILY FUND FOR GRENADA: It’s a pleasure, Michel. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

MARTIN: Your story is actually more common than I think a lot of people would like to admit. The difference here, of course, is that you are facing this story squarely and directly and talking about it publicly. So, let’s start at the beginning of how you learned that your family had enslaved, what, like 1,000 people in Grenada, something that someplace you’ve never actually been. So, how did you learn this?

TREVELYAN: Actually, far more than 1,000 over the years, Michel. But, yes. So, what happened is in 2013 in Britain, University College of London published a database which showed the compensation which was paid to all of the people who owned slaves when slavery was abolished in Britain in 1833, which might seem like a head scratcher. Why did the owners of the enslaved get compensation and not the enslaved? But the answer is that was the only way that Britain could get abolition through parliament, where there were many lawmakers who were themselves are plantation owners in the West Indies. So, this database of the 46,000 individuals who were paid compensation in 1834, the year of the revolution, was published online in 2013, and immediately the database crashed. You know, people logged into it, it couldn’t stand the volume, as you can imagine. And then, in about 2016, somebody in my family who had idly typed Trevelyan into this database e- mailed me because I was supposed to be the family historian. I had written a book in 2006 about family history, which, by the way, had nothing of this in it because I didn’t know. And this cousin e-mailed and then he said, oh, my gosh, Laurie, you won’t believe it. Do you know that it says in the database that the Trevelyan’s compensation for six different plantations in Grenada and that we owned more than 1,000 slaves at the time of abolition? Do you know that? And I said, no, I had no idea. And this cousin said, I’m shocked. I have called (ph). This has changed my whole vision of our family. It’s terrible. What do you think?

MARTIN: Tell me what went through your mind and frankly, I would not be surprised, no, what I judge you if at the moment it was nothing — not very much at all. I mean, it just isn’t the kind of thing you pick up the phone and expect to hear.

TREVELYAN: Yes.

MARTIN: So, do you remember what went through your mind in the moment and then —

TREVELYAN: Yes.

MARTIN: — subsequently?

TREVELYAN: No, I do. And I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t anything noble at all. It was, first of all, oh, my gosh, you know, how embarrassing. I’ve written this book in 2006, and it has nothing of it in it. I’ll have to update the book in the paper, should there be another paperback, was my initial reaction, which isn’t noble or anything. And then, my — and then I thought, you know, this is shocking, and it’s appalling. And then, I thought, huh, you know, that’s the real story there for some point. Nora Ephron, the American screenwriter, said that all life is copy. And so, I thought this is a story that someday I have to look at it. I have to think about it. But and then, came 2020, and, you know, that summer and living here in New York City, covering Black Lives Matter, the reaction to the death of George Floyd, so many protests right here in Brooklyn, where I live. And then I really was forced to think that if a legacy of slavery in America is police violence towards black men, then what does this mean that my family, my ancestors were slave owners in Grenada? Not that far from where I am now.

MARTIN: Do you remember how that thought occurred to you? And I’m wondering if you think it was like, sort of, you know, like the pilot light in the furnace, something that was on but that you don’t think about until you have to?

TREVELYAN: Well, I think that’s a good analogy, the pilot light. So, I think, you know, the match litter flame in 2016, and then it burned slowly. And then, I think that in that summer of 2020, the flame began to burn a lot more brightly. And you know, how it was that summer, you’ll remember, you know, as journalists being confronted with this reckoning in America finally, and it’s not like I had covered police brutality towards black men in the years since I’ve lived in the states, but it was the intensity of that summer and the way in which all aspects of American life and racism were being were being confronted. And then, I thought, well, you know, here’s the skeleton in the closet that, really, I need to think about. So, I’ve began the process of asking BBC commissioning editors, because I’ve been at BBC for 30 years, you know, could you commission a documentary? Would you send me to Grenada? Could this be part of the wider story? You know, Britain’s forgotten slave owning past. Because in Britain, we are really taught that the British abolished slavery in 1833. That was what I learned in school. Not that we were major participants in the slave trade. That bit is really downplayed. And instead, a reckoning was happening in Britain, just as it was here in the U.S. and across the world. And so, you know, it took a while to persuade everybody and then, this was something that was worth doing. And my commission editor at the BBC, Hugh Levinson said, you know, Laura, if you go, if we’re going to send you, you have to ask the question, should I pay reparations? You know, you can’t go unless you dare ask that question of everyone you meet Grenada. And so, then, I got to go with a fantastic young Haitian American producer, Koralie Barrau, herself a descendant of the enslaved in Haiti. And so, we went on this journey together to Grenada last year.

MARTIN: What was it like when you landed? What went through your mind? What was it like?

TREVELYAN: Really extraordinary. The first thing that we did was land and go to Bosaju (ph), which is one of the largest sugarcane — former sugarcane plantations on the island. A beautiful location with a huge plantation house. It’s not the original house, but it — you know, it looks like something from the movies, what you would think a sugarcane plantation would look like, with a huge house on the hill, these sloping hills, ancient buildings where the sugarcane factories were. And I looked at this place, which was once so beautiful and so terrible and I felt a shiver going down my spine, and I — you could just imagine the picture with the slave master in the big house with the enslaved at the bottom of these slopes, and it was so hot, Michel, so hot and just thinking of people toiling away and the machetes. And I met there DC Campbell, who’s a Grenadian historian, lives in the U.S. now, and I met DC there and he said, you know, Laura, think of it. Here we are in Bosaju (ph), me a descendant of the enslaved and you a descendant of slave owners. Think of that. And — but the weight of the moment just really hit both of us under that blue Caribbean sky and that — the hot sun and it was like we were back up 200 years.

MARTIN: But you weren’t though. And I guess I’m wondering what that was when you say that, we were back 200 years, I mean, did it make you feel, what, complicit? Did it make you feel guilty?

TREVELYAN: Not guilty because it wasn’t me, but just the sense that this is part of Britain’s past and part of Britain’s wealth that was accumulated here, there, in these sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean. And that it’s unacknowledged really. I think that was what hit me, is so few British people are taught the extent of the slave trade and the legacy of it as well. The fact that this was a system of wealth extraction. That was what we talked about that afternoon, was how the enslaved got absolutely nothing when slavery ended, apart from they had to work for free, a system of apprenticeship, that was also part of the — you know, the deal in Britain’s parliament, that not only did the slave owners get compensation, but their workforce were referred to as apprentices and had to work for them for free for another few years. So, then the Caribbean is left with this legacy of illiteracy, of poverty and emancipation. So, there was just so much that I learned when I was there about how the past does inform the present.

MARTIN: Well, the question was put to you not just, OK, now, that you know about this, the other question is, what are you going to do about it? And you are, in fact, doing something about it, you and your family, mainly you, are, in fact, paying reparations. Tell me about that.

TREVELYAN: Yes. Well, so Hilary Beckles is the chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and the preeminent intellectual at the Caribbean, author of “Britain’s Black Debt,” which is a really excellent book about the debt that Britain owns that Caribbean. So, he’s really one of the authors of CARICOM’s Ten Point Reparations Plan, and that plan begins with — and this is a request, by the way, to the formal — former colonial powers. It’s not a request to individual families like my own. But nonetheless, we used it as a guide. Point number one is an apology. You know, the importance of an apology. And then CARICOM’s Reparations Plan calls for debt relief and investment in health and education. Because these — you know, with the wealth extraction, there was no chance to invest in health or education. The Caribbean nations have been playing catch up forever. So, we use this as bit of a model and a guide for ourselves, and we worked with Grenada’s National Reparations Committee, Nicole Philip-Dowe, who was the vicechair of that committee. I worked closely with her and with Sir Hilary to try to figure out what was the best thing to do and, you know, talked to many family members and we tried to hurdle — you can imagine what that’s like — 104 and four family members signed our letter of apology that we delivered in Nader (ph). But, you know, not all 104 family members really have very much money or in a position to give. So, people are giving what they can. I myself giving are 100,000 pounds. And we settled on education and the University of the West Indies has a bursary funding Grenada for mature students. So, that’s something we’re giving money to, and also to a rural charity for schoolchildren in Grenada, which helps with the cost of getting to school, school busses and school supplies, because these seemed like very practical things. And if, you know, one of the legacies have been slavery was illiteracy and the education gap, then this, you know, seemed like something that it was important to fund.

MARTIN: I can imagine that there are people on both sides, there are some who would say, Laura, you’re crazy. You know, that’s your pension. You earned that. What are you doing? And I’m imagining that there are other people who would say, that’s never enough and it’s purely performative and therefore, you know, meaningless. And I’m — I don’t know if you engage with either of those perspectives, but if you do, what do you think about it?

TREVELYAN: I mean, yes, for sure. And when we went to Grenada, that question was asked a lot. You know, this isn’t very much money, is it, 100,000 pounds when your ancestors got 3 million pounds when slavery was abolished, plus earned who knows how much from the sale of sugarcane over maybe 8,200 years. And the answer is that, you know, no amount of money can possibly be enough for the horror — to compensate for the horror of what happened. And you know, enslavement in the Caribbean resulted in the population dropping the number of Africans who were shipped from West Africa to the Caribbean. There was no natural population growth. There was a population decline because of the brutality and the hideous conditions. So, money can’t make up for that. But what I hope — and yes, you’re right, the sort of attack comes to the left and the right. From the right is where will this end, you know, going to apologize for everything forever. And, you know, this was the past sort of thing. And then the left, well, this is just, you know, meaningless white savior making privilege, P.R., et cetera. But I think Sir Hilary Beckles persuaded us that if we became the first British family whose ancestors were slave owners to publicly apologize, he said, you will set an example, you will encourage others to follow and you will help a little bit to fill that void that we have in the Caribbean where we don’t know our history. All we know is that our ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and we were dumped in the Caribbean. But you’re actually part of our history and there’s been a deafening silence from descendants of slave owners, for obviously reasons, people are scared of the reaction. But it will be part of the healing process, even though it will be painful and it will be turbulent, it’s important to do it. And I’ve been contacted by a number of families since our apology who — British families whose ancestors were slave owners in Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, who have said, how did you do this? How can we do this? We want to acknowledge our — this painful past but we don’t know how. So, can you can you help? And so, I have said what we did. And in a way, in the Caribbean, is quite straight forward, Michel, because there are all these reparations committees on all the islands and CARICOM. There are people that you can talk to who want to talk to you about them.

MARTIN: What other observations do you have about the difference between the conversation in the U.K. and in the conversation in the United States as a person who’s been a reporter in both the U.K. and the United States for some time, what do you notice about the differences in the way these things are discussed? And what do you make of it?

TREVELYAN: I think one of the things that nobody really says but — which is true and the British Nigerian historian, David Olusoga, has just said, is that American slavery was British slavery. It was, you know, until America was independent, then slavery brought here by the British, you know, America was a British colony. This was — there was no distinction between American slavery and British slavery. So, that’s one thing. So, you know, I was taught in school that the British abolished slavery way before those terrible Americans. But, of course, those terrible Americans were actually us until they were independent. So, there’s that. And you know, we’ve just seen now, “The Guardian” newspaper, uncovering the fact that shares of the royal family — of the Royal African Company, when they were sold, the royal family profited from them, which you would expect. I mean, the duke of York ran the Royal African Company and he later became king of England. So, there’s this long and deep link between the royal family and enslavement. And Prince Harry, in his book, “Spare,” makes a passing reference to the fact that the wealth of the royal family is partly built off the backs of the enslaved. But only now we’re seeing the royal family acknowledged this with the death of the queen, with a new generation. We’re seeing now King Charles, who was head of the commonwealth, which has many formerly enslaved nations in it, King Charles has confirmed that the royal family is supporting research, academic research into the links between the royals and slavery, which, although it’s long overdue, but it is important and significant, and it’s part of this long overdue process that we’re talking about of acknowledgement, which is only the beginning, of course.

MARTIN: Drawing upon your long experience in the United States, what do you make of this argument that this makes white people feel bad and that this cannot — this these kinds of conversations cannot be had because they make white people feel bad, especially white children, this is something that one we’ve been hearing in these very kind of raucous school board meetings where people are, you know, demanding the removal of certain books and ideas and courses, you know, from the curricula that it introduces guilt, and therefore it’s bad? What do you say to people who say that?

TREVELYAN: Well, I think it’s just really important to acknowledge the pain of the past and to be honest about it. And it is painful. But, of course, you know, you don’t want to make white children feel guilty for what their ancestors did and nor should that be the aim of anything and nor do I think it is the aim of any of these programs. But it’s — you know, it’s hard to talk about difficult issues, honestly, but it’s really important to do it. And I think it’s just a question of the tone that you use really.

MARTIN: Laura Trevelyan, thank you so much for speaking with us today.

TREVELYAN: Thanks so much, Michel.