As famend British journalist Laura Trevelyan on Thursday, Could 1 mentioned the “reckoning” of the merciless historical past and present legacy of the transatlantic slave commerce, Grenadian Adjunct Prof. Martin P. Felix, coordinator of the Caribbean Research Minor, within the Division of Social Sciences, on the Vogue Institute of Know-how (FIT), State College of New York (SUNY), says that the Grenadian individuals must be the final word determinants of any slavery reparatory course of.
“Following her apology, Laura Trevelyan ought to first start with a collection of city corridor conferences on the difficulty nationwide,” Prof. Felix, a Brooklyn-based group and social activist, advised Caribbean Life after Trevelyan mentioned the “reckoning” with Arley Gill, chair of the Grenada Nationwide Reparations Committee, amongst others, on the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), downtown Brooklyn.
“On the finish of this course of, some type of settlement on a Grenadian process for reparatory justice would happen,” Felix added.
BPL famous that, on Feb. 27, 2023, an “historic apology to the individuals of Grenada was signed by 106 descendants of the British aristocrat Sir John Trevelyan for his or her household’s position in slavery.”
BPL mentioned the initiative was led by Trevelyan, a former BBC anchor, who, in 2016, first discovered that her ancestors had been absentee house owners of 1,000 enslaved Africans, who labored on their sugar plantations within the 18th and nineteenth centuries.
Along with the Grenadian authorities, represented by Gill, BPL mentioned Trevelyan and her household crafted “a proper, public apology – an act of reparatory justice – which is the primary and first step within the 10-point reparations plan put forth by CARICOM (the Caribbean Group).”
BPL mentioned Trevelyan is a co-founder of Heirs of Slavery, a bunch of British individuals whose ancestors profited from the enslavement of Africans within the Caribbean.
“Heirs of Slavery is encouraging different households with related histories to acknowledge this fraught previous, and calling on Britain’s authorities to interact in reparatory justice talks with Caribbean governments,” BPL.
It mentioned Trevelyan is collaborating within the United Nations Instructional, Scientific and Cultural Group’s (UNESCO) first dialogue for reparatory justice.
Prof. Felix mentioned one risk of the Grenada reparations possibility is that the household, at the side of the Financial institution of England, and others who had been enriched from Grenadian slavery, will set up a “trendy, well-equipped Grenada Heritage District.
“Just like the Barbados plan, this web site can be devoted to the historical past of enslavement in Grenada and its enduring traumas,” he mentioned.
“Attendant to this suggestion could possibly be the authorized stipulation that Britons with monetary pursuits in slavery, the Financial institution of England, and many others., would fund and keep this establishment for the subsequent 200 years or commensurate with their involvement in Grenadian enslavement,” added Felix, stating that there are additionally different potentialities of reparative justice on this context, “cash being just one side of a multi-pronged agenda.”
Prof. Felix mentioned another choice could possibly be for the UK’s benefactors of Grenadian enslavement to construct a “well-equipped, state-of-the-art, trendy hospital within the nation.
“This could possibly be constructed within the Bacolet or Hope Vale space, the positioning of the erstwhile plantations owned by the Financial institution of England, and the situation of a lot of our ancestors’ bodily and psychological ache,” he mentioned.
“Such measures are two attainable concepts that may go a great distance in starting to restore the hurt executed to our individuals and as a way of ample, efficient, overdue restorative justice,” he added. “The Trevelyans and different households also needs to see this as mutually useful.
“They’ll achieve respect as the primary household to have taken this courageous step of constructing concrete amends for Caribbean plantation atrocities,” Felix continued. “And this received’t precise a lot of their present wealth, particularly with the chances of tax write-offs.”
However he warned that something wanting authorized, substantive, institutional dedication from the Trevelyans in these conversations can be “tantamount to accepting trinkets of beads for the a whole lot of hundreds of descendants of Africans who’ve suffered on Grenadian plantations.
“The acceptance of lower than one pound per Grenadian dangers decreasing our individuals to the caricatures the colonists depicted in Eurocentric accounts of the historic first encounter on our islands — begging on the doorways of the very individuals who relegated us to mendicants within the first place,” Prof. Felix posited.
BPL mentioned that, earlier than leaving the BBC, Trevelyan went on a “historic journey to Grenada in February 2023, the place the Trevelyans publicly apologized to the Grenadian individuals for the position of their ancestors in enslaving Africans on the island.
“Laura delivered the inaugural Sir Tom Hopkinson lecture in March 2024, the place she known as on the British authorities and its main analysis establishments to make a monetary dedication to protect endangered archives within the Caribbean,” BPL mentioned.
It mentioned Trevelyan, who lives in Brooklyn, along with her husband James Goldston, former president of ABC Information and now president of Candle True Tales, a worldwide documentary firm, is a member of the Council on International Relations and the Chancellor of Cardiff College within the UK.
She is the writer of two books: A Very British Household: The Trevelyans and their World and The Winchester: An American Dynasty.
