‘Confronting the past, shaping the future’

Images: Dr. Marie-Annick Gournet, Gary Younge, Laura Trevelyan

In Bristol, on Tuesday 23rd July, Dr. Marie-Annick Gournet (Associate Professor in Lifelong Learning and Inclusive Pedagogy, University of Bristol) introduced the event as part of the University’s work on Reparative Futures. This work stream seeks to understand the University of Bristol’s links with slavery and engage in processes of repair both for that history but also for the ways it continues to show up today. With a budget of £10 million, this Reparative Futures Programme seeks to tackle racial inequality ‘both within the university itself and in the local communities it works with.’

This event - ‘Confronting the past, shaping the future’ - was a dialogue between Gary Younge (former Guardian Journalist, author of 6 books, and currently Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester) and Laura Trevelyan (former BBC Journalist, and descendent of the Trevelyan family who owned 6 plantations in Grenada and received compensation when slavery was abolished for the 1000 enslaved people who worked on those plantations). The discussion concerned the work Laura and her family have been doing to confront their history and engage in processes of repair.

In 2006, whilst working on a project in Ireland and realising how little she knew of the history of that place and her families involvement in it, Laura began delving into the family history. Finding that Charles Trevelyan, one of her ancestors had been directly involved in the Irish famine. He limited government aid on the basis of laissez-faire principles and an evangelical belief that “the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson”.

Several years later, a cousin of Laura’s came across the UCL Database on the Legacies of British Slave Ownership. This database is a record formed from the documentation of the Slave Compensation Commission set up to manage the distribution of the £20 million pounds in compensation the British Government agreed to pay to former slave owners when it abolished slavery. These records provide a more or less complete census of slave-ownership in the British Empire in 1833. Trevelyans are listed as recipients of compensation. If you search the database you can see eight Trevelyans received money for the more than 1000 enslaved Africans who worked on their plantations at the time of abolition.

‘In 1835, the Trevelyan family received £26,898, a significant sum at the time, in compensation from the British government for the abolition of slavery a year earlier. The enslaved men, women and children on their plantations received nothing, and were forced to work a further eight years unpaid as “apprentices”.’ (Guardian, 2023)

On finding out this information, Laura went to Grenada to find out more and to ask ‘should her family apologise’ and ‘should she pay reparations’? The answer to both questions from the people of Grenada she spoke with was ‘yes’. The impacts of slavery are still very much felt in Grenada as in other parts of the Caribbean today: from the wealth gap to illiteracy, colourism to health inequalities, climate crises and ongoing racism.

The Trevelyan family came together and with advice from Sir Hilary Beckles (Barbadian historian, current vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies and chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission) came up with a plan for repair. Sir Hilary Beckles urged the family to talk of slavery as a crime against humanity. In attempting to make repairs, this family wanted to show that it could be done, or at least started.

So what did they do? They organised a formal public apology ceremony in Grenada, Laura paid reparations of £100,000 to an education charity working in Grenada, and she is now working with other descendents of enslavers to explore reparatory work they can do. Through telling the stories of these histories that are so often intentionally forgotten, apologising for the part their ancestors played in slavery, and offering financial reparations this family are trying to make some kind of amends.

Gary Younge then spoke about how challenging it is in Britain to confront the past. He said ‘when you talk about reparations, British people lose historical identity’. The hypocrisy is quite stark. It seems many people in Britain are quite happy to identify with those in World War Two when they say ‘we won the war’, even if they weren’t alive at the time. Or to identify with the national football team when they say ‘we got to the final of the World Cup’ when they didn’t play in the game. But then argue ‘colonialism and slavery had nothing to do with me’.

This aversion to look at the more difficult, violent, harmful parts of British history is not accidental according to Gary. It is built in. And the avoidance of these pasts tells us a lot. He argued that we need to find a way to remember, to confront these histories. Because, as William Faulkner said, ‘the past is never dead’. It lives in the present. It is still here. And it shapes the future.

In the Q and A that then followed a number of topics were explored between Gary and Laura. From amnesia to the role of guilt in reparatory work, family conflicts around reparations to the concrete steps that can be taken for reparations beyond what has been done so far. I’ll touch on a few of these now.

Amnesia - did we forget?

At the point of abolition, the history of Britain’s role in slavery began to be re-written. William Wilberforce and the abolition campaigns in England became the focus - in 2007 at the bicentenary celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade this was the narrative that was still at the centre. As Catherine Hall has written, ‘The ‘national conversation’ about the slave trade and slavery in 2007 marked a contestation over memory – what was to be remembered and how?’ Very little has been told of the uprisings of the enslaved on the plantations and the role these played in abolition. It is only fairly recently with the work of primarily Black historians that these stories are coming to light. Britain’s role in empire and slavery is starting to be told - in some schools, in documentaries, in the works of historians. But it still seems challenging for the majority of the population to engage in these ‘difficult histories’ let alone take some responsibility for them.

The role of guilt?

Gary named that he wanted accountability and responsibility for the past and present injustices and wondered what role, if any guilt played for Laura in her work on reparatory justice. Laura said ‘I don’t feel guilty, I didn’t do it. But I can apologise for those who did.’ The people in Grenada wanted an apology and Laura reported that it was meaningful for them that her family formally apologised. She did acknowledge that her family’s wealth today is linked to the wealth generated from the plantations, and the social privilege she has is also connected. But that doesn’t elicit guilt in her. For those who do feel that guilt she argued it was for the therapy room, not the work of reparatory justice.

Concrete steps:

‘There is often a lot of bed wetting when the issue of reparations is raised in Britain’ said Gary. Individuals thinking people are going to come for their houses and their money, people naming working class issues and struggles to deflect from the need to grapple with legacies of slavery. He asked what concrete steps actually look like when it comes to reparations. He and Laura discussed different demands in different places. In the US direct payments are a part of the reparations case because of the promise of 40 acres and a mule that was never fullfilled at the point of abolition. In the Caribbean, CARICOM is a 10 point plan which demands former colonial powers apologise and pay reparations. The African Union have just set up a commission to consider reparations demands from African nations. There isn’t currently a coherent demand regarding reparations in the UK.

Gary proposed that reparations here might look something like the Marshall Plan in the post WW2 USA - where the government heavily invests in housing, education and health. He said ‘because of the racial dynamics in the UK and the levels of integration (which are quite high) - what benefits people of Caribbean descent will benefit everyone’. And this should be a bolstering argument for reparations in Britain today.

Why honour a descendent of enslavers with an honorary doctorate?

At the end of the event, a question was raised from the audience. The reason the event was taking place was because Laura was being awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bristol for her work both on journalism and reparations. The questioner named that many people, particularly people of Caribbean descent, had been doing work for years on anti-racism and reparations in the city of Bristol and asked why the University chose to recognise a white woman, a descendent of enslavers, and not these others. A question that did not really get answered but left the conversation open for further reflection and interrogation.