The great-great-grandson of 19th-century British Prime Minister William Gladstone said he was horrified to learn seven years ago that his ancestors were slave owners in Jamaica and Guyana.
And former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan said she learned after records of Britain’s Slave Compensation Commission were put online in 2013 that one of her ancestors, Sir John Trevelyan, owned sugar cane plantations in Grenada and about 1,000 enslaved people.
They spoke at a meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York this past week where, for the first time, descendants of slave owners and enslaved people in former British colonies in the Caribbean sat at the same table with diplomats and experts from those nations discussing the contentious issue of reparations.
“This was a historic event,” said Trevelyan, who moderated the meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent’s weeklong session.
From about the year 1500, millions of West Africans were sent to work mainly on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas, including the southern United States. U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk told the forum that an estimated 25 million to 30 million Africans were uprooted for the purpose of slavery.
Few nations have apologized for their role in slavery, and reparations have been the subject of much debate.
The Geneva-based Human Rights Council has called for global action for years, including reparations, apologies and educational reforms to make amends for racism against people of African descent. The 15-nation Caribbean Community, known as CARICOM, has a 10-point plan for reparatory justice, starting with demands for European countries where enslaved people were kept and traded to issue formal apologies.
Türk noted a European Union statement in 2023 profoundly regretting the “untold suffering” caused by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the African Union’s designation of 2025 as the “Year of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.”
At the meeting of descendants of enslaved people and slave owners on Tuesday, Trevelyan spoke of her family’s decision to apologize to Grenada and to make a contribution of 100,000 British pounds (about $133,000) toward education in the Caribbean island nation.
Going to Grenada with family and apologizing “wasn’t exactly smooth sailing,” said Trevelyan, who left the BBC and has become a campaigner for reparations. There were protests by one group that thought the apology was inadequate and the money not enough.
Also at the meeting was Aidee Walker, who said she was shocked when a DNA test revealed she was not only predominantly Scots-Irish but also part Nigerian, then discovered that her great-great-great-grandfather, who moved to New Zealand, was the son of a slave owner in Jamaica named John Malcolm and an African housekeeper.
Walker and her sister, Kate Thomas, said when they found out they felt they had to do something.
Thomas said she discovered what Trevelyan was doing and got in touch with Verene Shepherd, a professor emeritus and vice chair of the CARICOM reparations commission, who encouraged the sisters to start with the apology.
Charles Gladstone, meanwhile, said he felt “a profound sense of guilt” after learning that former Prime Minister Gladstone’s father owned estates with enslaved people — and that a great deal of his privileged life “was essentially connected to this criminal past.”
He said he apologized to Guyana and Jamaica and will try to do something “to make the world a better place.”
While Britain’s role in abolishing slavery in 1833 is widely taught, Gladstone said, its involvement in the trade “has been completely buried.” The history must be told, he said, because “the evils of this crime against humanity are not historical, they’re felt very, very profoundly today.”
Britain’s deputy U.N. ambassador, James Kariuki, attended the meeting but did not speak. The British Mission, asked for a comment, sent a statement from Development Minister Anneliese Dodds to Parliament on Feb. 25 saying she and Prime Minister Keir Starmer have been “absolutely clear that we will not be making cash transfers and payments to the Caribbean.”
Gladstone said supporters of reparations must keep working together. If thousands of families like his stand up and say, “‘We would like to do something about this,’ then there is a chance that the government in Britain could do something more substantial,” he said.
Thomas agreed. “If we can get the numbers, then that could influence institutions and governments to act,” she said. “It’s a really great start to what I think will be a lifelong journey.”
Shepherd, who taught at the University of the West Indies, said there have not been many apologies and, while some Europeans express remorse or regret for slavery, “no one is talking about reparations.”
Arley Gill, chairman of Grenada’s National Reparations Commission, said, however, he sees positive movement toward reparative justice globally and believes “we are on a good path to ensure these crimes against humanity are being recognized by the colonial powers.”
Antigua’s U.N. ambassador, Walton Webson, who is chair of the Caribbean ambassadors’ caucus, ended the meeting by saying, “We have reached the point where speaking of reparations is no longer taboo.”
Now, he said, it’s time to put reparations “on the lips of every child, every person” and start to take action.
