Laura Trevelyan, a BBC reporter who hails from the aristocratic Trevelyan family, hopes that her family's payment of £100,000 to Grenada for slavery will serve as an example to others who

profited from the practice. The funds will be used to establish a community for economic development in Grenada. The Trevelyan family owned six sugar plantations in the Caribbean country and had over 1,000 enslaved Africans. Ms Trevelyan revealed that her family received around £34,000 in compensation for their loss of "property" in 1834, which is worth approximately £3m today. Speaking at an event in Grenada, Chairman of the Grenada National Reparations Commission (GNRC) Arley Gill acknowledged the gesture from the Trevelyan family and called on other European families, governments and institutions to follow suit.

Mr Gill said that although no amount of financial compensation can ever repair what was stolen and lost due to slavery, it is the responsibility of those who benefited from it to "commit to stopping the bleeding of the many wounds caused by indigenous genocide, the slave trade and slavery!". He called on descendants of enslavers and profiteers of slavery to understand the devastating social, economic and public health impacts of hundreds of years of economic disinvestment and social neglect caused by slavery. Mr Gill added that the lingering legacy of slavery continues to manifest itself in poor quality education, illiteracy, high rates of unemployment, poor health outcomes and overall stalled national development and nation-building.

In 2022, Ms Trevelyan visited Grenada to make a documentary and discovered that her ancestors were compensated when slavery was abolished. She said that she felt ashamed and that it was her duty to acknowledge the pain caused by slavery.

The subject of slavery and its legacy continues to be an important topic, with several leaders in the Caribbean calling for formal apologies and reparations. In September 2022, leading Jamaican politician Lisa Hanna urged Britain to pay reparations for its role in slavery. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has also called for reparations. Last year, up to 100 Jamaican organisations and leading figures wrote an open letter calling for an official apology about slavery to be made, in opposition to Prince William and Kate's tour of the Caribbean. Photo by P. Hughes, Wikimedia commons.