A BBC journalist is to pay £100,000 to make reparations for her aristocratic family’s slave-owning past.
Laura Trevelyan, a BBC correspondent in New York, noted that the money seemed “really inadequate” compared to the £3 million in today’s money which her family was given for loss of their "property" after slavery was abolished in 1833.
The Trevelyans owned more than 1000 slaves and six sugar plantations on the Caribbean island of Grenada.
"For me to be giving £100,000 almost 200 years later ... maybe that seems like really inadequate," Trevelyan told the BBC.
"But I hope that we're setting an example by apologising for what our ancestors did."
Trevelyan said that seven members of her family would travel to Grenada to issue an apology, with the £100,000 going to set up a community fund on the island.
The Caricom [Caribbean Community] Reparations Commission – a group of 15 countries in the region – is to launch the fund alongside the family.
The Observer reported that the family had met online and some 42 of them had agreed to sign a letter apologising for their ancestors' participation in the slave trade.
