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South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, authorised by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu after the end of apartheid, began with the victims of gross human rights violations giving statements about their experiences. It began with everyone, including the families of perpetrators, listening to these statements. Truth, so often the first victim in man’s inhumanity to man, was given first place in the process of restorative justice, including reparations.
I can’t help but wonder, where was the listening by Laura Trevelyan and her family (My family owned 1,000 slaves and profited from the trade: this is how I am trying to make amends, 25 March)? Did they engage in any way with the direct descendants of slaves brutalised by their ancestors, the families harmed for generations? First, to hear and acknowledge these survivors’ stories, to come to grips with the actual (not presumed) pain inflicted. Then, to learn from them what response might be most meaningful. Who would know better?
Trevelyan and her extended family spent a year debating – presumably talking to each other – about how they could respond to the horrors of the past: slavery in Grenada and it’s aftereffects. Their apology has been described as “a first step” in the process of restorative justice. If they haven’t reached out to the survivors, the first step in fact has yet to be taken. What is clear is that there is no plan to give the survivors control over the £100,000. Instead, in choosing to direct this towards education, Trevelyan is perpetuating the power dynamic – those who have the money rule. As if wealth imbues right and intelligence. The rich alone deciding what should be done has rarely, if ever, best yielded the greater good.
Cynthia Fuller Quinonez
National City, California, US
Well done to Laura Trevelyan as she attempts to make up for her slave-owning ancestors, though it is arguable whether the sins of those fathers should be visited on daughters many generations later. However, as she is of such a frame of mind, it would not be remiss of her to apologise to the people of Ireland for the invidious role played by Sir Charles Trevelyan during the Great Famine there in the 1840s.
Patsy McGarry
Dún Laoghaire, Ireland
All credit to London City Hall for supporting a memorial to victims of the slave trade in the Docklands (London to pay tribute to victims of slave trade with memorial, says mayor, 24 March). But over a week ago, councillor Adel Khaireh, the cabinet member for culture in Greenwich, assured us of its full support for a modest ceramic relief on the wall of Greenwich Park for Ignatius Sancho.
In colour, and based on his portrait by Gainsborough, this will help do justice to Sancho, an 18th-century freed slave and polymath, composer, author, playwright and early abolitionist – and the first black man to vote in a Westminster election, in 1774.
Thanks to many small donors and the generosity of bodies such as the Musicians’ Union and the Buccleuch Charitable Foundation – for the present Duke of Buccleuch is proud of his Montagu ancestors who freed and supported Sancho – we are now over halfway in an appeal hosted on the Greenwich University donation website. Our aim is for an unveiling at the Windrush weekend in late June.
Richard Bourne
Secretary, Ignatius Sancho Memorial Committee
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