Descendants of UK slave owners going to Guyana to apologise
Published:Sunday | August 20, 2023 | 11:43 AM
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Family members of John Gladstone, a former owner of enslaved Africans in Guyana, will be arriving there later this week to participate in the launch of the International Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies (MiDias) at the University of Guyana on Friday.
The family also plans to apologise for their ancestor's role in that dehumanising period of world history.
“The Gladstone family, which includes several historians have today confirmed that they will in fact offer an apology given the role their ancestors had played here,” the University of Guyana said in a statement on Saturday.
John Gladstone was the father of four-time British Prime Minister William Gladstone, owned 2,500 slaves and according to the UK Guardian, was the fifth-largest beneficiary of the £20 million fund (about £16 billion today) set aside by the British government to compensate planters when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833.
The paper also reported that in addition to making an official apology for Gladstone's ownership of Africans, the 21st-century Gladstones have agreed to pay reparations to fund further research into the impact of slavery, through a £100,000 grant to the MiDias.
The Diaspora and Migration Centre is set up to pursue five specific areas of research interest including Diaspora and Migration in and around Academia, Youth, Technology and Vulnerable communities, Indigeneity, Indentureship and Slavery as specific and integral aspects of dispersion.
“The research track for Slavery and indentureship is the reason why it was deemed appropriate to launch the Diaspora and Migration Centre (MiDias) in this historically auspicious month in regard to the emancipation of enslaved peoples as well as the 200th anniversary of the 1823 slave revolution in Demerara,” UG added.
The University says it has been collaborating for several years with a number of Universities as well as the Guyana Reparations Committee on specific aspects of impacts of the plantations' enterprise of slavery and indenture as well as indigeneity on native populations, including relations being experienced today.
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