The Gladstone family, descendants of Sir John Gladstone, was one of the largest slave owners in Guyana and the British West Indies, today offered “sincerest apologies for his actions in holding your ancestors in slavery in Demerara, now Guyana.
Charlie Gladstone, whose family’s ancestral home is Hawarden estate in north Wales, travelled to Guyana, on Thursday, with five other family members to make an apology for his ancestor John’s ownership of Africans.
Charles read a prepared statement signed by other members of the family, which apologized to the people of Guyana for the enslavement of their African ancestors, who for centuries, endured harsh and inhumane conditions while being held against their will.
John Gladstone owned plantations across Demerara for many years and was also the owner of many of the slaves who started the Demerara Slave Revolt in 1823.
At the University of Guyana today, the descendant Charles Gladstone admitted that slavery was a crime against humanity, and that its damaging impact continues to be felt across the world today.
The following is the full text of the apology from the Gladstone family on behalf of the enslaver John Gladstone as read by Charles Gladstone:
To the People of Guyana,
We, the undersigned, are descendants of Sir John Gladstone, First Baronet of Fasque and Balfour, and wish to offer our sincerest apologies for his actions in holding your ancestors in slavery in Demerara, now Guyana.
We are deeply honoured to be in Guyana at the invitation of The Guyana Reparations Committee and The International Centre for the Study of Migration and Diaspora at the University of Guyana.
It is a particular honour to be here at the launch of this new and important department, whose work we are keen to support. We thank both of these organisations profoundly for welcoming us to Guyana and for supporting our attempts to create a brighter future.
Slavery was a crime against humanity and its damaging impact continues to be felt across the world today.
It is with deep shame and regret that we acknowledge our ancestor’s involvement in this crime and with heartfelt sincerity that we apologise to the descendants of the enslaved in Guyana. In so doing we acknowledge slavery’s continuing impact on the daily lives of many.
We understand that we cannot change history, but we believe that we can have an impact on the world in which we live; and in apologising for the actions of our ancestors, we hope to work towards a better future.
We support CARICOM’s Ten Point Justice Plan and urge the British government to enter into meaningful discussions with CARICOM so that both parties can move towards a better future together.
We also urge other descendants of those who benefitted from slavery to open conversations about their ancestors’ crimes and what they might be able to do to build a better future.
We have been helping to fund some of the work of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London for the past two years and have committed to this for five years.
We are funding other British cultural projects that seek to highlight the horrors faced by enslaved people and to educate British people about these crimes against humanity.
As a wider family, we will be creating a financial fund to assist various projects in Guyana, and we will be discussing the use of these funds with our hosts.
Our aim is to create meaningful and long-term relationships between our family and the people of Guyana.
In writing this heartfelt apology we also acknowledge Sir John Gladstone’s role in bringing indentured labourers to Guyana and apologise for the clear and manifold injustices of this.
Signed:
Charles Gladstone, Caroline Gladstone, Robert Gladstone, Felix Gladstone, Xanthe Gladstone, William Merison.
(WiredJA)
