GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – The descendants of a British slaveowner, John Gladstone, are set to apologize for slavery and indentureship on Friday at the University of Guyana.
According to the University, it was founded on plantation lands once owned by John Gladstone.
In response to reports that the apology will be issued, President Dr. Irfaan Ali said an acknowledgment and apology are the first steps in reparative justice.
The apology implicitly acknowledges the cruel nature of African enslavement and indentureship in Guyana and an act of contrition that paves the way for justice.
In a statement, the president said the apology offered by the descendants of John Gladstone “underscores their willingness to confront their family’s dark past and to acknowledge the immense pain, suffering, and indignities inflicted upon innocent persons through their family’s actions.”
“As I said in my message this year for Emancipation Day, I called on those who were complicit in and who profited from the trade in captive Africans and African enslavement to offer just reparations.”
The Gladstone family has admitted that it benefited from African enslavement and indentureship on the Demerara and other plantations owned by its patriarch, John Gladstone. It has agreed to undertake specific actions.
In his statement, the president said that the intended apology should include issues of compensation and reparative justice and that those involved should be posthumously charged for crimes against humanity.
According to History, John Gladstone was an absentee owner of plantations in Jamaica and Guyana, building on his wealth earned from the mercantile trade in India, the United States, and the West Indies.
After the British seizure of the Guyana colonies in 1803, John Gladstone began investing in them. His interests and acquisitions included, at one time or another, plantations at Belmonte, Covenden, Hampton Court, Industry, Met-en-Meer-Zorg, Success, Vreed-en-Hoop, Vreedenstein, and Wales.
John Gladstone was also the Chairman of the Liverpool West India Association, one of the most critical groups defending the interests of West Indian plantation owners.
Throughout his life, he was a champion of the institution of slavery. To protect his commercial interests, he successfully lobbied Foreign Secretary Canning not to return the colonies of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice to the Netherlands.
When the 1823 Demerara Slave Revolt erupted on his plantation at Success, he was baffled and blamed Rev. John Smith and the other missionaries.
But this tragedy did not deter him from expanding his investments in Guiana. His official policy was one of amelioration – that enslaved people’s conditions should be gradually improved and Christianisation prioritized, a position that was in staunch opposition to the abolitionists.
At the time of abolition, he received compensation, which is estimated at more than £10 million at today’s value. However, the freed Africans received nothing.
Anticipating a collapse in African field labor after the end of the Apprenticeship period, Gladstone, along with other planters, helped to pioneer the use of Indian indentured labor in British Guiana, introducing a new form of servitude to the colony.
On the 23rd March 1837, he wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Grey, arguing that: “unless a system of regular and continuous labor is…adopted, the cultivation of the sugar cane cannot be carried on to a productive level.”
In the same year, an Act was passed which allowed Gladstone to import Indian indentured immigrants. Serious abuses of Indian indentured immigrants on Gladstone’s Vreed-en-Hoop plantation were uncovered soon after by a member of the Anti-Slavery Society.
Despite his outsized influence in British Guiana and the empire, Gladstone never visited the West Indies. He was an absentee plantation owner.
In recent years, the demands for reparations for African enslavement and indentureship have intensified.
In his statement, Ali said the call for reparations was not intended to promote or leverage shame or guilt over the slave trade and slavery. “It is not extortion. Instead, the demand for reparations is a commitment to righting historical wrongs.”
The transatlantic slave trade and African enslavement were an affront to humanity itself. The Durban Declaration of 2001 of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance acknowledged that slavery and the slave trade are crimes against humanity and should always have been so.
Millions of Africans endured unspeakable horrors of displacement, captivity, extreme and brutal physical and sexual violence, and severing family ties. They were treated as chattel; their labor was exacted under the harshest conditions. They dehumanized enslaved people by destroying their culture, religion, and even names.
Ali states, “The heinousness of this crime against humanity demands that we seek to right these wrongs. Yet, we face a push-back in compensation for this crime, which does not accord with the fundamental underpinnings of justice.”
“But there is another important reason why the Caribbean is demanding reparations,” said Ali, who added that “slavery has bequeathed a legacy that endures to this day. It must be recalled that two out of every five slave persons were shipped to the Caribbean. The Region bears witness to the lasting impact of this historical injustice, a burden that has impeded development and hindered progress.”
He said that the call for reparations is an essential response to right a historical wrong and mitigate the enduring legacy of slavery.
“Reparations are aimed at ensuring a reckoning for the greatest crime against humanity and addressing the multifaceted inheritance of slavery.”
“While acknowledging the historical atrocities of slavery and offering an apology is undeniably significant, it constitutes the initial step towards achieving comprehensive reparative justice for African enslavement. An acknowledgment and apology serve as a moral reckoning, validating the pain and suffering inflicted on generations past. However, the multifaceted legacy of slavery extends far beyond the confines of historical memory.
The descendants of John Gladstone must now also outline their plan of action in line with the Caricom ten points plan for Reparatory Justice for slavery and indentureship,” the president declared.
and then 