We were fortunate to speak with one of this year’s esteemed honorary graduates, Laura Trevelyan (BSc 1990, DLitt 2024). She graduated with a degree in Politics before becoming a BBC journalist serving as UN Correspondent, New York Correspondent then anchor of BBC World News America. After discovering her family’s historic links to the transatlantic slave trade, Laura made the documentary ‘Grenada: Confronting the Past’ to investigate the story and discover how to address this legacy. Laura and her family made a formal apology for their family’s role in slavery as part of a larger reparations plan, and she is now a committed philanthropist and campaigner for reparatory justice. She is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Letters honoris causa in this summer’s graduation ceremonies.
Beowulf was not for me, but current events were. I started off reading English and then transferred to politics, something that was rarely done. It began my interest in public life, power and elected officials. Once I made the shift, I developed an intellectual curiosity that still serves me. Bristol gave me a fantastic grounding in current events and political history.
Britain gave me roots and America has given me wings. I have spent much of my career in the US, and while the language is the same, it’s a very different society. I love the differences and it’s made me appreciate Britain and its traditions and history much more. In the United States and New York in particular, everybody is from somewhere else. There’s a dynamism and ambition as everybody hustles and jostles and tries to make it. There is no one American experience and there are so many Americas. For all of the divisive politics, I love the optimism and the friendliness of Americans.
As journalist, you are privileged to be on the front line and a witness to history. You’re then responsible for relaying it to the public. I was in Belfast in 1998 as the Good Friday Agreement was negotiated. It was extraordinary to be there, knowing that history was made and sharing the story with the outside world. I was also on the steps of the US Capitol in January 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump were trying to stop the certification of the US election of President Joe Biden’s victory. It was another tumultuous moment of witnessing unprecedented history in the making.
I’ve learned that humanity always shines through. I was in Haiti after the earthquake and witnessed the horrific cholera epidemic sweeping through the country in its aftermath. It was a desperate situation with so much suffering and death. But in the midst of the double horror of earthquake and cholera, there was humanity and love. People cared for one another in the most difficult of circumstances. The dignity of the human condition always strikes me. People are so much better than you think, and even in the worst of situations, there can be hope.
I left the BBC last year, but I still think of myself as a journalist telling the story of the Caribbean’s struggle for reparatory justice. It started in 2014, when University College London created a database that showed the compensation paid to Britain’s slave owners when slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834. A family member wrote to me and let me know that the Trevelyan family was listed as having been absentee slave owners on the Caribbean island of Grenada. I didn’t know anything about it, even though I’d fancied myself something of a family historian and even written a book about it.
There is a moral compass in journalism that makes you want to get to the truth and the heart of the matter. The journalism landscape is becoming more fragmented, as is the audience, but that doesn’t detract from the importance of the job. I asked my bosses at the BBC if I could make a documentary to explore this family history and illuminate it for a wider audience. They said yes, and it was a way to tell the joint history of descendants of the enslaved and descendants of enslavers, and to ask how we should confront this legacy today.
The documentary about my family history unleashed things that I never could have dreamt would happen. I travelled to Grenada, where I asked everyone I met if our family should apologise on behalf of what my ancestors did to theirs, and if I should personally pay reparations for what my ancestors did. The answer to both questions was a resounding yes. Working with Caribbean leaders, my family apologised to the people of Grenada in public ceremony. At the advice of Grenada’s leaders, I paid reparations to support education in Grenada as a lack of education, poverty and illiteracy were direct legacies of slavery.
This experience taught me power of example. So many others have been in touch in the wake of that moment, also wanting to try to address this legacy. In April of last year, I set up a group called Heirs of Slavery with seven other people whose ancestors profited from the transatlantic slave trade. We encourage others to come forward, acknowledge this horrible history, get in touch with the Caribbean, and call on Britain’s government to sit down with Caribbean leaders and discuss the CARICOM ten-point plan for reparations.
There is a reparatory element to climate resiliency funding, and Britain has a historic debt to the Caribbean. This summer’s Hurricane Beryl was one of the most powerful storms that the Caribbean has ever seen this early in the season. It devastated Grenada’s islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique. It is an indirect legacy of slavery that people on these islands deal with increasing storms and higher sea levels. The ancestors of the people living on these islands were kidnapped and taken there. The former prime minister of Jamaica, P.J. Patterson, said to me, ‘Laura, the same winds that blew our ancestors from Africa now threaten us with the frequency and the strength of these storms.’
This is an interesting moment in Britain. I hope that this new British government will look differently at the question of the Caribbean and apologise for its historic links to slavery. It would perhaps open the way for King Charles to do the same. The King has described the legacies of slavery as a conversation whose time has come, but he can’t step ahead of the government of the day.
It means so much to be recognised by the place which launched me into the world and developed my intellectual curiosity. When I got the email congratulating me for an honorary degree from the Vice-Chancellor, I nearly dropped my coffee cup. My dad cried when he read the letter. I am absolutely thrilled, and it’s so meaningful that Bristol noticed my work and was proud. It’s a capstone. I can’t wait to be there with my family.