King Charles Should 'Apologize' for Royal Family's Involvement in Slave Trade, Says Former BBC Reporter

"There would be a great healing power to an apology for slavery and some kind of reparative justice strategy from the King," Laura Trevelyan tells PEOPLE

Former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan, who quit her job to join the Caribbean's fight for reparatory justice, wants King Charles to apologize for the royal family’s historic involvement in the slave trade.

Trevelyan, 55, spearheads a group of British families who want to make reparations for their ancestors' participation in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. In February 2023, Trevelyan gave $127,000 of her pension savings to the government in Grenada (which will be used to help fund education initiatives) after she learned her family once owned 1,000 slaves in the Caribbean nation.

And she would like Charles, 74, who has supported an investigation into the royal family's ties to slavery, to follow suit.

“I would hope very much that in the coming years, he can apologize for the royal family’s historic links to slavery and make a meaningful financial gesture that would be seen as reparative,” Trevelyan tells PEOPLE. “But what that figure is, I have no idea.”

During a visit to the Bahamas in 2021, Charles expressed his anguish over the crimes of the past, referring to the "appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history." And during a trip to Kigali, Rwanda, last year, he said in a speech, "I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many, as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery's enduring impact. Many of those wrongs belong to an earlier age with different – and, in some ways lesser – values. By working together, we are building a new and enduring friendship."

Charles' son and heir Prince William has done the same, speaking in Jamaica when he and his wife Kate Middleton were on a tour of the Caribbean in March 2022.

"I want to express my profound sorrow. Slavery was abhorrent. And it should never have happened.” he said.

Charles and William, 41, are both avid supporters of recognizing the achievements and contributions of the Windrush generation. In the 1940s and '50s, Caribbean immigrants were invited by the U.K. government to live and work in Britain to help rebuild the nation after WWII.

Related: King Charles and Queen Camilla Will Acknowledge 'Painful' Past During State Visit to Kenya

Echoing Charles' speech last year, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson tells PEOPLE, “This is an issue that His Majesty takes profoundly seriously. As His Majesty told the Commonwealth Heads of Government Reception in Rwanda last year: “I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many, as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery’s enduring impact.”

“That learning process has continued with vigour and determination since His Majesty’s Accession. As one part of it, the Royal Household is supporting Historic Royal Palaces' independent research project that is exploring, among other issues, the links between the British Monarchy and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade during the late seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries, by giving the researcher access to the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives.”

Britain was a prominent enslaver and many aristocratic families made their fortunes in the slave trade and the industries that used slaves. For Trevelyan, her family’s historical links to slavery were unknown to her and her relatives until around 2016 after the University College London published a list of families who received compensation for being slave owners. (She points out that any fortune has not materialized in the more recent generations who have all worked in professions without vast inherited wealth.)

Related: King Charles and Queen Camilla Arrive in Paris for Start of State Visit to France

For the royals, it is a complicated issue. While Charles, who will travel to Kenya later this week for an official state tour alongside Queen Camilla, supports the inquiry into the royal family's involvement in the slave trade, as a constitutional monarch, he has to act on the advice of the government. Thus, whatever his personal thinking about the wrongs of the past may be, he cannot offer an official apology without sanction from politicians who would be tied to what would possibly follow — such as demands for significant reparations.

While Charles has expressed “regret without saying sorry,” Trevelyan says, “presumably there's a memo somewhere in Whitehall which says you can't apologize because if you do, that opens you up for liability.”

Trevelyan, who was a political correspondent during her long and successful career at the BBC, says, “[The King’s] clearly doing as much as he possibly can and as a constitutional monarch who can't step ahead of the position of the government. But he is also Supreme Governor of the Church of England. And the church has apologized for its historic links to slavery and set up a hundred million pound fund.”

“Moreover he's the head of the Commonwealth. There would be a great healing power to an apology for slavery and some kind of reparative justice strategy from the King. So I wait with interest to see what he’s going to do.”

The organizations of Caribbean nations, called Caricom, has estimated that Britain and fellow slave trading nations France, Spain and Denmark, should pay $33 trillion in reparations. The organization has a 10-point plan that maps out what countries should do to make amends for the horrors of the past.

The Dutch government has apologized for its historic role in slavery and, in June, the country's King Willem-Alexander followed suit.

"So, it’s possible to do," Trevelyan says from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y.C. "And it is not just possible, but it's important to do. And the sky hasn't fallen in, in the Netherlands. That means it could happen in Britain.”

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Researchers recently told the Washington Post that there was a contract between Britain’s Queen Anne and King Philip V of Spain in the early 18th century. It involved the slaves being shipped across the Atlantic — and they were branded with a crown resembling the St. Edward crown used in coronations, including that of King Charles in May. Moreover, King William III — the original purchaser of Kensington Palace — was given shares in the Royal African Company by notorious slave trader Edward Colston.

“Clearly the royal family's wealth today is to some extent, based on its involvement in slavery. We don't know to what extent. We can only guess,” Trevelyan says.

It should start with the government, she continues.

“They should at least engage in negotiations with Caricom on the basis of their plan," Trevelyan says. "They're the most indebted countries in the world, and they're also now threatened by climate change. So I would argue there could be a big reparative justice element to climate resiliency funding.

"Nobody would be in the Caribbean today, were it not for their ancestors being shipped there by our ancestors.”

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