MEET THE AUTHOR

ALEX RENTON explores a dark period in his ancestry in his new book Blood Legacy: Reckoning With a Family’s Story of Slavery

How did you come to write the book?

I’m an investigative journalist, and I’ve always been interested in issues around empire and history. My grandfather was a quite well-known Scottish historian called Sir James Fergusson. He was the keeper of the records of Scotland, and had family papers dating back to the 16th century because his ancestors had been judges and lawyers and soldiers. About four years ago I was looking in his catalogues of this mass of documents, and the words Jamaica and Tobago kept coming up. I discovered what he’d partially catalogued, but hadn’t really told any people about: that our family had been slave owners from the 1760s to the end of slavery in 1834.

What did you discover about the slaves on their plantations, and how did it make you feel?

The first time I turned up an inventory of the Tobago plantation in 1777, and saw the hard facts written down – children called Johney, Colin and Flora with their prices beside them, and immediately underneath the mules and the horses, and that a horse was worth more than a child – I felt physically nauseated. However, there were a lot of things in the documents that were more shocking in a way. As I got deeper into them I realised that I’d started with this kind of belief that maybe there was a ‘decent’ way to be a slaver, but that was very naive. What they did was shocking in the 18th century, and shocking today. It’s not a question of applying our modern values to the past.

Do you feel that you have a moral responsibility because of your family legacy?

I think responsibility’s the wrong word. I feel shame about the fact that my culture, my society, is so ignorant of what happened, and shame that we discount the fact that it’s still important – that the slavery story isn’t over, that modern-day racism against black people and inequality come directly from slavery.

You’re donating money, including the profits from this book, to charities in the Caribbean and England. Why did you decide to do this?

I don’t think I had any choice, really. I’m very lucky. I have the privilege of access to this private archive. I couldn’t possibly make a profit out of my family’s activities as slavers, again. My family and other families that I’ve spoken to are now donating money. We can’t possibly in any sense repay the damage that we did. But I do think that people like us need to at least say, “We do acknowledge that it was wrong, we do acknowledge that it’s still important, and we do acknowledge that no one’s ever said sorry.”