The Guardian’s slavery links: it’s right to finally confront the wrongs of the past

‘Well done for acknowledging a great hurt – in a world where people seem to do much to cover up mistakes.’ Composite: rustemgurler/Guardian Design/Getty Images/iStockphoto

I have just read Katharine Viner’s article about the Guardian’s links to enslavement (How our founders’ links to slavery change the Guardian today, 28 March). I live in Martinique, a Caribbean island where France kept the black population in slavery until 1848, and some of my ancestors were slaves.

Just like Britain, France compensated slave owners, while slaves got nothing except freedom – with, in the case of France, the obligation to live on the plantation where they had been slaves in the first few years after abolition.