Trevelyan: ancestor's Irish famine role may merit compensation

The former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan has said her family would consider paying compensation to Ireland because of an ancestor's role in the Great Famine of the 19th century.

- Rory Carroll

Her great-great-great-grandfather Sir Charles Trevelyan, a senior British government official, was among those who "failed their people" during the humanitarian catastrophe in the 1840s, she said.

Trevelyan's comment opened a potential new front in her campaign for restorative justice, which so far has focused on the slave trade. The former BBC correspondent quit the corporation to campaign full-time and in February travelled with relatives to Grenada to apologise and offer £100,000 in reparations for the family's "ownership" of 1,000 enslaved people on the Caribbean island.

She has urged King Charles and the British government to follow suit and apologise for historical links to the slave trade.

Charles Trevelyan was the senior British Treasury official in charge of famine relief when potato crops failed in Ireland, leading to the death of 1 million people and the emigration of a further 2 million.