No-one alive today is personally responsible for the famine.
Surely we’re a successful and independent enough country that we don’t need compensation for historical wrongs.
Barely a story here at all. She paid reparations for sugar cane plantation in Grenada. Then when asked why she wouldn’t do it for Ireland, she said she would consider it if asked by the government. I don’t think begging for a few hundred K when you’re rolling in money is a good look.
>The Trevelyan family recently agreed to donate more than £100,000 to the Caribbean island of Grenada to compensate for their ancestors’ historic role in the slave trade.
>Asked why the Trevelyan family would pay compensation to Grenada over slavery and not to Ireland over the famine, Ms Trevelyan said her ancestors were personally profiting from the sale of sugar cane harvested by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, while Sir Charles was carrying out government policy.
>She added: “If the Irish government said the Trevelyan family are liable for what Sir Charles Edward did, then of course that would have to be considered.”
We don’t need compensation. If they feel guilty for something. They could invest or contribute to local charities but not because of something that was done by people to people that are no longer living but because they want too.
How about they fund a museum in the UK instead to educate them about it over there seem as so few even know about it.
Extinction of the name would do me
Regardless of the appropriateness of reparations, in the context of the famine or indeed in any context, the comparison is interesting: reparations based on personal (ancestral) responsibility versus collective (governmental) responsibility; reparations based on present economic deprivation versus present economic development; reparations based on events that occurred 200 years ago versus 150 years ago; reparations based on chattel slavery versus reparations based on other forms of slavery, or other forms of violent, fundamentally destructive policy. Maybe it’s a bit of a gotcha, but it’s interesting to think about comparisons and how different factors might be weighted.
Do ye have revolut
This is utter rubbish. Trevelyan’s descendant bears no responsibility for the famine, no more than any of us bear the responsibility for the failings of any of our ancestors. We are only responsbile for our own actions and how we each interact with the world. This whole ‘reparations’ movement is hysterical, wokeist nonsense.
We’re doing the same to the Normans for serfdom. The Romans are next – slavery and baths – and earlier still, as you know , Northern England was invaded by the Irish so that’ll be on the cards for reparations.
Ridiculous. It happened in the 1840s. It was a piece of incompetence driven by arrogance. No one living is to blame
Compensation? No.
Diplomatic cooperative development of infrastructural projects to show a degree of equality and fraternity and respect between these two sister islands? Hell yeah.
While I appreciate the sentiment of working towards reparations for slavery etc. I do wonder just how loaded you have to be able to afford to quit working and campaign for it full time.
I like to think us Irish have a bit more cop on then our American friends when it comes to the whole compensation nonsense.
This type of nonsense has to be rejected, we’re coming up on nearly 200 years since the Famine. Yes it would be fantastic if it was properly acknowledged and the actions taken by those in power better understood, however seeking monetary compensation is utterly ludicrous.
Six counties worth of compensation?
Wasn’t he killed by Bond ?
We don’t need the money personally, but perhaps open a museum in the UK, or sponsor a university bursary to support students of history or a related subject.
As part of this the scholar could visit schools and discuss the issue with young students.
Sponsoring inter schools debating teams to participate in an annual national competition on the issues of famine, racism, inequality etc and how An Gortha Mór is still important in this area to both Ireland and Britain would also be worth exploring. Do the same here – we need to discuss such matters too.
I will go out on a limb and assume the Trevelyan family does not have the 400 trillion pounds needed to compensate for the potato famine.
Good, ideally more families are forced to pay reparations to those they have wronged and profited off of.
Like at this point, I don’t think the common sense answer is to wring all the money we can out of descendents of the feckers who contributed to the sorrows of the famine.
But if they are willing to fund things that have a long term positive benefit, like muesums for better education, affordable subsided food kitchens and food banks, housing/rebuild innovations that restore older buildings and the very real abandoned/declining irish towns and islands that dot lesser populated regions, and don’t take any profit, then that would be a lot better.
Rn we don’t need large sums of money without purpose, we need funded projects that help educate, feed and house the people in modern day ireland who are losing or have lost their culture and place here.
Who would the money go to? It can’t go to the people who died, because they’re dead. And the descendants of the survivors could be anyone, there are millions of people with ancestry from the 1840s all over the world. So you’re just giving money to random people for no reason.
Fuck off, Ireland has its own money now, Britain should worry about itself in the present
How much / where do you start with compensation for something like that?
£100,000 to Grenada because “her ancestors were personally profiting from the sale of sugar cane harvested by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean” seems ludicrously small.
How about working out the amount of hours/days that the slaves likely worked, the amount of them, and give them the current minumum wage for that time.
Alternatively give them the lowest wage recorded during that time, and the interest.
£100,000 is nothing.
Regarding compensation for the great hunger, it seems she is mostly opposed to that as doesn’t see it as their fault or problem. Her distant relative was working under orders at the time.
There wouldn’t be enough compensation anyway.
Fair play to them for speaking out about the role their ancestors had in both the famine and the slave trade in Grenada. But donate the reparations to organisations currently working to eradicate both scourges in todays world. That would be a fitting tribute to the pain and suffering endured in the past.
“Would consider” I should hope so
Reparations doesn’t really make sense, why should you pay/receive for something your ancestors did or were victim of before you was alive? It always ends up going in the pockets of corrupt officials.
If that’s the case the UK could file for reparations from the modern day Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Franks, Normans and Romans as well as asking the Danes, Norwegians and Swedish to pay up as well. Ireland could do the same with a few exceptions.
The Germans recently tried to do this with Namibia and started in 2015 but of course, the local tribes asked for more and then the history of money mismanagement in Namibia is rife.
Investing in things to educate people about this stuff is the best answer. A great example being the Terror Museum in Hungary that shows their history of oppression in Fascist and Communist governments.
Won’t happen. We’re white, remember?
It’s a very noble thing to offer and to help reconciliation for the horrible crimes committed, whether knowingly or not.
Most people would not say sorry for the crimes their own father committed, never mind their great, great, great, grandfather..
What’s with all this compensation bullshit?
Trevelyan gets too much attention. He only become known due to Cecil Woodham-Smiths book. People didn’t know his name until 50 years ago. Charles Wood deserves more blame.
30 comments
No-one alive today is personally responsible for the famine.
Surely we’re a successful and independent enough country that we don’t need compensation for historical wrongs.
Barely a story here at all. She paid reparations for sugar cane plantation in Grenada. Then when asked why she wouldn’t do it for Ireland, she said she would consider it if asked by the government. I don’t think begging for a few hundred K when you’re rolling in money is a good look.
>The Trevelyan family recently agreed to donate more than £100,000 to the Caribbean island of Grenada to compensate for their ancestors’ historic role in the slave trade.
>Asked why the Trevelyan family would pay compensation to Grenada over slavery and not to Ireland over the famine, Ms Trevelyan said her ancestors were personally profiting from the sale of sugar cane harvested by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, while Sir Charles was carrying out government policy.
>She added: “If the Irish government said the Trevelyan family are liable for what Sir Charles Edward did, then of course that would have to be considered.”
We don’t need compensation. If they feel guilty for something. They could invest or contribute to local charities but not because of something that was done by people to people that are no longer living but because they want too.
How about they fund a museum in the UK instead to educate them about it over there seem as so few even know about it.
Extinction of the name would do me
Regardless of the appropriateness of reparations, in the context of the famine or indeed in any context, the comparison is interesting: reparations based on personal (ancestral) responsibility versus collective (governmental) responsibility; reparations based on present economic deprivation versus present economic development; reparations based on events that occurred 200 years ago versus 150 years ago; reparations based on chattel slavery versus reparations based on other forms of slavery, or other forms of violent, fundamentally destructive policy. Maybe it’s a bit of a gotcha, but it’s interesting to think about comparisons and how different factors might be weighted.
Do ye have revolut
This is utter rubbish. Trevelyan’s descendant bears no responsibility for the famine, no more than any of us bear the responsibility for the failings of any of our ancestors. We are only responsbile for our own actions and how we each interact with the world. This whole ‘reparations’ movement is hysterical, wokeist nonsense.
We’re doing the same to the Normans for serfdom. The Romans are next – slavery and baths – and earlier still, as you know , Northern England was invaded by the Irish so that’ll be on the cards for reparations.
Ridiculous. It happened in the 1840s. It was a piece of incompetence driven by arrogance. No one living is to blame
Compensation? No.
Diplomatic cooperative development of infrastructural projects to show a degree of equality and fraternity and respect between these two sister islands? Hell yeah.
While I appreciate the sentiment of working towards reparations for slavery etc. I do wonder just how loaded you have to be able to afford to quit working and campaign for it full time.
I like to think us Irish have a bit more cop on then our American friends when it comes to the whole compensation nonsense.
This type of nonsense has to be rejected, we’re coming up on nearly 200 years since the Famine. Yes it would be fantastic if it was properly acknowledged and the actions taken by those in power better understood, however seeking monetary compensation is utterly ludicrous.
Six counties worth of compensation?
Wasn’t he killed by Bond ?
We don’t need the money personally, but perhaps open a museum in the UK, or sponsor a university bursary to support students of history or a related subject.
As part of this the scholar could visit schools and discuss the issue with young students.
Sponsoring inter schools debating teams to participate in an annual national competition on the issues of famine, racism, inequality etc and how An Gortha Mór is still important in this area to both Ireland and Britain would also be worth exploring. Do the same here – we need to discuss such matters too.
I will go out on a limb and assume the Trevelyan family does not have the 400 trillion pounds needed to compensate for the potato famine.
Good, ideally more families are forced to pay reparations to those they have wronged and profited off of.
Like at this point, I don’t think the common sense answer is to wring all the money we can out of descendents of the feckers who contributed to the sorrows of the famine.
But if they are willing to fund things that have a long term positive benefit, like muesums for better education, affordable subsided food kitchens and food banks, housing/rebuild innovations that restore older buildings and the very real abandoned/declining irish towns and islands that dot lesser populated regions, and don’t take any profit, then that would be a lot better.
Rn we don’t need large sums of money without purpose, we need funded projects that help educate, feed and house the people in modern day ireland who are losing or have lost their culture and place here.
Who would the money go to? It can’t go to the people who died, because they’re dead. And the descendants of the survivors could be anyone, there are millions of people with ancestry from the 1840s all over the world. So you’re just giving money to random people for no reason.
Fuck off, Ireland has its own money now, Britain should worry about itself in the present
How much / where do you start with compensation for something like that?
£100,000 to Grenada because “her ancestors were personally profiting from the sale of sugar cane harvested by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean” seems ludicrously small.
How about working out the amount of hours/days that the slaves likely worked, the amount of them, and give them the current minumum wage for that time.
Alternatively give them the lowest wage recorded during that time, and the interest.
£100,000 is nothing.
Regarding compensation for the great hunger, it seems she is mostly opposed to that as doesn’t see it as their fault or problem. Her distant relative was working under orders at the time.
There wouldn’t be enough compensation anyway.
Fair play to them for speaking out about the role their ancestors had in both the famine and the slave trade in Grenada. But donate the reparations to organisations currently working to eradicate both scourges in todays world. That would be a fitting tribute to the pain and suffering endured in the past.
“Would consider” I should hope so
Reparations doesn’t really make sense, why should you pay/receive for something your ancestors did or were victim of before you was alive? It always ends up going in the pockets of corrupt officials.
If that’s the case the UK could file for reparations from the modern day Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Franks, Normans and Romans as well as asking the Danes, Norwegians and Swedish to pay up as well. Ireland could do the same with a few exceptions.
The Germans recently tried to do this with Namibia and started in 2015 but of course, the local tribes asked for more and then the history of money mismanagement in Namibia is rife.
Investing in things to educate people about this stuff is the best answer. A great example being the Terror Museum in Hungary that shows their history of oppression in Fascist and Communist governments.
Won’t happen. We’re white, remember?
It’s a very noble thing to offer and to help reconciliation for the horrible crimes committed, whether knowingly or not.
Most people would not say sorry for the crimes their own father committed, never mind their great, great, great, grandfather..
What’s with all this compensation bullshit?
Trevelyan gets too much attention. He only become known due to Cecil Woodham-Smiths book. People didn’t know his name until 50 years ago. Charles Wood deserves more blame.