Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the church’s links to slavery were ‘shameful’ (Image: Getty)
plan for a £100million reparations fund to address its “shameful” links to the slave trade have come under fire in a major report.
It warns the project would use money intended for struggling parishes and is both “poorly justified” and “historically uninformed”.
The £100million pledge followed an investigation which found the church had benefited from investments in a company which transported slaves. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the denomination should “take action to address our shameful past”.
But a new report from Policy Exchange calls on the church to abandon this “ill-conceived enterprise”.
Lord Sewell, the former chairman of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, states in the report’s foreword that he suspects the Church of England wants to be on “the cool side of history”.
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The peer said that the church’s “charge into the reparations fray is an embarrassing symbolic gesture, akin to those footballers and politicians who were taking the knee”.
He added: “Rather than addressing the genuine challenges in our society today, the church allows itself to be dragged into the quagmire of a narrative about the legacy of slavery and systemic racism.”
An investigation initiated by the Church Commissioners found the Church’s investment fund – known in the 18th century as Queen Anne’s Bounty – had investments in the South Sea Company which were potentially worth more than £720million in today’s money. The company transported an estimated 34,000 enslaved people in “inhumane” conditions.
The think tank is concerned the project could set an international precedent for reparations which will add pressure on the Government and the Royal Family to take similar action.
Lord Biggar, an Oxford academic and clergyman who co-authored the report, argues Britain has already performed “penance”.
He said: “The British were among the first peoples in the history of the world to abolish both the slave trade and slavery. They went on to do penance for slavery by spending resources of money, ships, and lives in suppressing slavery worldwide for a century-and-a-half.”
Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, a co-author of the report, said: “Today’s advocates for reparations not only turn the past into another country, but into a morally reprobate country too. This is neither true nor just.
“Unlike the mass movement in support of abolition of slavery, the call for reparations today is a top-down elite project.”
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And Charles Wide KC, who also contributed to the report, said: “After many months, the project’s promoters have been unable to formulate a legal mechanism for its delivery. It has been pursued in the face of abundant authoritative critique and has widened the divisions between the Church’s leadership and hard-pressed Anglicans, ordained and lay, from whose essential work many millions of pounds would be diverted.
“It should be abandoned.”
However, Gareth Mostyn, the Church Commissioners’ chief executive, said: “This report features factual errors and fundamentally mischaracterises our project – including the research carried out by independent, professional historians and forensic accountants, which established the fact that our predecessor fund was invested in a slave-trading entity. The Board of the Church Commissioners determined that, as a responsible investor, it is entirely right that we learn from our history and respond appropriately to these shameful findings, and we are now in discussion with the Charity Commission about the establishment of a new fund for healing, repair, and justice, and are exploring such authorisations as may be required.”