Debate Over Church of England’s Slavery Reparations Plan Intensifies

The Church of England is facing criticism over its decision to allocate £100 million towards slavery reparations, with some historians questioning the basis of this commitment. This debate centers around historical interpretations and the Church’s financial history.

More than three years ago, a report published by the Church Commissioners highlighted potential connections between the Church of England and the transatlantic slave trade. This led to the announcement of a reparations initiative called “Project Spire”.

The controversy largely revolves around Queen Anne’s Bounty, a fund initiated in the early 18th century to aid financially struggling clergy within the Church. The critical question is whether this fund benefited from slavery-related profits.

Grant Thornton, a firm of accountants, was engaged by the Church Commissioners to investigate these claims. Their research concluded that Queen Anne’s Bounty had investments in the South Sea Company, which reportedly transported 34,000 enslaved individuals across the Atlantic.

By 1739, when the South Sea Company ceased its involvement in the slave trade, the Bounty had invested an amount equivalent to £443 million today, according to these findings.

Professor Richard Dale, an expert from the Royal Historical Society, disputes these findings. He asserts that “there is incontrovertible evidence that Queen Anne’s Bounty’s investments earned not one penny from the slave trade”.

In his writings for History Reclaimed, Dale explains that the South Sea Company had split into two distinct entities. One was involved in the slave trade, while the other focused on government bonds. It was the latter that Queen Anne’s Bounty invested in, he claims.

Dale emphasizes that confusing these two entities is a significant error: “The Commissioners’ advisers have confused two different companies, each with the words ‘South Sea’ in their name: the South Sea Company and the separately incorporated annuity company, the Joint Stock of South Sea Annuities … the report is guilty of an elementary gaffe by conflating two legally separate entities.”

He concludes that investments by the Bounty, whether in stocks or annuities, did not profit from the slave trade.

A survey conducted last December revealed limited support for the Church’s reparations plan. Among 500 Anglican churchgoers, 81% preferred that the Church use its funds for local parish support, while nearly two-thirds (64%) believed it was not the Church Commissioners’ role to address historical injustices such as slavery.

Nigel Biggar, an Anglican theologian and professor at Oxford, also criticized Project Spire. Writing in The Critic, he stated he could find no ethical basis for the Church of England to engage in slavery reparations.

“For example, why pick out British involvement in African enslavement as something extraordinary? Over more than a century-and-a-half from 1650 some Britons were involved in trading 3.258 million of the 12.75 million Africans transported across the Atlantic — just over a quarter of the total. Whereas in about 1850 the indigenous Fulani people in now northern Nigeria were running vast plantations where they employed 4 million African slaves all at once,” he said.

“Next, were the living and working conditions of slaves in the West Indies really much worse than those of industrial workers in the slums of early Victorian England?

“Further, what about all the Anglicans who spent their lives committed to abolishing slavery in the British Empire and suppressing all over the world — do their heroic efforts count for nothing?

“And, further still, as for the ‘intergenerational trauma’ allegedly suffered by the descendants of African slaves today, how come those descendants in Barbados are faring far better on average than Nigerians, some of whom are descended from slave-raiders, -traders, and -owners? Has the quality of postcolonial government nothing to do with it?”