Reparations Rethought. Or Reframed? #189. 11/02/2025
Out of Many, One People
Welcome, to an attempt to set an on-going debate in a new frame, bringing in questions about ‘abuse’ arising from the current Synod debate.
Reparations Rethought. Or Reframed?
‘The Case Against Reparations: Why the Church Commissioners for England must think again’, by Charles Wide KC, the Rev’d Professor Lord Biggar and Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert’ is the first coherent and thorough push-back against the archiepiscopally inspired and Synod agreed ‘Project Spire’ to make reparatory payments to Caribbean or Caribbean-descended people for the evils of Britain’s importation and enslavement of African peoples in our Caribbean colonies. I want to look at the substance of their case, and then suggest how the debate might better be re-framed,
What is the substance of their case?
Firstly, that the core of the proposal – that through its investment of Queen Anne’s Bounty in the South Sea Company the Church of England directly profited from a company that engaged in slaving – is untrue, despite now largely being taken for granted. (Thus, Professor David Olusoga’s wild claim that ‘The Church of England derived a part of its vast wealth from the murder and exploitation of Africans’ – The Times, 06/04/2024). Wade takes up the arguments of those who have reviewed the Church Commissioners’ belief that the Church did profit, claiming that their case is frequently speculative and tentative, and forwards the critical analysis that the investment was in annuities, which were not based on profit from slave trading. In fact the church actually lost money from this investment.
Secondly, Wide argues that the whole process was the outcome of convictions formed in advance of analysis, flowing from Archbishop Welby’s statement at General Synod in February 2020 that ‘there is no doubt . . that we are still institutionally racist’. To my knowledge no Church of England leader or official has ever spelled out the specific and systemic procedures that disadvantage racial minorities but most likely has worked on the unjustified assumption that inequalities of outcome - as in appointments to senior leadership – themselves indicate racism in the institution. (A misreading which then leads on to the risk-laden policy of seeking out minority people to appoint to such posts). The result was a failure to draw differing viewpoints into the discussion and rubber-stamp pre-formed conclusions.
Thirdly, the question of the whole legitimacy of the reparation project is raised. Wide chronicles how it has become stuck by the Charity Commissioners questioning of whether such a payment falls within the remit of the Church Commissioners use of their funds, Seghal argues for its divisiveness amongst the church’s membership. Both see the intended expenditure as undermining the Commissioners’ primary responsibility for the support of parochial ministry in England, and a diversion, and most likely loss of confidence, from the Church’s message of salvation.
Fourthly, it is argued – notably in Lord Biggar’s review of the historical evidence, especially of Professor Michael Banner’s ‘Britain’s Slavery Debt: Reparations Now!’ (reviewed in blog # 176, 15/10/2024) – that Project Spire is based on a ‘flawed, narrowly selective, anachronistic historical understanding’ (p 8) that has failed to acknowledge the ubiquity of slavery until very recent times, has exaggerated the economic benefit that industrialising Britain gained from the practice, and failed to recognise the sacrifice of not only money but also lives that Britain subsequently expended on stopping the trading of slaves across the Atlantic.
Finally, in the background to the whole discussion are the outrageous proposals of the Oversight Group (discussed in pp 20-25) set up to oversee the disbursement of the funds leading to ‘the scandalous over-reach’ (p3, from Lord Sewell’s Introduction) of a ten-fold increase in the fund to £1 billion (though also seeking funding from other sources), extending its remit to well beyond the Caribbean, and seeking to finance a variety of black-led business enterprises. Intoxicated by its seemingly untrammelled power, it also sought to reshape the Church’s very understanding of its evangelistic mission (see blog # 151, 12/03/2024 on ‘The Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice’). Set up deliberately to express but one understanding of the reparations debate, and despite far exceeding its brief, the proposals were accepted by Synod. Perhaps inevitably, given that once a group is set up to speak for black people, then rejecting its recommendations is too easily vulnerable to the charge of racism. (Presumably based on the neo-racist assumption that black people, unlike white people, can’t make mistakes).
‘The Case Against Reparations’, then, brings a sharp critical eye to the deficiencies – financial, legal, historical, pastoral – of the Commissioners’ Project Spire. In its refusal to accept the Church’s default ‘cultural socialism’ (see blog # 170 04/08/2024 on Eric Kaufmann’s ‘Taboo’), and guilt-driven proposals it helpfully adopts a stance of dry rationality.
However, I want to go on to argue that being ‘dry’ is not just a commendation but also a criticism. It is an analysis that fails to gauge the full and, yes, emotional nature of the issue. Central to the question is the nature and damage – lasting until the present – of Britain’s slavery in the Caribbean.
In response to Michael Banner, Biggar writes ‘the humiliation and cruelty of British slave-trading and slavery was unique neither in kind or degree’ (p 45). There are three criticisms to be made of this statement. Firstly, the word ‘slavery’ refers to a continuum of brutality and injustice. At the one end it could be relatively humane (Philemon and Onesimus may be an example), at the other end it could involve the extremes of barbarity and sadism that we encounter, for example, in the diaries of Thomas Thistlewood. Overall British slavery in the Caribbean was very much at this depraved end of the continuum. It was exceptionally inhumane. Secondly, it was clearly racist. Slave-owner and slave were physically and culturally different, such that it could be speculated that they were of different species. It was easier to let slip any bonds of inter-human sympathy or remorse; easier to develop a mind-set where conscience or restraint eroded away. Whilst other instances of slavery based on both physical difference and ontological dehumanisation are not unknown, nonetheless slavery in the Caribbean in this respect was unusually racist. Thirdly as opposed to all other slave societies, those of the Caribbean islands had no activity other that producing material for consumption elsewhere by means of slave labour. The were in Banner’s dramatic words ‘slave labour prison death camps’ (p 21). Or as Orlando Patterson has written: ‘Jamaica and the other West Indian islands are unique in world history in that they present one of the rare cases of a human society being artificially created for the satisfaction of one clearly defined goal: that of making money through the production of sugar’ (in the introduction to ‘The Sociology of Slavery). In short, they were sociologically unique.
From this perspective, the creation of the slave societies in the Caribbean did not just involve the brutal exploitation of forced physical labour, it also involved the attempted and partially successful destruction of cultures, languages and religious practices. Instead, new enslaved communities were developed that were powerless and with their inferiority inscribed into them. Crucial in this respect is whether ‘today’s descendants of slaves two centuries ago continue to suffer the effects of ancestral enslavement’ (p 34). Biggar seems sceptical. I believe it is central to the issue. Further on I shall discuss how this might be understood as ‘abuse’ and how we might respond. But here I want to stress that the implied argument in ‘The Case Against Reparations’, namely ‘that was then, and we are very sorry; but this is now, and we need to move on’ is inadequate in taking the full measure of this debate.
Re-framing the Debate.
I want to argue that the terms in which the debate has been set need re-framing. It has been argued from the Caribbean, notably by Professor Hilary Beckles, that Britain has a ‘debt’. That has been met by the Church of England in a desire to respond with ‘justice’. But for a situation that occurred over two centuries ago those two terms are inappropriate. As Biggar argues ‘the riotous jungle of history’ (p 46) has so overgrown the past context that no sensible financial amount can be arrived at; for example, the descendants of slaves in present-day Barbados are considerably better off than are the descendants of those in West Africa who enslaved and sold their ancestors. As with debt, so with justice. Both words can only work given a high degree of precision. But as attempts to compute a specific amount of debt involve so many arbitrary variables as to be valueless, so too it is not possible to assess what might be regarded as just behaviour by descendants of one group of people, of whom a small percentage once committed great injustices, against another group of people, whose descendants are now several generations further on from the original victims.
The debate needs to be taken away from financial computations and quasi-legal fictions about justice and re-framed in relational terms, which bring to the fore concepts of repentance and reconciliation. My forefathers were part of a nation that was responsible for the brutal and heinous mistreatment of other peoples, and which profited from that enslavement. Even though it is arguable that my particular ancestors directly benefitted virtually nothing from it, yet as a moral collective - believing that the Christian faith justifies such an understanding - I and all my fellow English people (given we are working here with a C of E situation) have benefitted. So we are responsible to both ourselves and those whom we have damaged to attempt reconciliation.
Even at a recent and personal level, defining and characterising ‘abuse’ is difficult, how much more at a corporate and historically different level. But just as for many individuals the abuse that they suffered has scarred them permanently, so I believe the abuse of centuries of enslavement has scarred the societies that emerged, creating a brittleness of identity. Again, at the level of personal abuse, how individuals respond to it can vary enormously. Today’s Church Times reports discussion at Synod of response to the appalling physical abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, with one victim wanting ‘justice pursued relentlessly’, but another warning against prioritising ‘the voices of the most vociferous and litigious’. The Introduction to The Case against Reparations by Lord Tony Sewell is written by someone who sees no need for reparatory action in response to the evil committed against his forefathers, but for others of their descendants it is still a running sore which requires the healing of a substantial response.
Surely the first step must be some major public expression of guilt and remorse for the behaviour of our forefathers. I have argued previously (‘Reparations 3, blog # 177, 22/10/2024) that this is best done by a permanent memorial. It is remarkable that an estimated £137m is to be spent on a memorial to the Holocaust filling up a part of Victoria Tower Gardens next to the House of Lords, despite being perpetrated by another nation. Yet our own historical evil – not wholly dissimilar from the Holocaust in its extent and inhumanity - is unremarked. Such a memorial would extend and make visible and permanent previous isolated acts of confession, apology and repentance. It would say to descendants of our victims that we take seriously and feel genuinely that our nation has perpetrated a very great evil. In the Church Times report of the Synod debate on Smyth’s abuse, one contributor referred to ‘missing something that is deeply rich in our biblical tradition and that is symbolic acts of repentance: physical demonstrations or rituals performed to express remorse for sin and a desire to return to God’. I believe that can also apply directly to our remorse and repentance over slavery, chiefly as an expression of the heart of the church and nation before God, but also as a direct statement to the descendants of those who we so shamefully mis-treated that we publicly recognise before them the harm and evil that we have perpetrated.
Is that enough? How adequate are confession and repentance alone in response to very serious abuse, or ought some sort of financial payment also to be involved? If we decide to abandon any attempt to correlate a ‘debt’ owed by Britain with the labours of the enslaved or the ensuing profits, then how might we arrive at a figure that carries some weight? Does any attempt at a figure demean the abuse, and bring back to the surface what is best left dead and buried? Or does avoiding a figure for repayment make any other act of contrition seem like a lightweight evasion of taking responsibility in hard, costly material terms? With recent, personal abuses there is no agreed tariff that can be said to match the harm done. So too with slavery,. Franz Fanon rejected the idea as institutionalising a status of permanent dependence, but for others avoiding any payment is seen as a cynical get out, suggesting there is no real remorse.
So once attempts to correlate the amount with the actual historical injustice are abandoned, any figure arrived at is arbitrary and contestable. Ultimately it is a figure plucked out of the air by the guilty party as their decision, in absence of any court or procedure that might determine a more ‘objective’ or appropriate amount. In this respect, the Church Commissioners figure of £100 million can return into the debate, not as the outcome of their apparently flawed attempt to arrive at a ‘just’ amount, but simply as an offer which whilst well short of the vast amounts that Caribbean governments are now claiming from the nation, is for the church costly and sacrificial, symbolic of sincere contrition. Biggar quotes the moral philosopher Onora O’Neill: ‘Compensation is required for present harm caused by past wrongdoing’, and that is in line with my argument above’. Biggar then allows for the Church to give ‘direct charitable aid toward the British postcolonial Caribbean’ (pp 46,47).
Staying with the suggested amount, including or in addition to a permanent memorial, seems to be the most appropriate response. Whilst the Church of England did not most likely gain direct benefit from trading in slaves, it was the established Church and in that respect holder of the national conscience (‘the Church of England may be seen to stand, in some sense, as proxy for the nation’, p 8). It is the Church of a nation that was deeply involved in slavery, and itself gained indirect benefit from the slavery-generated wealth of some of its benefactors, as well as from a rising tide of national prosperity in which slavery in the Caribbean played at least some part.
Once ‘just’ attempts to pay off the Church’s ‘debt’ are abandoned, then we can face differently our complicity in a great evil which not only treated people at the time with appalling cruelty and brutality, but has also left a traumatised legacy which can not be fully defined or agreed upon but which has sufficient substance to be responded to by public repentance, largely symbolic compensation, and a desire for respectful and gracious reconciliation.