THE Church Commissioners have defended the research that they commissioned into whether their funds benefited from the transatlantic slave trade, after its findings were criticised by historians.
The document Independent Responses to Claims Criticising the Historical Basis of the Church Commissioners’ Research has been compiled from contributions by two historians: Dr Richard Drayton, Professor of Imperial and Global History at King’s College London, and Dr Helen Paul, a lecturer in economics and economic history at the University of Southampton.
Dr Drayton is a member of the Church Commissioners’ oversight group, established to advise on the £100-million “impact investment fund” (the Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice) to mitigate the long-term consequences of their endowment’s connection with the transatlantic slave trade (News, 24 July 2023). Dr Paul was engaged by the Commissioners, with the late Professor Arthur Burns, to conduct the original 2019 research, including reviewing early ledgers and other original source documents (News, 17 June 2022).
Since the oversight group released recommendations for the Commissioners (News, 8 March 2024), “some public figures have published articles refuting aspects” of the research, the new response document says. “This criticism has given rise to cynicism for some about the validity of the foundational research underpinning the Church Commissioners’ response.”
One example is a report by the Policy Exchange, written by Charles Wide KC, a retired Old Bailey judge and Reader; the Revd Lord Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford; and Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, an academic, campaigner, and director of the advocacy group, Don’t Divide Us (News, 7 February). Another is a paper by Professors Robert Tombs and Lawrence Goldman published last year on the History Reclaimed website, in addition to several media articles in national titles.
The latter paper drew on the work of Professor Richard Dale, an emeritus professor of the University of Southampton. In an article for the Church Times last year, he argued that Queen Anne’s Bounty, established in 1704, did not profit from the transatlantic slave trade, citing the lack of profits for the South Sea Company (SSC) as evidence, and an award of £100,000 made by Spain in 1750 “in final recognition of the losses incurred” (Comment, 22 March 2024).
The Commissioners’ response, referring to a dissertation by Dr Victoria Sorsby, argues that the 1750 payment was made “for the SSC giving up the significant profits, actual and potential, which it had enjoyed through its commercial privileges”.
But, in a letter to the Church Times this week, Professor Dale quotes directly from Dr Sorsby’s thesis to counter this claim. There is, he writes, “compelling evidence” that the trade was unprofitable for the company.
Professor Dale had also argued last year that the managers of the Bounty employed an investment strategy that “avoided economic exposure to the slave trade”, investing in SSC annuities (government-backed debt instruments) rather than trading company stock.
The Commissioners’ response argues that this distinction between types of investment is “unreasonable”: “we simply have not yet done the research to account for what kinds of cross-subsidy occurred under the waterline . . . at the level of the firm there was a reciprocity between these investment vehicles.”
It states: “We must begin with confronting the ‘Merchant of Venice’ problem: it is impossible to distinguish a pristine category of British national, or indeed European wealth, in the eighteenth century, innocent from any association with African enslavement and suffering. . .
“The public revenue of the British state in the eighteenth century, which allowed the government to pay a rent to the annuity holders, depended in significant part on excise taxation on sugar, tobacco, indigo, and other enslaved-produced commodities. The entire contemporary money supply . . . was based on precious metals either acquired via the slave trade or produced by enslaved workers in Brazil and Spanish America.”
In 2023, Professor Goldman, an emeritus fellow in history at the University of Oxford, argued on History Reclaimed that the importance of the Atlantic slave trade to the Industrial Revolution had been exaggerated.
The Commissioners’ response document argues that he is “not in command of the development of the historiography over the last 40 years”. It also argues that there is “abundant statistical evidence that racialised inequality in the UK has a profound and negative impact on British people of colour. . . To live in a body which is racialised as ‘black’ is to be born with poorer life chances, to be marked as dangerous, twice as likely to be unemployed.”
In an appendix, Professor Drayton argues that the history of the Anglican Church is “entangled directly and indirectly” with the long history of the slave trade’s contribution to the British economy. There is, he writes, “much more to be uncovered, in particular in the history of dioceses such as Bristol and Bath and Wells”.
He concludes with a quotation from Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London from 1723 to 1748, who told slave-owners that “Christianity and the embracing of the Gospel, does not make the least alteration in Civil Property . . . but in all these Respects, it continues persons just in the same State as it found them.”
Professor Drayton writes: “Given that the Bishops in the House of Lords voted uniformly against the Emancipation Bill in 1833, it is unfortunately not possible to say that it was not typical of the conduct of the Church. It is against this background that Project Spire has its mission, and its necessity.”
More than a year has passed since the publication of the Oversight Board’s recommendations. The Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice was expected to be operational by the end of last year; but, in February, the Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, told the General Synod: “We are currently working through the essential, valuable regulatory processes required to establish the new fund.” This included discussions with the Charity Commission, which began in February in 2023.
Last month, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova, told the House of Commons that “informal engagement” with the Charity Commission had concluded, and that, “subject to the approval of trustees, the Church Commissioners intend to make an application to authorise an ex-gratia payment under section 106 of the Charities Act 2011 on the basis of a moral obligation.”
Letter, page 15
