THE Church Commissioners risk attracting “widespread public contempt” if they proceed with Project Spire, a group of historians and General Synod members has warned (News,13 January 2023). The project is a £100-million fund set up to benefit communities affected by the historic transatlantic slave trade.
In a paper published on the History Reclaimed website on 26 June, the group urges the Church to “pause” the project, and to “seek the advice of other scholars, and reflect. To pay reparations on the basis that ‘everyone in the eighteenth century was guilty’ will not stand historical and public scrutiny.”
Its members include two General Synod members, Jonathan Baird (Salisbury) and the Revd Dr Ian Paul (a member of the Archbishops’ Council), and several historians who have publicly criticised the research behind Project Spire. The paper contains a detailed response to the points made in a document published by the Commissioners in May, Independent Responses to Claims Criticising the Historical Basis of the Church Commissioners’ Research (News, 6 June).
Its chief argument is that the managers of Queen Anne’s Bounty employed an investment strategy that avoided economic exposure to the slave trade, investing in Joint Stock of the South Sea Annuities (government-backed debt instruments) rather than trading company stock. The researchers “confused” the two categories, they argue — something denied by the Professor of Imperial and Global History at King’s College, London, Dr Richard Drayton, who is also a member of the Commissioners’ oversight group, established to advise on Project Spire.
The matter was debated at length in a heated exchange of letters between historians in The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) in May, after an article by Professor Robert Tombs, also a member of the History Reclaimed Group, which drew on the work of Professor Richard Dale (Comment, 22 March 2024).
The Commissioners, who refer to Professor Drayton’s and others’ work, have argued that the distinction between different types of investment is “unreasonable”, given the potential for cross-subsidy and reciprocity — something as yet unresearched, they acknowledge. “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.”
Professor Dale asserted in the TLS that there was no “reciprocation”, prompting Professor Drayton to cite a 1751 Act of Parliament that refers to “reducing the interest upon the capital stock of the South Sea Company”. A letter from Professor Laurence Goldman highlighted the “hundreds of thousands” of British people who signed anti-slavery petitions from 1791 and “massively outnumbered” those who received compensation after Emancipation.
The History Reclaimed group warns: “If the Church proceeds with Project Spire on the basis of research that has not only confused the primary investments made in the eighteenth century but which only mentions working people to make them fellow-travellers with slavery, it will have done a grave disservice to ordinary Britons both then and now. It will undoubtedly attract widespread public contempt for overlooking the remarkable contributions of the British working class in the building of modern Britain and in the ending of slavery, both — and it will have deserved it.”
This week, speaking in a personal capacity, Professor Drayton said: “There is no proposal to ‘pay reparations’, in the sense of rendering some debt to the past, in the way that Germany after 1919 was compelled to pay for what it did in 1914-18. The proposal addresses present and future: the Church Commissioners are creating the Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice, committing under one per cent of its assets to the work of repairing that racialised injustice in the world today which derived from Transatlantic Chattel Enslavement.
“This urgency is anchored in our Christian responsibilities in and for the present, that care for the living which is the central message of the gospel, but is also quickened by our recognition that enslavement-based wealth was foundational and central to the origins of the modern British economy, and, in small or larger part, to the Church Commissioners’ endowment and the wealth of the Church of England. It is both a recognition of fiduciary and civic responsibility and an act of faith towards a more just and kind future world.”
In a statement, the Commissioners said: “In continuing to make false claims, refusing to correct mistakes, and cherry-picking arguments, our opponents seem tone-deaf to the theological underpinnings of our moral obligations. Our work focuses on how a faith-based, Christian investor addresses the issue of historic links with a crime against humanity that continues to impact our society to this day. Our critics frame this as a culture war issue — in truth, we are acting in faithful service of the Gospel.”
On Thursday of last week, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova MP, reiterated that, subject to the approval of the trustees, the Commissioners intended to apply to the Charity Commission to authorise an ex-gratia payment under section 106 of the Charities Act 2011, on the basis of moral obligation. The trustees and the Commissioners had not yet made that decision, she said.
Sir Desmond Swayne, the Conservative MP for New Forest West, said that, earlier that morning, several MPs had “lobbied for expenditure to repair their churches”, and that Ms de Cordova had encouraged them to lobby the Government about the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme. “At the same time, the Church has already spent £5 million on this project, with the aspiration of taking it to £1 billion, when the Charity Commission has yet to deliver its verdict on whether that is within the charitable objectives allowable. How has that been allowed to happen?”
Ms de Cordova said that these were “two separate issues”.
It is understood that five written questions about the project have been submitted by General Synod members.
