THE Church Commissioners risk attracting “widespread public contempt” in the event that they proceed with Project Spire, a gaggle of historians and General Synod members has warned (News,13 January 2023). The project is a £100-million fund arrange to profit 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 recommendation of other scholars, and reflect. To pay reparations on the premise that ‘everyone within the eighteenth century was guilty’ is not going to 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 other historians who’ve publicly criticised the research behind Project Spire. The paper incorporates an in depth 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) slightly than trading company stock. The researchers “confused” the 2 categories, they argue — something denied by the Professor of Imperial and Global History at King’s College, London, Dr Richard Drayton, who can also be 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 confer with Professor Drayton’s and others’ work, have argued that the excellence between several 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’s not possible to differentiate a pristine category of British national, or indeed European wealth, within the eighteenth century, innocent from any association with African enslavement and suffering.”
Professor Dale asserted within 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 “lots of of 1000’s” of British individuals who signed anti-slavery petitions from 1791 and “massively outnumbered” those that received compensation after Emancipation.
The History Reclaimed group warns: “If the Church proceeds with Project Spire on the premise of research that has not only confused the first investments made within the eighteenth century but which only mentions working people to make them fellow-travellers with slavery, it should have done a grave disservice to odd Britons each then and now. It will undoubtedly attract widespread public contempt for overlooking the remarkable contributions of the British working class within the constructing of recent Britain and within the ending of slavery, each — and it should have deserved it.”
This week, speaking in a private capability, Professor Drayton said: “There isn’t any proposal to ‘pay reparations’, within the sense of rendering some debt to the past, in the way in which 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 on the planet today which derived from Transatlantic Chattel Enslavement.
“This urgency is anchored in our Christian responsibilities in and for the current, that take care of the living which is the central message of the gospel, but can also be quickened by our recognition that enslavement-based wealth was foundational and central to the origins of the fashionable British economy, and, in small or larger part, to the Church Commissioners’ endowment and the wealth of the Church of England. It is each a recognition of fiduciary and civic responsibility and an act of religion towards a more just and type future world.”
In an announcement, 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 problem of historic links with a criminal offense against humanity that continues to affect our society to today. Our critics frame this as a culture war issue — in reality, we’re 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 use to the Charity Commission to authorise an ex-gratia payment under section 106 of the Charities Act 2011, on the premise of ethical obligation. The trustees and the Commissioners had not yet made that call, 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 in regards to the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme. “At the identical 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’s inside the charitable objectives allowable. How has that been allowed to occur?”
Ms de Cordova said that these were “two separate issues”.
It is known that five written questions on the project have been submitted by General Synod members.
