THE Church Commissioners hope that others will join their efforts to “repair the breach” of the transatlantic slave trade, and construct their impact-investment fund to £1 billion, it was revealed on Monday.
At the beginning of last 12 months, the Church Commissioners pledged £100 million to create an investment fund that may ultimately aid communities harmed by transatlantic chattel slavery (News, 10 January 2023).
This followed a means of analysing the extent to which Queen Anne’s Bounty, a part of the endowment now managed by the Church Commissioners, had been invested within the slave trade.
In a press conference at Lambeth Palace Library on Monday, the Bishop of Croydon, Dr Rosemarie Mallett, said that a recent report set out a “vision of daring investment in communities impacted by African chattel slavery”.
A report produced by an independent oversight group sets out recommendations for the way the fund needs to be arrange, and what it should put money into. The chief executive of the Church Commissioners, Gareth Mostyn, confirmed that the recommendations had been accepted.
The group, which was chaired by Dr Mallett, began its work in August last 12 months. It incorporated individuals with a various range of skilled backgrounds and cultural heritages (News, 24 July 2023).
The section of the report that provoked probably the most questions, and has generated probably the most headlines, pertains to an ambition for the fund to grow tenfold, reaching £1 billion.
The Church Commissioners “share” this ambition, Mr Mostyn said on Monday, but their financial commitment remained similar to when it was first announced, at £100 million — although he didn’t rule out the prospect of further funds being allocated in the long run.
One way wherein the fund could grow is by recruiting partners to affix within the Church Commissioners’ scheme, said one among the oversight group, Geetha Tharmaratnam, who’s the chief impact investment officer for the WHO Foundation.
The social campaigner Patrick Vernon, who was also a member of the group, expressed the hope that other institutions would follow the instance of the Church in making a “journey”, starting with a recognition of complicity in past wrongs, and dealing to repair a few of the damage.
The word “reparations” was not used when the fund was announced in January 2023, and, on Monday, Dr Mallett suggested that it was too narrow a term for what the fund hoped to realize.
People often consider reparations as a “zero-sum game”, she said, whereas this was about “reparatory justice”. Rather than simply a payment made in an try to right a incorrect, the Church was embarking on a deeper process from which “everybody advantages”.
“This isn’t about parents’ giving children sweeties when the parents feel they’ve done something incorrect; that is about ensuring that the best way wherein we engage in the long run with impacted communities will likely be of the now, and for the then. And so it’s working at repairing the breach of what has been done previously,” she said.
This initial endowment from the Commissioners needs to be processed over five years, somewhat than the nine originally envisaged, the oversight group has said, and the team overseeing the fund needs to be incorporated, and funded, by the Commissioners, but operate with its own governance.
There was significant work to be done in figuring out the main points of the programme, Mr Mostyn admitted, speaking with the Church Times. The oversight group had provided helpful recommendations about how the fund should operate, nevertheless it was now the job of the Commissioners to work out the detail of tips on how to achieve it, he said.
For her part, Dr Mallett characterised the work done by the group as “a daring and hope-filled programme which seeks to bring about culture change within the work of the Church Commissioners and, concomitantly, within the Church of England”.
Asked how she hoped the fund would shape the C of E on the parish level, Dr Mallett said that she hoped a few of the investments and grants would involve churches and church schools.
“I’m an easy parish priest; so I see things on the local level,” she said. She identified, nevertheless, that the work of racial justice didn’t occur just in diverse areas, corresponding to Brixton, where she was formerly a vicar, but additionally in Wells, “where there usually are not that many individuals of color”. Last 12 months, a trail was launched which marks the town’s involvement within the slave trade (News, 20 March 2023), which Dr Mallett referred to for example of how engagement could “help all people”.
On the topic of when the very first investments could be made, Mr Mostyn cautiously suggested that funds could begin to be deployed by the top of 2024. The goal, Dr Mallett said, was to not rush, but to “plan well for what’s going to be long-term investment”.
