Reparations for Slavery? A Moral and Practical Stupidity

Cognisant of its dwindling membership, the Church of England is in survival mode, adopting fashionable ideologies in an attempt to remain ‘relevant’ whilst maintaining a semblance of orthodoxy to keep the pew-dwellers happy. The latest example is of the Anglican charity, United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), pledging £7m to Barbados over the next 10 to 15 years in reparation for its historic connections to two slave plantations during the 18th and early 19th centuries. There is much that is problematic with this decision, which is amply demonstrated if taken to its logical conclusion.

The problems with the compensationists’ argument are moral and practical. If the USPG was less prone to sententious cant and more attuned to Kant, it would see that moral maxims ought to be those that can become universal laws applicable to all. By that principle, if the transatlantic slave trade’s descendants deserve compensation, then so do all descendants of slaves. The problem is the sheer number of people who potentially ought to be compensated. Slavery has been and is a universal human phenomenon that has existed for millennia. The transatlantic slave trade is one among many appalling examples of it. Should reparations be paid to all who can demonstrate-if they can-that their ancestors were enslaved? And how far do we attempt to go back? To the slave-based civilizations of the ancient world? Tracking down the descendants of everyone who has a slave in his or her lineage is a ludicrously impossible notion.

There is also an inconsistency to reparations demands. Whenever Gyana, Barbados or Jamaica demand reparations, they never require the descendants of the African empires that sold African slaves to white traders in the first place also to be tapped for compensatory cash. This is an uncomfortable fact that upsets the narrative that slavery is a uniquely white crime. Yet the historical evidence for African slave traders is abundant. For example, the seventeenth century African Queen Nzinga of Ndongo established a very lucrative slave trade with the Dutch. None of this is ever publicly acknowledged, lest timorous white liberal consciences, such as those of the USPG, are given hope that they might not be uniquely evil after all and not pay.

The USPG makes no mention, of course, of historical reasons to be proud. From 1833, the British government spent £20 million, which amounted to 40% of its annual budget, buying freedom for slaves within its Empire. In today’s money that is £20bn. To finance it, the government took out vast loans which were only just paid off in 2015! Of course, this is not good enough for the tin-rattling activists, for they say that the British government ought not have compensated the slave owners. But how else, without launching major wars, was the British government going to prise slaves out of the hands of their masters? Added to this is the cost of suppressing the transatlantic slave trade. Between 1807 and 1860, the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron seized around 1600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. Approximately 1587 men died serving with the West Africa Squadron. Where is their memorial? Certainly not in Georgetown, Bridgetown and Kingston. The USPG also appears to have forgotten that Anglican divines were prominent abolitionists: men such as William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson were instrumental in pushing through Parliament the anti-slavery Act of 1807.

Moreover, in the compensationists’ calculations, there is no acknowledgement of Britain’s financial generosity to the Caribbean through foreign aid. In January 2021, the UK pledged to give over the next four years £21 million to the Caribbean Development Bank’s Special Development Fund which provides life-changing projects for the poor.

There must come a point when people can say that what happened is now in the past and though past crimes must be acknowledged, and Britain’s role in slave trading and owning has been, it really is unfair to expect contemporary and future generations of British people to bear the guilt and financial cost of reparations for what their ancestors did. If the leaders of the USPG bothered to crack open their Bible, they might see that this is a divine principle. As Ezekiel 18:20 puts it: ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.’ But to expect the Church of England to take the Bible seriously these days is perhaps a stretch too far.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).

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