Church ‘should build memorial to slavery’
Internal report by antiracism body suggests monument for victims in order to combat ‘injustice’
THE Church of England should atone for benefiting from the “evils” of slavery by creating a memorial to victims, its anti-racism commission has found.
Lord Boateng was appointed as head of the Archbishops’ Racial Justice Commission in July last year, leading a board of independent advisers to scrutinise policies and root out systemic racism.
When he was appointed to lead the three-year review, the 71-year-old, who became the UK’S first black Cabinet minister as chief secretary to the Treasury in 2002, called racism “a gaping wound in the body of Christ’s church”.
In the commission’s first biannual report, published yesterday, Lord Boateng laid out initial plans to combat “the hurt of those who have experienced and are still experiencing racial injustice at the hands of the Church of England”.
His suggestions include establishing a memorial to the victims of slavery, to help counteract the fact that the Church of England did not “call out the evil nature of what was happening”.
He also called for a “more diverse panel of judges” on the Consistory Court, diversity training for current judges and a means-tested legal aid fund so poorer people were not dissuaded from bringing cases to remove monuments linked to slavery.
The report said the slave trade is “among the worst atrocities ever committed by human beings against each other”, adding: “There is still no national memorial to the victims and those who resisted slavery and this needs to be rectified.”
The report comes as the subject of reparations is one of growing significance, particularly in the Caribbean.
There have been mounting calls for the Royal family to apologise for its role in perpetuating slavery. The Prince of Wales has called for the transatlantic slave trade’s history to be taught and understood as widely as the Holocaust.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were recently confronted over reparations on their Caribbean tour, which was criticised for its colonial overtones.
Lord Boateng’s report noted the calls for reparations, and welcomed a “forensic exercise in accounting” to find the extent to which the Church of England benefited financially from the trade.
He also warned that the ruling not to remove the memorial plaque to Tobias Rustat, a man who funded the slave trade, in the chapel of a Cambridge college, failed to address the “hurt such monuments cause”. As a result of the expensive Consistory Court process through which the ruling was made, Lord Boateng suggested a means-tested legal aid fund be created, so wealth is not a barrier to legal action.
The body will release two reports a year until it concludes in October 2024, when a final report will be published.
The Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Rev Justin Welby, said the report “identifies the difficult and long path to eradicating the pain and injustice felt by so many, but provides us with hope that through the commission’s work, these issues will be addressed”.