Kirk ‘should apologise for links to slave trade’

… but there’s no need to feel guilty about it, insists church report

THE Kirk should apologise for links to the slave trade, a report has said.

the Church of Scotland was urged to deliver an ‘acknowledgment and apology’ to a future General Assembly.

the Faith Impact Forum report also said that while an apology should be forthcoming, it ‘does not seek to lay blame or make people today feel guilt for actions that happened in the past’.

there was also no commitment made to paying reparations for its links to slavery despite benefiting from millions of pounds through the trade.

Some of its ministers and elders received historical inheritances linked to the slave trade, while some architectural features on the Kirk’s buildings were funded by merchants. Memorials were also dedicated to them. the report said physical features, including a clock tower, memorial stones and stained glass windows, should not be removed but instead used as an educational tool.

the report also recommended that the church should make a commitment on ‘becoming anti-racist’, create a page on its website about the links to slavery and commission a work of art to ‘start conversations about the legacy of slavery’.

the research will be presented to the General Assembly next month and covers a period between the 1707 Act of Union and the abolition of slavery in Britain’s colonies in the West Indies during the 1830s.

Researchers examined church buildings for physical evidence of slavery connections and studied historic and archival records, databases and the results of a questionnaire on church history and architecture sent to congregations.

the report found the Kirk holds a multi-million-pound fund that can be connected to compensation paid by the British Government when slavery was abolished.

Around £20million was paid to slave owners in compensation for their loss of ‘assets’ when slavery was abolished across most of the British empire in 1833.

One beneficiary was John Lamont, a sugar planter and enslaver who lived in trinidad and received £9,000. his wealth passed to descendant Augusta Lamont, and when she died in 1950 she left her share of the family estate to further the work of the Kirk in the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll.

the sale of the property and its contents was completed in 1990 and in 1992 more than £1.5million was received by the church. the fund is now valued at around £5.5million.

Glasgow Cathedral was also found to have memorials to merchants who profited from tobacco and sugar in the West Indies.

Old Gourock and Ashton Parish Church in Renfrewshire bears the coat of arms of Gourock, which is widely understood to depict an enslaved man.

But researchers who spent 18 months investigating the links to the transatlantic slave trade said: ‘We have learned that stories of slavery and abolition are often nuanced and not always clear cut.’

One well known proponent of abolition, Dr Robert Walker, led the Presbytery of edinburgh to petition parliament in 1788, but had also benefited from an inheritance after the death of his brother John, who was a merchant in St Lucia.

the report said: ‘We are mindful of the number of “sons of the manse” who profited, some significantly, from the enslavement of their fellow humans, whilst also recognising the commendable campaigns of many presbyteries and synods as part of the abolition movement.

‘If the church is committed to seeking racial justice then we must seek to acknowledge the origins of such funds that the church either received for its own use or distributed for others.’

‘Stories of slavery not all clear cut’