The moral case against slavery reparations

Last December, as reported by The Sunday Times, the Shadow Home Office Minister Katie Lam and 26 other MPs co-signed a letter warning that the Church Commissioners’ slavery reparations plan (to make “a funding commitment of £100 million, to invest in a better future for all, working with and for communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery”) risked setting a “worrying precedent”.

The letter also explained that: “at a moment when churches across the country are struggling to keep their doors open – many even falling into disrepair – it’s wrong to try and justify diverting £100million to a project entirely separate from those core obligations.”

At the same time, the Church of England’s own anti-reparations movement has become increasingly vocal in its opposition to the Church Commissioners’ 2024 plan. That movement has been particularly critical of the Commissioners framing slavery reparations as a response to “research [that] showed that Queen Anne’s Bounty, a predecessor fund of the Church Commissioners, had links (through investments it made and benefactions it received) with transatlantic chattel slavery.”

Overall, in the UK, the slavery reparations debate has become so politically and ethnically polarised that, if you’re black (as I am), or liberal, it is often assumed that you support reparations.

That is why, within the UK evangelical circles that I frequent, I’m a wayward “poster child” for the anti-reparation movement. A “poster child” because some of my evangelical friends who oppose reparations have cited my own opposition as proof that their arguments are not covertly racist.

Nevertheless, in that role, I might be considered wayward because my arguments against reparations significantly differ from and challenge those put forward by prominent leaders of the Church of England’s anti-reparations movement, such as Lord Nigel Biggar and the Revd Dr Ian Paul.

For example, last September, Lord Biggar’s book, Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt, was published*. One of Biggar’s key arguments against the Church Commissioners’ rationale for reparations is that Queen Anne’s Bounty did not realise any profit from the slave trade because the South Sea Company (in which it invested) operated at a loss.

Easily, this is the weakest anti-reparations argument that I’ve heard. As an analogy, consider a pension fund that has bought shares in a company that was later found to be using forced labour. Does the moral issue with investing in such a company simply disappear because the fund happened to lose money on the shares? Of course not. However, the debate has become so polarised and intractable that many who oppose reparations will wholeheartedly endorse such a flawed and morally incoherent argument.

In contrast, I would cite the anti-reparations rationale of Menachem Begin (the late Israeli politician and former Prime Minister of Israel), which I espouse, as an example of a morally coherent and principled rejection of reparations.

In a speech to the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), Begin declared: “Let me present a simple example: Shimon sets fire to the house of Ruben’s father and Ruben’s father dies in the fire. What can Ruben do? He might forego the house since his father burned to death in it. Or he might go to court, declare himself a litigant and demand that he be compensated for the cost of the house, on the basis of the court decision. But in which barbaric tribe would you find him turning directly to the murderer and demanding compensation for the house from him?”

Of course, regardless of his moral coherence, in relation to slavery reparations, adopting Begin’s position casts the British Empire in a very unfavourable light; and those who are proud of Britain’s imperial past would take issue with that. When they do, I’ve come across two key fallacies that prevail among them.

Firstly, some resort to conflating state liability with personal guilt. Both the “my particular ancestors didn’t do it” and the “a son will not bear the iniquities of his father” (Ezek.18v20) arguments fail because reparations relate to liability, rather than culpability. Also, as with post-WWII Germany, it would be the British state that would be liable (as a legal person) for reparations, rather than individuals. Otherwise, it would be impossible to justify the use of 20th- and 21st-century taxpayers’ money to service the long-standing public debt incurred by the £20 million that the British Government borrowed in 1833 to compensate slave-owners.

Secondly, it is argued that the statute of limitations invalidates slavery reparations. Yet international law (e.g., the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, which the UK co-authored) rejects such limitations in relation to crimes against humanity, which includes chattel slavery.

There are indeed good reasons to oppose reparations, but, thus far, I haven’t seen any that cast the British Empire in a particularly positive light.

*See the review of Reparations here.