British society is drowning in a sea of confected guilt
by Rakib Ehsan, Telegraph:
Some are more interested in taking aim at long-standing institutions and heritage, as opposed to freeing people who remain locked in slavery.
With calls for the Church of England to increase its ‘reparations fund’ for its historical links to slavery from £100 million to £1 billion, NHS Lothian Board agreeing to ‘take action’ after a study revealed the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh has similar connections, and pressure on King Charles III to apologise for the British monarchy’s role in the Atlantic slave trade, one could be forgiven for thinking that we are drowning in a sea of confected guilt.
Only today, Rowan Williams said Britain should learn from the Bible’s honesty about historical issues like slavery, with the former Archbishop of Canterbury saying “violently self-justifying national narratives” prevent people across the world from facing up to the less pleasant aspects of their countries’ histories.
Of course, I would not be in the business of whitewashing British participation in slave-trading activities. Merchants from these islands played a significant part in transatlantic slave trade between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The history of the royal family includes the likes of William IV – who, before becoming King of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover in the summer of 1830, was a strong supporter of the pro-slavery lobby. The origins of the Church of England’s £10 billion endowment fund were partly traced to the Queen Anne’s Bounty. A financial scheme established in 1704 designed to augment the incomes of relatively deprived members of the clergy, it had invested considerable amounts in the South Sea Company – which supplied African slaves to the Spanish Americas.
There is no doubt that there are British institutions – including the monarchy and the Church of England – which benefited from slave-related endeavours in the colonial period. That is a part of our national history. What is also part of it is Britain’s unquestionably integral role in suppressing the international slave-trading system – even resorting to military campaigns to do so, along with diplomatic and humanitarian pressure. What is also part of it is the fact that the monarchy had influential figures such as Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh – who supported the abolition of slavery both in parliament and as president of the African Institution (formed to provide a viable refuge for freed slaves in Sierra Leone). During his presidency, he was joined by clergymen and aristocrats.
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