Archbishop of Canterbury criticises delay in removing plaque in chapel linked to slavery

PA

The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised the delays in taking down a plaque associated with the slave trade from a Cambridge University chapel.

The Most Rev Justin Welby addressed the debate over the Jesus College’s plaque of Tobias Rustat, an investor in a series of slave trading companies and a college benefactor, on the wall of the chapel.

The college has proposed the memorial be moved, and a permit for its removal was submitted to the Diocese of Ely in December 2020.

An ecclesiastical court hearing is being held to determine whether the university should relocate the plaque from the chapel to a permanent exhibition space in the college.

Speaking at the General Synod, Mr Welby said the Church of England is taking too long to remove such memorials.

“We need to change our practices,” he said. “Why is it so much agony to remove a memorial to slavery?”

The marble plaque dedicated to slave trade financier, Tobias Rustat, hanging in Jesus College chapel, Cambridge. (PA)

Rustat, a Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II from 1650 to 1685, was a wealthy courtier who - alongside the King - became an investor in companies linked to the slave trade.

He was also elected to head the Royal African Company, claimed to be the largest transatlantic slave trading operator, for three terms in 1676, 1679 and 1680.

Jesus College now has a black woman, Sonita Alleyne, as its master. She has to look at the monument to the slave trade “every time she sits in her stall”, Mr Welby said.

Mr Welby asked why it was “so difficult” when the college was only asking to move it to an exhibition space where it can be interpreted and explained.

It follows comments from the chair of the Archbishops’ Racial Justice Commission - formed in response to the anti-racism taskforce report, ‘From Lament to Action’ - who called the lack of response to systemic racism in the Church of England “chilling”.

“Imagine what it is to go into a place of worship to look up and to see a monument to someone who was a party to the enslavement of your ancestors,” said Labour peer Lord Boateng.

“We are members in churches which have themselves benefitted from the horrors of the slave trade. That is the reality.”