The Church of England will aim to turn a £100m financial commitment into a £1bn fund to address the legacy of slavery in order to reflect the scale of “moral sin”.
The church should work in partnership with other organisations to create the fund that will be used to invest globally in black-led businesses and provide grants, says a report from an independent group of advisers commissioned by the C of E.
The £100m initially earmarked by the Church Commissioners was insufficient “relative either to the scale of the [commissioners’] endowment or to the scale of the moral sin and crime”, it said.
The Church Commissioners, the body that manages the C of E’s huge financial assets, accepted the report in full. However, the commissioners are not increasing the £100m investment but are aiming to attract co-investors to increase the fund’s value.
Gareth Mostyn, the chief executive of the Church Commissioners, said £100m was the “appropriate financial commitment … at this stage” while ensuring that they could honour existing commitment to parishes and other church activities. The commissioners would “at some point in the future consider whether to invest more”.
A £1bn fund would dwarf moves made by other UK institutions to address the legacy of slavery.
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, said the report was “the beginning of a multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement”.
The Independent Oversight Group was set up after the C of E publicly acknowledged its historical benefit from the international slave trade in January 2023. The origins of the C of E’s £10bn endowment fund were partly traced to Queen Anne’s Bounty, a financial scheme established in 1704 based on transatlantic chattel slavery.
At the time, Welby said the church must “take action to address our shameful past” and the Church Commissioners announced a £100m fund over the following nine years.
The oversight group said the proposed fund was “very small compared to the scale of racial disadvantage originating in African chattel enslavement” and the timeline for delivery should be accelerated.
Instead, it proposed a “fund for healing, repair and justice” with a target of £1bn. The group said the fund should aim to attract capital from three sources: the Church Commissioners; “other institutions once complicit in African chattel enslavement”; and contributors who “outraged by injustice, wish to make common cause against racial inequality”.
Among those likely to be approached to join the initiative are pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, ultra-high net worth individuals and foundations.
The consequences of slavery had “caused damage so vast it will require patient effort spanning generations to address”, the report said.
The fund will be black-led, and will invest in members of disadvantaged black communities, it said. It “will aim to back the most brilliant social entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare givers, asset managers and historians. It will not pay cash compensation to individuals or provide grants to government bodies.”
The report also recommended that a “significant share” of the Church Commissioners’ extensive property portfolio “increases socioeconomic mobility across racial lines by launching and expanding initiatives to provide competitive and/or below-market leases to black businesses”.
It called for a fresh apology from the C of E for “denying that black Africans are made in the image of God and for seeking to destroy diverse African traditional religious belief systems”.
The Right Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett, the bishop of Croydon and the group’s chair, said: “No amount of money can fully atone for or fully redress the centuries-long impact of African chattel enslavement, the effects of which are still felt around the world today.”
The impact of slavery persisted today, she said, and was “measurable and apparent in everything from pregnancy and childbirth outcomes to life chances at birth, physical and mental health, education, employment, income, property, and the criminal justice system. We hope this initiative is just the start and is a catalyst to encourage other institutions to investigate their past and make a better future for impacted communities.”
The historian and broadcaster David Olusoga told the BBC: “I’m very pleased to see the church recognising that it has a catalytic potential. This is an organisation that is hugely respected around the world that can inspire other organisations to make the same leap into their own history.”
Last year the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, apologised for the role the newspaper’s founders had in transatlantic slavery and announced a decade-long programme of restorative justice with more than £10m ($12.3m, A$18.4m) dedicated specifically to descendant communities linked to the Guardian’s 19th-century founders.
