05 Sep 2026
issue 05 September 2026
Comments
I have a suggestion for those opposed to Project Spire, the Church of England’s plan to put £100 million into an investment fund to benefit those communities ‘affected by historic slavery’. Bear in mind that none of the arguments against it has had an impact to date. Suggesting that this money would be better spent repairing roofs and stained-glass windows has left the Church Commissioners unmoved. Trying to assuage their guilt by pointing out that the Church’s financial investment in the transatlantic slave trade was negligible – and yielded a loss, not a profit – also falls on deaf ears. So why not club together and pay for a trip to Zanzibar instead?
I’ve just returned from the East African archipelago, which was a slave trading hub in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was struck by how well-disposed the locals are to the British, particularly the Anglican church. On a family trip to a spice farm, our guide lit up when he discovered we were from the UK and told us that Zanzibar was far better off as a British protectorate from 1890 to 1963 than it had been under Omani or Portuguese control. He was particularly effusive about Edward Steere, the third Anglican Bishop of Zanzibar and a prominent abolitionist, who arranged for the purchase of the former slave market in Stone Town, Zanzibar’s capital. In its place he built a cathedral, cementing his status as a local hero. Admittedly, the C of E didn’t actually pick up the tab – the land and building were paid for by the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. But the notion that the Church should pay reparations for its complicity in the slave trade would come as a shock to Bishop Steere.
