Lord Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, has continued his crusade against reparations for Britain's role in slavery and false historical narratives with an interview for fellow theologian Ian Paul's Psephizo blog.
Lord Biggar spoke of how the call for reparations for slavery and colonialism, which have rumbled on for decades, grew in frequency and volume following the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in America.
However, despite recognising slavery as “an appalling evil”, Lord Biggar pointed out that it was hardly the preserve of the British colonial empire, or even the European powers in general. Rather, slavery has been practised by every culture and civilisation across the globe.
According to some historians, the largest slave economy ever created was actually that of the Comanche tribe of native Americans.
Lord Biggar also noted that Europeans, as well as practising slavery, were also the victims of slavery, with their peoples at various times by Vikings, Romans and Islamic slavers.
Slavery has been practiced with varying degrees of brutality, he continued: “Enslaved African boys were often brought to the Arab world to serve as eunuchs. To that end, they had their genitals forcibly removed with a razor and the resultant wound cauterized by boiling oil. Nine out of ten of them died in the process.”
In many cases, ostensibly “free” people, such as factory workers in the early industrial revolution, lived lives which could be just as harsh and brutal as that of a technically enslaved person.
This, he argues, “reminds us that inhumane treatment was widespread and not at all confined to Europe or to formal slaves".
"And it reminds us that history contains an ocean of injustice, which is beyond human rectification. We are not gods; we cannot raise the murdered dead. Our instinctive desire for justice is one of the main fuels for belief in a God who can," he said.
Lord Biggar questioned the narrative put forward by reparations advocates that the descendants of slaves suffer a form of generational trauma, arguing that such claims have never been proven and further noting, that nearly everyone on earth can look back to their ancestors and see a miserable life.
Reparations would privilege historical black suffering over the suffering of every other race on earth, he argued.
Lord Biggar further argued that Britain was almost unique in expending massive resources in ending the slave trade, pointing to research that suggests the country may have spent more on destroying slavery in the 19th century than it actually made from slavery in the 18th.
The Church of England has committed £100 million towards black-led projects to atone for its alleged profiteering from slavery. Lord Bigger questioned the historical validity of such claims, pointing out that most historians doubt slavery played a huge role in Britain’s (and the Church's) later prosperity.
Despite this consensus, the Church continues to use as its source the views of a known Marxist historian, Eric Williams, he said.
"Those who present the ‘centrality’ of slavery to industrial growth as a simple fact are either ignorant or disingenuous," said Lord Biggar.
The Church’s decision to earmark funds towards reparations has also been criticised by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who said the funds should go towards ordinary parishes as the heart and soul of the Church.
