Ben O’Flanagan

If we rank the heroes and villains of the slave trade, the Church of England stands (alongside Quakers and Methodists) close to the top of the heroes’ table. William Wilberforce, who pushed through the legislation to extirpate the foul business, was moved by his Anglican faith. So was John Newton, the former slave trader who repented, composed Amazing Grace and ended his days as a Church of England curate. Thanks to them, and to hundreds of thousands of ordinary churchgoers who lent support to their campaigns, Britain not only abolished slavery in the parts of the world it controlled, but poured its blood and treasure into a long, gruelling and ultimately successful war against the slave trade everywhere else. Does that story smack too much of patriotism and of “white saviour complex”? Well, the hundreds of young British men who, acting on their faith, gave their lives to hunting down slave ships after 1807 were white and, in this case, were literally saviours. So were the Anglican missionaries who penetrated the African interior, often dying of tropical diseases, seeking to persuade local potentates to free their chattels. So, arguably, were the taxpayers who gladly approved the spending of 1.8 per cent of GDP annually between 1808 and 1867 on global eradication: the most expensive moral foreign policy in human history. That was meaningful restitution. Britain had been a player in the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. When, like John Newton, it saw that it had been wrong, it sought to make good that wrong by liberating as many remaining slaves as it could, diverting ships to hunt down the Guineamen even at the height of its life-and-death struggle with Napoleon. If slavery is your issue, you could help complete the Church’s abolitionist mission by taking the campaign to the countries where human bondage is most prevalent today: North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Afghanistan. But that does not carry the kudos of self-reproach.