Britain has paid its price in the fight against slavery

SO-CALLED "decolonisation" is threatening to become expensive.

- Nigel Biggar

DISTORTED VIEW: Demands for 'decolonisation' reparations ignore the full facts

Last month the African Union joined the Caribbean Community in demanding reparations from the UK for "colonial crimes" — especially slavery. Caricom has already submitted a bill of £18trillion and the African continent’s claim is likely to be even higher.

Such decolonisation is already expensive for the Church of England, whose leadership has decided to spend an initial £100million on slavery-reparations after research apparently revealed that the Queen Anne's Bounty, an 18th-century fund supporting poorer clergy, had “links” with African enslavement through investment in the South Sea Company.

The Church, it seemed, had been part of the “multinational white establishment that deprived tens of millions of Africans of life and liberty”.

Except that it didn’t, for the researchers misunderstood the data. The Queen Anne’s Bounty didn’t invest in the company’s slave-trading operations at all. And those who did made no profit from them since they were consistently loss-making.