STEPHEN GLOVER: I’m so furious about the Church’s £1bn reparations

By Stephen Glover for the Daily Mail Published: 20:44 EST, 5 March 2024 | Updated: 20:53 EST, 5 March 2024 The night before last, I awoke with a start and couldn’t go back to sleep. Had I drunk too much? Possibly, but that wasn’t the cause of my insomnia. I was raging inwardly over the latest idiocy of the Church of England — the Church my father and several relatives have served as priests, and in which, despite all that has happened, I still worship. An internal body described as an independent oversight group has recommended that the C of E should pay £1 billion in reparations to atone for its historic links to slavery. Previously the Church had pledged to stump up £100 million, which some thought pretty steep. What are these historic links, you may ask? In the early 18th century, the Church of England profitably invested in the South Sea Company, which transported 34,000 slaves across the Atlantic over a 30-year period. Cash-strapped Slavery was an abominable evil, and one could certainly lose sleep contemplating man’s inhumanity to man, while marvelling that the Anglican Church of 300 years ago should have briefly been the beneficiary of such...