Archbishop of Canterbury reveals his ancestral hyperlinks to slavery
The Archbishop of Canterbury has revealed his family’s ties to slavery.
The Most Reverend Justin Welby disclosed that his ancestor owned enslaved people on a plantation in Jamaica and was compensated by the British government when slavery was abolished.
In a personal statement, Dr Welby reaffirmed his commitment to addressing the legacies of slavery.
The Church of England’s most senior bishop revealed he recently made the discovery that his late biological father, Sir Anthony Montague Browne, who was a private secretary to Winston Churchill, ‘had an ancestral connection to the enslavement of people in Jamaica and Tobago’.
Montague Browne, the son of a British army colonel, was born in May 1923. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then joined the RAF. He died in 2013 aged 89.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, disclosed that his ancestor owned enslaved people on a plantation in Jamaica and was compensated by the British government when slavery was abolished
Sir Anthony Montague Browne, who was a private secretary to Winston Churchill, ‘had an ancestral connection to the enslavement of people in Jamaica and Tobago’
The Church of England last year announced it was creating a £100 million fund to address the legacy of slavery
Britain’s role in the slave trade began in 1562 and by the 1730s the country was the biggest slave-trading nation on the planet.
A parliamentary bill to abolish slavery failed to pass in 1805 – for the 11th time in 15 years.
But parliament outlawed the practice two years later, with a further bill passed in 1833 that banned the slave trade throughout the British Colonies.
The Church of England last year announced it was creating a £100 million fund to address the legacy of slavery, with a separate report calling for that to be increased to £1 billion to deal with the ‘scale of the moral sin and crime’.
At the time, Dr Welby described the move as ‘the beginning of a multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement’.
His revelation on his family’s links came less than a week after he warned that changing the law on assisted dying would put the most vulnerable.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the Church of England’s most senior bishop said ‘the pressure to end one’s life early would be intense and inescapable’ if the law is revised.
