Sheray Warmington | Rustat statue stay – A landmark decision

In this edition of Reparation Conversations, a collaborative initiative between The Gleaner and the Centre for Reparation Research (CRR), The University of the West Indies (The UWI), the recent decision of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Ely in the United Kingdom (UK) to deny a petition to relocate a memorial commemorating Tobias Rustat from Jesus College Chapel, University of Cambridge, is featured.

The recent Caribbean tour of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was initially portrayed as a gift to former colonies of the British Empire in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. What was expected to be a grand display of soft royal power in the Caribbean was hastily rejected by both the Belizean and Jamaican governments, who said that they intended to exercise their right to self-determination and become fully independent of royal rule.

Some people protested, sending a message that an apology was due to the region from former colonial powers for the wrongs of indigenous peoples’ genocide, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and colonialism, from which members of the British Monarchy profited. The tour, for many in the Caribbean reparation movement, was a substantial success as it catapulted the movement to the centre stage of global justice discourses.

However, even as there was loud and exuberant public display of resistance and loud calls for reparation during the week of March 20, 2022 in the Caribbean, within the silent quarters of an ecclesiastical court in Britain, another critical blow was taken against the quest for full reconciliation and repair.

DENIED PETITION

On March 23, the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Ely denied a petition to remove a memorial of Tobias Rustat, from the Jesus College Chapel, at the University of Cambridge. Rustat, a 17th century Anglican clergyman, was an investor, alongside 107 others, in the Royal African Company (RAC), a prominent slave-trading company. Rustat eventually assumed a leadership position in the RAC, becoming director of the company in 1676, 1679, 1680. Described by Gray and Stubbings (2000) as an “unwavering royalist”, Rustat served King Charles II and became a benefactor to Jesus College – notably contributing £1,000 to acquire books in 1667. In 1671, he established a scholarship fund at Jesus College for orphans of clergymen from the Church of England.

Acknowledging his role in supporting slavery and the trade of enslaved peoples, petitioners requested that a plaque commemorating Rustat and his contributions to Jesus College be removed and relocated to a space in Easton Hall. They posited that given his involvement in the RAC, and the foundations it laid for the growth and ‘success’ of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, his memorial should be placed in a secular space rather than a place of worship and reverence.

In his ruling, Deputy Chancellor Hodge QC, who presided over the hearing, stated: “The widespread opposition to the continued presence of the Rustat memorial within the College Chapel is indeed the product of the false narrative that Rustat had amassed much of his wealth from the slave trade and that it was moneys from this source that he used to benefit the College. The true position … is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa … brought him no financial returns at all … and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College.”

Justice Hodge’s dismissal of the case based on the grounds that Rustat’s wealth from the trade in Africans was not used to fund the college not only disregards the need for accountability for slavery, but also ignores a significant aspect of the reparation discourse – the need to decolonise spaces in order to dismantle the structures of imperialism and colonialism that still maintain a grip on our social consciousness. A significant tenet of the reparation movement focuses on the idea of repair and reconciliation. It seeks to create spaces in which victims and their descendants are not forced to exist in environments that commemorate and give prominence to the violent perpetrators of crimes, but rather, situate them in appropriate spaces that will invite an educational examination of their rightful place in history.

HIGHLY PUBLICISED

The petition to remove Rustat’s memorial from a place of worship and prominence follows in the same vein as the highly publicised removal of slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, UK, and Cecil Rhodes’ statue from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In all three instances, the protesters were not seeking to “cancel” these historical figures but rather appropriately situate and accurately acknowledge their real roles in history. The first step in the process of decolonising public spaces of imperial untruths is to acknowledge the harm caused by these colonial actors on the victims of slavery and colonialism and to then re-educate current generations of the harm caused by their work. The decolonisation process in the reparation movement removes the prominence given to the human rights abusers of our ancestors and accurately describes them as aggressors and perpetrators of crime in the discourse on slavery and colonialism.

The failure of the judge in Rustat’s case illustrates yet another instance of the purposeful distancing and dismissal of the harmful role that many prominent European figures played in the destruction of lives and nations. It prevents a truthful interrogation of the legacy of these individuals by insisting on keeping the rose-tinted perspective of the true impact of slavery and colonialism on Africans and the African Diaspora. More significantly, by reaffirming the prominent place in history of slavers like Rustat, a message is being sent to descendants of the victims of these atrocities that the lives of their ancestors, and the continued societal and racial pain and forms of discrimination their descendants now suffer, are of no importance. It speaks to the erasure of generational black and brown pain and the reaffirmation of a status quo that continues to subtly glorify the atrocities of the past.

Jesus College did the right thing despite the negative outcome that leaves Tobias Rustat in place; and despite the failure of their efforts to get two prominent experts, including the director of the CRR, admitted to give evidence. However, the outcome for the reparation movement on March 23, 2022, brings to the fore two key points: 1) the reparation movement in the Caribbean is gathering strength and prominence; and 2) we still have a long and difficult journey ahead. Nevertheless, setbacks aside, we take solace in the fact that the movement and its many supporters will continue to persist for justice and reparation for Africa and the African Diaspora.

Sheray Warmington is a research fellow, at Centre for Reparation Research, The University of the West Indies. Send feedback to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm.