Behind the cowardice and hypocrisy which many institutions are showing as they give obeisance to Black Lives Matter about any connection with the slave trade lies a dread word — reparations. Activists seek to claim actual financial liabilities payable to existing human beings for alleged, centuries-old wrongs. The institutions — Oxbridge colleges, for example — are terrified. They hope to deflect attention by babbling about ‘decolonising’ the curriculum and by ‘taking the knee’. Glasgow University promised last year to pay £20 million. It won’t work. Those who grovel will be made to grovel much, much more.
Jesus College, Cambridge, has tried to handle these matters quietly. One of its greatest benefactors was Tobias Rustat, a royalist who bravely assisted the escape of the future King Charles II. He remained a courtier to the restored king and made a great deal of money out of the Royal African Company (the slavery link).
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