Reparations: the tyranny of imaginary guilt, with Nigel Biggar & Katie Lam

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🗓️ 28 September 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

The past few years have seen growing calls for countries in the global west to pay reparations to former colonies for their role in the transatlantic slave trade. The debate over reparations was already part of the so-called ‘culture wars’, but became louder following the Black Lives Matter movement, as many groups sought to re-examine their histories. Calls for reparations have been embraced by the Church of England which set up a £100 million fund, with the aim of raising £1 billion, to pay reparations for the role the Church played in the slave trade.

But do the arguments in favour of reparations really stand up? Conservative peer Nigel Biggar, emeritus regius professor of moral theology at the University of Oxford – and an Anglican priest – demolishes the arguments for reparations in his new book. In Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Guilt he argues that calls for reparations are part of a ‘lust for self-condemnation’ and rooted in political opportunism. And, as Conservative MP Katie Lam questions, is it even legal for the Church to do this? And why – with crumbling parish churches across the country – is the Church focused on this now?

Nigel and Katie join host Damian Thompson to talk through their arguments and warn about the worrying precedent it could set.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm George Osborne and I'm Ed Balls. We've been at the heart of British politics for some decades.
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0:43.4	Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.
0:54.9	Two years ago, the church commissioners who managed the Church of England's assets
0:59.7	announced that they were setting aside £100 million, growing eventually to an investment
1:06.2	fund of a billion pounds to spend on reparations for money that they claimed the Church of England
1:12.6	had made as a result of the slave trade. How embarrassing for the church then that an Anglican priest,
1:20.1	former professor of moral theology at Oxford, and Tory peer Nigel Bigger, has just published
1:26.6	a book, Reparations, The Tyranny of
1:29.6	Imagined Guilt, in which he demolishes the historical basis for the church commissioner's claims.
1:37.2	I'm joined by him today, along with the Tory MP Katie Lamb, who's been looking at the
1:43.3	devious and potentially illegal nature of these proposals.
1:48.1	If I could begin with you, Nigel, welcome to Holy Smoke.
1:51.7	I wonder if I could start by asking you a general question about what you call in your
	...

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