BONG. BONG. BONG. The bells of St. Peter’s tolled not for a funeral but for a confession, as Pope Francis – that most un-Catholic of pontiffs – issued a grovelling apology for the Church’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. His Holiness, with a face like a man who’s just found a cockroach in his communion wafer, declared that the Church had been an ‘accomplice’ in the enslavement of millions. Cue gasps from the cardinals. Cue the shuffling of Vatican bankers checking their portfolios. Cue the British establishment reaching for the smelling salts.
Now, let us pause for a sip of aviation fuel (Gordon’s, no tonic, the ice is a lie). For if the Holy See can admit its historical debris, what of our own damp little island? We, who once ruled a quarter of the globe while wearing top hats and eating kedgeree. We, whose museums are stuffed with other people’s gods and whose grammar schools are named after slave traders. Are we not due a reckoning?
I propose a new leadership. Not a king, not a prime minister, not a custodian of the privy purse. I propose a National Apologist-in-Chief. Someone whose sole job is to stand at a podium every morning and say, ‘Sorry for the Opium Wars. Sorry for the Bengal Famine. Sorry for the Amritsar massacre. Sorry for the bunting and the pith helmets and the way we pronounce ‘schedule’.’
The current occupant of No. 10 looks about as comfortable with colonial guilt as a fox in a lavender bath. The man, whose name I shall not dignify by typing, prefers to talk about ‘Global Britain’ and ‘levelling up’ while his party accepts donations from the descendants of plantation owners. Meanwhile, the Church of England is still sitting on a compensation fund for slave owners that would make Scrooge McDuck blush.
But the Pope’s apology is a dangerous precedent. It suggests that institutions can admit wrongdoing without imploding. It suggests that apologising isn’t the same as surrendering. It suggests that maybe, just maybe, we could stop pretending that history began in 1952 with a woman in a hat getting on a boat.
I have seen the future, dear reader. It is a damp Tuesday in Lambeth. A new minister for colonial affairs – let’s call her Hilary, because all colonial apologies should be administered by Hiliarys – stands outside the Foreign Office. She holds a list. It is very long. She begins to read. ‘We regret the theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond. We regret the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. We regret the invention of the concentration camp during the Boer War. We regret the Irish Famine. We regret the Highland Clearances. We regret the way we treat the Welsh.’
The nation holds its breath. Then someone in the audience shouts, ‘What about the gin tax?’ And everyone laughs. And then we all get on with it.
But until that day, we are left with half-measures. A papal apology that doesn’t mention reparations. A Prime Minister who thinks ‘colonial reckoning’ is a new flavour of ice cream. A nation that prefers its history with the rough edges sanded off, served in a little blue passport.
I am going to pour another drink. The ice has melted. It always does. My recommendation? A new national holiday: National Apology Day. Every year, on the feast of St. Judas, we gather in Trafalgar Square, and a hereditary peer reads a list of grievances from a scroll. Then we all nod solemnly and go to the pub. The hangover, you see, is part of the penance.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a colonial guilt spiral to attend. It’s in the diary. Right after my dental appointment.
