Kingston, 15 April 2024 – The Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, the Honourable Olivia Grange, has welcomed the apology of the United Reformed Church of England, Scotland and Wales for its “role in transatlantic slavery and the scars which continue to blight our society, our church and the lives of Black people in our midst and around the globe”.

The apology to Jamaica was given on Sunday (yesterday) by the United Reformed Church’s General Assembly Moderator, the Reverend Dr Tessa Henry-Robinson, at a special ceremony at Webster Memorial United Church in St Andrew.

The ceremony was attended by Minister Grange who has responsibility for reparations.

The United Reformed Church was created in 1972 with the merger of the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church of England and Wales.

Minister Grange said “many of the churches from the UK invested in the project of the trade in and enslavement of African people on plantations here in Jamaica and it is fitting that the church should repent, apologise and redress the wrongs committed by their parent churches.”

Dr Henry-Robinson, in her apology, said her church committed “in a true spirit of repentance to find constructive ways in which we can move from saying I’m sorry into concrete actions of repairing justice.”

The Minister said the apology from the United Reformed Church was the outcome of discussions with churches in the United Kingdom by the National Council on Reparations through its sub-committee, the Churches Reparations Action Forum.

Minister Grange said she accepted the apology in the “spirit of repair, restoration and reconciliation, as demanded by God our Creator.”

The Minister called on other churches in the UK, especially those who sent representatives to Jamaica to witness this historic apology, to “signal to your government that the Christian thing to do is to admit culpability by way of an apology and to engage with us to determine the various forms that reparations may take.”

Minister Grange said the Government of Jamaica would continue to pursue reparations for the hundreds of years of chattel enslavement of our African ancestors on plantations in this country.

“It is not enough that the enslavers and their descendants should regret the suffering that slavery inflicted on our ancestors. When you have done something wrong, you must take responsibility for it, apologise and try to set things right,” Minister Grange said.

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