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The Case of the Rustat Memorial – Does Duffield Pose all the Right Questions?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2023
Extract
Two recent decisions of the Consistory Court have dealt with faculties for the removal of what is now called ‘contested heritage’. In Re Rustat Memorial, Jesus College, Cambridge, the faculty sought by Jesus College, Cambridge was refused. In Re St Peter, Dorchester it was granted on terms. As was observed by Ruth Arlow, Chancellor of the Diocese of Salisbury, in the latter case, each such application has to be taken on its own merits:
As with all faculty petitions, contested heritage applications will arise in almost infinitely variable circumstances. There can be no question of a uniform approach to such cases. Each must be decided upon consideration of the unique set of facts applicable to it.
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References
1 Re Rustat Memorial, Jesus College, Cambridge [2022] ECC Ely 2.
2 Re St Peter, Dorchester [2022] ECC Sal 4.
3 Ibid, para 59.
4 Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Church Buildings (2021), available at <https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/Contested_Heritage_in_Cathedrals_and_Churches.pdf>, accessed 17 October 2022. The guidance is issued by the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England pursuant to its powers under section 3(3)(a) of the Care of Cathedrals Measure 2011, and by the Church Buildings Council pursuant to its powers under section 55(1)(d) of the Dioceses, Mission and Pastoral Measure 2007.
5 In re St Alkmund, Duffield [2013] Fam 158, para 87; cf. Rustat, para 78.
6 See ‘C of E prefers marble to people’, James Crockford (Dean of Jesus Chapel), Church Times, 22 April 2022 (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/22-april/comment/opinion/c-of-e-prefers-marble-to-people), which expresses a similar view.
7 Re St Margaret, Rottingdean (No 2) [2021] ECC Chi 1, para 20.
8 A Taylor, ‘False narratives and the Rustat Memorial judgment’ (6 May 2022), available at: <https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/false-narratives-and-the-rustat-memorial-judgment/>, accessed 17 October 2022.
9 Rustat, para 6.
10 See the Introduction to Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Church Buildings (2021) (note 4), 7.
11 Rustat, para 127.
12 Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Churches 2021 (note 4), 7; and see Rustat, para 75, for the submissions of the expert, Professor Goldman, which were accepted by the court at para 124 (Professor Goldman also counselled against ‘judging the past by the standards of the present’).
13 Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Churches 2021 (note 4), para 2a, 11.
14 See note 18, to para 70(ii) of the judgment.
15 See, for example, this online dictionary definition: <https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/woke/>; and this analysis: <https://www.vice.com/en/article/kz445w/how-woke-culture-took-over-the-2010s>, which tends to support my view that the term has been hijacked (both accessed 17 October 2022).
16 D Starkey, ‘From Worms to Woke’, The Critic Magazine, June 2022, available at: https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2022/from-worms-to-woke/>, accessed 17 October 2022.
17 Including the ‘well-funded outside groups’ referred to in the First Biannual Report of the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice (Spring 2022) at 23, with regard to the objectors in the Rustat case; available at: <https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/ACRJ%20First%20Report%20-%20Spring%2022.pdf>, accessed 20 September 2022.
18 See the UCL website: <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/>: ‘Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain’, and its online Encyclopaedia of British Slave-ownership: <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/details/>, both accessed 19 September 2022.
19 ‘Prince William expresses profound sorow for slavery’, The Gleaner, 23 March 2022, available at: <https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20220323/full-text-prince-william-expresses-profound-sorrow-slavery>, accessed 20 September 2022.
20 ‘Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts’ (NRSVA).
21 ‘Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbours work for nothing, and does not give them their wages’ (NRSVA).
22 Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: The Report (March 2021), available at: <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf>, accessed 19 September 2022.
23 Although two of its authors, Dr Tony Sewell and Dr Dambisa Moyo, are to be rewarded with life peerages (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/political-peerages-2022).
24 Re St Peter, Dorchester [2022] ECC Sal 4 at para 49.
25 Re St Margaret, Rottingdean (No. 2) [2021] ECC Chi 1 see paras 30, 45, 47 and 52.
26 See Rustat at para 9.
27 The Archbishops' Commission for Racial Justice (note 17), 24.
28 Re St Peter, Dorchester, paras 67 and 71.
29 Rustat, para 131.
30 Ibid.
31 The Archbishops' Commission for Racial Justice (note 17), at 21.
32 Taylor (note 8).
33 Rustat, para 79.
34 The judgment itself sets out the factual background at paras 36 to 40.
35 See further on this: J Crockford, ‘Contested Memorials and the Discipleship of Christian Memory’ (June 2022), available at: <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1474225X.2022.2088666>, accessed 17 October 2022.
36 An African proverb, known to the Igbo of Nigeria, the Ewe of Ghana, as well as in Kenya and Zimbabwe (<http://thelionandthehunter.org/about-this-project/>).
37 Although it seems clear that Rustat's donations to Jesus College were not slave-derived, it remains true that, at the time he made them, he was an investor in slavery and was, no doubt, hoping for a return on his investment. By the time his memorial was erected, he had indeed received such a return, having profited from the sale of his shares.