King Charles is beginning a nine-day Caribbean tour on Tuesday that includes the Bahamas, Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda. The trip comes as campaigners press for a formal apology and reparations over slavery, and it lands in the shadow of renewed arguments over the monarchy's place in the Caribbean.
Charles is due to attend the Commonwealth heads of government meeting and deliver three significant speeches during the visit. The tour follows Jamaica's unprecedented slavery reparations petition, which is due to be heard by the UK-based privy council next March.
Patrick Vernon on the Commonwealth
Patrick Vernon, a cultural historian and UK representative of the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council, said the stakes are unusually high. “I think it’s the biggest crossroads for the Commonwealth since its creation,” Vernon said, adding, “I think his visit is pivotal.”
Vernon said the trip could matter well beyond one royal itinerary. “If the visit does not meet the needs and expectations of a lot of the Commonwealth heads, it raises a big question about the future of the Commonwealth. What’s the point of being in the Commonwealth when one of the biggest crimes against humanity, which has been recognised at international level, where you can’t even have a proper dialogue, conversation and exploration?”
Britain, reparations and apology
The pressure on Charles is sharpened by the position of Britain. The British government has ruled out paying reparations, and Charles is expected to follow government advice and not issue a formal apology for Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, said the monarchy and UK government had not kept pace with the public debate. “I think it would be wrong to think that we can continue with platitudes. You’ve got ‘atrocity’, ‘deep regret’, ‘sorrow’, and now they’re going to say ‘darkest days’,” Ribeiro-Addy said. “I think the king needs to realise that people wouldn’t keep raising it if what he was doing was anywhere near enough.”
Robert Beckford, a theologian at the University of Wolverhampton and broadcaster, said the issue goes to the monarchy's standing in the region. “I think what’s at stake fundamentally is credibility: credibility in the monarchy and that leadership based on his ability to empathise and lead as the head of the Commonwealth. And the credibility rests on the ability to empathise with Caribbean history,” Beckford said.
2022 tour and next March
The tour arrives four years after the Prince and Princess of Wales’s controversial 2022 Caribbean tour, when images of the couple greeting Jamaican children through a wire fence drew criticism across the region. Charles has gone further than his predecessors in acknowledging the monarchy's historic links to slavery, but the visit is still expected to be met with protests over the monarchy's colonial legacy and demands for a formal apology and reparations.
A UN resolution tabled by Ghana declared the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity and called for reparatory justice, giving campaigners a reference point for their push. For readers following the constitutional side of the dispute, the next formal test sits with Jamaica's petition next March, when the UK-based privy council is due to hear it.
