Britain’s King Charles is headed to Antigua in early November for the Commonwealth leaders’ summit, and just as was the case at the last conference in Samoa in the Pacific two years ago, the issue of the United Kingdom making things right for the horrors of slavery is likely to again be raised with the visiting monarch, regional officials say.
The four-day summit begins on November 1, just weeks after the umbrella Caribbean Reparations Commission (CRC) will have held its major review meeting in Barbados in September, and after Jamaica had handed King Charles a petition asking him to ask Britain’s final court to determine the merits of the regional demand for reparations for slavery.
The petition was presented in London by Jamaican Culture Minister Olivia Grange and asked the Privy Council or appeals court to determine whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English common law, violated international law, and the UK has a legal obligation to provide a remedy for the harm caused by slavery.
“We go fearlessly into another chapter in our story when we petition His Majesty King Charles on the matter of reparations,” the minister had said while in London preparing to serve the petition. “We want the answers. Once we get the answers, or once we get a response to those questions, then the next steps will be determined. We anticipate that His Majesty will accept our petition and refer the questions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. We are ready for those who will deny and oppose. To them I say, as we’ve been taught, let justice ring.”
The king will also visit Guyana and the Bahamas during the mini Caribbean tour.
Now that the king has consented and forwarded the petition to the court, the next major opportunity to discuss reparations with Britain would be the summit in Antigua. Several leaders who spoke at the ongoing UN General Assembly meeting in New York did raise the issue of reparations, including Mia Mottley of Barbados, who is the lead Caribbean spokesperson on the issue.
“Regrettably, we still carry the scars, and hence the wounds are still raw,” Mottley said. “We in Barbados accept the moral responsibility of removing the cross of slavery with its horrific consequences. We must effect healing through reparatory justice, for it is the right thing to do. For the Caribbean, for Africa, and for those countries concerned, the honest engagement must begin.”
For Jamaica and the region, Grange said the fight will continue on behalf of the ancestors as she brushed aside critics who had argued that the king would have trashed the petition because successive British administrations have vowed not to deal with reparations and Britain’s brutal role in the transatlantic slave trade.
“Jamaica should pursue reparations in the name of our African ancestors who endured hundreds of years of enslavement on this island, and in the name of the people of Jamaica,” Grange said. “We are awaiting directions from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as to the next steps to be taken in the case. We will keep the cabinet and the parliament updated on the developments.”
The Jamaican government had used the ploy of approaching the king because Jamaica is not yet a republic. The king is still officially the head of government and monarch of the northern Caribbean island, so the ploy was to deliver the petition to him asking for legal guidance about the slavery issue and reparations or the cause of reparatory justice.
Both Grange and Mottley argue that no one should forget the genocidal nature of slavery.
“Their status as human beings was denied. They were categorized as chattel, which means property that was bought, sold, and branded with hot irons to signify them as belonging to specific enslavers. They were abused with impunity — men, women, girls, and boys. They were raped. They were made to breed. They were forced to work for free. This went on every day for hundreds of years. It was the gravest crime against humanity,” Grange said while in London.
