Almost anywhere King Charles or senior British officials go in the Afro Commonwealth, they are faced with persistent calls for Britain to both apologize and to pay reparations for the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So far, the monarch has stoutly refused to do so, saying that the United Kingdom is only prepared to express “sincere sorrow for the great suffering” that enslaved Africans suffered on plantations throughout the region.
In Antigua since late Friday for the biennial Commonwealth summit of former British colonies, the monarch is facing withering pressure from regional leaders and rights activists to discuss the issue formally and set the stage for reparations negotiations. The four-day summit ends on Nov. 4 in Antigua. The king had also made brief visits to the Bahamas and Guyana during the current tour.
However, there was some level of confusion during the weekend, especially after British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that affected nations had been asking for “an honest conversation” for decades because the slave trade was “a brutal and barbaric violation,” noting that Britain must “face up to the past.” His remarks were reported in an opinion piece he had written for the Guardian newspaper.
Piqued by the difference in approaches between the king and the PM, and sensing an opportunity to apply more pressure, Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders wasted little time in pouncing on the issue with bloc Chair and St. Lucian Prime Minister Phillip Pierre, acknowledging that Burnham’s piece was the clearest signal yet from London about slavery and its brutal past.
“The Caribbean Community does not accept that reparations are ‘not the right answer.’ The British state did not simply tolerate slavery. It legislated for it, protected it, and profited from it,” Pierre said. “An apology without repair is incomplete. Any initiative that is to be meaningful for our region must measure vulnerability, not income alone.”
He pointed to the fact that colonial-era British authorities had gone as far as to compensate those who had owned slaves and plantations in the Caribbean, but reminded London that that those who had suffered were offered and given nothing.
“We are ready to engage. A dialogue that begins by placing reparations outside the room cannot be a complete dialogue,” Pierre said.
With the two most powerful men in the Eastern Caribbean for the summit, the push for a formal discussion of the issue, rather than platitudinal topics, is gaining a level of traction not seen before. The umbrella reparations commission (CRC) said in a statement that Britain is the guilty one that invented what is known today as chattel slavery. Chairperson Sir Hilary Beckles said London cannot escape responsibility.
“This is a very critical moment in the development of the reparations movement — that the king and the PM are coming to the Caribbean, the ancestral site of where this chattel system was established,” Beckles said in a video note before plenary sessions. “We know that chattel slavery was invented by the British. It was their concept. The world had not seen any concept like this. They created this concept of chattel-like cattle — this new and innovative form of slavery — and since then, the world has been coming to terms with the criminality of this system in which African people were denied the right to be classified as human beings.”
The big argument in Britain today is that the current generation was not responsible for what happened in the past and must not be made to pay. In addition, they argue that slavery had not been classified as an illegal act back then, so they bear no responsibility to apologize and to pay reparations now.
Sir Hilary also made a personal appeal to King Charles: “I’m appealing to Charles Windsor, a parent, a grandparent, a man today who reflects upon the history of his family. We’re calling upon the King as a man, as a human brother, to provide leadership to this organization over which he presides: the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth historically was the site of this crime (chattel enslavement). The Commonwealth can become a moral institution committed to human justice, and this is what we are calling for in Caricom, in the African Union; all of us who are committed to this process for reparatory justice for the people who have suffered the gravest crime in the modern world.”
