Like King Charles III, whose great-great-great-great-granduncle King George IV personally profited from slavery in Crown-owned plantations on the eastern Caribbean island of Grenada, my ancestors were also enriched by slavery in Grenada. When slavery was abolished in 1834, the formerly enslaved in Grenada got nothing, whereas my ancestors received about £3m in today’s money.
We’ve apologised and paid reparations, because we were told by leaders of the Caribbean’s reparatory justice movement that it was important to try and atone for the sins of the past, which inform the present. Buckingham Palace says while the King is in the Bahamas, Guyana and Antigua, he will not shy away from what he’s previously called “the darkest days of our past” – but that will not include an apology, and the Government has ruled out paying reparations through him.
How, then, will King Charles deliver on the promise of his own 2022 speech, made in Rwanda, when he was Prince of Wales? In front of the Commonwealth Heads of Government, Charles declared: “I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many, as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery’s enduring impact.”
Four years later, Charles will speak to Commonwealth leaders in Antigua and Barbuda. It is a deeply symbolic setting for the King’s speech. These are islands scarred by slavery. The King has backed research into the Royal Family’s historical links to the slave trade. But the facts are blindingly obvious.
The Royal Family sanctioned and profited from the transatlantic slave trade at the very start – through the Royal African Company, which shipped thousands of kidnapped Africans into slavery in the Caribbean and North America. King William III received £1,000 worth of shares in the Royal African Company in 1689, from the slave trader Edward Colston. As a moral outrage, it dwarfs any apparent rift with Harry and Meghan or discussion of what to do about Andrew; it is on an entirely different scale. Despite these historical facts, Charles cannot deviate much from the Downing Street line.
Yet, as head of the Commonwealth and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he surely has some leeway. Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caribbean’s Reparations Commission, has urged the King “as a man, as a human brother” to ensure the Commonwealth, historically the “site of this crime” of slavery, becomes a “moral institution committed to human justice”.
Beckles, along with Arley Gill and Nicole Phillip of Grenada’s National Reparations Committee, invited our family to Grenada in 2023 to formally and publicly apologise on behalf of our ancestors who had enslaved the ancestors of Grenadians. The amount of money we have paid in reparations is extremely small compared to the suffering our relatives inflicted upon enslaved Africans kidnapped and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean – so far, we have given £160,000 towards education in Grenada.
We were guided by Grenadians who told us an apology would be meaningful and that money given to education would help create a better future for Grenada’s young people. The King, however, will not be taking either step.
Charles showed with his superb oratory in front of the US Congress in April – when he deftly reminded Americans of how the Magna Carta restrained the divine right of kings, and mounted a staunch defence of the transatlantic alliance, Nato and Ukraine – that he and his speechwriters can finesse a pointed message while respecting sensitivities. But can they thread the needle between the Caribbean’s long-standing call for reparations, maintaining the opposition of Britain’s government and making clear his own understanding of slavery’s enduring impact?
He would need to start with an unequivocal recognition of the pain which slavery continues to inflict: “The appalling atrocity of slavery stains Britain’s history, and once again, I stand before you to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and renew my personal, wholehearted and continuing commitment to a process of righting the inequities that endure. Like others in Britain at the time, my ancestors profited from the horrors of enslavement, while your ancestors here in the Caribbean were exploited and abused.”
Then, he could go on to highlight the actions that the Crown is already taking, and commit to continue them. “Preserving the evidence of this painful shared history for future generations is vital,” he might say. As a Buckingham Palace source said to me back in 2023, “one of the core issues the King is taking a keen interest in is the preservation of historic records, which is so vital to our current and future understanding of that part of our shared history”.
So, it’s not a huge stretch for Charles to announce the setting up of a Royal fund to preserve the Caribbean’s historic documents. Then, there’s the question of the Caribbean’s location in the hurricane belt and the impact of climate change on small economies dependent on tourism.
“So many of the important historical records from the period of colonialism and slavery here in the Caribbean are at risk from climate change,” he could say. “Today, I am announcing a Royal fund which will preserve and digitise the paper archives in the Caribbean, so the traces of this painful past are not erased.”
Then, he would need to look to the future. “As one who has long been a steward of the environment,” he could go on, “the exposure of the Caribbean people to increasingly intense hurricanes, made stronger by warmer water, troubles me greatly. I shall personally be supporting the crucial research carried out by the University of the West Indies, which concentrates on how the people, the economies and the fragile ecosystems of small island developing states like Antigua are affected by sea level rise and climate change. We cannot change the past, but we can address our shared future through scientific research.”
The King has made numerous elegant speeches which allude to the tragedy of slavery. In Antigua, with the world watching, the man who is still head of state in eight Caribbean nations can tell us what concrete action he’ll be taking to confront this troubling history and its present day legacies.
Laura Trevelyan is a journalist and author. With Nicole Phillip, she co-authored Entangled Past: Apology and Reparations for Slavery in Grenada, published by the University of the West Indies Press on 30 October