King’s slavery remarks spark renewed calls for apology, reparations

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

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Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee mem­ber Shaba­ka Kam­bon says Britain’s colo­nial nar­ra­tive con­tin­ues to shield the Crown from ac­count­abil­i­ty, as King Charles III stopped short of an apol­o­gy and repa­ra­tions com­mit­ment dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da yes­ter­day.

King Charles III de­scribed the transat­lantic slave trade as a shame­ful chap­ter of his­to­ry that fills his heart with hor­ror and his soul with pro­found per­son­al sor­row.

“We can­not change the ac­tions of those who came be­fore us. We can, how­ev­er, learn from the past,” he said.

But the British monarch’s lat­est ac­knowl­edge­ment of slav­ery has done lit­tle to sat­is­fy those de­mand­ing an apol­o­gy and repara­to­ry jus­tice, with Kam­bon in­sist­ing that Britain must do more than of­fer care­ful­ly word­ed ex­pres­sions of re­gret.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Kam­bon de­scribed the King’s po­si­tion as a con­tin­u­a­tion of Britain’s long­stand­ing re­fusal to apol­o­gise, ar­gu­ing that the coun­try con­tin­ues to pro­mote a colo­nial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry that em­pha­sis­es its even­tu­al role in abol­ish­ing the slave trade while down­play­ing its own in­volve­ment in the crime.

Kam­bon said that po­si­tion was un­ac­cept­able in 2026, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in­creas­ing­ly recog­nis­es the transat­lantic slave trade and chat­tel slav­ery as among hu­man­i­ty’s gravest his­tor­i­cal crimes.

“It is not ac­cept­able for the King or any­body rep­re­sent­ing the Crown or the British gov­ern­ment to come to the Caribbean on such a vis­it and not ex­press a sin­cere apol­o­gy for this crime. Plat­i­tudes aren’t enough,” he said.

He ar­gued that the British monar­chy has a par­tic­u­lar re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ac­knowl­edge its his­tor­i­cal in­volve­ment, point­ing to the King’s an­ces­tors, who he said in­vest­ed in, par­tic­i­pat­ed in and ben­e­fit­ed from both the traf­fick­ing of en­slaved Africans and their en­slave­ment through­out the Caribbean.

For Kam­bon, this is not sim­ply about ac­knowl­edg­ing his­tor­i­cal suf­fer­ing, but con­fronting the in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als who ben­e­fit­ed from it.

For­mer prime min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­salves al­so be­lieves the King should even­tu­al­ly is­sue a for­mal apol­o­gy, but wel­comed his will­ing­ness to en­gage in an hon­est and ma­ture con­ver­sa­tion about slav­ery and its en­dur­ing con­se­quences.

Gon­salves, a se­nior fig­ure in the repara­to­ry jus­tice move­ment, said he re­mained hope­ful that Charles would even­tu­al­ly ex­press re­gret through a for­mal apol­o­gy.

The de­bate over slav­ery and repara­to­ry jus­tice un­fold­ed against the back­drop of the 2026 Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing.

King Charles III joined lead­ers from across the Com­mon­wealth at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in St John’s, where the fo­cus was on mo­bil­is­ing in­vest­ment and build­ing part­ner­ships to im­prove the lives of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 2.7 bil­lion peo­ple across 56 mem­ber coun­tries.

The meet­ing is al­so break­ing new ground by bring­ing heads of gov­ern­ment in­to di­rect dis­cus­sions with busi­ness lead­ers, in­vestors, in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and phil­an­thropists.

In his ad­dress, Charles warned that in­ter­na­tion­al trust was un­der se­vere strain, with con­flicts, rapid tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion and cli­mate change pre­sent­ing ma­jor chal­lenges to the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty.

He de­scribed the Com­mon­wealth as an un­par­al­leled op­por­tu­ni­ty for coun­tries to work to­geth­er, draw­ing on the col­lec­tive in­ge­nu­ity of a third of hu­man­i­ty to con­front those chal­lenges.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne de­scribed the sum­mit as a con­se­quen­tial CHOGM, point­ing to US$200 mil­lion mo­bilised through the Na­ture Ini­tia­tive and US$1.3 bil­lion an­nounced through the Glob­al Eye Health Sum­mit.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers un­der­took sev­er­al diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ments yes­ter­day as he rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try at the Com­mon­wealth meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to up­dates from the min­istry, Sobers held bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with Ghana’s Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Chief­tain­cy and Re­li­gious Af­fairs, Ma­hama Ayari­ga.

He al­so met with the Unit­ed King­dom’s Sec­re­tary of State for For­eign, Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Af­fairs, Ed Miliband.

Ear­li­er in the day, Sobers al­so rep­re­sent­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a high-lev­el break­fast meet­ing with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney and fel­low Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment.

Sobers said the dis­cus­sions un­der­scored the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing strong re­la­tion­ships with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.