King Charles describes slave trade as a ‘shameful chapter’

SOURCE: Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC)

Britain’s King Charles Tues­day de­scribed the At­lantic slave trade as a “shame­ful chap­ter” in his­to­ry, even as he ac­knowl­edged that “none of us, of course, would be here to­day were it not for our his­to­ry, which has shaped us in myr­i­ad ways.

“His­to­ry is not ours to choose or to change. It is be­queathed to us in com­plex syn­the­sis by fore­bears we can nev­er know. Our in­her­i­tance in­cludes both their achieve­ments and their fail­ures, the good they did as well as the wrongs,” the head of the British monarch told the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 28th Com­mon­wealth heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM), a group­ing of 56 for­mer colonies of the British em­pire.

In his long an­tic­i­pat­ed ad­dress in which del­e­gates had been told that King Charles would speak about slav­ery with “un­flinch­ing hon­esty” and “sin­cere sor­row”, the head of the Com­mon­wealth said his­to­ry can be hard to com­pass, viewed as it is through the prism of time, which can be both clar­i­fy­ing and dis­tort­ing “and yet its con­se­quences res­onate with con­tem­po­rary force.

“Our his­to­ry in­spires us, can ap­pall us, yet it can al­ways teach us. We can­not change the ac­tions of those who came be­fore us. We can, how­ev­er, learn from the past. The transat­lantic trade and en­slaved per­sons still cast a shad­ow over these is­lands and oth­er mem­bers of our Com­mon­wealth.” King Charles said.

He said as he had not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, slav­ery “that shame­ful chap­ter of his­to­ry is one that fills my heart with hor­ror and my soul with the most pro­found per­son­al sor­row.

“And yet, his­to­ry al­so teach­es us that evil need not have the last word, that char­ac­ter and courage can com­bine to over­come the most mon­strous in­jus­tice, as they did with the de­ter­mi­na­tion to end in­ter­na­tion­al trade and en­slaved peo­ple, in which the Roy­al Navy played such a lead­ing role.”

King Charles said that the more he has fur­thered his own un­der­stand­ing of the is­sues ”through lis­ten­ing, learn­ing, and look­ing, the more com­mit­ted I have be­come to find­ing ways for us to work in mod­ern part­ner­ship to ad­dress the wrongs of the past with ac­tion for the fu­ture”.

He said that this could be ac­com­plished through im­prov­ing ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, in­vest­ing in jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ties, en­cour­ag­ing in­tra-Com­mon­wealth trade, and in­spir­ing vi­tal cli­mate re­silience mea­sures across the world.

“I have al­ways felt that there is so much that could be done to help lift up those who strug­gle against hard­ship and dis­ad­van­tage. I have al­ways tried to play my part in do­ing just that, for as any sailor nav­i­gat­ing the seas knows, we can­not com­mand the winds, least of all where the winds of yes­ter­day have de­liv­ered us, but we can choose how we set our sails.

“The Com­mon­wealth of to­day is not mere­ly a prod­uct of the past, it is a re­sponse to the world of to­day. Its vo­ca­tion is more com­pelling than ever. In fact, in a des­per­ate­ly trou­bled world, the Com­mon­wealth has wel­comed new mem­bers who see the unique val­ue of this or­gan­i­sa­tion and have cho­sen to be part of its fu­ture,”King Charles added.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, who is tak­ing over the chair­man­ship of the group­ing for the next two years, told the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny that fair­ness al­so re­quires an “hon­est en­gage­ment with our shared his­to­ry.

“…we agree that the time had come for a mean­ing­ful, truth­ful, and re­spect­ful con­ver­sa­tion on repara­to­ry jus­tice.We must now car­ry that com­mit­ment for­ward through struc­tured, in­clu­sive di­a­logue on the en­dur­ing con­se­quences of slav­ery and colo­nial­ism, with a de­ter­mi­na­tion to make progress and a will­ing­ness to build con­sen­sus,” he said.

British Prime Min­is­ter Andy Burn­ham has ex­pressed sor­row and re­gret over slav­ery and his open­ness to con­sid­er­ing a for­mal apol­o­gy. In an ar­ti­cle in the UK Guardian news­pa­per, he wrote that he was “open” to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Unit­ed King­dom for­mal­ly apol­o­gis­ing for its role in slav­ery – a change in the gov­ern­ment’s stance.

Chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion (CRC), Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, in a state­ment pri­or to the open­ing of CHOGM, de­scribed as “a very crit­i­cal mo­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of the repa­ra­tions move­ment” the vis­it to the Caribbean by King Charles and Prime Min­is­ter Burn­ham to the “an­ces­tral site of where this chat­tel mod­el was es­tab­lished”.

Sir Hi­lary said that the en­tire Caribbean, in­clud­ing the CRC, wel­comes the de­ci­sion by The Unit­ed King­dom lead­ers eight months af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tions had al­ready de­ter­mined that chat­tel slav­ery was the gravest crime against hu­man­i­ty.

“So this is his­toric, this is a very crit­i­cal mo­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of the repa­ra­tions move­ment that the King and Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain are com­ing to the Caribbean, the an­ces­tral site of where this chat­tel mod­el was es­tab­lished.

“We know that chat­tel slav­ery was in­vent­ed by the British, this was their con­cept. The world had nev­er seen any kind of slav­ery like this. The British en­slavers in the Caribbean, be­gin­ning in Bar­ba­dos, cre­at­ed this con­cept of chat­tel like cat­tle, this new and in­no­v­a­tive form of slav­ery,” said Sir Hi­lary, who is al­so the Pro Vice Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). —ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua (CMC)