King Charles is due to make a multi-country state visit to the Caribbean this month. He will be traveling from October 27 through November 4th. The side-chick queen will only join him for part of the state visit, because Camilla hates to fly and hates all of this. Part of the tour is for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Buckingham Palace is already trying to hype the tour while simultaneously tamping down expectations on a political level. As in, King Charles is not going to apologize for slavery or speak about reparations in any way, shape or form. He will acknowledge, in a vague way, that slavery was bad. That’s all anyone is getting, apparently.
The King will not “shy away” from discussing the historic slave trade during his upcoming Caribbean tour, Buckingham Palace has promised, amid a growing campaign for reparations. The King, who will travel to the Bahamas, Guyana, and Antigua and Barbuda, will find ways to acknowledge the “darkest days of our past” without contravening British government advice to issue no official apology.
The Government has made clear that, while it considers the historic slave trade “abhorrent”, it will not pay reparations, following legal advice that it is not necessary for acts that were not, at the time they were committed, violations of international law.
Caribbean campaigners have called for slavery reparations to be on the agenda of the next Commonwealth summit, which the King will attend during the trip. The King, who is Britain’s head of state but bound to follow government advice in such matters, will instead “acknowledge the wrongs of the past” in his own way during an eight-day tour spanning three island nations.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “It is important to note here the work His Majesty himself has done over many years both to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and to find creative ways to “right inequalities that endure”. As you would therefore expect, opportunities will be found during the visit to reflect and renew his personal, wholehearted and continuing commitment to that process.”
The King will make speeches in all three countries, culminating in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at which there is expected to be heated debate over the issue of reparations. The King is attending the summit in his role as head of the Commonwealth. Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, is also expected to attend.
Buckingham Palace has acknowledged that this year’s CHOGM “comes at an important time in the history of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the countries of the Caribbean in particular…There are important discussions taking place in various fora about colonial legacy and the intergenerational impact of the transatlantic trade in enslaved persons,” a spokesman said. “While these are primarily matters for governments to address, His Majesty’s previous statements on them have been unequivocal, describing them as an ‘atrocity’ which ‘forever stains our history’. The visit programme will therefore not shy away from ‘the darkest days of our past’, as His Majesty has described them, but – in keeping with the wishes of our host nations – it will principally be oriented to the vibrant present and promising future of each country, with visit programmes developed in close consultation with their governments to reflect their individual priorities.”
This will be the first time Charles and Camilla have visited any Caribbean country in many years. After his mother’s death, Charles never even visited the Caribbean countries which still call him their head of state, which is its own issue and one which no one mentions – part of the succession plan was that Charles needed to go on a whirlwind tour of all realms and commonwealth countries in his first year as king. He flatly refused. I’d also like to point out that following Prince Harry and Meghan’s 2021 Oprah interview, there was a lot of talk about how Caribbean countries in particular were outraged by how Meghan was treated, and outrage with the modern racism of the royal family. It’s all well and good for Charles to act as if his ancestors’ involvement in chattel slavery can just be brushed aside with a vague acknowledgement, but many people in these countries feel that the monarchy is still an institution built on racism, colonialism and bigotry. Some might even ask why Charles is sitting on his hands and refusing to guarantee security to his mixed-race daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- King Charles III embraces an Indigenous community member, during a visit to the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence in Sydney to meet Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community representatives, on day three of the royal visit to Australia and Samoa Featuring: King Charles III Where: Sydney, Australia When: 22 Oct 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III, as Captain General of the Royal Marines, and Queen Camilla, during a visit to Mtongwe Naval Base in Mombasa, for a ceremonial welcome and to watch the Kenya Marines, trained by His Majesty’s Royal Marines, demonstrating a covert beach landing, showing defence collaboration in action, on day three of the state visit to Kenya. Featuring: King Charles III, Camilla Queen Consort Where: Kuruwitu, Kenya When: 02 Nov 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrive by tuk-tuk at Fort Jesus, in Mombasa Old Town, to tour the the UNESCO World heritage site and learn about the British, Portuguese and Omani influence on the fort’s architecture, on day four of the state visit to Kenya. Featuring: King Charles III, Camilla Queen Consort Where: Mombasa, Kenya When: 03 Nov 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III during Trooping the Colour 2024 ceremony, marking the monarch’s official birthday Featuring: King Charles III Where: London, United Kingdom When: 15 Jun 2024 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
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- CAPTION CORRECTION AMENDING EVENT AND LOCATION King Charles III during the Ceremonial Welcome to Australia at Australian Parliament House in Canberra, marking the King’s first visit as sovereign to Australian Parliament House, on day two of the royal visit to Australia and Samoa. Featuring: King Charles III Where: Canberra, Australia When: 20 Oct 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III views the Pyroton fire demonstration during a visit to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) National Bushfire Behaviour Research Laboratory, to learn about world-leading burn over protection systems, and bushfire behaviour research, on day two of his visit to Australia and Samoa. Featuring: King Charles III Where: Canberra, Australia When: 21 Oct 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III receives an official Royal ‘Ava ceremonial’ welcome during their visit to the National University of Samoa, on day five of the royal visit to Australia and Samoa Featuring: King Charles III Where: Samoa When: 24 Oct 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Apia, Samoa Featuring: King Charles III Where: Apia, Samoa When: 24 Oct 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Apia, Samoa Featuring: King Charles III Where: Apia, Samoa When: 24 Oct 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
I hope they get pelted with rotten mangoes.
Nothing negative expressed by folks regarding that deplorable Windsor man Charles surprises me. He probably feels he has a right to all the stolen goods his kingdom sits on and that slavery initiated by his country was just par for the course.
I’m sure the Palace flunkies are working very hard to avoid the embarrassing optics of the W&K Jamaica trip. That will be difficult to pull off since the colonial, slave trading history of the British monarchy cannot be hand waved away with a few words of regret.
“When the cotton stopped flowing and the mills went quiet, British industry did not sit idle. Liverpool shipyards built the Confederate navy almost from scratch. British manufacturers sold 500,000 firearms to the Confederacy and 400,000 to the Union simultaneously. By Gettysburg, 85 percent of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia carried a British Enfield rifle. Confederate purchasing agents sourced 90 percent of Southern shoulder arms from British suppliers before 1863. General Grant captured a Confederate artillery ammunition box at Petersburg stamped “Royal Arsenal Woolwich.” Britain never officially entered the war. It didn’t need to. It was already in it, from both directions, at a profit… The Lancashire mill workers, starving and unemployed because of the Confederate cotton embargo, voted in December 1862 to support the Union of the United States of America. They would rather be poor, they said, than support a nation built on slavery.” — from Substack, “The Lie that Built the South,” by Rolf Kvalvik, published 7th April 2026. It’s not just the Caribbean….
Interesting. I was not aware that the British supplied so many of the guns in the Civil War. The mill workers were admirably principled but their bosses were war profiteers. A British gun might very well have killed my great-great-grandfather at Chancellorsville. To be fair, he might have been using a British gun to shoot at the enemy too. They were probably hoping we’d fight each other into oblivion so they could come take back the “colonies.” Wankers.
They also reimbursed the SLAVEHOLDERS for the money lost when Britain abolished slavery. Gave nothing to the enslaved of course. Just the white rich slaveholders for loss of “property and income”
So he will just be repeating what he said at the last CHOGM.
That’s what I thought. Do they think that by having him repeat this mantra whenever he sets foot in the Caribbean the issue will eventually go away? That the people will give up? More likely that people will dig in and double down.
He always does the shittiest thing you expect him to do. In that way, he never disappoints– a predictably horrible man.
I saw one article claiming KFC wouldn’t pay any reparations because he “couldn’t afford it.” I sh!t you not.
This tour is going to be a fabulous mess for all of us to watch, however.
So slavery wasn’t illegal then but when they paid those slave owners compensation that didn’t seem to be a problem. These people will all have to answer to god for their evil deeds . The Caribbean does not need Charles and his family. They all need to come together as one and do what Barbados did and say bye bitches to the British monarchy. They need to do it as one . A mass exodus
Not only that, @Over It, as you note accurately — and you are the only one to do so to date, that I’ve read in the whole of the internet — they compensated the slave owners despite slavery itself having been lawful when it was generating their profits, so, they not only kept the profits, but after slavery was banned, their descendants were entitled to claim the compensation awarded until the sum was exhausted, and the net present value calculation ran until…. 2015!!! See the New Yorker piece, I think it was by Sam Knight. So not only did the descendants of slaves themselves receive *nothing* but the descendants of their *owners* were still receiving compensation from the UK government until 11 years ago. Camilla famously had a blackamoor statue in the foyer of Ray Mill. I have seen a photo of it. Much larger and more impressive than the brooch that Princess Michael wore to the first Christmas lunch that Meghan attended. Like, if you took the brooch and blew it up by several orders of magnitude. These people really did not deal with the fallout of racism here in the way that people in the US did. It’s a bit like when they joke about the Nazis: no one on the Continent does that, in the countries that were actually occupied, where people were gassed, raped, stripped of their property, all according to law, again. Really.
Ugh, not only that but that the many, many, many Caribbean people who formed the Windeush generation and helped rebuilt Britain after WW2 were paying taxes that helped pay off the debt Britian took to pay off the slave owners. So people like my grandfather, and my parents and aunts and uncles were paying for that loan while their ancestors were never compensated. And again, the Windrush generation were done dirty by the Tory government who then illegal deported some of them.
Well of course not. How shitty but predictable.
By comparison Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands issued an apology for slavery several years ago and ran an audit of their Collection to remove any objectionable items depicting slavery from display. This included retiring their gold carriage, the grandest of the collection, because of 1 panel depicting a kneeling African man. The 3 volume historical review of the house of Orange’s role in not just slavery but colonisation in general was released 2 days ago and included efforts to determine how much wealth the RF received.
Well since the UK wants to rejoin the EU, one wonders why anyone even has Charles or his heir as King and Future King. They don’t do anything.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “It is important to note here the work His Majesty himself has done over many years both to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and to find creative ways to “right inequalities that endure”.
Creative ways LOL? He can take his “creative ways” and put them where the sun doesn’t shine.
“Creative ways”=nothing that takes any money from his wallet.
That picture on top is so apt.
It really is. We couldn’t have staged it better if we tried.
He is probably not allowed to apologize because the government will get sued for zillions in damages.
Not the government – the royal family themselves. Because much of their own wealth comes from slavery. Just like the Dutch – who actually apologized.
Yes, Charles himself has said the BRF “couldn’t afford it.” My ass.
the issue isn’t charles, its the british government. This is one area where he is absolutely going to toe the line and say exactly what the government wants him to say. The british government needs to grapple with its role in the international slave trade in a much more meaningful way.
And dont get me wrong, there are absolutely things Charles could do, especially with items in the palaces or the royal collection, or his own treatment of people like say his daughter in law – but I dont expect him to stray from the official government line at something like this.
I hope his plane gets turn away when he tries to land.
maybe this is part of Prince Harry’s strategy for returning now? Maybe Charles will be forced to explain to the governments of Bahamas, Guyana, and Antigua and Barbuda why he and the british government are continuing to neglect providing protection to their only mixed-race royals. I could see him and the british government, in desperation to not lose the carribbean commonwealth, to apologizing and publicly reversing course on the protection issue.
Perhaps the chefs involved with CHOGM will watch The Help before Chuckles visits and pay particular attention to the pie.
Can’t wait to see the welcome they get.
I am, however, willing to bet that Charles and his horsey will not do a parade standing up in an open Range Rover. I’ll wait and see, though