King Charles III stood in Antigua on Tuesday and said the transatlantic slave trade “fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow.” He did not apologize, and the British government that stood behind him still refuses to pay a penny for it.
The words came at the opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in St. John’s, in a region whose Black populations descend from the people Britain trafficked and enslaved. Caribbean leaders came to the summit asking for an apology and for reparations. They got an expression of feeling from a monarch who, under Buckingham Palace’s own description of his role, is “inspiring and convening, rather than policy-making.”
The King called it a “shameful chapter of history” that “still casts a shadow over these islands.” He pointed to the Royal Navy’s part in ending the trade, and said “evil need not have the last word.” What he offered next was a list for the future: better access to education, investment in jobs, more trade inside the Commonwealth and measures for climate resilience. He said his commitment was growing to find ways to “address the wrongs of the past with action for the future.”
That is the gap. Sorrow is free. Repair is not, and Britain has spent two centuries working out how to give the first without the second. When slavery ended in the British empire, the government paid £20 million to enslavers as compensation. The people they had enslaved received nothing.
There is movement in London, but not much. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has signaled he is open to a formal apology and has proposed debt restructuring for Commonwealth nations. He has ruled out financial reparations, saying Britain is “bringing a new approach to this meeting.” Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Politico: “I don’t think reparations are the answer.” The Palace says nothing in the King’s speech was changed after Burnham’s comments on Friday.
Caribbean governments have asked for more than words. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley led a group of leaders who launched a reparations manifesto at a conference in Ghana in June, and the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) prime ministers are expected to update its 10-point reparations plan.
Outside the summit hall, the argument was simpler. Shana Michelle, an Antigua resident, told the Associated Press: “Technically, we’re free, but mentally a lot of us aren’t.” She said an apology should be the starting point for wider accountability and repair.
Debt relief is not nothing, and an apology from a prime minister would matter. But the government that is willing to say it was wrong is still unwilling to pay for it, and horror from a king costs Britain nothing. Caribbean leaders have laid out what repair looks like. The test of this summit is whether Britain’s “new approach” ever reaches a number.
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