‘We want a full apology for slavery’: Commonwealth at a crossroads as king heads to the Caribbean

Campaigners say tour could hasten Charles’s removal as head of state unless he does more to confront monarchy’s historic role in slave trade

King Charles’s upcoming Caribbean tour could accelerate moves to remove him as head of state in several countries unless he does more to confront the monarchy’s historic links to slavery, campaigners have warned.

The king will embark on a nine-day tour on Tuesday, visiting the Bahamas and Guyana before travelling to Antigua and Barbuda, and will attend the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm).

Patrick Vernon, a cultural historian and UK representative of the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council, said the stakes for this trip could not be higher for the future of the royal family’s standing in the region, warning: “I think it’s the biggest crossroads for the Commonwealth since its creation.”

Charles is expected to deliver three significant speeches during the trip, but will follow government advice not to issue a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The British government has also ruled out paying reparations.

The visit is expected to be met with protests over the monarchy’s colonial legacy and demands for a formal apology and reparations. It comes four years after the Prince and Princess of Wales’s controversial 2022 Caribbean tour, where images of the couple greeting Jamaican children through a wire fence sparked widespread criticism across the region.

Although Charles has gone further than his predecessors in acknowledging the monarchy’s historic links to slavery, he arrives in a region transformed.

Recent developments include a UN resolution, tabled by Ghana, declaring the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity and calling for reparatory justice, as well as Jamaica’s unprecedented slavery reparations petition to the king, which is due to be heard by the UK-based privy council next March.

“I think his visit is pivotal,” Vernon said. “If the visit does not meet the needs and expectations of a lot of the Commonwealth heads, it raises a big question about the future of the Commonwealth. What’s the point of being in the Commonwealth when one of the biggest crimes against humanity, which has been recognised at international level, where you can’t even have a proper dialogue, conversation and exploration?”

The Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, said the royal family and UK government had failed to reckon with a sea change happening across the world on this issue.

“I think it would be wrong to think that we can continue with platitudes. You’ve got ‘atrocity’, ‘deep regret’, ‘sorrow’, and now they’re going to say ‘darkest days’,” she said. “I think the king needs to realise that people wouldn’t keep raising it if what he was doing was anywhere near enough.

“You can tell that the Commonwealth means something to the monarchy, and I’m sure he would not want to be the monarch under which it crumbles.”