King Charles heads to Caribbean as calls grow for slavery apology

By Rupert Neate, Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN

London (CNN) — Britain’s King Charles III will begin a tour of the Caribbean on Tuesday as pressure mounts on Britain to apologize and pay reparations for its role in the slave trade.

Charles will arrive in the Bahamas at the start of a nine-day visit that will also take in Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda, where he and Queen Camilla will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), a biennial summit of 56 nations.

Charles’s first visit to the Caribbean as monarch comes amid growing calls for Britain to make reparations for its leading role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey said last week it was time for discussions about reparations. Asked by Sky News whether the King should apologize over Britain’s historic role in the slave trade, Botchwey said: “It wouldn’t hurt to have that.”

“That’s what the countries have asked for,” Botchwey added. “I don’t believe we can run away from it. But it is important to determine the form that reparations should take, and that is something that will emerge eventually.”

Meanwhile, the Caribbean Community, or Caricom, a group of 23 member and associate member states, said last month it would push for reparations to be on the agenda at CHOGM.

“The Caribbean has consistently asserted that reparations is fundamentally about justice,” Caricom Secretary-General Carla Barnett said in a speech. “It is about recognition, accountability and transformation, and about building a just and equitable future for the descendants of those who, as the chattel of colonial owners, endured untold suffering, loss of life and freedom.”

The king can only act on the advice of his ministers when he represents the country abroad, and despite the renewed calls, he has continued to follow the British government advice against issuing a formal apology for Britain’s role in the slave trade. Buckingham Palace has said he will not apologize during the Caribbean tour as such questions were “matters for governments to address,” but that he will “not shy away from the darkest days of our past.”

At the last CHOGM, in 2024, Charles acknowledged that “the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate.” However, he stopped short of an official apology and did not directly engage on the subject.

Jonathan Reynolds, the United Kingdom’s business secretary, said Tuesday that reparations are not a “reasonable request.” Reynolds told Sky News that he was “sensitive to British history” and that “we should be able to talk about it” but that past events should not be attributed to current generations.

In recent years, the British monarchy has adopted a more conciliatory tone when addressing the horrors of slavery. During a visit to Kenya in 2023, his first trip to a Commonwealth nation as head of the body, Charles said the “wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret.”

At least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and sold into slavery by European merchants between the 15th and 19th centuries, and Britain is estimated to have had a role in transporting about 3.2 million people.

When slavery was abolished in Britain in 1834, the government compensated slave owners the equivalent of £17 billion ($22.5 billion), but slaves received nothing, according to research by University College London.

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CNN’s Max Foster contributed to this report.