Caribbean Nations Demand Reparations from King Charles for Royal Connection to Slave Trade Transcript

During a visit to Kenya Britain’s King Charles has stopped short of apologizing for his nation’s repression of independence fighters 70 years ago. But the new monarch is under severe pressure because of Britain’s imperial past. Caribbean nations are calling on Charles to dig into his $2 billion personal fortune and pay compensation for the royal family’s slave trading past. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports

Britain’s imperial state crown that Charles III wore at his coronation was supposed to represent the king’s moral authority over his subjects in the United Kingdom, as well as former colonies which have retained the monarch as their head of state. But as Charles strives to bolster the monarchy’s relevance in the 21st century, he’s been undermined by revelations that the symbol of his sovereignty is stained by the blood of slaves.

The British royal family are deeply entangled in the transatlantic chattel slave trade.

Professor Robert Beckford field is social justice, and he’s been investigating links between major institutions and slavery.

They signed the first charter that allowed privateers to go into Africa, into the West Indies and traffic hundreds of thousands of enslaved people. They made huge profits from it.

A document recently emerged showing that in 1689 King William III accepted shares worth $300,000 in today’s values in the slave-trading Royal African Company, the donor was Edward Colston, the company’s deputy governor who made a fortune from trafficking 80,000 Africans to the Americas.

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Three years ago, anti-racism, activists tore down Colston’s statue in his home city of Bristol. Faced with growing proof of the crown’s ties to slavery, King Charles has promised to support researchers by opening up the Royal family’s archives.

This provides them with a redemptive moment, an opportunity to do what no royal family has ever done before in the history of Britain, to acknowledge that much of their wealth is linked to the trafficking, enslavement, and genocide of African people, and the opportunity to apologize for that and to pay reparation. This could be a huge turning point, not just only in terms of British history, but in terms of world history.

One year after his succession, King Charles is under increasing pressure to apologize and pay reparations to Caribbean islands, which generated huge wealth from slave plantations and are now impoverished.

We want to encourage the royal family, we are interested in all of the institutions, governments, families that have benefited. They must come forward.

Arley Gill heads the authority seeking reparations to the island of Grenada. Another major institution targeted by Gill is Lloyd’s of London, the insurance exchange, which profited from indemnifying, the slave fleets.

The reparation is not charity, it is actually making amends.

According to the United Kingdom’s National Archives, British ships transported roughly 3 million slaves across the Atlantic Ocean before the trade was outlawed. In the early 19th century.

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A study commissioned by the American Society for International Law, together with the University of the West Indies, calculates that Britain’s slave debt amounts to $23 trillion. The Caribbean islands are going after British institutions with slavery connections because the UK government is refusing to engage.

So I want to ask the Prime Minister today if he will offer a full and meaningful apology for our country’s role in slavery and colonialism and commit to reparatory justice.

Minister.

Well, no, Mr. Speaker, what I think our focus should now be on doing is of course, understanding our history in all its parts, not running away from it, but right now, making sure that we have a society which is inclusive and tolerant of people from all backgrounds, but trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward and is not something that we will focus our energies on.

Rishi Sunak is on the wrong side of history, and that must be made absolutely clear.

Dealing with Britain’s colonial past is a tightrope walk for King Charles. In Nairobi last night he expressed remorse for Britain’s brutality towards Kenyans during an insurgency in the 1950s.

The wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret. There were abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans as they waged, as you said at the United Nations, a painful struggle for independence and sovereignty. And for that there can be no excuse.

But the king stopped short of issuing an apology, which begs the question just how far will he go when it comes to slavery? The owners of this relatively modest dwelling in South England are trying to lead by example, retired doctor Tom Trevelyan is a descendant of merchants who owned more than 1,000 slaves in Grenada and lived in this mansion.

I did say to myself, “I have done nothing.” It’s not that I’m apologizing for something I’ve done. I’m apologizing for something that my ancestors did because of the difference that it makes to the people who have been harmed.

Earlier this year, Trevelyan and other members of his family went to Grenada to apologize in person. His wife, Anita, works with other families trying to atone for the misdeeds of their ancestors.

Everybody in this country who’s lived here has in one way or another benefited from the prosperity that the slave trade brought to this country, which enabled everything to be built on. And it’s just important to realize that without that dreadful trade… We’ve all eaten sugar, we’ve all eaten chocolate, we’ve all got cotton. Where did it come from in the beginning?

We’re going to give it.

The Trevelyan’s niece Laura, the former BBC foreign correspondent, has gone further by donating $120,000 to establish an education fund in Grenada.

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Are their families who are reluctant to follow your path because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose their wealth?

Absolutely. And that was a debate that happened within my family. Within mine there isn’t wealth to lose really, there is money and good middle class lifestyles for sure, but not hundreds of millions of pounds. People who have that kind of generational wealth I think are concerned about the consequences, the consequences of being sued.

Most Jamaicans are descended from 1 million slaves who made fortunes for British plantations owners, their island, the second-poorest nation in the Americas is demanding compensation from Britain and is on track to become a republic by dumping Prince William’s father as head of state respect.

Respect us and apologize now.

Reparations on time, come now.

[inaudible 00:07:13] this is living hell.

It’s one of these terms which you see bandied around a lot, I think it’s called generational trauma.

After being a journalist in Britain, Nick Davis is carving out a second career in Jamaica, making artisan chocolate.

You only have to look at the murder rates of societies in the Caribbean; it’s a thing which was done to us which has been passed on from generation to generation. We are literally killing ourselves, and that is because of this constant lack of resources, lack of opportunity.

Do you think reparations, if they were to happen in your lifetime, would make any difference to you?

It’s a tricky one. I think that as a community, we don’t realize that what happened during the period of enslavement was our holocaust. When people tell you, “You need to get on with it’s in the past,” you don’t realize how traumatic that is and how damaging that is to your very being.

Do you think that he personally should dig into his personal fortune and pay reparations?

That’s the only way, as an economic entity, is to dig into your own profits from this genocide and make recompense, and I’d expect King Charles to do just that.

So the Caribbean is hoping Charles will follow the lead of other British slave-owning families, because it’ll pile pressure on the UK government to do the same.

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For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Malcolm Brabant in London.