OMM Newsroom
King Charles III will begin a Caribbean tour on Tuesday as pressure grows on Britain to apologise and pay reparations for its role in the slave trade, CNN reported.
Charles is due to arrive in The Bahamas at the start of the nine-day visit, which will also include Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda. He and Queen Camilla will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), a biennial summit of 56 nations.
It is Charles’s first visit to the Caribbean as monarch. The trip comes amid renewed calls for Britain to make reparations for its leading role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Caribbean leaders call for reparations discussions
Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey said last week it was time to discuss reparations. Asked by Sky News whether the King should apologise for the UK’s historic role in the slave trade, she 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.”
The Caribbean Community (Caricom), a group of 23 member and associate member states, said last month it would press for reparations to be included on the CHOGM agenda.
“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.”
UK government rejects an apology and reparations request
When representing the country abroad, the King can act only on the advice of his ministers. Despite the renewed calls, he has continued to follow UK government advice against issuing a formal apology for Britain’s role in the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace has said Charles will not apologise during the Caribbean tour, saying such questions were “matters for governments to address”. It added that he would “not shy away from the darkest days of our past.”
At the previous CHOGM, in 2024, Charles acknowledged that “the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate”, but did not issue an official apology or directly address the subject.
On Tuesday, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told Sky News that reparations were not a “reasonable request”. He said he was “sensitive to British history” and that “we should be able to talk about it”, but argued that current generations should not be held responsible for past events.
In recent years, the British monarchy has adopted a more conciliatory tone when addressing slavery. During a 2023 visit to Kenya—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. Britain is estimated to have played 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), while enslaved people received nothing, according to research by University College London.
