A trip to the Caribbean by Prince William and Duchess Kate makes it clear that the royals will have to face up to their responsibility for slavery and exploitation in the future.
Dozens of children’s hands reach through a chain link fence at the edge of a soccer field in Kingston, Jamaica.
Opposite them, separated from the children by the fence, are the British Prince William and his wife Duchess Kate. They wave and greet in a friendly manner, shaking one or the other hand.
As warm as the encounter may have been, the images reinforced the impression that British royals have little sense of how the self-confidence of the descendants of ex-slaves developed in their former empire. William and Kate, though gracious, seemed distant and elevated above their subjects.
For the 70th Jubilee of the Qeen
Since last Saturday, William and Kate have been traveling through several Caribbean countries on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II (95) on the occasion of her 70th anniversary of the throne. The eight-day trip of the future British king and his wife, which ends this weekend, was actually intended as a charm offensive. After the former colony of Barbados declared itself a republic last year, Buckingham Palace feared that the Queen’s dominion could be shrinking.
That doesn’t seem entirely unjustified: although the royals were warmly received in their travel destinations Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas, there were also protests and critical overtones.
The very first appointment on a cocoa farm in Belize had to be canceled due to protests. The background was a land conflict between local residents and a nature conservation organization whose patron is William. Later there were always the usual pictures of the royals laughing, joking and dancing with people in colorful robes. But these were not the images that shaped this trip.
History “Stained Forever”
In Jamaica, where hundreds of thousands of people who had been kidnapped from Africa had to toil on the sugar plantations, William tried to approach the subject. He agreed with his father, who last year in Barbados described slavery as “an appalling cruelty that forever stains our history,” the second in line to the British throne said at a state banquet. But no word of apology.
“The royal family does not say sorry,” commented Philip Murphy, who heads the Institute for Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, Williams’ statement in an interview with the German Press Agency. The wording was chosen with great care so as not to open the floodgates to demands for compensation, Murphy said. However, it seems doubtful whether this tentative approach will be enough to tie the former colonies to the British crown in the future.
In Murphy’s eyes, the fact that the royals broke with William’s younger brother Harry (37) and his wife Meghan (40) is now taking revenge. Both their less prominent royal roles and their greater credibility could have played an important role in reconciling the royals with their former colonies, he believes.
Demonstration in Kingston
Activists from the Advocates Network group presented 60 reasons why the Crown should apologize to Jamaica and pay reparations at a demonstration in front of the British Embassy in Kingston during the Royal visit.
“We see no reason to celebrate the 70th anniversary of your grandmother’s accession to the British throne, for under her leadership and that of her predecessors the greatest human rights tragedy in human history was sustained,” it said in an open letter to William and Kate handed over to the embassy.
“The monarchy continues to benefit from what it has done to us. Our jewels are still in their crowns,” Rosemarie Francis-Binder, a Germany-based member of the activist group, told dpa. Many Jamaicans feel affection for the Queen because they admired her as children. But that is changing. “We gave so much to the crown, but they never stood up for us,” she said.
One of the points of criticism is that Great Britain repeatedly boasts that it abolished slavery as early as 1834. What is often not mentioned, however, is that this was accompanied by massive compensation for slave owners, which the country paid for until 2015. For the former slaves and their descendants, however, there has not been a penny so far.
The Advocates Network is not calling for Jamaica to abandon the monarchy. That could still be imminent, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness indicated to journalists on Wednesday. “We’re moving on,” he said, while Prince William stood next to him with a somewhat embarrassed expression and nodded his head. Holness had already said in December that Jamaica must become a republic – a few days after Barbados solemnly seceded from the British crown and declared a republic in the presence of heir apparent Prince Charles and Barbadian pop star Rihanna.