Facing history frontally

Buckingham Palace assures us that King Charles will not “shy away” from Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade during his forthcoming Caribbean visit. A formal apology, however, is excluded since the Palace explains that is a matter for the British Government. His Majesty will confront “the darkest days of our past”, provided the confrontation stops short of saying “sorry.”
The sophistry begins with the phrase “Britain’s involvement” which distributes responsibility across a nation, while allowing the Crown to appear as a sorrowful observer. Yet the monarchy helped authorise, organise and finance the very enterprise whose horrors it now deplores. King Charles III’s predecessor, Charles II granted the Royal African Company its charter in 1672, establishing its monopoly over English trade with West Africa, including the trafficking of enslaved Africans. Both Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York—the future James II—invested in the company. These facts appear in the records of Britain’s own National Archives and British Museum proving that “Royal” was doing considerable work in that company’s name.
The slave trade required deliberate decisions, commercial investments and state protection. Describing it as “dark days” risks making an organised system of exploitation sound like a spell of unfortunate weather. The Crown was among those helping to make the weather. CARICOM’s Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice addresses precisely this evasiveness. Its original first demand is a full formal apology and expressly rejects statements of regret as substitutes because they evade acceptance of responsibility. The distinction Buckingham Palace now offers as reasonable diplomacy is the very distinction Caribbean governments have already identified as inadequate.
The region has also supplied a programme for moving beyond words. The original ten points encompass a formal apology; voluntary repatriation; Indigenous Peoples’ development; cultural institutions; action on public health; illiteracy eradication; African knowledge programmes; psychological rehabilitation; technology transfer; and debt cancellation. Together, they connect historical injury with the work of repairing societies shaped by enslavement and colonial extraction.
That agenda continues to develop with CARICOM adopting an expanded revision in July and relaunching it in September, highlighting education, health, cultural development, Indigenous communities, gender justice, debt cancellation and monetary compensation. The Community is preparing to advance reparatory justice at the Commonwealth summit in Antigua and Barbuda with Charles III at the head table. The representatives of the government of Britain, also in attendance as the head of the organization, will therefore encounter a developed regional position, backed by years of research and diplomacy.
This matters because the Palace also wishes to emphasise the Caribbean’s present and future. CARICOM’s plan is concerned with exactly those things: hospitals, education, technology and the fiscal capacity to pursue development are practical questions about the future. Repairing inherited disadvantages is one way of building it.
Of course, Charles III did not personally commit the crimes of Charles II but the issue is one of institutional responsibility. A monarchy that invokes centuries of continuity to sustain its prestige cannot conveniently treat that continuity as irrelevant when the historical accounts become uncomfortable. The frequently invoked constitutional constraint deserves recognition, to wit, that the present King acts on ministerial advice. But that explanation identifies a shared responsibility of Crown and government and it certainly does not justify their refusal. If an apology requires government agreement, the proper response is to secure that agreement.
Nor would an apology automatically settle every legal claim or determine the amount and form of reparations. Those questions require serious negotiation. Acknowledging wrongdoing would establish a more honest foundation for it. Caribbean leaders should welcome respectful engagement while insisting that royal sorrow must lead somewhere. CARICOM has already placed a framework on the table and we should insist that Britain responds to it with proposals, commitments and a timetable.
Otherwise, the promised confrontation with history will remain another carefully managed royal occasion: solemn words for the descendants of the enslaved who continue to be enmeshed in the systemic inequities imposed by our colonial past, and institutional comfort for the Crown.