Sorry seems to be the hardest word for the Royals, whose recent tour of the Caribbean was a stark reminder of colonial histories of slavery, exploitation and dispossession of indigenous peoples
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - William and Kate to us commoners - have just completed a Royal tour of the Caribbean that has been nothing short of a public relations disaster. William and Kate, the most popular members of the British Royal family outside of the Queen herself, stumbled through three Caribbean Commonwealth member countries. The tour was nominally to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne. In fact, as the aftermath of the tour itself has confirmed, it was about boosting support for the monarchy in the handful of remaining realms in the region. It appears that the opposite has happened. Beyond the usual vacuous commentary on how happy the couple looked, what Kate was wearing or the well-composed photo opportunities with smiling children and a bit of flag waving, it’s clear the monarchy as an institution is in deep trouble in the region.
William and Kate’s tour took them to Belize, Jamaica and The Bahamas countries grappling with colonial histories that include the horrors of slavery, dispossession of indigenous peoples and exploitation. Their tour comes just months after Barbados transitioned smoothly to a republic within the Commonwealth, elevating its former Governor-General to head of state. Despite the claims of Jeremy Clarkson and others that Barbados made the move after being pulled into China’s orbit, Barbados’ own diplomats were not too subtly pointing the finger at two connected grievances in the region: the Windrush immigration scandal and reparations for the descendants of the British Empire’s involvement in slavery. The Royal tour’s attempt to gloss over these issues very clearly failed.
Slavery is an especially touchy subject for the British Royals and the British government. For an institution that often appeals to its heritage and links back to history, there is the often unrecognised fact that right back to the reign of Elizabeth I, the monarchs of England and the United Kingdom have been tied to slavery and profited from it. Elizabeth’s successor, James I and IV, oversaw the first African slaves transported to what was then the Crown colony of Virginia. The Royal family invested directly in the African slave trade during the reign of James’ grandson Charles II, taking slaves from the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to the sugar-producing British possessions in the Caribbean – Belize, Jamaica and Barbados.
Far from saving the monarchy outside of Britain, the tour might very well be the catalyst that ends it.
With the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement across the region, the calls for an apology and reparations have only grown louder. There’s also the personal and uncomfortable fact for William that his brother Harry and his wife Meghan made a fairly explosive accusation of racism within the Royal family less than 12 months ago.
In Jamaica, William expressed his “profound sorrow” for “abhorrent” legacy of slavery, falling well short of the protestors demands for a full apology. William’s inability to say the word sorry may very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in Jamaica. The absence of the word underlines a major institutional weakness for the monarchy, and something we in Aotearoa well understand all to well after almost 30 years of settling Treaty of Waitangi claims: the British Royals speeches require the approval of the British government (the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be precise).
The last thing the British government, which would be on the hook for slavery reparations or indigenous claims for compensation, wants is a prominent member of the British royal family apologising. As we discovered during the Waikato-Tainui settlement in the 1990s, a formal apology from the monarch will never be forthcoming if the British government feels it is against its interests. In the end, the Queen merely signed the Waikato-Tainui settlement into law by granting Royal assent while on a visit to New Zealand, but the actual apology rightly came from the New Zealand government. The British government was able to side-step the issue, a side-step repeated by Prince Charles in 2019 when he described at Waitangi the confiscation and theft of Māori land in New Zealand as a “painful period.”
There were no such easy side-steps for William and Kate in the Caribbean. On the one hand, the Royals are paid for by a British government responsible for generating acrimony with immigration policies targeting Afro-Caribbean nations. On the other hand, William is in line to be king of increasingly confident, independent states in the region. Even with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office describing the Royals and the Queen’s headship of these states as a key part of Britain’s “soft power”, the tour has set off a wave of announcements of republican transitions. Both Belize and Jamaica have made clear their intentions to become republics.
Jamaica, which has for years debated the issue, may finally go through with a referendum later this year. Belize, like Barbados, only requires a constitutional amendment to make the change. The Bahamas has been more circumspect on the head of state issue; while the island chain shares its anger at immigration restrictions (the fact the Queen is head of state of New Zealand and Australia as well as the Bahamas, yet only citizens of the Bahamas require a visa, does not go unnoticed) there has not yet been a pro-republic prime minister there.
If this comes to pass, William and Kate’s tour will become infamous for its complete public relations miscalculations. Far from saving the monarchy outside of Britain, the tour might very well be the catalyst that ends it. In a bizarre statement, William has implied that he might not be Head of the Commonwealth, a sinecure positions his grandmother holds and father is in line to pick up. The modern Commonwealth, with its 54 independent members, is in fact by majority republican now anyway. Clearly the fallout of the tour, replete with colonial-era throwbacks such as William and Kate standing on the back of a Land Rover waving at their colonial subjects, is such that the Royals might need to have a serious rethink about future adventures. Perhaps they might even convince the British government that an apology and reparations for slavery are the right thing to do.
