By: Staff Writer
September 12, 2023
Caribbean nations are preparing to write a formal letter to the British Royals demanding reparations for slavery.
According to a report by The Telegraph on Saturday (September 9), national reparations commissions in the Caribbean want to bypass the Rishi Sunak government and pursue financial payments directly from British institutions with historical links to slavery.
Lloyds of London and the Church of England are also set to be approached with demands for reparative justice for their role in the slave trade and plantation system.
The Telegraph reported that Arley Gill, a lawyer and chair of Grenada’s Reparations Commission, said: “We are hoping that King Charles will revisit the issue of reparations and make a more profound statement beginning with an apology, and that he would make resources from the Royal family available for reparative justice.
“He should make some money available. We are not saying that he should starve himself and his family, and we are not asking for trinkets.
“But we believe we can sit around a table and discuss what can be made available for reparative justice.”
The lawyer of the Reparations Commission also pointed out the duty to offer reparations laid “at all levels, banks, churches, insurance companies like Lloyds, and universities and colleges that benefited”.
Dr Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, head of the Bahamian Reparations Committee, told a local daily in The Bahamas that as that country is a part of the 15-nation CARICOM Reparations Commissions, The Bahamas is in support of moves made by the Caribbean community.
This comes as the CARICOM Reparations Commission prepares to take action seeking an apology and reparations from the British Royal family for its historical involvement in slavery, especially the exploitation of enslaved people in the Caribbean region, hailing from Africa. “One of the important things to note is that The Bahamas National Reparations Committee, just like the committees in Barbados or Grenada or Guyana or Jamaica, is a member of the larger CARICOM Reparations Commission.
“So, when progress is made, or when the Heirs of Slavery group or the Repair Campaign does an initiative in Guyana, for example, where they had the Gladstone family make an apology and donate $100,000, while that does directly affect Guyana, it overall speaks to the CARICOM reparations commission, because we work as a unit,” she said
The Telegraph report also said the Royal family played a direct part in founding the slave-trading Royal African Company, from which it earned a return. It said that banks such as Barclays and RBS have had direct links to the slave trade, whether through finance or the slave ownership of their directors.
It added that leading figures in the Church of England owned slaves, and the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel invested in Barbados plantations. The above-mentioned institutions are set to receive formal demands being prepared by the Reparations Commission for St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
Adrian Odle, a lawyer and commission chair in the SVG, told the publication that British institutions are compromised by their ancestral guilt, saying “every property that the royal family is in possession of has the scent of slavery”. Odle will push to bypass the Sunak government which has so far not been receptive to the idea of reparations.
Bypassing the Sunak government and going directly to the Royal family may be a bit of a risk in that courts may decide that the respective reparations committee’s didn’t exhaust all possible channels before taking their matter to the highest body in the UK, in that of the Royal Family.
But as it stands now, the watch is on for the formal request.