Reports say Charles will acknowledge the shame of the slave trade without the word campaigners want, and the reason lies in the constitution as much as in the man
King Charles’s Caribbean Tour: Acknowledgement, Apology and the Constitution
There is a particular kind of royal speech that is drafted by many hands and judged by a single word. The King is about to give one.
The headlines this week set out the terms. A daily digest of royal coverage lists them side by side: the Guardian reporting that the King is to acknowledge the “darkest days” of Britain’s colonial rule during a Caribbean tour, and the Daily Mail reporting that he will not apologise for Britain’s role in the slave trade as he heads into a row over reparations. An American magazine put it that he will not shy away from the shame surrounding the United Kingdom’s role.
So the shape is clear before he boards the aeroplane. There will be sorrow. There will be acknowledgement. There will not be the word “sorry” in the sense that carries legal weight.
Why the Word Matters
To anyone outside the argument this can look like hair-splitting. Regret, sorrow, shame, apology: are they not the same thing?
They are not, and both sides know it. For campaigners in the Caribbean, a formal apology is a recognition of responsibility and a step toward reparatory justice. Several Caribbean governments have, through a regional body, set out a plan that begins with exactly that.
For the British government, a formal apology is feared as an admission that could strengthen claims for financial compensation. Successive governments of both main parties have declined to give one.
The King’s Position
Here is the part that is often missed. The King does not make policy. He is a constitutional monarch. As any account of the monarchy of the United Kingdom explains, the sovereign is head of state and carries out ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. On matters of government he acts on the advice of ministers. An overseas tour is undertaken at the government’s request, and a speech on such a subject is cleared with it.
If the government’s position is that there will be no apology, the King cannot give one, whatever his private feelings. He can go to the edge of the permitted language, and by all accounts he intends to.
He has done so before. In Kenya in 2023 he spoke of abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence. At a Commonwealth gathering he has spoken of the most painful aspects of the past continuing to resonate. Each time the phrasing went a little further. Each time it stopped short.
Is That Good Enough?
Reasonable people disagree, and I think it is my job to set out why.
Those who say it is not enough argue that the Crown is not a bystander. Monarchs chartered and profited from the companies that traded in enslaved people. The institution, not merely the country, was involved. An heir to that institution who expresses personal sorrow while declining to apologise is, on this view, offering sympathy where accountability is owed.
Those who defend the approach argue that a king who freelances on a matter of state policy would be breaking the convention that keeps the monarchy above politics, and that words of acknowledgement from the head of state, repeated and deepened over time, shift the ground on which governments stand. They add that he has supported research into the monarchy’s historical links to slavery, which is not nothing.
The Realms
There is also a harder political fact. In several Caribbean countries the King is head of state. In some of them, moves to become republics are under way or under discussion. Barbados made the change in 2021. A tour is, among other things, an encounter between a monarch and people who are deciding whether to keep him.
A visit that is seen to dodge the central question may speed those decisions. A visit that is seen to engage with it honestly may not slow them, but could shape how the parting is remembered.
The Clown in the Title
This blog is called what it is called because the monarchy is, among other things, a source of comedy. I am usually the first to enjoy that. This week I find I am not in the mood. The subject is the enslavement of millions of people. The carefully weighed adverbs of a palace speechwriter are a small matter beside it.
What I will say is that there is something very British about the whole procedure. A man in a good suit will stand at a lectern and convey, through the selection of an adjective, a position negotiated between a palace and a foreign office, and commentators in three continents will parse it like scripture. It is how we do things. I am not sure it is how we should.
What to Listen For
When the speech comes, a few things will be worth noting. Whether he speaks of the Crown’s own role or only of Britain’s. Whether he refers to the continuing effects, not only to the past. Whether there is any reference to dialogue about what comes next. And how it is received by the people in the room, which matters more than how it is received in London.
A Caution
I am writing before the event, on the basis of what newspapers have reported the King will say. Briefings ahead of a speech are not the speech. I will come back to this when the words have actually been spoken.
The Longer View
Institutions that last a thousand years do so by adjusting. The monarchy’s relationship with its own history is being renegotiated, slowly, in public, one tour at a time. Whether it is moving fast enough is a question on which the people of the Caribbean are entitled to the deciding view.
Elsewhere
For readers who want the lighter side of royal coverage, The London Prat has pages of British satirical news on royal tours and London satirical news about Buckingham Palace statements, where you can also find my royal notebook. Bohiney Magazine watches from America.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
