Caribbean nations are set to make a bid to the British royal family and other institutions for reparations over their role in the slave trade.
National reparations commissions have begun writing letters demanding financial payments and reparative justice, with plans to send them by the end of the year.
Insurance market Lloyd’s of London and the Bank of England will also be approached for reparations.
Arley Gill, a lawyer for Grenada’s reparations commission, told a local paper there’s high hopes for King Charles’ response.
“We are hoping that King Charles will revisit the issue of reparations and make a more profound statement beginning with an apology,” he said.
“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.”
Recent research has proven direct links between the royal family and the slave trade, with ancestors of the late Queen Mother having bought and exploited people on tobacco plantations in Virginia.
King Charles indicated he supported research into the ties between the slave trade and the monarchy, describing the issue of slavery as an “appalling atrocity”.
He is yet to apologise for Britain’s involvement in the slave trade.
While the UK government has refused to provide reparations, the Caribbean reparations commissions are seeking to bypass Parliament and instead appeal directly to the institutions involved.
A commission chair, Adrian Odle, told the UK Telegraph that “every property that the royal family is in possession of has the scent of slavery”.
When the Slavery Abolition Act was put into place in 1834 – effectively outlawing the practice within the British Empire – the government of the day compensated slave-owning operations and individuals for their losses.
A total of £20 million (£17 billion today), taking up a whopping 40 per cent of the government budget, was handed over.
The Bank of England only finished paying off their obligations to slave owners in 2015.
Barbados has begun pursuing reparations for the slave trade since becoming a republic in 2021.
