LONDON—Campaigners for slavery reparations and students have criticized the British monarchy after King Charles posed with Caribbean officers at a London reception beneath a portrait of George IV, who profited from enslaved labor on plantations in Grenada.
Charles hosted on March 10 a number of Caribbean representatives at St. James’s Palace for the annual Commonwealth Day reception, attended by, amongst others, the overseas ministers of Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Grenada’s excessive commissioner to Britain, Rachel Croney, was additionally in attendance, alongside different Caribbean diplomats.
A gaggle of 29 company on the reception posed for {a photograph} with Charles and British overseas minister Yvette Cooper beneath a big portrait of George IV. The picture was subsequently shared throughout a number of accounts of some Caribbean overseas ministries in addition to by a excessive commissioner.
GEORGE IV WAS ENRICHED BY GRENADIAN ESTATES: RESEARCHER
Analysis by unbiased scholar Desirée Baptiste shared with Reuters final 12 months, discovered that 1,000 kilos ($1,331.20) – about 103,000 kilos as we speak – have been paid into George IV’s personal coffers from two Crown-owned Grenadian estates labored by lots of of enslaved individuals within the 18th and nineteenth centuries.
George IV’s reign lasted from 1820 to 1830.
Specialists mentioned the discovering will increase stress on the monarchy to confront its historic ties to slavery, together with issuing a full apology and acknowledging the methods it profited from it.
“It’s offensive to have his portrait up,” Arley Gill, chairman of Grenada’s Nationwide Reparations Committee, mentioned. “It’s doubly offensive to have individuals of African descent with the king under {a photograph} of him.”
“It simply rubs salt within the wounds.”
Gill mentioned the criticism of the {photograph} introduced a possibility for some Caribbean representatives to raised educate themselves on the historical past of slavery.
Buckingham Palace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Baptiste referred to as the {photograph} a “diplomatic misstep” by the palace and urged Charles to “deepen his understanding” of the monarchy’s involvement in slavery.
Robert Beckford, a British professor of theology of Jamaican heritage, mentioned the group {photograph} was an act of “historic amnesia.”
“Standing beneath royal portraits normalizes forgetting,” Beckford added.
Charles, who expressed sorrow over slavery in a 2022 speech to Commonwealth leaders, has backed a PhD examine on the royal household’s function in slavery.
A 2023 Guardian report discovered that King William III, who reigned from 1689 to 1702, obtained 1,000 kilos in shares of the Royal African Firm, which trafficked 1000’s of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
