--- title: King Charles III Begins Caribbean Tour as Leaders Demand a Slavery Apology Britain Has Ruled Out description: King Charles tours the Bahamas, Guyana and Antigua as CARICOM pushes slavery reparations onto the Commonwealth summit agenda. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-10-27T08:24:15.337Z updated: 2026-10-27T08:29:21.370Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/king-charles-caribbean-tour-slavery-reparations image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/unsplash-ryujcii4g64.webp categories: Politics, Culture content_type: Feature region: Caribbean publication: Sovereign Magazine schema_type: Article about: - type: Person name: King Charles III --- In 1833 Parliament voted to end slavery across most of the British Empire and agreed to compensate the people who stood to lose money. The compensation did not go to the enslaved. About 46,000 slave owners shared £20 million, a sum equal to 40 per cent of annual government spending at the time, and the loan raised to pay them was not repaid in full until 2015. The men, women and children they had owned received nothing, and most were bound to work for their former masters for several more years as unpaid 'apprentices'. That history travels with [King Charles III](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/uk-historic-alliances-and-diplomatic-priorities-the-king-charles-iii-message-on-80th-anniversary-of-vj-day) this week. His Majesty and Queen Camilla begin a nine-day Caribbean tour on 27th October in the Bahamas, continue to Guyana and finish in Antigua and Barbuda, where the King will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) as head of the Commonwealth. The tour ends on 4th November. Leaders across the region have used the weeks before His Majesty's arrival to make one request plain. They want Britain to apologise for slavery and to pay for its consequences. The British government has ruled out both, and the King, who acts on the advice of ministers, cannot offer either on royal authority alone. ## The palace will talk about slavery but will not say sorry Buckingham Palace has said the King will not shy away from Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade during the tour. It has also confirmed that His Majesty will not make a formal apology, in line with government policy, which excludes financial reparations as well. A palace spokesperson pointed instead to the King's long record of trying to find 'creative ways to right inequalities that endure'. That record consists of words, and the words have grown stronger over time. In Barbados in 2021, on the night the island became a republic, His Majesty, then Prince of Wales, called slavery an appalling atrocity that forever stains Britain's history. At the Commonwealth summit in Kigali in 2022 the then Prince of Wales spoke of deep personal sorrow. In Kenya in 2023, by then on the throne, the King expressed the greatest sorrow and deepest regret for colonial-era violence, and again stopped short of an apology. The same year, Buckingham Palace said His Majesty supported independent research into the monarchy's historic links to slavery and would give researchers access to the royal archives. Caribbean leaders treat these statements as the start of a conversation rather than its conclusion. Guyana's President Irfaan Ali told ITV News that His Majesty had rightly recognised slavery as the darkest chapter in human history, and that an apology should be the next step. ## His Majesty returns to the Bahamas for the first time since 1973 The Bahamas became independent in July 1973, and the King, then Prince of Wales, attended the ceremonies that ended 300 years of British rule. His Majesty has not made an official visit since. The Bahamas remains one of seven Caribbean nations that keep King Charles III as monarch and head of state. Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, a psychology professor at the University of the Bahamas who chairs the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, told the Associated Press that her students showed no excitement when she mentioned the visit. ## Guyana remembers a rebellion on the Gladstone plantation His Majesty arrives in Guyana on 29th October for a two-day state visit. In 1823 thousands of enslaved people in what was then the colony of Demerara rose up in one of the largest revolts of the colonial Caribbean, on a plantation owned by John Gladstone, father of the future Prime Minister William Gladstone. More than 200 of them were killed. Several were beheaded and their heads were placed on poles. In 2023 six members of the Gladstone family travelled to Georgetown and apologised in person at the University of Guyana. A protest leader outside called the apology perfunctory and said Britain and Europe owed the region billions of dollars. The same year, the BBC reported that the family of its former correspondent Laura Trevelyan would apologise in Grenada for their ancestors' role in slavery there and give £100,000 to a community development fund on the island. Several private British families have now gone further than the British state. During the visit the King is expected to meet President Ali and the elected leaders of Amerindian villages, known as toshaos. Nikita Miller, toshao of Chinese Landing in northern Guyana, told the AP she had not been invited, and said she expected the visit to help the country as a whole but not the Amerindian villages. ## Jamaica has taken its case to the King's own court Jamaica is not on the itinerary. Royal visits to the island were once routine, but the 2022 tour by the Prince and Princess of Wales drew protests and demands for reparations, and observers in the region told the AP that the palace had learned from it. On 7th September a Jamaican delegation led by Culture Minister Olivia Grange delivered a petition to Buckingham Palace, using a legal route that dates back to the empire. It asked His Majesty to refer three questions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which is still Jamaica's final court of appeal. The questions are whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was lawful under English law, whether it breached international law and whether Britain has a legal duty to compensate for the harm it caused. The British government restated the same day that it would not pay reparations. The petition has since been referred to the Privy Council. Until this autumn the Caribbean pursued reparations through diplomacy, in speeches and summit statements. Jamaica's petition asks judges who sit in the King's name to rule on whether Britain broke its own law. ## Britain shipped 3.2 million Africans across the Atlantic Between the 15th and 19th centuries at least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and sold into slavery by European merchants. Britain transported an estimated 3.2 million of them, more than any other European nation except Portugal. The plantations of the Caribbean produced the sugar, rum and cotton that [built fortunes, banks and country houses in Britain](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/california-slavery-disclosure-law-ab2599), and the region was left with little when emancipation came. CARICOM, the Caribbean Community, set up its own Reparations Commission in 2013. It has called on European governments to pay reparations and to cancel the debts of Caribbean states, alongside a formal apology. Supporters of reparations say slavery left vast and lasting racial and economic inequality behind it. Opponents say present-day governments and taxpayers should not be held responsible for wrongs committed centuries ago. ## Antigua will show how far Commonwealth leaders are prepared to go CARICOM, which groups 23 member and associate member states including the Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica, said last month that it would push to put reparations on the CHOGM agenda. Its Secretary-General, Carla Barnett, described reparations as a matter of justice, recognition and accountability for the descendants of the enslaved. Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey said last week that the time had come for discussions about reparations, whether financial or in other forms such as the return of artefacts. Asked about an apology from the King, she told Sky News that one would do no harm. At the previous summit, in Samoa in 2024, Commonwealth leaders agreed in their final statement that the time had come for a conversation about reparatory justice, despite London's reluctance. His Majesty told that summit that the most painful aspects of the past continued to resonate across the Commonwealth. ## The King aims to face the past and focus on each nation's future Buckingham Palace has said the visit comes at an important time for relations between Britain and the Caribbean, and has set out what His Majesty aims to achieve. The programme will not shy away from what the King has called 'the darkest days of our past', and it will give His Majesty the chance to renew in person a personal and continuing commitment to acknowledging the wrongs of slavery. Above all, the palace says, the tour will focus on the present and future of each host nation, in line with what the hosts themselves asked for. That future is where the King's own record is strongest. Talks in Antigua are expected to centre on climate, trade and development, the Associated Press reports. His Majesty has campaigned on climate change and the protection of forests for decades, and President Ali, while pressing for an apology, has praised the King's work on forests, climate change and the rights of Indigenous peoples. Historian Sir Anthony Seldon told the BBC that this tour is the biggest risk His Majesty has taken since coming to the throne. In St John's, the King will speak as both head of the Commonwealth and monarch of the host nation, before the leaders of 56 member states. His Majesty arrives with a record of acknowledgement that began in Barbados in 2021, decades of work on the issues at the top of the summit agenda and a clear aim of putting each host nation's future at the centre of the visit. That gives the King the chance to turn a difficult conversation into a shared one.