King Charles III will not personally receive a petition from Jamaica as its government steps up a campaign for Britain to pay £7.6billion in slavery reparations.
The Jamaican delegation has arrived in London with a petition for Buckingham Palace as it attempts to lobby the monarch for a massive payout by UK taxpayers.
Royal observers had initially expected the petition to be given to Charles as Jamaica’s head of state, asking him to put three questions to the Privy Council.
But Buckingham Palace has now told Newsweek this will not happen in person, with the King away in Scotland as he continues his annual summer break at Balmoral.
It comes as Jamaica hopes answers to questions in the petition, as well as talks with the Foreign Office, are steps towards a reparations payout by Britain.
The bid to entangle the King in the campaign focuses on how in 1833, after Britain led the world by banning slavery, it paid compensation to slave owners, not to slaves.
The £20million bill, amounting to 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual income, meant Britain had to take out a huge loan, which was only paid off in 2015.
Jamaican culture minister Olivia Grange said on arrival in the UK: ‘Up to 2015, Britain was paying the slave masters because we were considered property.
Jamaican culture minister Olivia Grange holds the petition at Buckingham Palace yesterday
‘The question really should be: if in modern times we’re still paying back the slave masters for the ‘property’ that was our ancestors, because of the abolition of slavery, why shouldn’t we be pursuing some remedy at this time?’
She accepted some UK taxpayers might object but said the majority ‘may consider answers are required’.
The three questions for the Privy Council are: whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English law; whether it broke international law; and whether Britain now has a legal duty to provide redress.
Ms Grange said: ‘We want the answers. Once we get the answers, or once we get a response, then the next steps will be determined.’
The Privy Council, which advises the King on matters of state, among other duties, currently has around 700 lifetime members, including present and past Cabinet ministers, leaders of opposition parties, archbishops and judges, all of whom earn the title ‘Right Honourable’.
The Privy Council’s Judicial Committee remains the highest court of appeal for Commonwealth countries including Jamaica – and its five judges could consider the countries’ questions.
The British monarch has for two centuries had the authority to refer legal matters to the committee for advisory opinion.
British governments have maintained they will not pay slavery reparations.
A church service in south London for ‘remembrance, justice and repair’ was held yesterday, as one of a series of events scheduled around the filing of the petition on slavery reparations
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: ‘We understand the Jamaican government is seeking a petition to be heard before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
‘The process for seeking a petition is to lodge it with the Judicial Committee so that referral under section four of the 1833 Act can be considered.
‘We also understand the Jamaican representatives will be received by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for bilateral discussions.’
He added: ‘His Majesty has on many occasions expressed his personal and wholehearted commitment to promoting greater understanding around the issue of slavery and finding ways to address historic wrongs for the benefit of communities today.’
The spokesman also referred to what he described as the King’s ‘landmark’ speech to leaders at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Samoa in October 2024.
He quoted Charles saying: ‘I understand, from listening to people across the Commonwealth, how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate… none of us can change the past. But we can commit, with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.’
While the petition is formally addressed to the King, Charles has no personal say on whether it will be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and he will act on the advice of the government.
More than 12million Africans were taken across the Atlantic to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries, many to British sugar plantations in Jamaica.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who is pictured meeting King Charles III at Buckingham Palace in September 2022, has previously announced plans to sever ties with the British crown.
Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London, said the move was ‘quite clever’ because it seeks to use an obscure constitutional procedure to address one of the biggest issues in Jamaican society.
The right of British people to petition the crown with grievances about the administration of justice stretches back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, when the king was considered the ‘fountain of justice throughout his Dominions,’ the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council says on its website.
Jamaica’s petition is based on an 1833 law that made the committee the highest court for civil and criminal appeals in the British Empire.
When the Empire became the Commonwealth of independent nations after the Second World War, the committee retained that role for the countries that maintain their legal ties to the UK.
Mr Prescott expects the petition to be referred to the Judicial Committee, where a panel of UK Supreme Court justices will review it and make a ruling.
But he said the justices are usually very cautious about granting such petitions because they sidestep standard legal procedures.
‘I think, at the very least, the board will look at this with a sceptical eye, not because of questions of whether slavery is wrong or right or otherwise, but just this is a very peculiar legal procedure that is sort of just one on the statute books that rears its head from time to time.’
The procedure could boost support for a Jamaican republic even if rejected – after Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced plans to sever ties with the British crown.
Charles and Camilla play drums outside the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica, in 2008
Mr Prescott said that if the Privy Council, acting in the King’s name, rejects the petition it would underscore the gulf between the interests of Britain and Jamaica.
‘It does raise the question of why have a head of state who really does not share the positions that are widely held in Jamaica,’ he added.
‘If those residual links (to Britain) don’t deliver an answer that is what they’re looking for in Jamaica, then you might be looking at severing those links.’
The filing was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the day in 1781 when the Liverpool-registered ship Zong set sail from West Africa with 442 enslaved Africans on board.
When water supplies ran low on the way to Jamaica, the crew decided to throw 132 men, women and children overboard, calculating that it would be more profitable to file an insurance claim for the lost ‘property’ than to sell their weakened and dehydrated captives for a reduced price.
Publicity about the Zong massacre helped fuel the campaign to end slavery in the British Empire.
Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, although it was not until 1834 that the enslavement of humans was outlawed.
Ms Grange is also meeting British Museum executives to ask for the return of three carvings found in a cave in 1792 and taken to the UK.
One is of a birdman, another of a rain-making god and the third was used in taking drugs in rituals.
They were created by the island’s original inhabitants the Taino, who were wiped out by the arrival of Europeans, many from disease.
Ms Grange said Jamaica had previously tried to secure the three pieces for an exhibition but was told they were unavailable and was sent replicas instead.
She added: ‘We would wish to have repatriation of those artefacts.
‘For years, we have tried, I think we’re making some inroads now in terms of the dialogue, and we have been invited to send three curators for them to go through to see what artefacts are in the possession of the museum, and for us to engage in discussions.’
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