King Charles on the monarchy’s role in slavery: ‘None of us can change the past’

Here are more photos of King Charles and Queen Camilla in Samoa. The only thing keeping this tour from being widely criticized is the fact that most people aren’t even paying attention to Charles and Camilla. There’s been plenty of controversy, some of it even highlighted by the British media and royal rota, but it’s like they can’t even pay people to care either way. Well, let’s see if this gets picked up outside of the royalist press – King Charles made his big speech at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, his first address as the Head of Commonwealth. He did not apologize for the monarchy’s role in slavery, nor did he directly address the calls for reparations. Instead, he told people to watch their language.

King Charles backed Sir Keir Starmer in effectively ruling out reparations over slavery today, saying: ‘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.’

The monarch – and new head of the Commonwealth – told its meeting of leaders in Samoa that it was important to understand and acknowledge ‘the most painful aspects of our past’.

In his first speech to the biannual congregation of leaders as the new leader of the ‘family of nations’ following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, Charles said: ‘Since this is the first occasion on which I find myself attending this gathering of our ‘Family of Nations,’ as Head of the Commonwealth, it gives my wife and myself enormous pleasure and pride to be with you for this twenty seventh Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Together, we represent a third of humanity, with all the splendidly diverse complexity that this entails. And yet we know and understand each other, such that we can discuss the most challenging issues with openness and respect.

‘That said, our cohesion requires that we acknowledge where we have come from. I understand, from listening to people across the Commonwealth, how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate.’

He continued: It is vital, therefore, that we understand our history –to guide us to make the right choices in the future. Where inequalities exist, for example, in access to opportunity; to education; to skills training; to employment; to health; and to a planet in whose climate our human race can both survive and thrive, we must find the right ways, and the right language, to address them. As we look around the world and consider its many deeply concerning challenges, let us choose within our Commonwealth family the language of community and respect, and reject the language of division. 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.’

[From The Daily Mail]

The calls for reparations and the requests for a formal apology for slavery have been happening for years, and I always find it rather audacious for the British government and the British monarch to so consistently try to side-step both. Like, they genuinely think people will be placated with the rhetorical shrug of “None of us can change the past.” In essence, slavery happened and yes, the monarchy amassed a vast and still undisclosed fortune from chattel slavery, violent colonization and the subjugation of millions of people of color for centuries, but let’s turn the page and please don’t say mean words to me.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.