Commonwealth: Coronation evokes bitter memories
Forgive us if Britain’s former colonies didn’t watch the coronation of King Charles III with delight, said Kenyan journalist Patrick Gathara in Al Jazeera (Qatar). In putting on that display of hereditary wealth and aristocracy, the British were asking “the world to join in celebrating something they have actively denied to other societies: a sense of their own history.” Millions of people, particularly those in the 54 nations of the Commonwealth and in the 15 countries where the British monarch is head of state, are still living with the legacy of violence wrought by British colonialism. At this point, most of us look to the monarchy only as “the world’s longest-running reality show,” with plotlines including the disgrace of the king’s brother Andrew and the estrangement of his son Harry. Alas, that “reinvention of the monarchy as global entertainment” has helped shield it from the justifiable criticism that it represents a history of injustice.
The coronation would have been the perfect occasion for the king to apologize “for the leading role the British monarchy played in the horrendous crime of African slavery,” said D.C. Campbell in Now Grenada (Grenada). Centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, which stole Africans from their homeland to toil in British colonies in the Caribbean and the Americas, left a “destructive legacy in health, education, and economic development” that “is crushingly alive and well today.” The king’s son and heir, Prince William, did express “profound sorrow” for slavery on a trip to Jamaica last year, but he stopped short of an apology. That’s why Indigenous leaders from 12 Commonwealth countries are demanding that the new king formally apologize for colonization. Other Commonwealth nations are simply ditching the monarchy, said Barbadian author Suleiman Bulbulia in The Guardian (U.K.). Barbados, which became fully independent in 2021, “is moving full steam ahead on firming up its republican status.” Jamaica will be next: It has already appointed a committee to facilitate the transition to a republic by 2025. “I can’t stand the thought that the head of state of Jamaica is King Charles III,” said committee member Hugh Small. “We tolerated it long enough, and now the public conscience has raised to a boiling point.”
Canadians, though, are stuck, said the Toronto Star (Canada) in an editorial. It’s true that 60 percent of Canadians don’t want Charles as their king, and half of us want to become a republic. But the “necessary constitutional maneuverings” to do that are simply too complex, requiring all 10 provinces and three territorities to agree. Fortunately, said John Fraser in The Globe and Mail (Canada), if we must have a sovereign, Charles is not a bad person for the job. He’s “shown himself to have a strong conscience” and is clearly personally moved by the crimes of his forebears. Already, he’s allowed researchers full access to royal archives so they can “delve into the royal family’s own past role in the slave trade.” We can expect him to be the monarch who leads Britain on its long overdue “journey of reconciliation.”