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- Former Saint Vincent and the Grenadines premier calls for ‘full, unequivocal apology’ as palace aides say king will not apologize during Caribbean tour - ‘They don't want to help to finance any of the matters because they feel that it will cost them a great deal of money,’ says Ralph Gonsalves - Gonsalves sees Commonwealth summit as potential ‘watershed moment’ for reparations
By Fatma Zehra Solmaz
ISTANBUL (AA) - As King Charles III arrived in the Bahamas for a Caribbean tour, former Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said expressions of sorrow over slavery were no longer enough.
"The starting point is for a full, unequivocal apology," Gonsalves told Anadolu in an interview Tuesday.
“They don't want to do an apology. They don't want to help to finance any of the matters because they feel that it will cost them a great deal of money,” he added.
Gonsalves, now a senior adviser to The Repair Campaign and a leading figure in the Caribbean’s reparatory justice movement, argued that the consequences of slavery remain visible in Caribbean societies’ health, education, housing and access to land.
An apology must lead to measures addressing those inequalities, he added.
His appeal comes ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda on Nov. 1-4, which Charles will attend during his nine-day regional tour.
Speaking in the Bahamian capital Nassau on Tuesday, Charles acknowledged the “great suffering and injustices of the past” and said leaders of affected Commonwealth countries would discuss those issues at the summit.
However, Buckingham Palace has made clear that no formal apology is expected.
- A ‘watershed moment’?
Despite that resistance, Gonsalves sees Charles as someone who could help advance the discussion.
He said he raised reparations directly with Charles during a 2019 visit to Saint Vincent, when the monarch was still Prince of Wales, and again after his accession to the throne.
“I have a sense that the king would be supportive of that conversation,” he said.
Gonsalves acknowledged that Charles acts on government advice but argued that he could seek the British prime minister’s approval for an apology.
“He can apologize certainly for his own family's role in the enslavement of African bodies,” he added.
He pointed to the Netherlands, where then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized for the Dutch state’s role in slavery in December 2022, followed by King Willem-Alexander in July 2023.
For Gonsalves, the upcoming summit offers an opportunity to begin “a mature, honest, respectful conversation” about the consequences of Indigenous genocide and the enslavement of Africans.
“This Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is likely to be a watershed moment for reparations in the Commonwealth,” he said.
- Slavery’s lasting consequences
Gonsalves said generations of exploitation had left Caribbean societies confronting deep inequalities in education, health, housing, land ownership and economic development.
"For us on this issue, the present is the past," he said. "When the British say they don't want to go to the past, we say we don't want to live in the past. But the contemporary legacies are consequences of these grave historical wrongs."
He said formerly enslaved people emerged from slavery without the resources to build secure livelihoods.
"They had no education. They were in a terrible health situation. No housing. They had no land. No property of any kind," he said.
Britain, meanwhile, paid slave owners £20 million in compensation following abolition in the 1830s, Gonsalves noted.
“In today's money, that is over $100 billion,” he said.
Those who had been enslaved received no comparable compensation for generations of forced labor. Many were required to continue working without pay under an apprenticeship system that lasted until 1838.
"This free labor built the wealth of Britain," he said, arguing that slavery helped finance the country's commercial and industrial development, including its banking system.
Gonsalves argued that addressing those injustices would also help Britain confront racial tensions at home.
"It is in the interest of Britain," he said. “British society has a lot of dissonance on ethnic issues.”
- 10-point reparation plan
The Caribbean Community established its reparations commission in 2013. Regional leaders approved a revised 10-point reparatory justice plan in July, which was relaunched at a conference in Barbados in September.
The plan addresses the legacies of Indigenous genocide and the enslavement of Africans. Its proposals include a full formal apology, debt cancellation, monetary compensation, health and education initiatives, infrastructure development, the return of cultural artifacts, memorialization and psychological rehabilitation.
Gonsalves said an apology and financial redress were parts of the same process.
“All 10 are interconnected, they form a composite of all,” he said. “So it's not a question of you're doing one and you don't do the other.”
He called for a structured program of compensation and development initiatives, with deadlines and milestones to measure progress.
“We have to have a repair. A compensation, among the repair items,” he said.
For Gonsalves, reparations are "a matter of international justice," extending beyond Britain and its former Caribbean colonies to Africa and the wider diaspora.
He rejected suggestions that institutions and cultural practices introduced under British rule could offset the harm of colonialism.
“Did you have to carry out native genocide and enslave African bodies to take us out of our own developmental path?”
- The monarchy’s future in the Caribbean
Alongside demands for reparations, Gonsalves predicted that more Caribbean countries would remove the British monarch as their head of state.
“More and more Caribbean countries will become republics in the future,” he said.
Barbados became a republic in 2021, following Guyana in 1970 and Trinidad and Tobago in 1976. Dominica became a republic upon independence in 1978.
Gonsalves said constitutional requirements, including referendums in some countries, could slow the process.
He said he "strongly" supports a republic in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines while retaining respect for Charles and the royal family.
Whether Britain itself should become a republic was a question for the British people, he added.
As Charles continues his tour from the Bahamas to Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda, Gonsalves said he expected protests but believed they would remain peaceful.
Around a dozen demonstrators gathered outside Tuesday's youth event in Nassau carrying placards demanding reparations, according to the BBC.
Gonsalves said he did not anticipate a security threat to the king and stressed that Caribbean leaders wanted their demands addressed through respectful dialogue rather than confrontation.
"The standing of Britain in the world would improve if they address this question honestly, maturely, once and for all with us, and with Africa," he said.
