Keyword – News
Trefwoorden – Jamaica, King Charles III, Colonialism, Commonwealth of Nations
Title – Jamaica’s plea to the king: use your authority to ensure colonial slavery is examined | Jamaica | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/olivia-grange
Link – Jamaica’s plea to the king: use your authority to ensure colonial slavery is examined | Jamaica | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T15:44:11.000Z
Category – SpecialReportAlt
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/sep/09/jamaica-slavery-reparations-king-charles

O n 6 September 1781, the Zong slave ship set out on the final leg of its voyage to Black River, Jamaica . Four hundred and forty two enslaved Africans were on board – twice the number of people the ship could safely accommodate.

Twelve weeks later, 132 enslaved people were murdered by the ship’s crew by being pushed overboard to their deaths. The crew’s justification was the ship had insufficient water supplies to keep everyone alive for the rest of the voyage – a claim later proved false in the British courts.

This event, and the legal case that followed, added significant weight to the abolitionist movement in the UK, as did uprisings throughout the Caribbean led by the enslaved.

My ancestors achieved their emancipation in 1834, more than 50 years on from the horrors of the Zong. It took a further 128 years for Jamaicans to achieve our independence, on 6 August 1962.

At that time, Jamaica ceased to be a British colony. But the legacies of our colonial past linger, not least because we remain a member of the Commonwealth, with King Charles as our head of state.

The consequences of the slave trade reverberate deeply to this day. The UK drew immense wealth from Jamaica during the colonial era, but centuries of exploitation left us with an economic and social deficit we are still fighting to overcome.

Our natural resources were ravaged during the colonial period, leaving us one of the most vulnerable regions in the world in relation to the climate crisis and extreme weather events.

Our infrastructure is massively underdeveloped; our most talented young people often choose to immigrate to the US or come here to the UK. Poverty levels remain high; educational disadvantage persists; health outcomes are poor – all of this can be directly linked to our history of enslavement and colonialism.

While the government of Jamaica works tirelessly to address the economic and social deficits, legacy issues persist.

Here in the UK, meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people have African-Caribbean heritage.

It is against this backdrop that we have, this week, filed a petition with King Charles, asking him to refer three specific questions on transatlantic chattel enslavement to the judicial committee of the privy council. The questions focus on whether enslavement in Jamaica was ever lawful and whether there is an obligation on the UK to provide some form of reparatory remedy.

It is important to stress we are not asking King Charles to answer these questions himself. Rather, the people of Jamaica are asking him, as our head of state, to allow our case to have a fair hearing in the British courts.

Drawing on the Judicial Committee Act of 1833 – which confers a special power on King Charles to refer questions of legal and constitutional importance to the judicial committee – this is the first time any Commonwealth state has pursued this legal route for the cause of reparatory justice. It is, in fact, such a rarely used legal route that it took us some time – with both the palace and the privy council – to confirm the exact process for filing the petition correctly.

In pursuing this route, we are placing our faith in the British legal system, one of the longest-established in the world.

We are seeking a chance to put forward the legal argument for reparations – and our legal case coincides with growing political and public momentum on this issue.

In March, the UN passed a motion, recognising enslavement as “the gravest crime against humanity” . In May, Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology for the Vatican’s role in legitimising enslavement .

In June, heads of state, policymakers and activists from more than 80 countries (including some former European colonial powers) gathered in Ghana for the Accra Reparatory Justice Conference. A Global Advisory Council on Reparatory Justice was established after the event, of which our own prime minister, Dr Andrew Holness, is a member.

Just last week, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (CERD) issued guidance stating countries were legally obliged to consider reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and to take other ⁠measures to address the enduring ⁠legacy of racial ​discrimination.

Now, through our petition, Jamaica is adding our own distinct effort to the global campaign for reparatory justice, aiming to test the legal principles of relevance to this issue.

Our petition has been endorsed by the heads of government of all Caricom countries, while Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, has also expressed his strong support.

King Charles has previously expressed deep personal sorrow about the history of enslavement. He has the constitutional power and the personal moral authority to allow this question to now be legally examined. Two hundred and forty-five years on from the Zong massacre, we are asking him to grant this request.

Olivia Grange is the Jamaican government’s minister for culture, gender, entertainment and sport