Editorial | King Charles and reparations

Jamaica no doubt coordinated with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on its petition to King Charles, requesting that he seek an advisory opinion from the Privy Council about the legality of chattel slavery and Britain’s obligation to pay reparations to Jamaicans for maintaining the system in the island for nearly 200 years.

Indeed, Olivia Grange, the island’s culture minister, who lodged the petition in London yesterday, previously explained that Jamaica’s action was parallel rather than in conflict with continuing regional demand for reparations, to which Jamaica has long been a party. There is no fragmentation of the Caribbean’s reparations project. That is important.

The Jamaican petition has a number of potentially significant legal and political consequences while highlighting the absurdity of Jamaica’s existing constitutional arrangements.

First, though, this newspaper has no doubt about the moral and legal obligations of European countries that were involved in the slave trade and chattel slavery to compensate the victims of what a UN resolution in March labelled “the gravest crime against humanity”.

However, even as they increasingly acknowledge the horrors of trafficking over 12 million Africans from their homes and their existence as chattel in the Americas, the perpetrators have stopped short of an embrace of reparatory justice for slavery.

DELICATE POSITION

Jamaica’s move places King Charles, depending on the perspective, in a delicate constitutional and political position, or, perhaps, between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

King Charles is Jamaica’s head of state, to whose citizens he owes a constitutional duty of care. Jamaica maintains the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, established in 1833, as its final court for criminal and civil matters.

The 1833 Act, passed by the British Parliament, gave power to “His Majesty to refer to the said Judicial Committee for hearing or consideration any such other matters whatsoever as His Majesty shall think fit; and such Committee shall thereupon hear or consider the same, and shall advise His Majesty thereon in manner aforesaid”.

It is this authority that Jamaica wants King Charles to utilise to provide an advisory opinion on whether

• the transportation of Africans to the island and their forced enslavement was contrary to the fundamental principles of the common law and any local legislation that purported to authorise their subjection was void as repugnant to fundamental principles of English law;

• forced transport and subsequent enslavement of people of African descent, up until 1838, constituted ‘crimes against humanity’ under international law, for which the UK bears responsibility; and

• the United Kingdom is under an obligation to provide a remedy to the Jamaican people.

But King Charles is not only the sovereign of Jamaica. He is also monarch of Great Britain. Moreover, the justices of the Privy Council are also the same ones who constitute the UK’s Supreme Court, that country’s final court.

EASIEST OF HURDLES

The latter point is, perhaps, the easiest of the hurdles – assuming that the justices are clear about, and apply in good faith, applicable legal principles.

An advisory decision is not binding, but one in favour of Jamaica would provide the island, and others pursuing reparations, a powerful legal platform from which to accelerate political negotiations with Britain. They may even contemplate legal action in the British courts.

But here is King Charles’ dilemma. His Majesty usually acts on the advice of his ministers. It is the Jamaican ones who have requested that he act.

However, those at Westminster and in Whitehall might claim a legitimate interest in this matter. A referral by the king, if the Privy Council’s advisory opinion favoured Jamaica, would be, from Britain’s standpoint, the opening of a judicial Pandora’s box that London would find hard to contain.

Should the king decline to accommodate Jamaica’s petition, he would not only have betrayed his obligation to his Jamaican subjects by shielding the UK Government from their demands for reparatory justice but also raised questions about the discharge of his responsibilities as Jamaica’s head of state.

As exquisitely enticing as the king’s conundrum is, it is also a burlesque theatre of Jamaica’s constitution: a head of state who is king of a foreign country and of whose allegiance there is certainty; and supplicants to a final court, access to which is by prayer to the king of many loyalties.

The absurdity of this matter insists that Jamaica act with urgency on arrangements to disengage from the king, establish a republican state, and remove the Privy Council as its final court.