‘We want answers’, says Grange as Jamaica files slavery reparations petition with King Charles

Jamaica today filed its petition with Buckingham Palace for King Charles III to seek legal guidance on the country’s slavery reparations claim from Britain.

In a social media post on X, Culture Minister Olivia Grange, who led Jamaica’s delegation to Britain, shared a picture of herself with a document held aloft and the caption, “The petition has been filed.”

British media reports say that King Charles III was not at the presentation as he is away on vacation.

“In relation to the wrongs that were done, we want answers,” Grange told The Associated Press on Sunday before a church service in south London, the first in a series of events scheduled around the filing.

“Once we get those answers, then our attorneys, our lawyers, will determine what the next move is,” she added.

While the petition is formally addressed to the King, Charles has no personal say on whether it will be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and he will act on the advice of the Government.

The petition asks the King, in his capacity as Head of State of Jamaica, to refer three questions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Jamaica’s highest court.

The three questions are specific to the transatlantic chattel enslavement of Africans in Jamaica and shift from the demand for payment.

Jamaica and other Caribbean nations have demanded reparations for decades, but these were largely framed as requests for direct financial compensation.

Buckingham Palace said Monday that it has been working closely with the Governor-General of Jamaica, the King’s representative on the island who is appointed on the advice of the Jamaican Government, to ensure the petition is “properly lodged”.

While acknowledging that slavery was “abhorrent”, the British Government has so far rejected demands for either an apology or reparations.

Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London, said the move was “quite clever” because it seeks to use an obscure constitutional procedure to address one of the biggest issues in Jamaican society.

The right of British people to petition the Crown with grievances about the administration of justice stretches back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, when the King was considered the “fountain of justice throughout his Dominions”, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council says on its website.

Jamaica’s petition is based on an 1833 law that made the committee the highest court for civil and criminal appeals in the British Empire. When the Empire became the Commonwealth of independent nations after World War II, the committee retained that role for the countries that maintain their legal ties to the UK.

Prescott expects the petition to be referred to the Judicial Committee, where a panel of UK Supreme Court justices will review it and make a ruling.

But, he said, the justices are usually very cautious about granting such petitions because they sidestep standard legal procedures.

“I think, at the very least, the board will look at this with a skeptical eye, not because of questions of whether slavery is wrong or right or otherwise, but just this is a very peculiar legal procedure that is sort of just one on the statute books that rears its head from time to time.”

- Additional reporting from AP News

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