The Daily Mail is reporting that King Charles III will not personally receive a petition from Jamaica as the Holness administration steps up a campaign for Britain to pay £7.6 billion in slavery reparations.
The Jamaican delegation, led by Culture Minister Olivia Babsy Grange, is in London with a petition for Buckingham Palace.
It was expected that the petition would be delivered in person to the King, who is Jamaica’s head of state.
But according to the Daily Mail, Buckingham Palace says this will not happen. This, as the King is away in Scotland as part of his annual summer break at Balmoral.
The petition asks the king to seek an advisory opinion on the transatlantic slave trade from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The three questions are: whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English common law; whether it violated international law; and whether the UK has a legal obligation to provide a remedy for the harm caused by slavery.
The bid is based on Britain’s compensation to slave owners, not to slaves, after the abolition of the slave trade.
The 20-million pound bill amounted to 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual income, a loan for which was only paid off in 2015.
