Tomorrow Charles III will be crowned king in Westminster Abbey in accordance with rites some of which date back many hundreds of years. Of the 56 nations which make up the Commonwealth 15, including the UK, still retain the British monarch as their head of state and of those, eight are members of Caricom. Australia, Canada and New Zealand account for three of the remaining six, while the others are islands, or in the case of Papua New Guinea, a portion of an island, in the Pacific.
In terms of the anglophone Caribbean, Guyana led the way when it acquired Republican status in 1970, to be followed by Trinidad and Tobago in 1976. A lengthy interval followed until Barbados became a republic in 2021. Of our other Caricom neighbours, Jamaica is the one which seems ready to pursue republicanism first since it has said that a referendum on the issue could be held next year. Once that happens it is likely that most of the others would follow suit sooner or later.
Of the three large territories, Australia would likely make the move to republican status before the others, although when the question was put to referendum in 1999, voters rejected the proposal. Times have changed, however, and since then politicians, particularly the present Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have been working towards some kind of consensus on the matter to put to voters. Nothing dramatic has happened on the republican front in Canada and New Zealand recently, although whether with the passing of the Queen and the advent of a new sovereign, there will be a renewed push to alter their constitutions remains to be seen. What can be said is that the more territories which abandon the monarchical system, the more likely it is that all of them, or nearly all of them, will follow suit.
While the arguments in Commonwealth territories about having a foreign head of state – and a monarch, no less – who does not live there and has no intimate relationship with the people and their culture may seem self-evident, what about the UK itself? Monarchy is, after all, a feudal anachronism trying to accommodate itself within a democratic framework. While in 1953 there were no republicans to be seen when the Queen was crowned, although a few of them mostly associated with the left-wing of the Labour Party did exist, tomorrow their far more numerous decendants will be visible as they demonstrate on the royal route to the Abbey. They have said they did not want to openly protest while the Queen was still alive, because of the risk of antagonising the public, but her successor does not present any such problem.
And a recent poll on the monarchy commissioned by the BBC’s Panorama programme might support their belief. The survey found that 58% of all citizens supported the monarchy, as opposed to 26% who would prefer an elected head of state. When those figures are broken down by age groups, however, a more nuanced picture emerges. Not surprisingly the over-65 year-olds were overwhelmingly in favour of retaining a monarch at 78%, in contrast to the 18-24 year-olds only 32% of whom wanted one. A larger group of young people – 38% would prefer an elected head of state, although 30% said they didn’t know.
What this means for the monarchy in the longer term cannot be predicted with any certainty, because people sometimes change their views as they age, and the 30% who don’t know what they think now, may acquire opinions at a later stage in life. Nevertheless, it must give the new King pause for thought, that a generation down the line his family’s grip on the throne might possibly come under considerable pressure. It might be added that in the 25-49 age group only 48% indicated they would rather have a monarch than an elected head of state, although among what might be described as the middle-aged, ie those between 50 and 64 years old, that figure rose to 67%.
The Panorama poll did not do a geographic breakdown of the popularity of the monarchy, but ITV undertook one and found that in Scotland only one-third of people supported it, the lowest of the four nations which make up the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland too the figures were not high at 47%, while Wales came in at 56%. Where Scotland is concerned such a result cannot make King Charles feel altogether at ease, although he will be aware that if that country should ever become independent the monarchy would almost certainly not be retained in any case.
But the Panorama survey looked at other aspects of the issue including whether people thought the King was out of touch: 45% thought he was, as against 36% who did not think that was the case. Not surprisingly only 16% of the youngest age group considered he was not out of touch, while among the over-65s who in any event are closer in age to Charles III, that figure rose to 56%.
That, of course, was a question which relates to the King as an individual rather than the monarchy as an institution, although there was a further breakdown of the figures which has bearing on the Royal Family both as individuals as well as the institution of which they are a part. The poll found that people from ethnic minority backgrounds were less likely to support the monarchy, 40% of them saying they would prefer an elected head of state. In addition, 49% of them said they thought members of royalty had a “problem with race and diversity” as opposed to the percentage from the population at large of 32%.
This issue came to have particular pertinence given the discordance in the family involving Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and subsequent to that, the controversy over the treatment of a Black charity founder at a palace reception, but it is also not unconnected to the matter of slavery and reparations, and for the larger Commonwealth, the legacy of colonialism too. Certainly where the Caribbean is concerned it is a critical issue, and the King, at least, has shown himself not insensitive to its implications.
He expressed his regret about the slave trade and slavery in Barbados at the time of its transition to republicanism, sentiments he has repeated in one form or another subsequently, including a reference to the “depths of his personal sorrow” when addressing Commonwealth leaders in Rwanda last year. Prof Hilary Beckles, Chairman of the Caricom Reparations Commission, considers an expression of ‘regret’ inadequate, and says that an apology is needed along with a “reparatory justice path”. Where the first of these is concerned, an apology does not lie in the hands of the King; that will be a decision by the British government, which so far has shown no intention of apologising, possibly because it has implications for any court case dealing with reparations, should one ever be filed.
And where the reparatory issue is concerned, early last month the King gave his support to a project researching the historical links between the British monarchy and the slave trade. There does not seem to be a mention of royalty and slavery in this, although it seems not unreasonable to suppose there must have been some enslaved servants, if only a few, working in royal households at one period or another. Certainly there was the case of the Crown Slaves, as they were called, owned by the British state which was headed by the monarch. In this country they were located in Berbice and after 1814 comprised skilled artisans known as Winkels, who were freed in 1831, before other enslaved people.
This week it was reported that indigenous leaders and republicans from 12 Commonwealth countries had demanded that the King apologise for centuries of “genocide and colonisation”, and had called on Britain to begin the process of reparations as well as return stolen artefacts and remains held in museums. The statement has been signed by indigenous representatives and republican groups from Antigua & Barbuda, New Zealand, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent & the Grenadines.
That accounts for all eight of the Caricom territories where the monarch is still head of state. It might be noted that the King is head of the Commonwealth, something his late mother managed to bring about, the murmurings of dissent among some members of the group notwithstanding. While given the fact that she qualified almost as an institution in her own right, she was not openly challenged. The situation is different now, however, and it seems likely that there could eventually be moves to change the arrangement to a more elective one.
