King Charles to Confront Britain’s Slave Trade Legacy in Landmark Antigua Speech
King Charles III will address the lasting pain of the transatlantic slave trade with “unflinching honesty” and “sincere sorrow” when he formally opens the Commonwealth summit in Antigua on Tuesday, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.
The King’s speech to Commonwealth leaders comes on the final leg of a nine-day Caribbean tour and at a moment when the British government’s position on a formal apology for slavery has shifted further than at any time in living memory.
Palace sets the tone
A Palace spokesperson said the King “will not shy away from confronting the most shameful aspects of the past during this visit,” adding: “You may therefore expect him to address them in his speech with unflinching honesty, sincere sorrow, and respect for the wider discussions that will be taking place between relevant governments on this issue at CHOGM and beyond.”
The speech will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in St John’s, Antigua, which gathers leaders from the Commonwealth’s 56 member states under this year’s theme of “Accelerating Partnerships and Investment for a Prosperous Commonwealth.”
The King is not expected to offer a formal apology. Buckingham Palace has made clear that an apology is a matter for the UK government, not the Palace, and stressed that the speech was not altered in response to recent political developments. Downing Street is understood to have alerted the Palace to the prime minister’s change of position before the tour began, but no changes were made to the King’s remarks.
Burnham’s U-turn and the political row
On Friday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he was “open” to the possibility of Britain formally apologising for its role in the transatlantic slave trade — a significant departure from the position held by every previous government. Britain has never formally apologised for slavery or offered to pay reparations.
Writing in The Guardian, Burnham said: “The transatlantic slave trade was a brutal and barbaric violation of those people.” He went on to express “my sorrow and regret for the pain and suffering of so many millions” and to recognise the way the trade “still shapes our world today.”
The prime minister ruled out financial reparations but proposed a programme of debt restructuring for the poorest Commonwealth countries, to be led by former prime minister Gordon Brown.
The shift has opened a political row at home. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch rejected the call for an apology, telling the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that Britain has “had enough of apologising” and describing the debate as a “navel-gazing distraction.”
Meanwhile, former St Vincent prime minister Ralph Gonsalves, a senior figure in the Repair Campaign which presses for reparations, has claimed that British officials warned Burnham would skip the Antigua summit if reparations were formally placed on its agenda.
The King’s own record on slavery
Charles, 77, has addressed slavery on several occasions before. In 2021, at the ceremony marking Barbados’s historic transition to a republic, he called slavery an “appalling atrocity” which “forever stains our history.” A year later, at the opening of the Commonwealth summit in Rwanda, he said he was continuing to “deepen my own understanding of slavery’s enduring impact.”
He has already touched on the subject during the current tour. At a youth rally in Nassau, he said that much of what is best in Bahamian culture today was “born out of darkness” and that it was only right to “acknowledge the great suffering of the past in these islands and beyond.” In Georgetown, Guyana, he visited Independence Park, the parade ground where African slaves were publicly executed after the Demerara Rebellion of 1823, one of the largest uprisings in the history of the British Empire.
Queen Camilla is accompanying the King in Antigua, where the couple attended a church service on Sunday ahead of the island’s Independence Day celebrations. By the end of the tour, the King will have carried out around 36 engagements.
