The most important thing about a charm offensive is that it mustn’t be…well…offensive.
Unfortunately, the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha seem to have rather misjudged their PR trip to Jamaica.
No one in the Royal entourage thought there was anything wrong with releasing the featured image of this piece.
First, a quick history lesson, the Caribbean island was under London’s colonial rule from 1655 until 1962.
As part of Oliver Cromwell’s Western Design, the Spanish conquistadores were evicted, and centuries of British rule ensued.
This year Jamacia is celebrating 60 years of independence which is the reason for the visit of the British Royals.
However, instead of happy throngs of swooning locals, William and Kate have also been greeted by demonstrators.
It would appear that the Republic of Barbados is the first domino to fall in the Caribbean.
Jamaica’s move to ditch the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and have an elected head of state is gathering pace.
This short piece from Channel 4 News captures it well.
“Slightly off-key” is one way of putting it.
This letter from the Advocates Network doesn’t miss.
Of course, Britain should apologise for their central part role in the catastrophic criminality of slavery, and the people of Jamaica have every right to demand reparations.
When this subject is brought up, some defensive Brits point to the heroic figure of William Wilberforce and the role that the Royal Navy played in banning the slave trade.
As ever, the reality is more complex than the fuzzy feel-good shite that is force-fed to Ireland’s neighbours.
Eric Williams wrote Capitalism and Slavery when Jamaica had yet to become independent from Britain.
This piece in the Guardian lays out his basic thesis that trashes the altruistic narrative that the Brits abolished the slave trade out of the goodness of their hearts.
It is worth reminding that the 1807 abolition did not end slavery in the British Empire.
That would take a few more decades with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
Britain paid millions in compensation, but every penny of it went to slave owners, and nothing to those they enslaved.
It was considered proper order that Britishers be compensated for the loss of their property, i.e other human beings held as chattels.
To this end, the British government borrowed £15m, with the government adding an additional £5m later. The total sum represented 40% of the government’s yearly income in those days, equivalent to some £300bn today.
Now look again at that happy snap released by the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
The billions in today’s money paid out to compensate slave owners is eye watering.
10 years later the same government allowed 1.5 million Irish to starve to death.
A book you might like to read, published just yesterday is “Legacy and Violence: A History of the British Empire” by Caroline Elkins.
What should strike people is why slavery?
At one and the same time it kept the wages and job opportunities down for the free folk-making them both vulnerable to and beholden to their social betters-ie the slaveowning class.
The value of the work done by slaves (including the wages they were denied} is quite clear in the compensation paid to the slaveowners for loss of their property.
Millions of pounds so I read at a time when a hundred a year put you in the low gentry class -just think about that for a while.
Great stuff.
The Royal Family desperately trying to find some relevance for their brand – and it gets a reality check away from the fawning UK media!
And for Kate to wear expensive jewelry at a speech to express regret about slavery was tone deaf as well.
There is simply no place for a Royal Family in a modern society: it is offensive on so many levels.
[And the tourists come to see the cities / buildings / scenery – not an obscenely rich family of benefits scroungers! 🙂 ]
The parasitical royal family need to be permanently removed. An embarrassing freak show in the 21 century. Disturbing that Jamaica hasn’t yet became a republic.
He actually wrote Capitalism and Slavery earlier than that Phil, it was published in 1944 and has been recently reprinted
If, as the Freudians might claim, there are no such things as accidents only opportunities for growth then perhaps there are no slip ups in the media and the picture is seen as intended. Even allowing for how hardened we have become towards human suffering, displayed daily on our TVs, I found that picture and the satellite images it produced, profoundly sickening.
When the current Queen passes that should be the end of the Royal nonsense once and for all.
King Charles? Are you joking, even worse the thought of one of the young eejits taking on the roll of the current Queen who give her due has put in a shift.
Why is it that in 2022 we should be beholden to a family that has done nothing but enrich themselves whilst many of those who they ‘reign’ over live in poverty.
Hopefully those countries who are still tied to the UK Royal family, the nonsense of the Queen being head of state etc etc, will follow Jamaica and rid themselves of these ‘Royal’ hangers on.