Protesters Call for Reparations as Royal Family Visits St. Vincent and the Grenadines

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – The St. Vincent and the Grenadines government Saturday gave a red carpet welcome to two members of the Britain’s royal family, but a small group of protesters registered their objection to the visit and instead called for reparation for African slavery.

Protesters demanding reparation for slavery as Britain’s royal family makes official visit to St. Vincent and the Grenadines (CMC Photo)At the Argyle International Airport,  Prince Edward, 58, and his wife, Sophie, 57, the Earl and Countess of Wessex,  were greeted by Acting Prime Minister Montgomery Daniel, as Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is off island undergoing medical attention in Venezuela.

Governor General, Dame Susan Dougan. who is the Queen’s Representative here, as well as Opposition Leader Godwin Friday, other government and opposition lawmakers were also present at the airport as steel band music welcomed the royals whose visit to the Commonwealth Caribbean forms part of the activities marking Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne..

But the pomp and ceremony was overshadowed by a small group of protesters calling on Britain to apologies for its role in the African slave trade as well as to pay compensation.

“The African holocaust is one of the greatest holocausts, if not the greatest holocaust,” Idesha Jackson, 47, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC)

She said that while some people might not agree, “we know what our forefathers went through; it’s in our DNA.

“We feel their pain and every time I talk about African brothers and sisters who had to struggle for survival in these ships and work for many years — 400 years of slavery — and still up to this day, we are not compensated.”

Jackson noted that at the end of the slave trade, it was the slave masters, rather than the slaves who were compensated.

“So, today, we are still standing firm in the cause of reparation. Reparations now! Reparations now!  Reparations now!  No more idle talk,” she said, adding “I am here to demonstrate, to show my disgust, my disappointment, my vengeance for my brothers and sisters … who, over 400 years had to suffer the slave masters’ whip, the slave masters’ rape and brutal dehumanization of our people.

“So I am here to stand up for those persons and seek from Britain reparations now,” she said, acknowledging that some people might argue that slavery was legal and permitted when it occurred.

“Our African brothers and sisters were never permitted to be enslaved. So the wrong was done against a sector of the human race by another and this wrong must be compensated.”

Former chair of the National Reparations Committee, Jomo Thomas, who was those demanding the apology and reparation, said “we just wanted to indicate, represent, manifest our disgust, our disdain and our concern that the neo-colonial government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines would again, yet again, be welcoming and celebrating these people”.

The former government senator and speaker of the House of Assembly, said that under the Royal African Charter, the British were “responsible for the hunting down, kidnapping and trans-shipment of 60 per cent of all of the Africans who were taken from the African continent”.

Thomas noted that for hundreds of years, Europeans forced Africans to work without pay, saying “they owe us and they must now pay us, as this sign is indicating,” referring to the large “Reparations now” banner that he and another protester were holding.

“Reparations now is the demand, reparations now is the call,” he said and expressed hope that more Vincentians will join the call for reparations

“This is not so much for the colonials who are coming in but to raise the consciousness of our people that the call for reparation is a just cause and a just demand and we will fight until we achieve that.”

Britain and other European countries have dismissed the reparations call, saying that current generations should not be held responsible for acts committed by their forebears.

Thomas, however, said that it was only in 2015 that the British government finished repaying the 20 million pounds it borrowed in 1831 to compensate slave owners in preparation for the end of slavery.

“So if they finished paying in 2015, the argument that slavery is remote is nonsensical, it is farcical,” said Thomas, a lawyer and newspaper columnist.

“Slavery is alive and well. It is alive and well in the underdevelopment of our people; in the fact that so many of our people are captured by a neo-colonial European mind-set and we can only emancipate ourselves from mental slavery if we understand that the struggle for reparation is an integral part of freeing ourselves, or regaining our patrimony.”

Another protestor, 33 –year-old Judah, from Pembroke, a community six miles northwest of the capital, echoed similar views, saying “when we say reparation, it’s not just money.

“We want repair for all of the damage that has been done to our people in all the areas of human activity: economics, education, entertainment, religion, sex, war, politics, labor.

“The earth is suffering; people are suffering. This is what you all have done. The damage, we want it repaired. This is what this stands for,” he said, referring to the slogan on his placard.

Theo Thomas, 69, said he regarded the visit of the royal family as the government joining in the exploitation of the people.

“I came out here because it’s a shame that a so-called progressive government would be using our people as props to entertain members of the Royal Family and there has been no conversation about reparations,” said Thomas, who travelled 11 miles from the western side of St. Vincent to the protest site.

“The royal family is in the position where they are today because of the pillage of our country and the enslavement of our ancestors,” he said, noting that Grenada had rejected the royal visit, and speculated that the real reason was because of the demands for reparations there.

“And so, for this so-called progressive government to be entertaining these people using these people as props is a crying shame,” Thomas added.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a constitutional monarchy, with the queen as the ceremonial head of state. In 2009, the population voted in a referendum to keep the British monarch and Thomas cautioned against using this as an indication of support for the monarchy.

Political observers have said that the constitutional reform vote 13 years ago was a referendum on the Gonsalves administration and electors might have voted differently, if given a chance to vote on individual elements of the Constitution.

During their one –day visit, the royals planted a tree at the Botanical Gardens in Kingstown, the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, and met privately with the acting prime minister.

They also met with women in leadership roles regarding the response to the April 2021 eruption of La Soufriere volcano and congratulated those who have recently completed their Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. They also watched a local cricket match.