The Tribune

The monarchy cannot ask us to respect its inheritance while refusing to confront what helped build it.

As King Charles visits The Bahamas, the question is whether an institution sustained by inherited privilege still deserves a place at the centre of our national life when demands for justice are met with expressions of sorrow and limits on what it is prepared to do.

Britain’s involvement in slavery is an established historical fact. Acknowledging it is no concession. Personal sorrow, however sincerely expressed, is no substitute for accountability.

The Palace’s reported position that the King will not formally apologise during this visit makes that distinction painfully clear.

Our ancestors endured generations of indignity and brutality. They were bought, sold, separated from their families and forced to labour for the enrichment of others. Their humanity was denied by a system that assigned a price to their bodies and claimed ownership of their children.

We owe their memory more than polite acceptance of another carefully worded statement.

Royal involvement was direct. Charles II and his brother, the future James II, invested in companies engaged in the trade in enslaved Africans. James also served as their governor. This was participation in an enterprise that converted human suffering into wealth.

The precise contribution of slavery to today’s royal fortune requires transparent investigation. But uncertainty about the accounting cannot erase the documented profits or excuse the institution from answering for them. An inherited institution still enjoying wealth, status and privilege cannot insist that responsibility expired with its predecessors.

If inheritance carries benefits across generations, the demand to confront how those benefits were acquired cannot simply be dismissed.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley deserves credit for refusing to allow this issue to be softened into diplomatic pleasantries. She has pressed for reparatory justice and rejected the offensive suggestion that former colonies should compensate Britain for its supposed generosity. Her leadership recognises that Caribbean people have standing to demand repair for what was done to them.

The Bahamas should speak with equal conviction.

Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell has made his preference for a republic clear, describing that objective as his life’s work. His position deserves a serious national discussion followed by a credible process through which Bahamians can decide.

Our constitutional future belongs to us. We should exercise that ownership confidently, including the right to replace hereditary monarchy with a Bahamian head of state.

We also have the right to demand justice for our ancestors. Becoming a republic would not settle that claim, and retaining the monarchy should never require silence about it.

The Government should advance public education on constitutional reform while working with Caribbean partners towards a formal apology, transparent examination of historical benefits and negotiated reparatory commitments. Those commitments should include financial remedies and investment in education, health and cultural restoration. They must be treated as questions of justice, not charitable favours.

Our children must understand why this matters.

They should learn what colonialism did to The Bahamas, how racial hierarchy restricted opportunity and how Bahamians fought for political power and dignity. They should know their ancestors as people who resisted, built families and preserved their humanity under conditions designed to destroy it.

That knowledge should also teach us to scrutinise any arrangement that places our resources, decisions or future beyond meaningful Bahamian control. Independence requires vigilance as well as celebration.

A modern Bahamas should have the confidence to determine its own institutions and insist upon accountability from those seeking its respect.

The monarchy’s relevance is not guaranteed by its age, its ceremonies or the familiarity of its titles.

An institution unwilling to match its inherited privilege with meaningful responsibility gives us every reason to leave it behind.