In California there is talk of paying up to $350,000 a head and $800 billion in total (almost double the state’s annual budget) to black residents descended from slaves, as restitution for physical and moral damages suffered by their ancestors, and because of the discrimination they have been – in many cases continue to be – subject to. Great Britain does not go nearly as far, but the new King Charles III has commissioned an inquiry into the role and responsibilities of the monarchy in building that empire “where the sun never set”.
Already in the past, as Prince of Wales, Charles had described slavery as “horrible and shameful”, “a black page in history”. But after reaching the throne, he felt compelled to take one more step, although without officially asking for forgiveness as demanded by human rights groups and some collectives. The trigger was an investigation by The Guardian newspaper, which demonstrates the transfer in 1689 of a thousand shares of the Royal Company of Africa to King William III by his deputy governor Edward Colston (a businessman whose statue was demolished and thrown into the water in Bristol three years ago during a protest organized by
William III was of course not the only British monarch (and politician) to benefit from the slave trade in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and that transfer of shares (which today would be worth a fortune) is no more than the tip of the iceberg. It is also nothing that was not known. What happens is that times have changed a lot, being inclusive and diverse is part of the agenda of those who declare themselves on the progressive side in the growing and increasingly virulent culture war, and Charles III wants to be on the right side of the history
Not everyone agrees, just as there isn’t a single opinion in California. If there are those out there who wonder why the inhabitants of a non-slaveholding state should pay out of their taxes for what happened three centuries ago, very substantial compensations to people who have never been slaves, in the United Kingdom ( where no one talks about scratching their pockets) Charles III’s decision is questioned as a mistake and imprudence that could undermine the institution. “Uncovering this Pandora’s box, the king runs the risk of abolishing himself”, author and journalist Petronella Wyatt wrote in the conservative The Daily Telegraph.
Charles III has only been on the throne for six months, but it already displeases the most traditionalists that he is a much more political king than his mother, however careful he is to stay within the constitutional order and not express opinions in public . But he does do it in private, and he has already shown it with a few gestures (such as receiving the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, or that his first official trip was to Germany and not to the former colonies of the Commonwealth ) who is pro-European and anti-Brexit, and is concerned about the Good Friday agreements and the nascent campaign to postpone beyond 2050 the elimination of the carbon footprint. He is passionate about the environmental cause, nature protection, alternative medicine, green energy and religious tolerance, he opposes illegal fishing, mass agriculture and genetically modified crops, he is a supporter of the British army is better equipped, he believes he can improve the lives of the most disadvantaged Britons, and he wants his footprint (he is speculating about a “ten-year plan” before handing over the throne to his son William) to be precisely this one
During the seven decades of his mother’s reign, the monarchical motto was never complain, never explain (never complain but also never give explanations), under the premise that an anachronistic institution alien to democracy can only survive surrounded of an aura of mystery, if the subjects want to live a kind of fairy tale and attribute magical powers and characteristics to those who are in reality as fallible as any human being. But Carles thinks that this concept has become outdated and has chosen to favor social activism (in November he gave the equivalent of 800 euros to each employee in his service to compensate for inflation, with the implicit but clear message that the Government should having done something similar).
In a country without a written Constitution, with a monarchy subject to the democratic will of Parliament, for centuries there has been the precedent that the king must be politically neutral and limit himself to putting his stamp on the laws approved by the Government and the Legislature Although there was nothing to prohibit it, Elizabeth II never voted. Charles III will surely continue this tradition, but it is known that – despite his environmental progressivism and opposition to Brexit – he is panicking about a Labor victory in the next elections, even being aware of the enormous damage that four successive conservative prime ministers ( David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Lizz Truss) have done to the international image of Great Britain, and that the idea of ​​sending asylum seekers to Rwanda seems to him, like so many, an inappropriate barbarity of ‘a country that boasts a humanitarian tradition, and whose industrial revolution had slavery as one of its pillars.
As the Prince of Wales, he boycotted banquets with Chinese presidents to express his support for the Dalai Lama, compared Putin to Hitler and, after Trump’s election in 2016, spoke of “troubling echoes of the dark thirties”. He has criticized the design of hospitals and the National Theatre, he has campaigned against the deforestation of the Amazon, and he has expressed sympathy for the goals (not the methods) of the environmental organization Extinction Rebellion.
According to a survey, only 23% of young people aged between 18 and 24 consider the monarchy to be beneficial (compared to 74% of those over 65). Perhaps that is why he wishes to act as a kind of tribe of the people and conscience of the nation, a dissident of the establishment, who eagerly fights climate change and assumes the responsibility of the monarchy in slavery. And thus leave his mark on history.
