“At the last minute of that visit, as he was about to disembark, he turned and shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you, Daniel,’” the 58-year-old recalled Tuesday as flags flew at half-mast in balmy sunshine. “It was the first time he referred to me by my first name and that was special to me.” Daniel Pryce at King’s House in Kingston, Jamaica. Photo: David Smith/The Guardian But in downtown Kingston, among the bustling street markets filled with uniformed students and vendors selling bananas, calabash and mangoes, memories of the monarch were less charitable. In the aptly named Charles Street, a Rastafarian known as Ras Ralph, 63, said: “The Queen stole the riches of the black people. Africa, Jamaica, all ours. We have no reason to celebrate someone who enslaved us.” The death of Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III gave new impetus to republican movements in the 14 Commonwealth “kingdoms” where the British monarch remains head of state. It comes at a time of reckoning over Britain’s imperial legacy and the royal family’s culpability over slavery, as well as demands for reparations. Barbados cut ties with the British monarchy last year. Antigua and Barbuda announced plans last week to hold a referendum on becoming a democracy within three years. Jamaica, another Caribbean island in 12 official days of mourning for the Queen, appears hungry for dominance. Andrew Holness, the prime minister, said last year: “There is no doubt that Jamaica should become a democracy.” In March he told Prince William and his wife, Kate, that “we are moving forward” and that Jamaica intends to be “an independent, developed, prosperous country”. Last month, a newspaper poll found that more than half of Jamaicans wanted the Queen removed as head of state. It would be a highly symbolic break. After Oliver Cromwell’s forces captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, it became Britain’s richest colony and the world’s leading sugar producer. Britain sent about 600,000 enslaved people from the west coast of Africa to work on the plantations of Jamaica and enrich the empire. Many died under brutal discipline as landowners built “great houses” in the Georgian style. National Heroes Park in Kingston honors figures such as Samuel Sharpe, a minister who was hanged in 1832 for inspiring a slave revolt that led to the Abolition Act a year later, but also contains a memorial to Jamaicans who fought and died for Britain in the First World. war. In 1962, a decade after the Queen’s accession to the throne, Jamaica gained independence in a ceremony attended by Princess Margaret. Yet from the courts to the schools, from the military barracks to the cricket pitches, the ties between the nations have remained strong and affection for the Queen herself has hardly wavered for six decades. Now, many among the 3 million population feel it is time to take the final step. Carolyn Cooper, 71, author and emeritus professor at the University of the West Indies, Mona, said: “It would be a fulfillment of the promise of independence. The process of decolonization is not complete as long as the head of state is the monarch of England.” He noted that the Royal African Society was founded by King Charles II to enable the African slave trade. “The British monarchy represents a racist, genocidal, predatory policy. They represent the worst of our history. The Royal African Company was responsible for the trade of more African slaves to America than any other company and was wholly owned by the British Crown.” Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, has been to Jamaica six times, but King Charles III won’t dare visit, Cooper predicted, because it would provoke an even more hostile reaction than the protests that greeted Prince William , who spoke of his “deep” sadness” over slavery, but stopped short of apologizing. Cooper added: “Death is a moment of reckoning. In the past, people might have said, “okay, she’s a nice little old lady, let her live her life, we’re not going to terrorize her.” Now she’s dead, it’s time to think about what monarchy means, even in the UK. The monarchy has absorbed so much of England’s wealth. “They are so rich from ill-gotten gains. If only a fraction of that could be redistributed across the Commonwealth for the infrastructure we need for roads, schools and hospitals. Remedies are no joke. It is about trying to restore the damage of centuries of exploitation.” Brand irons, a cat-o-nine tail, a neck restraint and handcuffs are on display in a glass case at the National Institute of Jamaica Museum. So did a wooden effigy of Elizabeth II paraded through Kingston on a float during the 1962 independence celebrations. Ayanna Gordon, Assistant Curator at the National Museum of the Institute of Jamaica. Photo: David Smith/The Guardian Ayanna Gordon, assistant curator, said: “The legacy is more negative than positive. There are so many places in Kingston that are named after Queen Victoria and so it meant that Britain stamped its presence very indelibly on our country, in architecture, in buildings, in so many areas, but it didn’t develop our people. “We still suffer from the legacies of the plantation. We suffer from the legacies of slavery. We are suffering from the legacies of Windrush. We are suffering from mass immigration and brain drain. We have to get the reparations if we are not a democracy. For me, rehabilitation is more important than democracy.” On the campus of the University of the West Indies, in Mona, a simple memorial honors about 200 slaves known to have once lived in the area from 1817 to 1832. It lists names – unmistakably English – that include William Bennett, Donald Gordon, Peter Robertson , Liverpool, George Rae, Nelson, Somerset, Edgar, Julian, Portia, Amelia, Charlotte, Phoebe, Judy and Eleanor Rutherford. Two centuries later, on a route called Queen’s Way, students wander the grounds, carrying backpacks and consumed by smartphones like students anywhere. Many interviewed by the Guardian expressed disinterest in the monarchy. Some suggested that Jamaica should first address more pressing concerns such as crime and education. Others felt the dismissal was urgent. Shane Brown, 30, an education administrator, said: “For our sense of identity and who we are as a people, it should have happened a long time ago. It is an absolute travesty that to this day this institution is still the head of state. The concept of independence is a little absurd.” Sitting outside a cafe just before a downpour, Jevaughn Gordon, a communications student, noted a generation gap between “people who were there in the 50s and 60s” and “millennials and Gen Z-ers who have gone global and watch The Crown.” . The latter have become involved in the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice. Gordon, 22, said: “A lot of people understand that in the US there is a lot of institutionalized racism, especially since George Floyd and the cases of black people being oppressed by the police or experiencing some form of segregation from the general public. “In Jamaica we feel it too. People now feel part of this community and have an obligation to speak out against oppression and marginalization among black people.” Others in Jamaica agree that advances such as the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which highlights the central role of slavery in American history, and protests in Britain that saw a statue of Edward Colston, a transatlantic slave trader, toppled, have raised global consciousness. of how white privilege came at the cost of trauma to black generations. Michael Phillips, an opposition MP who in 2020 tabled a motion to remove the monarch, said: “What has happened in Britain and the US has brought the conversation locally here in Jamaica to our own identity as colored people, as black people. People. Those two brought the conversation to people who wouldn’t normally have that conversation, which is why there’s a difference in the poll numbers.” Last year the Jamaican government said it would seek compensation from Britain for enslaved people forcibly taken to the island. The push for a democracy, however, has been slow because of internal political disputes, for example over whether the new head of state will be an executive or ceremonial president. There are plans to set up a commission to review the constitution before a referendum is held. Phillips, 50, who represents the Manchester North Western constituency and has visited his British namesake, said he did not understand why Holness appeared to be dragging his feet. “Maybe he was waiting, he didn’t want to do it with Queen Elizabeth still as head of state. Maybe not,” he said. “You either have the will or you don’t and I would feel that as a post-independence kid like myself, who I believe is committed to Jamaica, [he would agree] that if the generation before ours didn’t make it, we have a responsibility. We have the easiest opportunity to do it.” It seems to be a matter of not if but when. Even Price, the retired colonel who served as the Queen’s horseman 20 years ago and fondly remembers her “liberal dose of dignity”, seems prepared for history to make its way to a referendum. “If we’re going to go down that route, we’re going to have to do it with a lot of shrewdness and not just go around talking,” he said. “I think we should just do it.”
