The 28th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) opens in Antigua & Barbuda tomorrow, November 1, 2026, with all eyes and ears on King Charles III and how he’ll respond to demands from Governments and Civil Society for an Apology for Britain’s role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that involved Trafficking and Chattel Enslavement of Africans in what the United Nations (UN) has aptly termed The Gravest Crime Against Humanity.
The demand for the apology was made by the 14-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in November 2013 through a 10-Point Plan (TPP) for Reparatory Justice issued by the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) established after its establishment in St. Vincent & The Grenadines at a regional meeting hosted by then Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, with University of the West Indies (UWI) Vice Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, appointed as Chairman.
In the 13 years since the CRC issued its call for Reparations from Britain and other European States for Slavery and Native Genocide, the European Union (EU) has refused to give a positive response to the former European colonies’ request, as independent nations, for an honest dialogue.
Instead, individual member-states have responded differently, with the King and Prime Minister of Netherlands making public apologies, while Britain and France outrightly refused and most EU member-states that built empires off enslavement offered similar claims that either slavery was legal while it lasted or their aid to the former colonies over time, including as independent nations, constituted forms of reparations.
But the 2026 CHOGM is coming at a time when there have been some slight recent changes in formal government attitudes, with King Charles indicating a willingness to enter into ‘a conversation’ on reparations and France indicating it’s also willing to talk about Haiti’s longstanding claim for repayment of the reparations extracted from it by way of compensation for the enslavers overthrown by the island’s 1894 revolution.
The new Burnham administration in London, while adopting the stated refusal by all three main British political parties (Labour, Conservative and Reform) that they’ll not pay reparations, says it’s willing to join the ‘conversation’ heralded by King Charles since taking office, following his mother (Queen Elizabeth II) having offered (on her dying bed in 2021) statements of royal sorrow about Britain’s role in the slave trade.
At and since its first two CHOGMs in Rwanda (2022) and Samoa (2024), Charles – who reigns as sovereign head of the Commonwealth of mainly former British colonies in Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean and the Pacific – has concentrated on falling short of apologising by consistently referring to Britain’s ‘dark past’ and its ‘shameful’ involvement in the enslavement of Africans.
Indeed, 354 years ago (in 1672) Charles ancestral predecessor (King Charles II) granted the Royal Charter that allowed the Royal African Company its trading charter, which allowed for kidnapping and trafficking in Africans, treated as Chattel property, shipped like cargo to the Caribbean and The Americas and sold as slaves.
Today, Charles III is being asked to effectively apologise for the Royal Family’s blessings to and role in the gravest crime against humanity, while the nations now inhabited and run by the heirs and successors of the enslaved are also calling for a similar apology and reparations from Britain.
While the major parties still maintain they’ll not pay reparations, it’s a historical fact that they compensated the enslavers after finally abolishing slavery in 1837 and paid the vast sum of £20 million (now equivalent to approximately £100 billion) over generations until 2015 — 178 years, during which British generational successors of the enslaved also paid the taxes from which that vast sum came.
Therefore, if it was legal, prudent and justified to pay the enslavers and their heirs and successors over generations for their loss of ‘property’, it should also be all well and just to pay the generational successors of the original victims.
Fact is, both the Royal Family and the British government owe apologies and reparations and it is to be hoped that in his ‘conversation’ whose ‘time has come’, Charles III will indicate what’s come out of the three-year investigation into the role of the Royal Family into the slave trade that he positively commissioned on April 6, 2023 – and that the Burnham administration’s decision to join that conversation will lead to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Ed Milliband indicating they’re also willing to come to the table with the majority of Commonwealth member-states demanding apologies and reparatory justice.
The British public has already joined their King’s readiness for that ‘conversation on reparations’ with public press surveys in 2013 indicating only 21% support, which sample figure skyrocketed to 51% in 2025.
Further, in the months and weeks preceding CHOGM 2026, there have been many expressions, suggestions and recommendations that apart from the elusive and implicating apology, Britain can also come to the table with proposals for forms of assistance to victim nations that will help them achieve the elements included in the TPP.
The King can also ensure that Royal Reparations due be rolled-out in, among other things, projects and programs to help victim nations overcome the worsening effects of accelerated Climate Change, including Climate Financing for Loss and Damage for the small-island and developing nations that least contribute to the carbon emissions but suffer the most from their effects.
CRC Chair Sir Hilary made a passionate appeal to the King as ‘a father’ and head of a family that’s reigned happily over the riches acquired from enslavement to do the right thing and initiate a reparations process, while the African Union (AU) last June 18, at a conference in Ghana, joined CARICOM’s quest for reparations – the two regions representing, by-far, the majority of Commonwealth member-states.
Sir Hilary, at a recent CRC press conference, described the November 1-4 event as ‘a reparations summit’ and it’s clear that, whatever the outcome, that’s exactly what it’ll turn out to be.