You’ve got the makings of a perfect storm,” he said.Ī better approach to the trip, said Prof Trevor Burnard, director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, would have been for the royals to go prepared to directly acknowledge and apologise for the family’s role in the slave trade, including through memorial visits to sites connected with slavery, such as Kingston harbour, to express sorrow instead of upbeat photo ops. “All of those things make it politically very difficult to stage this visit at this time. Murphy pointed to the growing emphasis on the relationship between colonialism and racial oppression after the Black Lives Matter movement, along with damage to the royals’ reputations after Meghan Markle’s accusations of racism and the British government through the Windrush scandal. There are profound sensitivities around the legacies of colonialism and slavery and around the royal presence in the Caribbean, and sometimes you get the feeling that the Foreign Office doesn’t quite get it,” he said. “I think the Foreign Office is sometimes a bit naive, and it doesn’t have much institutional memory any more. Photograph: Ian Vogler/The Daily Mirror/PA The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge view a portrait of the Queen during a visit to Sybil Strachan primary school in Nassau, the Bahamas.
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