Dear Editor,

The recent decision by King Charles III to refer Jamaica’s reparation petition to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has reopened discussion about the relationship between reparatory justice, the monarchy, and Jamaica’s proposed transition to republican status.

These issues should not be confused.

Jamaica is one of 56 independent members of the Commonwealth, an association in which republics comfortably coexist with Commonwealth realms and countries possessing their own monarchies. Indeed, most Commonwealth members are republics. Commonwealth membership has, therefore, long ceased to depend upon recognising the British monarch as head of State.

The same distinction applies to reparation.

Reparation concerns historical responsibility arising from slavery, colonialism, dispossession, and their continuing consequences. Whether Jamaica retains the monarchy or eventually becomes a republic does not alter those historical questions. Caricom’s reparation programme itself demonstrates this — republics and constitutional monarchies participate together in the regional pursuit of reparatory justice.

What must be distinguished, however, is the claim from the legal mechanism presently being used.

Jamaica petitioned King Charles III under section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833, an unusual provision allowing the King to refer matters to the Judicial Committee for consideration. On September 22, Culture Minister Olivia Grange confirmed that the King had referred Jamaica’s petition to the Privy Council.

The questions now referred concern whether transatlantic chattel slavery, as practised in Jamaica, was lawful; whether forced transportation and enslavement breached international legal obligations; and whether Britain bears a legal obligation to provide a reparatory remedy.

That procedure involves the Crown because Jamaica presently remains a constitutional monarchy, but the substantive reparation issue is not dependent upon Jamaica remaining one.

Caricom Heads of Government have continued, collectively, to advance their Ten-Point Plan for Reparations and specifically supported Jamaica’s petition, illustrating that reparation is being pursued as a regional historical and legal question rather than as a referendum on monarchical government.

We should, therefore, be careful not to turn two legitimate but distinct constitutional conversations into one.

Republicanism asks: Who should be Jamaica’s head of State?

Reparation asks: What responsibilities arise from the injustices and consequences of slavery and colonialism?

Changing the answer to the first question does not erase the second.

Dudley McLean II

dm15094@gmail.com