The Daily Mail has come to a curious – if entirely predictable – conclusion about the Royal’s trouble in the Caribbean.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been accused of benefitting from the “blood, tears and sweat” of slaves as they arrived in Jamaica to be met by a protest calling for reparations from the British monarchy.
William and Kate have been celebrating the culture and history of the island where there have been calls from politicians in recent years for Jamaica to drop the Queen as head of state and become a republic, and for a formal acknowledgement of slavery.
Anti-colonial sentiment has been growing across the Caribbean against the background of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has inspired many around the globe to campaign for equality.
Last night, William expressed his “profound sorrow” at the forced transportation of millions of people from Africa to the Caribbean and North America – a trade which British monarchs either supported or profited from during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Speaking at a dinner hosted by the Queen’s representative in Jamaica, he echoed the words of his father the Prince of Wales and described the slave trade as an “appalling atrocity” that “stains our history” and he went on to acknowledge Jamaica’s “pain”.
The future king did not say sorry, just as his father Charles had not during his trip to witness Barbados become a republic.
But he praised the Windrush generation of Caribbeans who arrived in the UK a few years after the Second World War to help rebuild the nation depleted by six years of conflict.
According to Mail columnist Dan Wootton, there is only one person to blame for anti-monarchy sentiment in the Caribbean, and you can probably guess who it is.
He described Markle as a “propagandist” who uses the “fantasy that the Royal Family is racist to derail Wills and Kate’s Jamaican tour and destroy the Commonwealth”.
Jim Felton gave his kudos to Wootton for blaming the breakup of the Commonwealth on the “only adult member of the Royal Family who is black.”
Others pointed out that if he did some research he would know that Jamaica wanted to remove the Queen as head of state long before Harry even knew Meghan.
Related: Borders bill makes UK ‘one of the most anti-refugee countries in the world’
