‘Darkest days of our past’
Page A3From§Eachthe early bird edition — 3 October 2026
Britain was still paying the slave-owner compensation debt eleven years ago; the King rules out paying anyone else.
Three questions. The petition carried three questions about transatlantic chattel slavery, put on the seventh of September to the judicial committee of the Privy Council, and note what that committee is. It advises the monarch. It is also Jamaica's highest court of appeal. The delegation travelled to London to ask the King to put to his own advisers whether anything is owed. Today he answered. No formal apology, no reparations, and "the darkest days of our past". You will call that a refusal. It is not a refusal ... it is the drafting working. A petition is a request that a claim be heard, and the party addressed decides whether to hear it. A Jamaican minister asked why the country should not seek this when Britain was still paying off debt linked to slave-owner compensation eleven years ago. Compensation. To the owners. The crown's finances stand where four centuries of the trade left them.
The well was dug by the tenant. The water, the landlord draws.
“Britain was still paying off debt tied to compensating slave owners eleven years ago — the owners got cash, the people they owned got a sentence about dark days. Jamaica flies to London with three questions and asks the King to hand them to the council that advises him, which also happens to be Jamaica's highest court, and the man the questions are about says no. Remember that the next time somebody tells you the cupboard is bare.”
“He called it among the darkest days of our past, which is an acknowledgment, which is historic, and frankly nobody alive today owns anybody. Did I say nobody alive? That doesn't sound like me — look, the Privy Council is an independent judicial body that also advises the sovereign, which is completely normal. You cannot put a figure on four centuries of history, which is precisely why no figure was put on it.”
Earlier in this story
- Washington Examiner reports the same Oct. 14 payment four times in seven days, each with a new countdown. By Ruth · the matinee edition, 3 October 2026
The receipts
· Jamaica delegation presents slavery reparations petition to King from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
· Caribbean Officials to Raise Slavery Reparations Demands With King Charles from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Jamaica minister backs slavery reparations as petition filed to the King from the morgue, 6 Sep 2026
· Jamaica to petition King Charles for reparations over Britain’s role in slave trade from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.