Jamaica is stepping up campaign for £7.6billion in reparations for slavery - by lobbying the King on London visit

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source Published: 17:29 EDT, 6 September 2026 | Updated: 18:25 EDT, 6 September 2026 Jamaica is stepping up a campaign for £7.6billion in reparations for slavery by lobbying King Charles.A government delegation has arrived in London with a petition for Buckingham Palace.Jamaica hopes answers to questions in the petition, plus talks with the Foreign Office, are steps towards a massive payout by UK taxpayers.The bid to entangle the King in the campaign focuses on the fact that in 1833, after Britain led the world by banning slavery, it paid compensation to slave owners, not to slaves.The £20million bill, amounting to 40 per cent of the Treasury's annual income, meant Britain had to take out a huge loan, which was only paid off in 2015.Jamaican culture minister Olivia Grange said on arrival in the UK: 'Up to 2015, Britain was paying the slave masters because we were considered property. 'The question really should be: if in modern times we're still paying back the slave masters for the 'property' that was our ancestors, because of the abolition of slavery, why shouldn't we be pursuing some remedy at this time?'She accepted some UK taxpayers might object but said the majority 'may consider answers are required'. King Charles III during The Braemar Gathering 2026 in Scotland on September 5 Olivia Grange, Jamaica's minister of culture pictured outside Buckingham Palace on September 6The petition will be given to Charles as Jamaica's head of state, asking him to put three questions to the Privy Council.Those questions are: whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English law; whether it broke international law; and whether Britain now has a legal duty to provide redress.The Privy Council's Judicial Committee remains the highest court of appeal for Commonwealth countries and its five judges could consider the questions.British governments have maintained they will not pay slavery reparations.A royal source said the King has no personal discretion in making referrals to the Privy Council.But a Buckingham Palace spokesman said: 'His Majesty has on many occasions expressed his commitment to finding ways to address historic wrongs for the benefit of communities today.'More than 12million Africans were taken across the Atlantic to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries, many to British sugar plantations in Jamaica.Ms Grange is also meeting British Museum executives to ask for the return of three carvings found in a cave in 1792 and taken to the UK.One is of a birdman, another of a rain-making god and the third was used in taking drugs in rituals.They were created by the island's original inhabitants the Taino, who were wiped out by the arrival of Europeans, many from disease.