The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and the Caribbean

Last month the Palace announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, will visit three Caribbean countries between 19 and 26 March. William and Kate will visit Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas as part of a series of royal spring tours to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. They will be followed to the Caribbean by Edward and Sophie, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, who will travel to Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines in April. The Duke and Duchess, who will represent the Queen while on tour, said they were ‘so excited’ about their visit and ‘can't wait to meet people’ and ‘celebrate local cultures’. Their itinerary will include visiting historic Mayan sites in Belize, meeting the Defence Force and celebrating the legacy of Bob Marley in Jamaica, and experiencing a junkanoo parade in the Bahamas.

Coming less than 6 months after Barbados became a republic, this tour raises many questions. Should we see this as a charm offensive designed to renew bonds and maintain Crown links with its remaining eight Caribbean realms, or is this the inevitable beginning of a long goodbye to the Caribbean? All eyes will be on Jamaica which has been talking about removing the monarchy for years. Yet, unlike in Barbados, this can only be decided by popular mandate: the Jamaican constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament plus a referendum to become a republic. Republican sentiment has also been expressed or hinted at in the Bahamas and Belize. Clearly, the Palace believes in the value and purpose of a royal tour, however fleeting it is. A tour, after all, guarantees photo opportunities and substantial press coverage. But will William and Kate’s tour do little more than raise questions about the absurdity of a distant head of state? Or uncomfortable questions about reparations? In anticipation of William and Kate’s arrival, Belize’s 7 News asked a number of people if they had even heard of William and Kate. ‘No’, was a common answer. And for someone who did know who ‘the Duke’ was, he questioned the purpose of a visit by descendants of the country’s former ‘colonial master’. And there are more practical questions: how are these countries (the UK included), which are recovering from the pandemic and struggling with the cost of gas, funding such a tour, a trip that involves not only travel and luxury accommodation but also lot of staff and high levels of security? What is it about the travelling show of the British monarchy that has persisted, and that can still be justified? These displays of majesty and devotion go back hundreds of years; Elizabeth I excelled at the royal progress but she bankrupted her hosts along the way. Or do these tours enable the bonds between Crown and people to be reforged, reinvigorated and even reinvented? Can the charisma of William and Kate showcase a new kind of modern royalty with a purpose, but that still needs, as the Queen once said, ‘to be seen to be believed’?

The Royals in Belize

Elizabeth II has been to Belize twice during her reign, in 1985 and 1994. The itineraries were familiar to those arranged for Prince William and Kate’s upcoming Caribbean tour: a visit to a Mayan site, meeting with the Defence Force, music and dancing. Although the Queen has only visited twice, there have been several royal appearances in Belize since 1952: Princess Margaret in 1958 (at a time when relations with neighbouring Guatemala were fraught); three solo visits by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; Prince Michael of Kent to mark independence in 1981; Princess Anne in 2001; and, most recently, Prince Harry in 2012 to mark the Diamond Jubilee. Harry was, according to The Reporter, a ‘great hit’.

In 1985, the Queen received a ‘tumultuous’ welcome. Certainly, the press was charmed, although the republican-leaning Amandala delighted in reporting how she was served gibnut (a rodent), now forever known as ‘royal rat’. When Elizabeth II arrived in Belize a decade later, press coverage was calmer, ‘mostly’ rapturous, but the Belizeans perceived to be generally warm and affectionate. Then, as now, the 1994 tour was clearly a charm offensive. The official line from the former British High Commissioner, David Mackilligin, was that links with the Crown had been successfully ‘reinvigorated’ and that there were mutual benefits all round, with Belize’s morale ‘boosted’. Indeed, Mackilligin was ‘surprised’, he said, by the ‘very small amounts’ of republican sentiment expressed during the visit. In total, the 1994 trip was estimated to cost the Belize government BZ$200,000 dollars (£65,000). We don’t know, yet, how much the Platinum jubilee tours will cost, or who will ultimately foot the bill. Jamaica has agreed to pay for security personnel only.