The Daily Dispatch E-Edition

Barbados ditches Britain’s queen

Barbadian Rihanna leads colourful celebrations as tiny Caribbean island becomes a republic

Barbados ditched Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as head of state on Tuesday, almost 400 years after the first English ships arrived on the Caribbean island’s shores.

At the strike of midnight, the new republic was born to cheers of hundreds of people lining Chamberlain Bridge in the capital, Bridgetown. A 21gun salute fired as the national anthem of Barbados was played over a crowded Heroes Square.

Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, stood somberly as Queen Elizabeth’s royal standard was lowered and the new Barbados declared, a step which republicans hope will spur discussion of similar proposals in other former British colonies that have the Queen as their sovereign.

“We the people must give Republic Barbados its spirit and its substance,” said the island’s first president, Sandra Mason. “We must shape its future. We are each other’s and our nation’s keepers. We the people are Barbados.”

Barbados casts the removal of Elizabeth II, who is still queen of 15 other realms including the UK, Australia, Canada and Jamaica, as a way to finally break with the demons of its colonial history.

“The creation of this republic offers a new beginning,” said Prince Charles. “From the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery which forever stains our history, people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude.”

In a message to Mason, the queen, 95, sent congratulations to Barbadians who, she said, had a special place in her heart. “I send you and all Barbadians my warmest good wishes for your happiness, peace and prosperity,” she said.

After a dazzling display of Barbadian dance and music, complete with speeches celebrating the end of colonialism, Barbadian singer Rihanna was declared a national hero by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the leader of Barbados’ republican movement.

The birth of the republic, 55 years to the day since Barbados declared independence, unclasps almost all the colonial bonds that have kept the island tied to England since King James I claimed it in 1625.

“Full stop this colonial page,” Winston Farrell, a Barbadian poet told the ceremony. “Some have grown up stupid under the Union Jack, lost in the castle of their skin. It is about us, rising out of the cane fields, reclaiming our history. End all that she mean, put a Bajan there instead,” ,” he said.

Prince Charles’ speech highlighted continuing friendship of the two nations though he acknowledged the horrors of the trans-atlantic slave trade.

While Britain casts slavery as a sin of the past, some Barbadians want compensation from Britain. The English initially used white British indentured servants to toil on the tobacco, cotton, indigo and sugar fields, but in just a few decades Barbados became England’s first truly profitable slave society.

It received 600,000 enslaved Africans between 1627 and 1833, who were put to work in sugar plantations, earning fortunes for the English owners.

More than 10 million Africans were shackled into the Atlantic slave trade by European nations between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Barbados will remain a republic within the Commonwealth, a grouping of 54 countries across Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe. — Reuters

World News

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2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

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