The Government of Barbados has announced it will remove the Queen Elizabeth II as its Head of State and will and become republic by November 2021.
The Queen is Head of State of the United Kingdom (U.K.) and 15 other countries that were formerly under British rule. These include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
Reading a speech by the Prime Minister of Barbados – Mia Mottley, the Governor General Sandra Mason said, ” Barbadians want a Barbadian Head of State. This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving.”
Mason further read, “Hence, Barbados will take the next logical step toward full sovereignty and become a Republic by the time we celebrate our 55th Anniversary of Independence.”
The statement was part of the Throne Speech, which outlines the Government’s policies and programmes ahead of the new session of Parliament.
As far as history of Barbados goes, an English ship, the Olive Blossom, arrived in Barbados on May 14, 1625 and its men took possession of it in the name of King James I. In 1627, the first permanent settlers arrived from England and it became an English and later British colony. Britishers used the land for sugar cane production and the island became a focus of the brutal transatlantic slave trade, as plantation owners shipped over captured Africans as slaves to work in the fields. According to the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, by the 1670s enslaved Africans outnumbered whites by a ratio of almost 10 to 1. Many Africans did not survive the horrendous sea passage to the Caribbean, and they endured appalling conditions on the plantations. Meanwhile slave owners became enormously rich. Slavery was abolished in Barbados in 1834, and full freedom from slavery was celebrated in 1838.
In the year 1966, Barbados got its freedom but maintained a formal link with the monarchy like some other countries that were once part of the British empire. The Barbados economy diversified itself with focus on tourism and finance. Mia Mootley is their first woman Prime Minister who came to power in 2018.
Since Independence, Barbados has sought constantly to improve its systems of law and governance so as to ensure they best reflect their characteristics and values as a nation. Barbados is now looking to find stronger, more resilient and more sustainable architecture, which can form the basis of a modern and enduring structure for current and future generations. Over the years, Barbados has developed governance structures and institutions that mark them as what has been described as, ‘The best governed Black society in the world’.
The idea of Barbados claiming to turn republic is not new. Buckingham Palace is well aware of it and the same has been mooted many times. Buckingham Palace said the issue was a matter for the people of Barbados. Britain’s Foreign Office said the decision was one for Barbados to take.
Besides, several other countries have also given up Queen Elizabeth II as their Head of State. Mauritius is the latest one to do so in 1992. Barbados is not the first in the Caribbean to become a republic. Guyana went Republic in 1970, four years after becoming independent. Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica also became Republic in 1976 and 1978, respectively. However, all these 3 Caribbean countries remain in the Commonwealth.
