Coronation price tag draws ire of UK Jamaicans

LONDON, England:

Professionals from the Jamaican diaspora, living in the United Kingdom (UK), have expressed their distaste for tomorrow’s lavish coronation of King Charles III.

The crowning of King Charles is expected to cost British taxpayers £100 million, according to the Operation Golden Orb committee, which is in charge of planning the historic event.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has estimated that the addition of an extra Bank Holiday weekend would also cost the government £2.39 billion.

The coronation follows the death of Queen Elizabeth ll in September 2022 and will take place at Westminster Abbey on May 6. The ceremony will also see the King’s wife, Camilla, crowned Queen, after she was initially set to use the title Queen Consort.

Dr Velma McClymont, a writer, has renounced the event.

Speaking with The Gleaner, she said, “Ironically, King Charles III is a billionaire whose expensive coronation is being paid for by British taxpayers. They also pay for the royal family’s upkeep, albeit the king inherited a fortune when the late Queen Elizabeth II (his mother) died.

“What is so infuriating is the fact that the nation is experiencing a serious cost of living crisis [utility bills have sky-rocketted] that has resulted in the rise of food banks in one of the richest countries on Earth.”

Clifton McLeod, owner of corporate events company, MMCo World, also believes the financial upkeep of the royal family, coupled with the coronation’s cost, is reason for concern.

Said McLeod: “The royal family’s extreme wealth was partially built on profits received from the transatlantic slave trade, and yet the State helps them preserve their gains, by paying for their police security, palaces and other perks.

“How do they support the average person in the UK? King Charles should pay for his own coronation and a decent gesture would be the government investing in schools, inner cities and providing a pay increase to nurses, doctors and teachers.

“This British establishment should be abolished.”

Education professional Seymour Mattis said he deplores the coronation and described any African or Caribbean person who attends the event as ignorant or stupid, given the royal family’s links with the slave trade.

The ‘Homage of the People’ has proved to be a controversial feature of the coronation service. It replaces the traditional ‘Homage of Peers’, in which a long line of hereditary peers knelt and made a pledge to the monarch in person.

During the service, the Archbishop of Canterbury will call upon “all persons of goodwill in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of the other realms and the territories to make their homage, in heart and voice, to their undoubted King, defender of all”.

The order of service will read: “All who so desire, in the Abbey, and elsewhere, say together: ‘I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God’.”

McLeod described the act of allegiance as “archaic”.

Seymour Mattis expressed strong views against the pledge of allegiance.

“I will not be pledging allegiance to Charles. If he was a good King who apologised for his family’s involvement with the slave trade and was willing to discuss reparations, my view would be different,” he said.

Benjamin Alexander, the Jamaican Olympic skier, agrees.

“I believe the monarchy is an outdated concept and, with Charles beginning his reign aged 74, he is unlikely to bring sweeping changes in line with the times, including reparations.

“I believe that, as the generation that loved Queen Elizabeth passes away we’ll see huge drops in the percentage of the population that are in favour of the monarchy as a whole.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who will anoint and crown King Charles, said new elements of the coronation reflected the “diversity of our contemporary society”.

McClymont believes the service is controversial.

She said, “Another contention is the fact that the king will be crowned with Holy Oil, in a sacred ceremony, as if his kingship was ordained by God Himself. This is worrying in a country where a high percentage of the people now regard themselves as atheists. How, then, can they reconcile themselves to the idea of an omniscient God presiding over a ceremony where the new head of the Church of England [and his unpopular Queen] is a divorced man?”

editorial@gleanerjm.com

In 1953 when Queen Elizabeth was crowned, the British Government paid £1.5 million for the occasion, equivalent to £50 million today. Today’s increased costs are said to be due to security issues which were not prevalent seven decades ago.

The coronation is expected to provide a boost to the UK’s economy, of £1 billion, as result of an increase in tourism and TV rights.

Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden said, “It has always been the case that the government have paid for coronations. The reason for doing so is that the sovereign is our head of state, and it is important that we market that properly.

“It is right that we celebrate this moment in the life of our nation and do so in an appropriate fashion and in a way that the nation can come together in celebrating.

“These moments in the life of our nation. They bring joy to millions of people. They mark us out as a nation around the world.

“It is a marvellous moment in our history and people would not want to dour scrimping and scraping. They would want an appropriate ceremony. That is what we will have.”