King Charles III may have expected to wade through throngs of welcoming dignitaries and plenty of pomp and ceremony for his royal visit to Australia on October 18. No such luck; he was persona non grata for many. The Australian Republican Movement (ARM) used the visit to promote the breaking of all ties to the monarchy, and made the King the butt of jokes. The ARM was selling T-shirts calling the King’s visit a “Farewell Tour” as if he were a musical band going into retirement. At the official reception intended to take place in Canberra on Oct. 19, every Premier of each state that was invited has already announced that they will be unable to attend.
The last “charm offensive” by the Royals in February 2022 in the Caribbean was also a rude awakening for the monarchists. This Caribbean tour took place three months after Barbados declared independence, and was designed to prevent a domino effect leading to other Caribbean islands breaking with the Empire. Representing the royal family on that trip were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate, but the first stop in Belize set the tone, with protests and demonstrations before they even got off their helicopter. Their entire tour of Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas was overshadowed by the fury of the Windrush Scandal, which broke into the headlines in 2018, and in which legal residents of England were illegally deported back to their Caribbean homelands. In the Bahamas, a government committee urged the royals to issue “a full and formal apology for their crimes against humanity.” In Jamaica, there is a great deal of resentment against the monarchy and the optics of the royal visit only added to the problem with military parades and tone-deaf disrespect for historic sites such as the harbor in Kingston and other hubs of the colonial slave trade.
