Will and Kate’s Caribbean Reckoning: Jamaica Says Seh Yuh Sorry

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update  |  Publication date: 3 July 2022  |  Period covered: January–June 2022

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Key Developments at a Glance

• William and Catherine’s Jamaica visit met with reparations protests and "Seh Yuh Sorry" banners.
• PM Holness publicly tells William that Jamaica intends to become a republic.
• Over 100 Jamaican leaders sign formal letter demanding slavery apology and reparations.
• William expresses "profound sorrow" about slavery but stops short of a formal apology.
• Twenty-one Jamaicans rescued at last minute from UK deportation charter flight to Kingston.
• Windrush compensation scheme hits three-year mark with pressure for independent administration.

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KINGSTON / LONDON — No single event in recent Caribbean diplomatic history brought the questions of reparations, colonialism and the Crown into sharper focus than the two-day visit to Jamaica by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge on 22 and 23 March 2022. What was planned as part of a Caribbean tour to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee became, within hours of the couple’s arrival in Kingston, a defining moment in Jamaica’s relationship with the British monarchy: one that sent a signal not only to London but to every remaining Commonwealth realm that still carries a British monarch as head of state. For the Windrush generation watching from Britain, the images and words that emerged from Kingston carried a resonance that was both personal and political.

"Seh Yuh Sorry": The Protest That Defined the Visit

Dozens of protesters gathered outside the British High Commission in Kingston before the royal couple’s arrival, singing traditional Rastafarian songs and holding banners that read "Seh Yuh Sorry" — Jamaican patois for "Say You’re Sorry." The protest was organised and attended by a broad coalition: Rastafarian elders, academic historians, lawyers, church leaders, civil society activists and ordinary Jamaicans who rejected what they saw as an inappropriate celebration of a relationship built on slavery and colonial exploitation.

More formally, a group of more than 100 prominent Jamaicans — including professors, politicians, religious leaders and community figures — signed an open letter addressed to Prince William. The letter stated, without ambiguity, that the signatories saw "no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind." It called upon the Crown to apologise for the transatlantic slave trade and to pay reparations to the Jamaican people. The letter was widely reported in British and international media and set the tone for the visit’s public reception.

The visit itself produced imagery that undermined its diplomatic intent. Photographs of William and Catherine waving from an open-sided Land Rover behind a wire fence, in scenes that unavoidably recalled colonial-era images, circulated widely on social media and drew swift condemnation from Caribbean commentators and activists. Al Jazeera, NPR, CBS News and Vice reported extensively on the symbolism of the scenes and the disconnect between the tour’s stated purpose — celebration of the Queen’s reign — and the response it was receiving in the countries it visited.

Holness to William: Jamaica Will Be a Republic

The most consequential moment of the visit came not from the protesters but from the Jamaican government itself. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, meeting Prince William at an official dinner, stated directly and publicly that Jamaica intended to become a republic — to "fulfil our true ambitions and destiny as an independent, developed, prosperous country." He did so with composure and without hostility, but his meaning was entirely clear: Jamaica intended to remove the British monarch as its head of state, and the visit of the heir to the throne was as good a moment as any to say so.

The declaration was the most explicit statement of republican intent from a sitting Jamaican prime minister in the country’s modern history. It reflected a shift in political climate: the JLP government, traditionally more aligned with Commonwealth institutions than the PNP, had reached the same conclusion that the PNP had long advocated — that Jamaica’s colonial constitutional framework was not a neutral inheritance but a living reminder of a relationship built on inequality. Holness framed the republican aspiration positively rather than antagonistically, but it left William with nothing substantive to say in response. Before leaving Jamaica, the Prince expressed his "profound sorrow" about slavery and described it as "abhorrent" and something that "should never have happened." But he stopped short of a formal apology, and his words carried no promise of reparations.

The Reparations £7 Billion Question

The royal visit gave fresh momentum to Jamaica’s reparations advocacy. Jamaica’s demand for reparations from Britain had been growing in urgency since the CARICOM Reparations Commission published its ten-point plan in 2013 and since the Jamaican parliament passed a motion supporting reparations in 2015. By July 2021, Jamaican legislators had proposed a figure of approximately £7.6 billion in reparations from Britain, a figure the British High Commissioner in Kingston dismissed as not viable, arguing that there was no clear framework for who would pay or who would receive the funds and that direct financial reparations were not the way forward.

The royal visit of March 2022 made these demands impossible to sideline. For the Windrush generation in Britain watching the Holness-William exchange and the "Seh Yuh Sorry" protests, the convergence of issues was striking: the same Crown whose governments had stripped Caribbean-born British subjects of their rights was now being asked, on the island those subjects had left, to reckon with the history that had shaped everything that followed. The connection between the Windrush scandal and the reparations demand is not merely rhetorical. It is constitutional, historical and deeply personal.

Twenty-One Jamaicans Rescued From Deportation Flight

Against the backdrop of the royal visit and reparations debate, the human reality of UK deportation policy was brought into focus by a deportation charter flight that saw 21 Jamaicans rescued at the last minute from removal. A total of 29 deportees were flown to Kingston on the charter flight, but legal interventions had succeeded in securing the removal of 21 individuals from the flight at the eleventh hour. The episode illustrated the continuing tension between the UK’s immigration enforcement operations and the diaspora organisations working to prevent cases where Windrush-connected individuals or others with strong community ties were swept up in charter deportations.

Justice for Windrush and allied legal organisations maintained that the Home Office’s deportation machinery had not been adequately reformed following the Windrush scandal. The Wendy Williams Lessons Learned Review had called for a fundamental change in the Home Office’s culture, and while there had been cosmetic changes, campaigners argued that the institution’s approach to Caribbean-heritage individuals in the immigration system remained inadequate.

Windrush Compensation: Three Years On, Still Incomplete

The Windrush Compensation Scheme passed the third anniversary of its April 2019 launch in the first half of 2022, still drawing criticism for its pace and structure. By mid-2022, the scheme had processed thousands of claims but had reached only a fraction of those estimated to be eligible, with a significant proportion of the population of affected individuals yet to come forward. The absence of legal aid for claimants, the complexity of evidential requirements and the lack of an independent commissioner were the persistent complaints of advocacy organisations.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness had consistently expressed his interest in ensuring that the Windrush generation and their descendants received justice, and the Jamaican government’s engagement with the British High Commission on Windrush issues was ongoing. The royal visit had, if nothing else, given that engagement additional diplomatic salience: a Jamaica that had publicly declared its republican intentions was one whose views on the treatment of its emigrants could not easily be dismissed.

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Sources for this report include Al Jazeera, CBS News, NPR, Vice, Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Voice Online, BBC, CARICOM, the Jamaica Information Service, GOV.UK, Caribbean National Weekly, the Change.org open letter on Justice 4 Windrush and constitutionnet.org. This report was researched and published on 3 July 2022.