Buckingham Palace in London, England, released a statement on September 8 saying:

"The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral [Castle in Scotland] this afternoon."

Referring to her son Charles and his wife Camilla, the statement said: "The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow."

According to news reports, Charles "automatically becomes king of the United Kingdom and the head of state of 14 other realms including Australia, Canada and New Zealand."

Apparently, Charles will call himself King Charles III whose many "hereditary titles" however do not include Head of the Commonwealth. The deceased queen declared herself Head of the Commonwealth when she ascended the throne 70 years ago. Unbeknownst to the peoples of the 56 member countries of the Commonwealth, including the 15 of which the queen was head of state, and without the peoples' approval, Charles was appointed her designated successor in this position at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2018.

The news of the Queen's death and the pomp and pageantry which follow is now dominating the airwaves with the English broadcast channel BBC and Canada's CBC carrying minute by minute reporting. The impression is created that it is all a matter of centuries-long traditions. However,  a lot of it stems from the days of Queen Victoria and since then to shore up the aim of the monarchy as a fictional person of state above the people who are subjects and allegedly hold this fictional person in reverence and awe.

The propaganda is meant to disinform the people about the system of rule established in the mid-1600s to make peace between warring factions in the English Civil War. This gave rise to the constitutional arrangements at the base of the European nation-states, subsequently imposed on all countries where the colonial powers held sway. The anachronistic institutions harbour entitled individuals in economic and political power whose wealth, corruption, degeneracy and privilege can no longer be accepted or hidden from public sight.

An impression is created in Canada and even Quebec that to get rid of the foreign monarch as head of state is nigh impossible because the law-making process depends on receiving Royal Assent, and other prerogative powers are seen to be indispensable. Nothing could be further from the truth. A parliament or legislature worthy of the name could vest the sovereign decision-making power in itself, not a foreign monarch, and elect a head of state based on criteria established by itself to carry out a mandate it gives. The parliament or legislature would thus hold the head of state to account and recall the person in the event that he or she does not carry out the mandate as given.

It is high time Canada rid the country of these anachronistic arrangements and finally declared itself free from entanglement with the British monarchy. It is high time the people of Canada elected a Constituent Assembly and founded a modern republic whose institutions would be created on a modern basis.

As it stands, all life in Canada including the Quebec elections and Ontario municipal elections are now hijacked by the news of the death of the Queen and the preposterous pomp and pageantry which will accompany the Queen's funeral and then Charles' ascension to the Throne. Charles now goes to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to seek their "allegiance." At a time members of the ruling circles are even committing crimes as they vie against one another for positions of power and privilege, and life in their midst has become a permanent "night of the long knives," so many oaths of allegiance to the new monarch are seriously incongruous. So too, in Canada, discussion will centre on how those who swore allegiance to Queen Elizabeth when they took office are now supposed to do it again with the new king.

These shameful shenanigans are intolerable and unacceptable in a modern world. The working people themselves are striving to bring the human productive forces under their control and gain political empowerment so as to be able to take the decisions that affect their lives. The days of the monarch as fictional person of state and of casting a ballot in an election to authorize others to represent, rule and speak in your name are over. Now those who are elected, or appointed to office, swear allegiance to a foreign monarch. The people, representing themselves, will not swear such allegiance and will not allow others to speak and rule in their stead. Today's world is so filled with dangers that only the people themselves can provide the problems with solutions, control their destiny and open up a bright future.

TML Daily is reprinting below pertinent articles published in the Party press this year.

The little "Jubilee Tour" to Canada of the so-called Working Royals -- Charles, who ruling elites presume to be the future King of Canada, and his wife Camilla -- illustrates that it is high time Canadians renounce the monarchy and everything it brings with it.

This begins, not ends, with rejecting the Constitution 1867, also known as the British North America Act 1867. This Act of the British Parliament, imported 155 years ago, was written in Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England. Highclere is the castle rented for the TV show and movie Downton Abbey. The archives at Highclere show almost daily correspondence between the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon and Sir John A. Macdonald on key elements of the Constitution used to found Canada.

"It is clear that Highclere Castle was at the very centre of the discussions surrounding the British North American Bill and its drafting. Indeed, it was the Fourth Earl himself who took the British North America Act to (the British) Parliament in 1867, which led to the creation of the Dominion of Canada on July 1st of the same year," the current Lady Carnarvon proudly affirms on her blog.

The principles and structures contained in the British North America Act 1867 remain essentially intact to this day with the addition of an amending formula and Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. With the adoption of the document called Canada's Constitution, in which the people of Canada had no say, Canada's Dominion status was maintained with new trappings such as that henceforth Canadians were to pay for Canada's defence, contribute cannon fodder to British wars and the like.

What is significant, however, is that the document is based on the Covenant Thesis invented by Thomas Hobbes after the English Civil War in 1660. It provided the country with a structure that establishes a fictitious person as head of state and, in the case of Canada, this is the monarch of a foreign country. The relations between ruled and rulers are based on a hierarchy which keeps the people disempowered through the institutions created to perpetuate the rule of the elites.

To this day it is based on a medieval outlook whereby rights are privileges which can be given or taken away on the basis of those the rulers declare are legal or illegal, or worthy at any particular time, or based on what are called reasonable limits which it defines according to what serves private interests.

To this day all official legislatures and institutions must swear allegiance to the foreign monarch, who also controls prerogative powers, privileges and the decisions on matters pertaining to war and peace, including the conception of justice, rule of law and who and what opinions are legitimate and which are not.

To this day, immigrants seeking citizenship must also swear allegiance to the foreign monarch and Indigenous peoples are considered wards of the state.

This is the Crown which syphons millions of pounds from the people in Britain and money from the people of countries, such as Canada, where the anachronistic institutions linked to the monarchy continue to exist. All that money and much more should be given to the Indigenous peoples in reparations for the genocide committed against them which are crimes not only of the past but of the present.

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Message Given the Queen on Her 1997
Visit to Newfoundland

- TML Monthly, May 21, 2022 -

As is well known, in Newfoundland the genocide of the Beothuk Indigenous people occurred due to the slave trade and brutal treatment carried out by colonial powers of which the English set the pattern, something the Indigenous peoples have repeatedly raised. 

Queen Elizabeth II visited Labrador in 1997 to mark the quincentennial anniversary of the "discovery" of Newfoundland by the Venetian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), who was commissioned by Henry VII of England. In Sheshatshiu, on June 26, 1997, Innu community leaders presented her with a letter that read in part:

"The history of colonization here has been lamentable and has severely demoralized our People. They turn now to drink and self-destruction. We have the highest rate of suicide in North America. Children as young as 12 have taken their own life recently. We feel powerless to prevent the massive mining projects now planned and many of us are driven into discussing mere financial compensation, even though we know that the mines and hydroelectric dams will destroy our land and our culture and that money will not save us.

"The Labrador part of Nitassinan was claimed as British soil until very recently (1949), when without consulting us, your government ceded it to Canada. We have never, however, signed any treaty with either Great Britain or Canada. Nor have we ever given up our right to self-determination.

"The fact that we have become financially dependent on the state which violates our rights is a reflection of our desperate circumstances. It does not mean that we acquiesce in those violations.

"We have been treated as non-People, with no more rights than the caribou on which we depend and which are now themselves being threatened by NATO war exercises and other so-called development. In spite of this, we remain a People in the fullest sense of the word. We have not given up, and we are now looking to rebuild our pride and self esteem."

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Peoples of the Caribbean Give "Working Royals" a Fitting Reception

– Margaret Villamizar, TML Monthly, May 21, 2022 –

The visits in March and April of the so-called working members of the British royal family to Commonwealth "realms" were shocking for their display of racist condescension, extravagant living and wasteful expenditures to host them and provide for their security. Organized to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 70 years on the English throne, these "Platinum Jubilee" tours to the 14 former British colonies that retain the British monarch as their official head of state have taken different members of the "House of Windsor" to six Caribbean countries, Australia and Papua New Guinea. The latest such tour brought "heir to the throne" Charles and his wife Camilla Parker Bowles to Canada from May 17 to 19.

The peoples of the Caribbean were not impressed by attempts to portray the monarchy as young, vibrant and relevant. The visit of Prince William and Kate Middleton to Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas in March was intended to be a charm offensive by two allegedly popular "young royals" to win hearts and minds. William and Kate are also known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for the duchy they claim as theirs in England -- another leftover from medieval days. Their visit came at a time the peoples of the Caribbean are persisting in raising their demand for Britain to pay reparations for the enslavement and trafficking of African peoples, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. It also came at a time when republican sentiment is higher than ever in these former colonies which continue to be saddled with the monarchy and its archaic institutions. The republican movement was given a big boost last year when Barbados cast off the monarchy and exited Britain's "realm."

In fact William and Kate's tour was a cringeworthy display of colonial paternalism and disrespect. Even royal sycophants in Britain, worried about the implications, criticized what one of them called the royal "tour de farce" and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for being "tone deaf" and out of touch with reality.

When they were in Jamaica, photos flashed around the world of William and Kate shaking hands with Black children straining to reach out to them through a chain-link fence. The chair of Antigua and Barbuda's Reparations Support Commission rightly described their tour as a "horrible, horrible exposition of archaic colonial behaviour." Images of them being driven around to inspect troops standing in the back of a vintage Land Rover, both of them wearing white and William in full military dress -- a throwback to how his grandparents did things in the 1960s – drove the point home in spades.

The Cambridges were forced to cancel one of their first outings -- a visit to a cocoa farm in Belize -- after villagers staged a protest to denounce colonialism and a charity of which William is the patron, for disrespecting the local people's rights.

In Jamaica, where they headed next, they were also greeted by protests. Outside the British High Commission in Kingston, one of the signs seen said "Kings, Queens and Princesses and Princes belong in fairytales not in Jamaica!" An organizer of the protest elaborated the demand for an apology and reparations saying the luxurious lifestyle that allows British royals to go traipsing all over the world for free is the result of the blood, sweat and tears of her great, great grandmother and grandfather. Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the couple straight out that Jamaica intended to "move on" to become an independent country, meaning it planned to follow the path taken by Barbados.

In Bahamas, the final stop of their "celebratory" tour, that country's National Reparations Committee issued a letter calling for the monarchy to issue a full and formal apology for its crimes against humanity and to pay reparations for its role in slavery. The letter also took issue with the fact that the people of the Bahamas were left holding the bag for much of the cost of "this extravagant trip." "Why are we footing the bill for the benefit of a regime whose rise to 'greatness' was fuelled by the extinction, enslavement, colonization, and degradation of the people of this land? Why are we being made to pay again?" the committee wrote.

Of course no apology was offered.

More of the same characterized the visit in April to three other Caribbean countries by Elizabeth II's son Edward and his wife Sophie, Earl and Countess of Wessex. It got off to an ominous start when the day before a scheduled short first stop in Grenada, the visit was cancelled. No explanation was given publicly.

What is known however is that Grenada's National Reparations Committee had written a letter requesting an audience with the royals during their visit. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss with them why Britain should be held accountable for its crimes against humanity committed against the Indigenous and African peoples of the Caribbean and for its "wanton exploitation of the Caribbean islands during colonialism." The Committee said it did not receive a reply to its request.

In a statement on April 21, the Reparations Committee pointed to a fresh revelation that the Bank of England owned two plantations in Grenada in the 1770s where 600 Africans were enslaved. It said that should spur every Grenadian to join the fight for reparations and reparatory justice.

Official National Reparations committees and commissions in Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda were also active in organizing to make sure the same message was delivered to the royals on their visits to those countries.

With Grenada struck from the list, Edward and Sophie's tour began in Saint Lucia. In a statement demanding a full apology from the Crown, Saint Lucia's National Reparations Commission wrote: "Britain, the royal family and the European nations that built empires from off the backs of enslaved Africans are avoiding making full and formal apologies because they still don't want to plead guilty despite the United Nations declaring Slavery a Crime Against Humanity in 2001 and because they are simply not committed to atonement and repair."

During the royals' visit, the host of a popular radio show slammed their "Jubilee Tour." He asked what purpose it served, how it would benefit the people of Saint Lucia, and who was paying for it?

During a meeting at Government House, Saint Lucia's Prime Minister Philip Pierre presented the Wessexes with a beautiful canvas of a sea turtle painted by a local artist. In exchange they gave him a signed, framed photo of themselves and a "Jubilee box" commemorating the 70-year reign of the country's foreign head of state. The British newspaper The Independent ran a story the next day about the reactions of online commentators who used words like "narcissistic," "insulting" and "tone deaf" to describe what the royals' called a token of their appreciation. One person was quoted as saying, "These people are delusional. Why would you give that nonsense to someone outside of your family? What's he meant to do with that? Hope the frame is worth something at least. He can ditch the photo and sell it."

During Edward and Sophie's one-day visit to St. Vincent and the Grenadines on April 23, the motorcade carrying them to Government House was received by protesters shouting slogans, who lined the road beside a large banner that said, Reparation Now. Protesters held signs with messages such as: Up with Compensation for Slavery; End to Colonialism; British Genocide of Indigenous People -- Never Again.

One woman said she was demonstrating to show her disgust and disappointment that for over 400 years there were those who "had to suffer the slave master's whip," and that this wrong done to a sector of the human race by another must be compensated. Another said, "They hunted us down, they kidnapped us, they stole us, they worked us. They owe us and they must now pay us."

The country's prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, meanwhile, had flown to Venezuela for medical attention a few days before the royals' scheduled visit. He remained out of the country while they were there. Shortly after the royals departed, television news from Venezuela showed the prime minister enjoying a friendly exchange with President Nicolás Maduro following a meeting with him and other members of his government.

Antigua and Barbuda was the last stop on the itinerary. The tone for the royals' visit had been set days in advance with a widely publicized open letter from the country's Reparations Support Commission addressed to the junior representatives of the House of Windsor. It did not mince words:

"It has become common for members of the royal family and representatives of the Government of Britain to come to this region and lament that slavery was an 'appalling atrocity,' that it was 'abhorrent,' that 'it should not have happened.' We have heard such from your former Prime Minister David Cameron and most recently from your brother, the Prince of Wales, and your nephew, Prince William. But such sentiments did not convey new knowledge to us. African people and their descendants -- as most of us are -- have known such since the middle of the sixteenth century. We have been on the receiving end of the barbarity. We hear the phony sanctimony of those who came before you that these crimes are a 'stain on your history.' For us, they are the source of genocide and of continuing deep international injury, injustice and racism. We hope you will respect us by not repeating the mantra. We are not simpletons.

"We know that the British Crown -- both as royal family and as institution -- is historically documented as an active participant in the largest crimes against humanity of all time," they wrote. The full text of the letter can be read here. 

Prime Minister Gaston Browne told the Wessexes that it was Antigua and Barbuda's wish to eventually remove the Queen as head of state and become a republic, much like Jamaica's prime minister told William and Kate. In the meantime, he asked them to use their "diplomatic influence" to help his nation obtain reparative justice, saying it is bereft of modern institutions such as universities and medical facilities.

Expressed with the utmost civility and politeness characteristic of the Caribbean peoples, famed for their hospitality towards all guests, even those as uncouth as the British royals, those were the main messages delivered to representatives of the House of Windsor, who had intended their tours to be a "celebration" of the monarchy by its "subjects."

One "biographer" attempted to deflect from what the two Caribbean tours actually revealed about the centuries-old colonial institution of the British monarchy, its past and ongoing crimes, and the demand of those descended from the Indigenous and African peoples subjected to genocide and enslavement, that Britain now pay for those crimes. He cast blame on the royals' handlers for not "protecting" them from the humiliations that "cursed" their visits to the Caribbean. He called out British diplomats for being not only incompetent but "dangerously ignorant and insensitive to the countries where they are employed." He also blamed palace officials for failing to check that the diplomats had done their job properly.

Congratulations to the governments and peoples of the Caribbean for the firm anti-colonial stands they took, placing front and centre their demands for a full, official apology and reparations from the British monarchy for its 400 years of "genocide and of continuing deep international injury, injustice and racism." Congratulations too for putting the representatives of the British Crown on notice that they intend to exit the "realm" to become sovereign, independent republics. And they did it right as the royals arrived to celebrate and reinforce the empire's colonial imprint on their lands and institutions.

It is an inspiration to others striving to cast off stifling colonial relations defined by the separation of those who rule from those who are ruled, in favour of entering into new relations fit for a modern world based on equality and upholding the rights of all. In such a world, there is no place for relics of a bygone era intent on holding on to their obscene ill-gotten riches and privileges.

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Royal Family's Fortune from the Slave Trade

- TML Monthly, May 21, 2022 -

From the enslavement and deportation of the Irish to British colonies in Oceania and the West Indies to the kidnapping of Africans, the British Crown made much of their vast personal wealth from the human slave trade. Every monarch and their family from Elizabeth Tudor onwards were financiers and beneficiaries of this trade in human flesh.

In The Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano describes how Elizabeth I became a business partner of Captain John Hawkins in 1560. Described as "the English father of the slave trade," Hawkins' first slave expedition in 1562 was made with a fleet of three ships and 100 men. He smuggled 300 slaves out of Portuguese Guinea "partly by the sworde, and partly by other meanes." According to James Walvin writing in Black Ivory, Hawkins sold the slaves in Hispaniola, and filled his ships with "hides, ginger, sugars, and some quantities of pearles." A year after leaving England, Hawkins returned "with prosperous successe and much gaine to himself and the aforesayde adventurers." When Hawkins told Elizabeth I that in exchange for the slaves, he had a cargo of sugar, ginger, hides and pearls, "she forgave the pirate, and became his business partner." She supported him by loaning him for a second expedition, The Jesus of Lubeck, a 700-ton vessel purchased for Henry VIII for the Royal Navy.

On July 11, 1596, Elizabeth I issued a proclamation saying that "all Negroes and blackamores" are to be arrested and expelled from the kingdom. Although she herself had an African entertainer at court and was already a lead investor in slave expeditions out of England, she proclaimed:

"... there are of late divers blackmoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are allready here to manie. ... Her Majesty's pleasure therefore ys that those kinde of people should be sent forth of the lande."

Accordingly, a group of slaves was rounded up and given to a German slave trader, Caspar van Senden, in "payment" for duties he had performed.

In 1632, King Charles I granted a licence to transport slaves from Guinea, from which is derived the name of the coin the "guinea." Charles II was a shareholder in the Royal African Company, which made vast profits from the slave trade. Its Governor and largest shareholder was James, Duke of York. The shareholders of its predecessor, Royal Adventurers into Africa (1660-1672), included four members of the royal family, two dukes, a marquess, five earls, four barons, seven knights and the philosopher John Locke.

By the 18th century Britain was the world's leading slave trafficker. About half of all enslaved Africans were transported in British ships. Eighty per cent of Britain's income was connected with these activities. The royal family has never apologized for its role in the slave trade and the genocide of the Indigenous peoples. Nor has it paid a single cent in reparations.

In 1833, Britain used £20 million, 40 per cent of its national budget, to pay slave owners reparations for freeing their "property." British taxpayers, including many descendants of enslaved people, were paying interest on the amount of money borrowed to fund the Slavery Abolition Act (1835) until 2015 when Britain paid off the loan.