Prince Charles to Visit Barbados as the Country Removes Queen Elizabeth as Head of State

When Prince Charles made an official visit to Barbados in March 2019, the system was still in place for him to one day take over from the Queen as the country’s head of state. However, he will return to the Caribbean nation at the end of this month on very different terms to join Barbados as it celebrates its transition to a Republic.

Clarence House has announced today that the Prince of Wales will make a solo trip to Barbados after Prime Minister Mia Mottley “extended an invitation to The Prince, as future Head of the Commonwealth, to be Guest of Honour at the Republic Celebration events.” The short trip will also see him undertake “a short programme of engagements.”

The statement reads, “HRH The Prince of Wales will visit Barbados to mark Barbados’s transition to a Republic within the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister of Barbados, The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley, extended an invitation to The Prince, as future Head of the Commonwealth, to be Guest of Honour at the Republic Celebration events. His Royal Highness will also undertake a short programme of engagements in Barbados.”

Barbados announced its intention to become a Republic, removing the Queen as head of state, in September 2020. “The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,” the country’s Governor General Dame Sandra Mason said at the time. Buckingham Palace said the issue was a matter for the people of Barbados. In October this year, Dame Mason was elected as the country’s first President and she will be sworn in at celebrations on November 30.

Until then, Barbados is one of 15 countries outside the UK, known as Commonwealth realms, which still recognize the British sovereign as head of state. The other 14 are; Antigua and Barbuda; Australia; The Bahamas; Belize; Canada; Grenada; Jamaica; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Solomon Islands; and Tuvalu. In 2012, Jamaica’s then Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller stated her country would move to cut ties with the Queen. This has yet to to happen but the debate continues, with the country’s current opposition leader Mark Golding telling The Independent earlier this year that the Queen should be removed as head of state. A referendum on the subject in Australia in 1999 saw a narrow victory for keeping the British monarch.

One official role that the Queen, and one day Prince Charles will continue to have in relation to Barbados is as head of the Commonwealth. Formed as countries formerly in the British Empire gained their independence, the Commonwealth is now a voluntary association of 54 independent countries of which Barbados will remain a member. King George VI was the first head of the Commonwealth and the Queen took over from him in 1952 but the position is not a hereditary one. In 2018 Prince Charles was voted in as the next head of the Commonwealth by leaders during a meeting at Windsor Castle after the Queen said it was her “sincere wish” that he should succeed her.

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