You are in:
- Archives » 2008 » March 2008
Crown Jewels
Twenty-seven years after the last of Britain's ex-colonies in the Caribbean 'achieved' independence, someone by the name of Elizabeth II remains queen and official head of state in almost all of them.
Even the republics of Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica have decided to use her majesty's Privy Council in London as their final court of appeal. (Meaning, in American terms, supreme court).
On a visit this month by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, a man in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, exclaimed outside the Bob Marley Museum: "If the Queen was here there would be even more hoopla".
In the English Antilles, when a volcano erupted on the British overseas territory of the island of Montserrat in 1995 it was lucky that HMS Plymouth, at the head of the Royal Navy's Caribbean fleet, was in the vicinity.
The navy, with the aid of helicopters, saved many desperate people, and transferred them to adjoining English-speaking islands.
It is evident that although these charming sandy-beach islands are independent, they are tied still to the apron-strings of Mummy England.
