Charles: Teach pupils about our place in the slave trade

PRINCE Charles wants Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade to be taught to the nation in the same way that schoolchildren learn about the Holocaust.

- Richard Palmer

The heir to the throne believes improved education about the darkest days of Empire will help to heal divisions within the UK and the Commonwealth and help both to move forward.

Aides have said he is on a mission to listen, learn and acknowledge the legacy of the trade-in which Britain shipped 3.1 million Africans to its colonies between 1640 and 1807, before campaigning aggressively to halt it here and around the world.

Charles, 73, has suggested the UK should create a national day to commemorate the victims of slavery, similar to Holocaust Memorial Day.

A Clarence House source said Charles had noticed the difference between schools teaching the Holocaust and slavery but insisted he was not trying to interfere in Government policy.