Prince Charles Says Britain’s Welcoming Black Community Is “a Source of Inspiration”

Since Prince Charles founded his Prince’s Trust Foundation in 1976, he has made the issues facing Black British citizens one of his priorities, and over the last few years, he has intensified his rhetoric with speeches discussing the contribution that Black immigrants have made to British society. This month, Charles guest edited an issue of The Voice, one of Britain’s largest Black-interest publications, and according to the Daily Mail, he also wrote an introduction discussing his history with the U.K.’s Black community.

“The Black community is a source of inspiration to me,” it reads, per the tabloid. “You have welcomed me into your communities with wonderful enthusiasm and I am grateful that you have always been candid with me about the issues you continually face and how I might help.”

The issue will contain an interview with Idris Elba, who has been open in the past about how the support from the Prince’s Trust helped him launch his acting career. It will also spotlight Baroness Doreen Lawrence, a British-Jamaican activist whose teenage son, Stephen, was murdered in the early 1990s, and announce that Charles has helped to organize a new scholarship in Stephen’s honor, according to the Mail. Before his death Stephen was passionate about architecture, and in September 2000, Charles paid tribute to his memory in a lecture urging more young people to pursue architectural careers. In 2018, he was represented by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at the first annual Stephen Lawrence Day event, and this April Charles invited Baroness Lawrence to his charity’s headquarter’s Dumfries House for a meeting to honor her son and discuss a collaboration. 

When the collaboration was announced over the weekend, Charles praised The Voice in a statement. “Over the last four decades, with all the enormous changes that they have witnessed, Britain’s only surviving black newspaper has become an institution and a crucial part of the fabric of our society,” he said. “This is why I was so touched to be invited to edit this special edition.”

The newspaper’s editor Lester Holloway pointed out that Charles’s interests made him a natural choice for the guest editing-role. “Our readers may be surprised at the parallels between the issues which The Voice has campaigned on for four decades and the work the Prince of Wales has been involved in over the same period, often behind the scenes,” he said. “In past decades these causes were once scorned and ridiculed, but today they are widely acknowledged.”

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