Scotland’s brutal slavery links must be confronted

At home in Scotland, renewed discussion on the ill-gotten gains of slavery and our part in this terrible period in history has resulted in a petition circulating to rename the Glasgow streets which are named after slave owners such as (Andrew) Buchanan Street. Now Edinburgh Council has announced that a plaque will be added to Henry Dundas’s monument in St Andrew Square, the first Viscount Melville and infamous prolonger of slavery to protect the elite, to inform the public on his cruel and self-serving role in the trade in human beings.

It’s not the first time this suggestion has been aired to add accurate “warts-and-all” information to some of the less than savoury characters that populate our squares and gardens or lend their names to our streets. Dundas’s own descendent Benjamin Carey has backed calls in the past for a plaque to inform on the true nature of his ancestor’s role, and Professor Geoff Palmer of Edinburgh University has been pushing for the same since before 2018. Now world events have spurred the council into action rather than dithering over the “correct” language on the plaque, which has delayed its installation. It would seem to me that the “correct” language involves the truth. Fortunately, with the world watching, minds now seem to be focused and undistracted by political correctness or offending our imperial masters. And since it was Oliver Cromwell who coined the phrase “warts and all”, no doubt he would not object to a few choice words about his depredations in Ireland (and Scotland) being added to his monument outside the House of Commons.

However, as usual on social media, discussions on our historic past and how we address the truth has opened a hornets’ nest of opposing views that run concurrent to the outrage/joy at the pulling down of 17th-century slave owner Edward Colston’s statue during the Black Lives Matter protests this past weekend, and then sinking him in Bristol harbour. Condemnation for the protesters’ actions has been loud and proud from the UK Government – no surprise there and no awards for empathy for a prime minister with his rather loud dog whistle.

As a woman of colour, I find it astonishing that we are still debating the rights and wrongs of highlighting the uglier corners of our national history. Surely, it is valid to recognise our historic crimes and misdemeanours as much as our successes. It’s about context and it’s about making amends, it’s about understanding who we are and how we got here. This I understand on a deep and personal level – because the legacy of racism and the dark seam of prejudice that joins these historical figures to present day trolls and bigoted abusers, is a real and present experience for me, my family and my BAME friends. We don’t need a street name or a statue to remind us of past oppressors, of deep-rooted inequality and violent injustice. That reminder is part of our everyday lives.

In the particular case of Henry Dundas, the obstruction of abolitionism was only one of the old rogue’s claims to infamy. He was the last politician to be impeached by the Westminster Parliament (only Tony Blair has come close since) and his cruel suppression of Scottish radicalism resulted in many good men being transported. Not for nothing was he nicknamed “the great tyrant”. Perhaps the best way forward would be to “transport” the tall plinth monument to Thomas Muir and his fellow radicals which stands in Calton cemetery to St Square and leave the erstwhile “uncrowned king of Scotland” languishing in the graveyard.

READ MORE: Henry Dundas: The Scotsman who kept slavery going

As is often the case in my wonderful adopted home town, someone in Glasgow has already got ahead of the game and put up alternative names for some of these iconic city streets, such as George Floyd Street under the sign for Buchanan Street and Joseph Knight Street for Dundas Street. Of course it was Glasgow which took steps back in the 1980s to rename St George’s Place Nelson Mandela Place to highlight apartheid and injustice in South Africa, a bold act celebrated in our own Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in 2014. The immovable can be moved.

To me it makes sense to generally keep the statues in place but with a plaque explaining who they were and what they did, or to erect alternative monuments celebrating the people’s history. This is a project that will keep councils across Scotland pretty busy for the foreseeable future as our nation is littered with commemorations to self-interested individuals or violent aggressors. Scotland’s statues and street names reveal a litany of oppression and yet still we allow these tyrants to dominate our daily landscape.

When I walk along Cumberland Street in Edinburgh, the hairs rise on the back of my neck when I think of how he butchered the Highlanders in his bloody retribution after Culloden. To have his name on one of our most beautiful streets in the capital city is an insult to their memory and their living ancestors. It’s quite incredible that his name has been left to tarnish our capital without correction for so long. Similar sentiments have been long felt about the statue of the notorious Duke of Sutherland, “the mannie” which towers over Golspie.

AFTER generations of speculation about whether the “Clearances Duke” should be officially removed, or even unofficially blown up, a band of Highlanders led by the late Dennis MacLeod found the perfect answer some 15 years ago by erecting a beautiful counter memorial to honour the achievements of those who were cleared in Helmsdale.

Generally the victors write the history, name the streets and raise the statues to themselves. There is one notable exception to this – Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns who has more memorials around the planet than any non-religious figure save Queen Victoria and Christopher Columbus. Ah, I hear the detractors say, but didn’t Burns once accept a job in a slavery-based sugar plantation? Indeed, but Burns was an abolitionist, wrote The Slave’s Lament and was the poetic inspiration of the great liberator Abraham Lincoln. If Robert Burns had gone to Jamaica no doubt he would have written powerfully and beautifully about “man’s inhumanity to man” and perhaps hastened the demise of evil.

The mighty Dundas, Butcher Cumberland, the opportunist Andrew Buchanan and the Clearances Duke are just some of the “greats” whose misdeeds demand explanation and correction. Instead of blissful ignorance, we need to know the honest truth about these men who have been commemorated in stone or immortalised in name. Otherwise, who are the Scots, new or old and who do we want to be? These are the questions thrown at us in facing the facts about our history.