WELL done to Hamish MacPherson for the article on Henry Dundas (The Scotsman who kept slavery going, June 10). I’d like to add a wee bit to the story.
If you look very closely at Henry from the ground, you’ll notice that he’s not actually looking straight along George Street (which in fact is the premier street in the capital, named after the sovereign) but is twisted and at an angle.
READ MORE: Henry Dundas: The Scotsman who kept slavery going
Everybody assumes he is looking straight along from St Andrew Square to Charlotte Square at the other end of the street. He actually has his back to Holyrood Palace. Many say this position was a direct result of him being impeached – that he thought the Crown should have protected him from prosecution, and he simply fell out with the royals and held that grudge to the grave. Who knows the real reason, however he is certainly immortalised in stone as a twisted guy.
Personally, I’d replace Henry with our patron saint, St Andrew. Seeing St Andrew on that column in St Andrew Square in the capital city would be a real statement for Scotland. Hopefully we’d also share the knowledge that Saint Andrew was the only disciple to be crucified diagonally, hence the other name for the Saltire – The St Andrew’s Cross.
Dougie Gray
Dunbar
REGARDING Hendry Dundas. Historie is historie, ye canny paint it ower wi white wash or pretend fit happent niver happent. Dundas wis an ogre as wir mony o his ilk.
I mind bein taught fan I wis yung (mony years syne) fit wis cryed the “Black Triangle”’ bawbees an worthless whigmaleeries, alang wi some guns but ainly ae haunfu o slugs, bein shipped frae Glesga tae Africae. Thay trinkets wis traded fur slaves which wir then shipped frae Africae tae the suthren states o Americae, tae be selt.
READ MORE: Black Lives Matter: 'No loss' if statue of Scotsman is removed
Syne thay ships loaded up wi baccy an bek hame tae the Broomielaw. I canny mind o ocht bein sayed anent the cruelty o it, but at least it wis talked o.
Puin doun statues, thou unnerstaunable, is tae gang frae deploring the past tae hiddlin it awa whaur in canny be seen. Yon’s nae healthy avaa. Muckle better in ma mind tae lea the statue o Dundas an pit roun the base o it eimages o slavery, the torture, the killins, the howplessness o it. That wey, fowk wuid see juist fit Dundas an his ilk really stuid fur, an hoo we maun mak siccar, fowk like Dundas niver gain frae ither fowks misery again.
George T Watt
Arbroath
YOUR correspondent, Jake Chalmers from Golspie (Letters, June 10), rightly suggests that the Duke of Sutherland was as undeserving of a statue as a slave trader. But that’s our view today. At the time the landowning class often profited from slavery and then effected Clearances of cattle-herding people to make way for more profitable sheep. The Duke of Sutherland’s family inheritance was from canal building no doubt by navvies, near slaves themselves.
However, the 1994 outline planning application by Sandy Lindsay that Mr Chalmers mentions did not seek to demolish the statue and scatter the broken pierces on Ben Bhraggie hillside. He and Peter Findlay sought to remove the statue and rebuild it in the garden of Dunrobin Castle as a museum piece, replacing the stone Duke with a Celtic cross.
It was journalist Neal Ascherson who wrote “Blow up the Duke and leave his limbs among the heather”. Ascherson, like Lindsay and friends, were conscious at that time of the removal of communist leaders from their plinths and some being exhibited in memorial gardens.
Neal summed up: “I would blow him up, not just as a statement about the Clearances but as a gesture about ‘heritage’, for the Duke’s removal is a reminder that heritage, after all, is not just a dry schedule of monuments. It is a ceaseless rolling judgement by a people on its past.”
I captured the whole debate in my book Toppling the Duke – Outrage on Ben Bhraggie. The Clearances and slavery are but two of the past injustices of which today we must be educated, understand and interpret.
Rob Gibson
Evanton, Ross-shire
THERE have been a few letters about statues commemorating people from our past that were in some way involved in the slave trade, either in moving or selling slaves or using them on their plantations. I disagree with their removal.
My reason is that in the past societies’ opinions differed from today. To me it is crazy putting our present-day values on the past. The past is the past. Removing a statue changes nothing in history. The statue damaged in Bristol, for instance, was of a man who did use slaves, however he was a philanthropist helping people here. That is why society at that time put up a statue. Yes he got his wealth in slavery but then very few people cared about that, but were grateful for his philanthropic endeavours here hence his statue.
This is a similar thing to governments apologising two or three hundred years after an event to those aggrieved at that time. Why? Once again people behaved in the past based on the moral landscape at the time. Putting modern values to the past is illogical.
Keep the statues, they are our history, even though today we may not agree with that person’s life and their social values.
Robert Anderson
Dunning
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