A slavery museum for Scotland is overdue

The recommendation that Scotland should have its own museum dedicated to the country’s role in slavery and the empire couldn’t have come soon enough.

Such a space offers a chance to effectively and cohesively bring together increasingly piercing research into the vast riches derivived by Scots from business that had the transportation, sale and suffering of enslaved Africans at their heart.

The discussion on Scotland’s imperial legacy first came to public attention back in 2007, the bicentennial of the abolition of the Slave Act, when the Glasgow Built Preservation Trust ran an exhibition linking Glasgow’s built heritage with the slave trade. It was the start of the unravelling of a collective amnesia around Scotland and slavery, with the piece of work suitably entitled It Wisnae Us.

Today, we know Scotland was awash in the profits made from human suffering.

Creating a new museum to confront Scotland's extensive role in the slave trade has been proposed. PIC: Creative Commons.

Work is already ongoing in museums to decolonise collections and broaden narratives. At National Museums Scotland, a statue of steam pioneer and Industrial Revolution hero James Watt is accompanied by a plaque which sets out the extensive involvement his family had in transatlatic slave trade and the profits his firm made from the plantations. In Glasgow museums, similar work is underway.

Talks have been ongoing locally in Greenock for several years to open such a museum in one of the town’s sugar houses, where cargo delivered from the plantations of the West Indies was stored. Today’s report could bring new energy to the proposal.

While we may not be proud of this aspect of our history, we may have a chance to be proud of the way we tell it.