Don’t tear down statues to slaver traders – Letters

Memorials should be left as grim reminders, says a reader

Should Edinburgh's Melville Monument be torn down? (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)

I have been struck by the knee-jerk reaction from some quarters that we should be removing statues/street names that are connected with the slave trade. This includes the likes of the memorial to Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, and certain Glasgow street names.

If anything, what this debate has done is at least give people some understanding of Scotland’s role in the slave trade, something I have been campaigning on for some time and around which there is still widespread ignorance.

Scotland as a nation benefited disproportionately from the transatlantic trade in people. Relative to population, Scots owned more slaves, more plantations and had a higher share of the trade in plantation goods, such as tobacco and sugar, than England or most other European countries.

Dundas, who was Home Secretary in the late 18 century, believed slavery should be abolished gradually in three stages over a decade, which many historians say cost thousands of lives. Glasgow’s street names, such as Glassford Street, bear testament to plantation owners who accrued massive sums of money off the back of slave labour.

By all means let us have interpretation boards and plaques that provide information on the role of these individuals in this barbaric practice. Let us use this as an opportunity to embed slavery in the school curriculum and erect a monument to mark it, not forgetting the role of countless individuals in its abolition.

However, what we cannot do is whitewash, sanitise our history, by removing the statues and street names of those whose views we find abhorrent now. If that were indeed a route we were to go down we would have precious little left. They are testament to our past, a reminder, warts and all.

Alex Orr, Marchmont Road, Edinburgh

All saints?

One of the most sensible suggestions put forward to address the problem of statues celebrating the lives of controversial people is to put such statues in museums, with a proper assessment of their political and social life (“Protesters pull down statue of Edward Colston”, 8 June). Tearing down statues because we don’t like what the person stood for gives carte blanche to tear down any statue for any personal grievance or hurt, however genuine.

Who is to determine what good or bad a man or woman has done? Who is the arbiter?

History changes perceptions and attitudes. Should we only put up statues of saints?

Trevor Rigg, Greenbank Gardens, Edinburgh

Subsidy myth

Richard Allison repeats the myth that Scotland is subsidised to the tune of £1,900 per head by the UK Exchequer, which I assume is based on GERS figures (Letters, 9 June).

GERS is merely an indicator of Scotland’s position as a region of the UK, not as an independent country with its own priorities. A quarter of the GERS deficit amount is allocated to Scotland as interest on the UK’s national debt despite the fact that Scotland contributed surpluses during most of the last 40 years.

Also, multiple UK-wide costs applied to Scotland’s expenditure in GERS are under the control of the UK Government and not necessarily spent in Scotland.

The small Scandinavian nations Richard Allison appears to ridicule have a far higher standard of living than the UK, proved to be more resilient in tacking economic downturns and successfully dealt with coronavirus with very few deaths, whereas the UK government’s disastrous handling will result in higher taxes, destroy thousands of businesses and put at least one million people out of work with austerity for years to come.

When you add to that the dire economic consequences of a no-deal Brexit, there is no advantage in remaining under Westminster control.

Richard Allison refers to discharging elderly patients into care homes without testing, which was a UK-wide strategy and as recently as the end of April the Labour Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, said there would be “no value” in providing tests to everyone in care homes.

Mary Thomas, Watson Crescent, Edinburgh

Harsh indictment

Beside a prominent picture of Alex Salmond and Donald Trump, Brian Wilson (Perspective, 6 June) writes: “How sad for Scotland that a little more research was not done before this bigot, who has caused so much division in America and beyond, was garlanded with hero’s welcomes, planning consents and honorary degrees.”

The inference is clear and this exhibits one of Mr Wilson’s specialities, the art of critical analysis with hindsight.

However, it’s a harsh indictment on Jack McConnell, Scotland’s then First Minister, who “garlanded” Donald Trump with the honorary position of Global Ambassador in 2006. Mr Trump’s bullying and hectoring nature was to become more obvious later when he fought the Scottish Government over planning permission given to a wind farm sited some miles off the Aberdeenshire coast, which he said spoiled the view from his golf course.

However, it was in the run-up to the American election of 2016 that details of Trump’s dishonesty and sleaze began to become more clear. In December 2015 Nicola Sturgeon stripped Donald Trump from his role of business ambassador after he called for Muslims to be banned from the United States.

Gill Turner, Derby Street, Edinburgh

Dazzling fiction

Well done to Lesley Riddoch (Perspective, 8 June) for her most dazzling piece of fiction writing so far. The description of indy Scotland’s oil and gas sector suddenly reinventing itself as a wind and solar power innovator is an incredible feat of imagination. Hey presto! Energy security permanently sorted, no need to import a single cross-border megawatt ever again.

We are awed by breathtaking factual gymnastics, such as the revelation that the UK has “the highest Covid death toll in the world” – so now apparently we surpass even our wicked ally, the US. Ms Riddoch nimbly dodges pointless debate about Scotland’s death rate of 580 per million compared to England’s 499.

Deploring the state of our underfunded NHS, the columnist hints at a massive health spending spree after independence, coyly leaving us to guess where such funding comes from: unlimited interest-free loans from the bursting coffers of a post-Covid European Central Bank, perchance? Tax raids on any fat-cats daft enough to stay in Scotland? No matter; our super-creative Curriculum for Excellence-educated workforce will soon build an economy rivalling Switzerland’s, but with a Danish-style welfare state.

This utopian narrative presents cutting loose from “the deep pockets of HM Treasury” in these uncertain times as a worthy, morally progressive aspiration.

Leading us to an exciting and eco-friendly promised land, the writer deftly sidesteps such awkward trivia as colossal budget deficits and instead plays to her undoubted strengths of Tory-bashing and Boris-blaming.

Martin O’Gorman, Littlejohn Road, Edinburgh

Blame game

I for one am sick and tired of apologising for an empire which my ancestors were equally victims of: from the forced migrations to the towns and cities by the Enclosures stealing common land to the horrors of the Industrial Revolution, where children under 12 losing limbs and lives
was commonplace until the 1901 Factory and Workshop Act.

Black people do not have a monopoly on suffering, nor whites a monopoly on inflicting it. Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford were built as much as Scandinavia on the blood of British slaves. Every world empire was built on slavery: just ask the quadruple-enslaved Jews – Babylon, Egypt, Rome and Nazi Germany.

The mass genocides the Bantus inflicted upon Africa (with the “lucky” ones being sold as the slaves today’s protesters are so holier than thou over) right though to the ethnic cleansings of Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone today show that the biggest oppressor of the black person has always been his supposed brethren.

Mark Boyle, Linn Park Gardens, Johnstone

Spitting mad

There is a pandemic with over 40,000 dead in the UK yet people – mostly male – continue to spit in the street. Not only a filthy habit, but spitting spreads diseases.

Are these people copying their football heroes? I do not see this vile practice in women’s football and other sports. Before the football season commences there needs to be legislation in place to stop this disease-spreading practice. Those highly paid footballers who spit during a match should be given a yellow card and thus two spits and they are off. A substantial fine by their clubs would certainly focus their attention.

The Scottish Government is fond of saying “where Scotland leads others follow”, so will they now show Westminster how it should be done?

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow

Viva vandals!

The milling mobs of protesters who vandalised our cities have been forgiven for placing the vulnerable at risk by spreading coronavirus.

Instead, Joe Fitzpatrick, Scotland’s Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing, threatens criminal proceeding against golfers who travel more than five miles to their golf course – such as Edinburgh golfers who play regularly in East Lothian.

I am at a loss to understand the logic behind this threat, since drivers on the East Lothian coastal road are usually separated by more than six feet.

However, I would like to suggest a compromise. If Edinburgh golfers en route to, say, Gullane promised to vandalise a building or statue on the way could they be re-classified as protesters and allowed to flout all inconvenient laws?

(Rev) Dr John Cameron, Howard Place, St Andrews

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