Slavery abolition

In response to comments about slavery (Opinion, 24 March and Letters, 30 and 31 March) Scotland has proud record in the campaign to abolish slavery.

From the 1790s to the 1860s and beyond, Glasgow hosted militant abolitionists, from William Lloyd Garrison on several occasions, and Harriet Beecher Stowe to African-Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnett, James McCune Smith and very many others.

Glasgow University might claim to have the first African-American graduate in Dr James McCune Smith, member of the Glasgow abolition movement and pioneer New Yorker.

Glasgow also helped the freed slaves in numerous ways after the American Civil War with support for education. This has been a subject of public lectures in the Black History month at Glasgow University for several years now.

BERNARD ASPINWALL

Arran View Gardens

Seamill

Scotland's relationship with the slave trade raises several points of historical and present day relevance. Debate about how Scots benefited from direct involvement in the Americas-Africa slave trade has been the subject of much comment, some of which has obscured the enslavement of Scots themselves.

Andrew Gray (Letters, 31 March) touches on the truth of more domestic enslavement in Scotland. Many instances are maybe more recent than many would want to acknowledge – such as the women bondagers of the Borders with their badgemark bonnets.

I recall a former employee of the Singer sewing machines company in Clydebank saying that they were "white slaves" in their situation.

The tied housing occupations that many employees have been engaged in has an enslavement dimension, which maybe illustrates how omnipresent slavery is or was, and how imperceptibly it can happen behind the headlines of its bigger definitions.

IAN JOHNSTONE

Forman Drive

Peterhead