Scotland hits a new low of intolerance, ignorance and bigotry

The rejection of facts and dismissal of education signals a descent into darkness, writes Brian Monteith

Ihave never known a time like it. Edinburgh and Glasgow – the centres of the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th century that contributed enormously to the triumph of reason over superstition, to liberty over oppression and free trade over mercantilism and protectionism – are descending into darkness.

When hard facts and evidence can be so wilfully pushed aside to traduce reputations and historical records in the name of seeking power; when education can count for so little that it is dismissed without a care; when baying groupthink seeks to intimidate into silence those that seek to challenge the edicts of the powerful – then we know Scotland is reaching a new low of intolerance, ignorance and bigotry.

We are witnessing mob violence in Glasgow’s George Square that, according to the Scottish Police Federation, is in part due to the failure of politicians to condemn unequivocally protesters breaking lockdown rules.

We are witnessing our school system turning towards a part-time blended learning system of oneand-a-half days a week that will cast a whole generation into educational disadvantage and poverty as a result.

We are witnessing monuments to historical figures across Scotland, from Robert the Bruce to Henry Dundas, being vandalised as any objective reasoning is abandoned for the emotive baying of ignorant mobs.

Last week I presented the evidence that demonstrated – far from delaying the abolition of the slave trade – Dundas first ensured slavery in Scotland was illegal then went on to have the first Bill to abolish the slave trade passed in the Commons. He supported the end of slavery but when a Bill came before the House in 1792 he could not see it gaining a majority for immediate abolition and brought forward amendments that would phase in the abolition by the end of 1799. The Bill was passed and he would have gone down in history as responsible for helping William Wilberforce achieve his goal – but it was defeated subsequently in the Lords and it was not until 1807 that a Bill passed both Commons and Lords to receive assent.

Dundas did not therefore obstruct the end of slavery and it is to stand history on its head to accuse him of such, yet that is exactly what many are doing in seeking to change the plaque on Edinburgh’s Melville Column or, worse, have his statue on the top of it removed. Making a grotesque and typically obscene caricature, the Edinburgh author Irvine Welsh compared Dundas to Jimmy Savile, a self-demeaning slur that was an insult to the many victims of the broadcaster who preyed on both the dead and living.

All I see are the same lazy and exaggerated claims being repeated about Dundas with no supporting evidence that abolition could have been achieved any earlier than the Scot obtained. Such is the level of ignorance that now abounds and upon which our cities and our country will be governed by.

It is clear from the tenor of the debate being constructed around slavery that no historical context is to be allowed. Unfortunately, slavery has been the condition of the human species for most of our existence, be it from antiquity with the Sumerians, through ancient times of the Greeks, Persians and Romans, on to the medieval period to just over 200 years ago – and even after then it was still common around most of the world. Slavery