Devine: We have a duty to tell the truth
PROFESSOR Sir Tom Devine, the nation’s leading historian, says the scale of Scotland’s involvement in the slave trade is “truly mind boggling”. He believes historians have a “sacred duty” to tell the truth about it, just as they have with “that other horror, the Holocaust”.
Adebusola Debora Ramsay, of the Glasgow Slavery Legacy Tour, which takes visitors around sites in the city linked to the trade, says that whenever the history of slavery is discussed in Scotland the nation appears to suffer from a “collective amnesia”.
Poet Jackie Kay, Scotland’s Makar and a woman of Nigerian descent, once said: “Scotland is a canny wee nation when it comes to remembering and forgetting. The plantation owner never wears a kilt and Glasgow does not readily admit its history in a way that other cities have done.” Liverpool has built a museum to its role in the slave trade and Bristol is in the middle of a long debate over what to do about statues to wealthy slavers in the city.
Dr Stephen Mullen, a historian and author of the book It Wisnae Us about Scotland’s role, says Scots view slavery as a “peculiarly English problem”, adding: “Scots have got off the hook.” Slavery trickled down into every part of Scottish life – from the docker who brought sugar into the city, to the grocer who sold it, and the families who bought it to sweeten their tea. One major export from Scotland to the Americas was “slave cloth” to make cheap clothes for Africans on plantations. Salted herring from the Highlands had its main market in the islands of the West Indies as food for slaves.
The Jamaican-born scientist Sir Geoff Palmer, Professor Emeritus of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, says if Bannockburn is in the history books, then slavery should be there as well. Scottish academic Michael Morris, an expert in slavery at Liverpool John Moores University, adds: “Scots like to promote themselves as part of the civilising mission of the British empire, so we glorify individuals like David Livingstone, and we would prefer to talk about our role in abolition rather than our role in chattel slavery.”
Chris Dolan, the Scottish playwright who wrote an acclaimed novel about the slave trade called Redlegs, believes: “We managed to forget about slavery for an awful long time. Now that we are waking up to the part we did play, it is very difficult for us as we have this mythology we tell ourselves that we are less racist people than other European nations, specifically England. That is not true. Therefore to wake up and find we are involved in slavery as much as other parts of Europe is difficult.”
As David Alston, a historian who is now chairman of the board of NHS Highland, says Scotland’s own historic grievances hold us back when it comes to confronting the past – specifically events such as the Highland Clearances. “We want to tell ourselves a story that in the Highlands we were victims,” he says, “but if you want to portray yourself as a victim the last thing you want to do is be the victimiser.”