Call for greater recognition of local abolitionist

Mr Cameron was speaking at a time of renewed awareness of past figures connected to the slave trade.

And while the role of many notable people have been called into question, some efforts are also being made to highlight those who campaigned for its abolition.

With this in mind Fraserburgh Heritage Centre wants one of the town’s sons to be better known.

Museum volunteers say the north-east could learn a lot, amid the Black Lives Matter movement, from Broch- born abolitionist Charles Rawden Maclean.

He was one of the first white people to meet and befriend the great Zulu king Shaka Senzagakhona – partly due to his distinctive red hair, after being shipwrecked at Port Natal.

Raised by the Zulu chieftain for 13 years, Mr Maclean achieved hero status when settlers at Port Natal were struck down by sickness and lacked supplies and medicines.

In 1827, at the age of 12, Maclean trekked for 600 miles around Africa to raise the alarm and fetch medicine for locals and fellow settlers.

He later became a prominent figure in the West Indies and then Victorian London for his opposition to the transatlantic slave trade.

The centre’s secretary Chris Reid said: “His story is most valid today and it’s a fascinating one, particularly with all the education going on around the Black Lives Matter movement and the tearing down of slavery monuments.”

In Durban Mr Maclean, later known as John Ross, became something of a folk hero, with roads, schools, statues and a ship named after him.

He died, aged 65 and bankrupt, when his ship the SS Varne hit rocks near Southampton, where he was buried in an until-recently unmarked pauper’s grave.

The memorial to Charles Rawden Maclean