Greens boss Patrick Harvie has called for statues of Scot slave trade profiteers to be hauled down and stuck in museums
Glasgow’s Merchant City was founded on the back of the slave trade and Scots shared millions in compensation when it was abolished
GREENS boss Patrick Harvie yesterday called for statues of Scot slave trade profiteers to be hauled down and stuck in museums.
The MSP said our links to the shameful period should never be forgotten after the country raked in riches from exploitation.
He spoke out after violent clashes between white supremacists and anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, over plans to remove a statue of pro-slavery US Civil War general Robert E. Lee.
Glasgow’s Merchant City was founded on the back of the slave trade and Scots shared millions in compensation when it was abolished.
Mr Harvie said: “This is never about erasing history. It’s about putting slavery into a proper context.
"I would be far more in favour of people seeing statues in a museum rather than raised on pedestals.
“And we should look at the people who built great places and cities such as Glasgow and saying something meaningful about the whole context.
“Huge numbers of people had an economic interest in the slave trade and you can trace a lot of our current economic inequality back to the extraordinary compensation.”
The co-convener added: “It is absolutely right that Scotland should have public museum space looking at the slave trade, particularly in the cities that benefited.”
Slavery supporter Henry Dundas, who became Lord Melville, has a monument in Edinburgh city centre.
The Royal Bank director’s family made fortunes from the trade. Their home is now the bank’s city base.
Cash made by merchants from tobacco, sugar and cotton plantations trickled down to almost every level of Scottish society during the 17th and 18th century.
But many fought to end slavery before it was outlawed in 1833, including mill workers who risked the sack when they refused to spin cotton picked by slave labour.
Others went on sugar strikes.
New online records detail the slave owners who shared £20million compo paid by taxpayers when the trade was abolished — the equivalent of £22.4billion today.
They included John Gladstone, dad of Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone, who was handed £81,669 — more than £93million now.
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