 Felly, rydw i'n gofynu, rydw i'n rydw i'n mynd i'n mynd i Nas Amir. Rydw i'n profesiad Krif Llywodraeth, rydw i'n cyd-fyniadol y University of Edinburgh, ac mae'n gilydd ymlaen yn ei gweithio i'n cyd-fyniadol, o'r parlym Ysgrifedd a'r ffesibl o Gyllidol Fygedig, o'r llefodol Cymru a'r llefodol Cymru. Felly, mae'n gyd-fyniadol sy'n ei wneud i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n amlod. ac mae'r angen yn fwy oedd yw dda i'w cofioedd yw'r bobl yn ymgyrch. a'r diwrnod yn ymgyrch o'r parwyr neu'r dyfodol. Ac wrth gwrs, yw'n defnyddio, nawr yn sicr o'r newol, rydych chi'n fawr am eu cyfnodd gyda'r cyfnodd yn ychydig o'r panel. Yn ysgolwch, mae'n ysgolwch ar gyfer 30-miniadau, ac mae'n 30-miniadau gan hynny o'r meddwl. My offended that our conversation today can join others happening across Scotland and helping to understand the past has, in terms of our bearing on the present. And a something which our speakers are exceptionally well placed to lead a discussion on yn gofyniede bwysig i ymwneud o bobl ar y cysmfyniadau o'r lexyg o yng Nghymru Raji Llywodraethau. Mae'r dda i'r rhai i ni wedi'i wneud cofyddiadol gyda sy'n bod ein astu'r ddod, cefnid, ac mae'r ddod i'r ddod, byddaf ar y stwyll Gwliadach Aberdeinidol yng Nghymrydau ym Poestyng Llywodraethau, yn cydweithio iddyn nhw ymwneud yn y parwyr i'r tot a ai'r unrhyw beth sy'n enw sy'n gallu ymddangos i'r gweithio o'r ddechreu o'r gwybod a'r ddwylliant o'r ddwylliant o'r ddwylliant o'r ddwylliant o'r ddwylliant fel ydyn ni'n ysgol ei ddweud y gallu yn y ffordd y sefydliadau o'r rhannu sgoligau yn Sgoledd yw eisiau symud y ddwylliant o'r prif o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod arall. Mae'n sefydlu i gynnwys o'r ddau iawn i gynnwys Dr David Alston, sy'n cyfleu llyfr i ddefnyddio'r llyfr ac yn ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddeud a'u cyfan o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r sgol, ac yn nesaf, yn ddau'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r NSS. David yn ddweud y cyffredig o'r rolyfr i Llyfr Mhiliadau Sgolwyr i'r ddweud o'r llyfr mhiliadau Sgolwyr oes ar y gwrs yma ar gyflenwyr, ac yn y gweithio'r llyfr yma ar gyflenwyr ysgoledadau'r Ysgoledad i'r Maes Indonesia i'r amser yn ymwyllgor Dawy, Rydym yn dod o'r Mae Gaelất i'r Gaeladol yn amser pan i ni'n golygogol oedd yna ynghoriad ynghylch yn oedol, ac mae'n ardal i'r mewn Mae'n gallu Gaeladol gyfarfodol ei gaeladol, oedd mae'n oedl yn sefydledd y ysgoledad bwrdd mewn ymgyrchol. Nelton Cionwg maen nhw wedi'i ysgoledadau, oedd o'r newid yn gyfrydyd i leidio ar gyfer yr Ymddindol acrossi Gwladgor, a'r grau ei amlwg hynny i ddaw'r rhywbeth... ...u'r rhubes yn ddim yn gweithio'r cyd-cynnaeth... ...mallan y Ddech chi'n gwneud... ...yng ngôlgyntau ganwn Iblodau a Llyfrgell. Pwr� David, maith i chi i ymddangos i'w gael i'r Rhubes? Yn ddweud ar gyfer y brysgell... ...ac ystod eich rhubes o'i rhywbethau a'r Cyrebu... ... cyn ydw i'r Rhubes i eich Ymddindol?Well, I think a helpful way to start considering this is to remember that slavery was based on the belief that people could be owned, people could be property, and therefore people became commodities.And there was a supply chain which began in Africa with the kidnapping and enslavement of people, people were then shipped in appalling conditions across theifeound iniments and that bit that we often refer to as Atlantic slave trade. After that there was trade organised by people called slave factors – which sold enslaved people on, right to the smallest corner's empires in the Caribbean and the Americas, and they did beyond because they also traded into non-Gritish colonies. And the whole purpose of that was then to exploit the PhD labor of enslaved Africans a oedd yma yn oed yn ysgolwyd yma, rwy'n meddwl a'r oedd Cotten, CofiYsgwr a'r oedd yma'r goyd. A os ydych chi'n gweithio, mae'r göchelodau a'r cyhoedd yn allu'r llaw o'r bobl. Ond o hynny'n ddifolio, mae'n gweithio ar y sgolwyd yn sgolwyd, a'u gwoith oedd ysgolwyd yn ymddangos ar y ddysgrifiad. Yn y 19th yma, rydyn ni'n ddifolio'r storio oedd ymddangos that Scotland's hands are clean, because we are not involved in the slave trade, meaning slave ships weren't served in Scotland. But, in fact, almost exactly the opposite is true. In relation to the population of Scotland, Scots were disproportionately represented as captains of slave ships, surgeons on slave ships, slave factories in the Caribbean islands, and in the whole business of managing the plantations as owners, as managers, as overseers, as bookkeepers. Mae'r oedd yn ddaeth ag yn wirgylchol yn ddaeth yng Nghaennau. Felly mae'r pethau o'r cyd-dechrau, yn gweithio, yn cael ei amser. Mae'r gwahau cyngor, mae'r brifwysgol cyfrifol, mae'r gwasanaeth. Mae'r oedd gael ymddangos yma yn ddaeth hwnnw, mae'r cyfrwys gyd-diadau'r cyfrwys gyd-diadau'r cyfrwysau. A gyd-diadau'r cyfrwys gyd-diadau'r cyfrwys gyd-diadau'r cyfrwys gyd-diadau'r cyfrwys. was a material, they called slave cloth because it was clothing for slaves. The Scottish herring industry was exporting salt herring as food for enslaved peoples. And one way that I think is helpful to look at it is if you ask the question who was involved and who benefited. It's rather like asking the question who was involved and who benefited from North Sea Oil. Of course there are some people made more money more than others out of North Sea Oil but it's the effects and the involvement permeated society. Could I ask you to maybe put some potential numbers on high points in the period of Scottish involvement in the slave trade. Is it true that at one point a third of all the slaves in Jamaica were owned by Scottish planters? It seems there is one source which suggested a third of the white population of Jamaica had Scottish origins. That would be slightly different to a third of the enslaved population being owned. But yes sir, even if it wasn't as high as I thought, what's particularly dramatic about that is that that's kind of from a standing start because Jamaica was an English sugar island to which Scots didn't really have access until 1707 and that figure comes from the 1770s. So in half a century Scots have moved from almost being excluded from the island to being as strongly represented as that. In terms of proportions of the white population that would be even more so in some of the Caribbean islands. I think we're probably reaching its highest level in Guyana on the north coast of South America. One measure we have of the involvement of Scots is in the compensation that was paid not to the enslaved but to slaveholders in 1834 at the end of colonial slavery. And merchants in Glasgow received more, first of all Scots proportionally received more compensation than English slaveholders. But also Glasgow slaveholders received more in compensation for the enslaved people they held in Guyana than in Jamaica, despite the fact that Jamaica is a much larger colony. And what do you think, well how do you write the public knowledge of this history that you've sketched out for us? Well it's certainly got better. I mean it is remarkable that 25 years ago when the then new Museum of Scotland opened, it opened without a single mention of slavery. I don't believe that would happen now. However, I think what does happen now is a lot of distancing from the reality of slavery and the Scottish involvement. And by that I mean that a lot of people will say well yes Scotland was involved but it wasn't ordinary people like us. And I think that's quite a common way of expressing it, that it's the big merchants, it's people with big houses. A lot of what I've been trying to do in my work is looking at the ordinary people who get involved. And I think it's part of the perniciousness and the tragedy of the whole system that it sucks people in who in their hearts knew better. And Robert Burns is the obvious example. I mean he was going to go to work as an overseer on the slave plantation. He changed his mind for moral reasons. He changed his mind because the poetry started doing better. So it sucked people in like that and they are ordinary people. They are people like us. And the disturbing thing when you study this in detail is how frighteningly easy it is just to identify with the people and to enter into their lives and you do feel they are like us because they are and yet they are involved in the most appalling acts. Sheila, your work in the Empire Slavery in Scotland's Museums project was perhaps the first in Scotland to try to gauge an understanding of both the grasp of Scotland's role in the slave trade but also the contemporary opinions of Scots to it. I wonder if you might be able to run through some key points for us. Yeah, of course. So, as you mentioned, I work for Museums Gallery Scotland. So we are the kind of advocacy policy grant funding body for all museums in Scotland. We don't hold any collections or anything but we are there to support museums across Scotland, around 430 museums that are in Scotland. And we were brought on board as part of a project called Empire Slavery in Scotland's Museums that had its inception in June 2020. The Scottish Parliament voted in favour of a motion for a Museum of Slavery in Scotland. And then that was broadened out, put into the Scottish programme for government as looking across museums in Scotland and how they are addressing the legacies of historic slavery, empire and colonialism within their spaces and also looking at the potential for a dedicated space to look at the roles of these legacies. So that was an independent steering group set up to go into that and the independent steering group were asked to make recommendations to the Scottish government and they made those recommendations in June this year. So those recommendations were given to the Scottish Government by the steering group. And as part of that process, as you say, we wanted to consult really widely across a variety of people to really understand these legacies and what they mean for contemporary society. And so we had three kind of different groups that we looked at. We had a priority community group as we turned that group and those were people who has lived experience of racial discrimination were a direct result of the legacies of historic slavery, colonialism and empire. We also worked with the museum sector itself and consulted with them and also we had consultation with wider Scottish public. And so through that consultation we were able to then come to the recommendations but with the public element what we had was a survey that went around to the Scottish public. And in that we had an overwhelming support for telling honest and accurate stories regarding the legacies. There was a definite interest in learning more around the legacies of we separated them between historic slavery and empire and colonialism. But we did find that when naming racism within this specifically within the questions and about looking at how these legacies are racism today that then there was an understanding that kind of came down there and that understanding when actually naming racism and how that is a direct legacy of these histories. But yes there was overwhelming support for doing this work and that was with the public and then similarly with the museum sector there's overwhelming support to do the work but really more of a desire for some support and guidance around how to do it and how to do it well and also an understanding that it's another thing to be adding to what museum the museum sector is looking to do as well on stretch budgets and just after a pandemic but there was a desire to learn more and to tell those stories. Is it surprising and it'd be interesting to know later from the audience whether or not it strikes in the surprising when you think about it that there isn't a museum or a properly curated space in which you can tell the story of Scotland and slavery already? Yeah definitely and it's this project although the motion parliament was kind of the the inception of the specific element of this project there have been campaigns for years in CRER have been part of one of the major campaigns to make to ensure these histories are put on the stage in museums and are told in museums and particularly to have a dedicated space to that. There's something that has been really important and they've been campaigning for and a lot of others have been campaigning for for years but it has been quite quiet and this is kind of this is the first time that it has been taken on in that way through a Scottish Government sponsored programme so yeah it's surprising. And what are the next steps now from this? So as you say the recommendations are with Scottish Government and they were and the steering group gave those recommendations and then for Museums Gallery Scotland we are there to support the sector to embed the areas of the recommendations so I can just give you a quick overview of the recommendations there were six of them. The first one was for a dedicated space to address the legacies through development of a new organisation and this new organisation should be run by people who have lived a professional experience of the historic legacies of slavery empire and colonialism. Then recommendation two was looking at embedding anti-racism within the sector itself. Recommendation three was looking at how to the sector can involve Scotland's people in development of projects and collections and programming in relation to the legacies. Recommendation four was particularly looking at the histories and how then really that the the the Scotland's museums need to be looking and researching these histories. Five was how we can work with education and that was a huge part that came out across all three strands that this work isn't a standalone thing but this has to work in partnership with working with the education system and that has to be done together and then the last one was looking at the government making statement in relation to repatriation and restitution of lucid and stolen objects so those are the six recommendations and the recommendations that sit within what Museums Gallery Scotland's kind of have the control of are two and two to four and looking at anti-racism within the sector and working with people within the sector and more and also looking at researching these histories within the sector so we are now looking to support that and take that forward and see how we can help those who have expressed their desire to do this work but as it also expressed their their need for support. I mean Nelson for a lot of people it seems difficult to see a kind of a direct relationship between slavery, its legacies and contemporary roasts of them. How do you think the recognition of the kind of histories that both David and Sheila have outlined would go, how do you think they could contribute to tackling contemporary experiences of roasts of them in Scotland? Thank you, Nelson. So I think a really key thing and I think Sheila spoke about this as well in seeing contemporary racism as a legacy of transatlantic slavery and sort of wider forces of colonialism and empire as well is that the fact I think even though it's important to not define the sort of histories of black people minority ethnic people through these lenses I think a lot of the time in Scotland's relationship to black people to people from a minority ethnic background and a lot of that relationship has sadly been defined by slavery, by colonialism, by empire and that's had a deep impact historically on how Scottish society has perceived those communities and viewed those communities like slavery itself was maintained by a sort of codified a racialized system that meant it was explicitly reserved of people who are black African or black African heritage and I think that shows us that that sort of force of white supremacy of racism has really played a key role in Scottish society historically and that has continued to maintain and sort of led us to having contemporary racism. I think a good example of where we see that is actually in the compensation scheme that came in at the end of the slavery trade and David mentioned it as well but the fact that that scheme compensated enslavers not people who enslaved sort of shows us who was prioritized in the opinion that was held of people who enslaved that even this act of abolition that is quite often defined as being something that was overwhelmingly positive which no it was positive thing but it also it was done in a way that was still actually quite racist and marginalized people who were enslaved by not a given them compensation it wasn't necessarily an action that was taken um by people who were explicitly anti-racist you know the sort of abolitionist movement itself it's can be a point of contention particularly um particularly in the sort of viewpoints of white abolitionist and I think that legacy is sort of filtered down over time and led us to having issues of contemporary racism today um so like for example in Scotland today almost half of children who live in poverty are from minority ethnic families the poverty rate experienced by minority ethnic people is more than double that of white Scottish people I think in a lot of the ways we think about poverty and um think about the sort of stereotype that we quite often think of when we think of people who are working class people who might live in poverty we quite often think of those people as being white and actually don't think enough about the experiences of minority ethnic people I think a lot of that is a legacy from um the sort of histories of slavery an empire that Scotland's been complicit in as well um the other like the final thing I'll say about that as well you see that in who was sort of complicit in the slavery trade as well so in Glasgow where we do a lot of work a lot of um very influential members of Glaswegian society in the 17th, 18th, 19th century were enslavers you know you see that in the as excellent work that's been done by Dr Stephen Mullen into this that shows about 40 out of the 79 people who were Lord Provost in the city of Glasgow between 1636 and 1834 had some connections to slavery so some of them were enslavers some of them invested in slavery um some of them you know had a connection whether direct or indirect to that trade and these were people at the very top of Glaswegian society uh very influential people I think that shows us that during times of the slavery trade um Glaswegian society Scottish society was institutionally racist and these people had a massive influence and I think I don't think there's been a sort of real anti-racist action or overturning off that structure that's happened in that time since where we can really say that we're an anti-racist society today and I think that's where that legacy of contemporary racism comes from in Scottish society as well yeah thank you just whilst I prime the audience to get their questions ready one one for the entire panel really which is that um it seems like one of the the flash points in discussing the legacy of transatlantic slave as trans slave trade and a slavery more broadly in Scotland's connection to it um isn't so much the genealogy and the labour and the archival work which is being done and needs to be done um but it's more about what we do with remembrance with that um insofar as the contentions of our public commemorations of historic slavers and how we turn to that presently um do either of you want to speak to that specifically that charge that sometimes we judge society or judge the past from today's standards I don't think we are yes that's a that's a common line we shouldn't judge the past by by today's standards but the people at the time in many ways had the same standards they were living in the world of the Scottish Enlightenment um and one of I mean what one of the first Africans to write an account of being enslaved and is Guglano and he was enslaved by by a scott um and and he's very clear that everyone in Britain some more than others are responsible for the evil of of slavery I thought he's he's aware of it right writing in the 18th century so I think I think people in many ways did have the same standard but what is what is happening is a complicity as as Nelson said and uh it's sometimes quite difficult to find out language it's it's not it's a turning away it's a blindness it's uh an unwillingness to attend to the humanity of the enslaved um and and you you see this again and again in the letters that are written from the Caribbean there's there's lots of of humanity when it comes to their their friends and their relations and and an obliviousness to the reality of the lives of those who are enslaved yeah um and also I think that's um for me I think it's really important to to understand that although um the effects of um these legacies hit um black people and people who are minority ethnic um in a first they are legacies for all of us you know we all live with those legacies they still permeate the structures that we live with and they still keep us um from having a more cohesive society and for us being able to recognise that we are all um really of the same race um and so I think that you know although often these stories are told in a in another way in that you know that we're doing this for um for people who are black or minority ethnic it's actually for the whole society to really be able to reckon with and understand its history to be able to then move forward and hopefully learn from it that's really how everything you know um I was just um I think when you was chatting speaking then Sheila actually about um this that when we're talking about racism as a structural force and we sort of see it as you know like not net there are very I think CRER would argue that there are very few people who are individually racist there are some but there are very few and actually it's more that in a society um that allows racism to exist you get a lot of people who will do racist things I was thinking that when we that argument comes forward about and there were different standards as you were saying David I think actually a lot of people when they had an opportunity to be educated about the reality of slavery the reality of the cruelty behind it and the abolition movement then had great support um it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who supported it wasn't didn't necessarily do other racist things or didn't view black people as equal or anything like that but they clearly you know when the cruelty of the slavery trade was highlighted people came out against it in significant numbers and I think that alone shows us that you know that sort of treatment of people and that cruelty and human suffering and misery wasn't acceptable it's just when racism operates on a institutional and structural level it can be quite hard to counter racism when it exists on that scale because as David was listing the sort of facts and figures behind how far the slavery trade reached and the significance of it it was clearly really key and really underpinned a lot of how Scottish and British society operated and that's a really hard thing to counter against and I think especially for the individual person yeah thank you thank you that's a thank you thank you David well I think you've got to started and given us a basis on which to have a rich discussion so there are some roving mics in the room so if you can indicate if you would like to ask a question you would be very much encouraged to do so those of you on on social media don't forget our hashtag which I should have told you at the beginning should you wish to tweet it is hashtag fop 2022 you can join in digitally if you don't ask a question in the room bear in mind please that there's quite a few of you so if you want to raise a question don't take don't take all our time so please I think we had three people here the person just in the front in there in the red and then the person behind in blue was next to me my question is mainly for Sheila what would be the advantage of a Scottish slavery museum as opposed to putting a slavery exhibit in all the currently existing museums since slavery permeated every part of society thank you that's a really good question it's one that our project wrestled with and talked about a lot and I think the answer is they're not too exclusive and so for a lot of the work that museums gather in Scotland do it's for including these histories across all museums and for for an understanding as David mentioned the you know that often people think maybe about the central belt but these you know these are these are permeate all of Scottish society and all places have a connection to it so yeah really understanding that and being really clear about that is really really important to to all of this work but the a dedicated space has a lot of has the potential it's we don't know what that is at the moment and it's not for me to decide it's it would be for a new organisation to decide but has the potential to be a place potentially of remembrance of reparation a place of that's that's specifically for and told by those who are affected by the likes of that third road in this time frame in which transatlantic slavery took place also was the time when many scots were cleared off their land and press ganged so there was that sort of racism which is this is perhaps a subject of a topic for another festival but um you know it's still it there's the legacy still exists today amongst the colonial countries and it's it's your point that precisely at the moment Scotland enters the transatlantic slave trade it's a reflection of the clearances and people being forced into that labour David did you want to come in yeah um i think it's like in many ways i think racism grows towards the end of slavery um i mean clearly the whole system had a racial basis but i i think with abolition in some ways racism becomes more important to a lot of people because once slavery is gone that idea of a hierarchy of races and and and mission to to civilize the the lesser races becomes becomes i think comes to the fore in society and and i think that has an impact on on Scotland on the highlands because you also get views i about you know whether you're about Saxon peoples and Celtic peoples um and and i think some of the worst i think it's legitimate to say it's race some of the worst racist attitudes towards gales come come later in the 19th century rather than in the the period of the clearances which seems to be more driven by by economics and profit and not by a racist ideology so there's there's complicated things about the timescales here leith the gentleman back hello ashila um thank you all but ashila mentioned reparations and and i wanted to ask for views on that and if i might say something briefly of my own my own view i i am descended from uh a family that owned plantations and enslaved people perhaps 900 people in Jamaica and Tobago uh Scottish family uh and i live here in Edinburgh uh and i've done my best when i realised this to educate myself about it and i've been to Jamaica and Tobago and talked to people there who lived on those plantations the descendants of those who lived on those plantations about what they feel what we what they ask us people like me to do today and i and there are things that people like me descendants the privileged people who may not perhaps not wealthy any longer but still privileged because of the wealth uh you can do but one of the things that really interests me is the failure of the UK government to respond in any way to the caracom nations call for discussions about reparative justice first made in 2014 and we've completely ignored this uh we haven't even had the grace to respond to the letter unlike some other european nations who where discussions are going further ahead um Scotland um i'm proud as a proud scott i'm proud that Scotland has a now has a foreign aid budget we give it to Zambia, Malawi, Pakistan but Guyana which has already been mentioned full of scots fortunes made by scots including the Gladysdon family of Leith um is poorer than any of those three nations when are we going to start talking here if london refuses to to the caravan nations about what and the west african nations about what we owe them and how we can help them and how we can be better friends with them and try and bring some peace and reconciliation to this whole story thank you thank you for sharing your story and for that provocation do you either of you want to pick up? Yeah no thank you um thank you for sharing that as well i think i think to be honest on this issue of reparations um it's it's something that i think for us to progress forward to being an anti-racist society has to happen because as we've sort of spoken about on this panel you know the racism of today is rooted in that racism of the past and we have to acknowledge that and we have to acknowledge where racism has come from in taking these reparative actions because it's not just this acknowledgement where it's come from it's also this acknowledgement of the harm that it's caused and the harm that these legacies still cause to minority ethnic people in the present day as well so i think at the very core reparative justice and anti-racist actions actually go hand in hand in that and in acknowledging um you know acknowledging something's bad has happened and has caused a lot of harm so that still has to happen um sorry so something has to be done to rectify that in the present day and but i also think with reparations as we sort of spoke to at the start what really uh irritates me even though it happened centuries ago is that actually you know like reparations were paid they were paid to enslavers and um to me that shows actually the sort of institutional racism that was present in the UK government at that time that their priority or who they saw as suffering the most harm from the end of slavery and who had to be protected what it wasn't about you know supporting the communities that have been slayed and cruelly treated for hundreds of years it was about supporting the people who had made profits off that cruelty and i think that is a big historical imbalance that actually any reparative action has to address because we still have those great imbalances of wealth um in scottish and in british society today um and yeah i think with any reparative action it'd be a very um challenging thing to do because we're talking about a big um change in the way our society works and the way our society is structured but i think we have to acknowledge the challenge of that but we also have to acknowledge it as an action that we should be wanting to do because of the history that our nation is complicit in it's that acknowledgement of we've done something terrible to communities of people over hundreds of years so we have to do something to start to acknowledge that and also to rectify it as well thank you thank you now for sharing it with you um yeah i mean yeah i can't unfortunately speak to what the government will do um but um with um some of the discussions we've had um across um the museum sector about how how can we be part of reparative justice and there's some really interesting discussions um about how we can be there to help with a lot of the work and i know david's really interested in a lot of the work in you know in Guyana and preserving records and understanding um across the um these the these variety of places across the the globe that we are connected with in us helping and finding out what they need from us in helping to preserve records helping to tell stories um and so that that's an element where we have we can we can be part of helping to repair um some things um and and it's very important i think to to be always asking what it is that others need rather than trying to guess or give people things that they don't want or need so um yeah finding out what these places need and find and trying to find a way for us to actually give back um and what it is that we can do in that and so that's a new discussion our a lot of our discussions um were within scotland it was an 18 month project we didn't really have the capacity to go internationally but moving forward i think it's really important that we start to look at how what we do is is is connected directly to a lot of these places across the globe David and i yeah i mean Alex Renton is very eloquently expressed the issue and the urgency of of the issue and there is no reason why whatever the UK government is doing scotland can't be engaged and this is not just a comment about scotland government it's about scotland political parties because i don't think there was anything in any of the political parties manifestos at the last election that referred to to reparations and that there should be um i think there are things that we can do at individual level at community level and at national level whether that's Scottish or UK level carry comm is the the carry is is an organisation the caribbean community which has a 10 point plan for reparation the very least we could do is start engaging in discussion about that 10 point plan and the there are there are there have been contacts between leading academics in the caribbean and Scottish government offering to discuss these matters and none of them that i know of have been have been picked up could i just say something about compensation because i um i did the compensation payments that were made in 1834 i think something something that's often missed is this compensation was based on the assessed value of enslaved people which they did by looking at how much they had sold for over a 10 year period and then slave holders were given compensation of about half of that amount and where was the rest of the of the value to come from it came from the it was to come from the unpaid labour of the formerly enslaved people for for six it was intended to be six years it actually ended up being four so in slave not only was the compensation paid to the slave holders but the formerly enslaved people were expected to meet a very substantial cost of their own emancipation which involved remaining effectively indentured except their title to change they were called apprentices yes yes yes rather but i mean your point nelsa's point sheila's intervention in in response to to the provocation from from the questioner emphasized reparations and mentioned glabston of course and i suppose one of the remarkable things about those compensation payments to slave holders was the way in which that wealth was obviously generative it quickly divested and was reinvested into things like the railways or indeed into historic buildings and the legacies of which you know are amongst us in our built environment today but even that understanding it seems where some distance from a broad public concept of those things many people would imagine that when slavery ended so did its proceeds so this goes back to that question at the beginning in terms of you know what beyond a promise for education needs to be done to just at an elementary level whatever your moral position on on these things just establish a sufficient understanding of what the history of this country is a small question a small question which you're not compelled to answer if there's any more from the audience please if gentlemen the black t-shirt hi i'm scott bridges i'm from alabama which has a remarkable history and in 1831 they passed a law that made even the discussion or distribution of abolitionist literature punishable by death i would like to mention that andria baker is going to be singing about this topic at the piano dome this week and i mean next week in the week after it's a remarkable situation i hope you all go to it my question is in the states it has been addressed at one level by a concept called affirmative action and that has not yet achieved what it hoped to achieve and it's largely been put on the shelf reparations is a new concept but i think reparations has to do with the idea that reconciliation means balancing the checkbook if you will but i would like to ask the panel is reparation a form of affirmative action and if so how will you improve what the states haven't been able to do themselves well thank you for your question but also thank you coming all the way from alabama for our panel we're very grateful for your participation um do you want to have a no thank you and i would echo that about um going to see andria baker she's absolutely fantastic so but um yeah that's a really good question um so siarria is a sort of anti-racist organisation and charity part of our sort of goal is to build the social economic and political capital of minority ethnic people living in scotland so i think that sort of action would if successful would sort of feed into some of the points you're raising about how we sort of build up minority ethnic communities and seek to address historical and contemporary imbalances in wealth and in influence in scottish society and but i think it's like a great question to think about how we do it because i think a lot of the time when we in the uk and particularly in scotland when we sometimes talk about actions that could be similar to actions of affirmative action in the us um it can be met with a bit of a sort of reaction that sees it as being something that might be like going too far or too radical and things like that i think that shows us as a long way to go and how we see racism and how we see racism should be how we think racism should be addressed because i think actions like that that are very active actively anti-racist and take you know like big steps to addressing imbalances in social economic and political capital in society i think they're the actions that we need and but i think in scotland i don't know what a palace would think but i think we're quite actually far off having the conversations about how we take those actions i know there are individual examples on the local level so for example there's been work done in glasgo to try and address the lack of black or minority ethnic teachers in glasgo schools and that's not to say that this action is in any way complete or is even like halfway through its journey because there's still very few teachers from that background in glasgo schools but i think a lot of the action that's been tried to take into address things like this has been quite local i think there's still a real need for national action and i think it feels like the conversation is still to happen sadly i don't know what panel everywhere else would think but i think that shows we're quite a way off get into that stage of taking action and figuring out how we can take that action in a way that is actually successful and effective as well i would agree with Nelson i mean the first step is we need to be in conversation and we need to be in conversation and hearing voices from beyond their own beyond our boundaries because the majority of people who live with the legacies of british colonial slavery are not here they're they're in the caribbean and elsewhere so that that conversation because i don't know the answers and none of us i think will really know the answers until until we are engaged i think there's also a sort of an issue for historians and for our institutions because the histories of what remains of them of millions of people are held in documents that are that are here and i think there has to be some kind of priority given to making these records available so that individuals who are living with with the legacy of colonial slavery also have access to the ability to study that history whether that's family history or it's looking in in in greater depth at the analysis the detail of what was going on i mean both your answers are really interesting because if i've discerned them you you actually have quite different ideas of repatriate justice i mean nelson you are talking about the contemporary implications of historic racism as manifest in the life chances of racialised minoritised people in scotland today including in the labour market participation including in education and you're talking about a global repatriate recourse both in terms of knowledge and access to data but also the kind of the kind of investment or reinvestment i suppose that the questioner was also leaning towards they're not exclusive but yes i mean i i i i think we i think we need to be here hearing we need to be hearing both voices from within scotland but we also need to hear the voices from beyond our boundary i wonder if that actually sort of shows how much work there is to be done because i would completely agree with what davis was saying about reaching um to sort of work to be done particularly in the places that form the colonies as well so i wonder if that just shows how wide a reaching issue it is and how much work there is to be done as well i mean in the city i mean in the city of course we we did hear lots of voices and most recently over the renaming all the addition to the melvin monument the Henry Dundas statue where there were a few words added to the plaque to say and i quote he was he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade now there was quite quite a significant movement to resist that to object to it and to retain the you know insignia that was there in the first instance and i wondered if any of you wanted to comment on what that reaction might tell us about where we are as a society in terms of wanting to even have that conversation nobody was saying tear it down nobody had the grappling ropes in the van you know it was um it was simply a statement of fact to be added to the plaque and it was resisted with with quite a degree of force legal and political yeah i think it's perhaps a warning that we're maybe not as far along this journey as we sometimes think we are and like to play when we are it is as you say it was the adding of some words now you you could argue about the words and whether some other words might might have been better but i don't think that's really what the dispute was about um the dispute seemed to be about doing something yeah and that's an unsettling uh an accepted narrative it seems yeah and but interesting i mean i don't know if the glass go ahead and breathe thing but it seems to tie itself in knots over these glass go seems to get on with it then you know it has done a lot um yeah i think i don't know like speak on behalf of all of glass no i think if there is a glass region here with my accent they might have a bit no i think actually a lot of the time um we quite often get caught up in debates about things like statues and monuments that actually like aren't necessarily too significant to the overall understanding of that history um so in Glasgow there's been lots of work done by lots of very talented individuals um to you know put together um a sort of comprehensive guides to that history in Glasgow they're like walking tours at Sierra Leone there's an excellent book called It Wasn't Yours by Dr Stephen Mullen that outlines this history in Glasgow and i think i don't know i feel like a lot of the hostility towards adding something like that to the Dundas Monument and the Melville Monument sorry and i think that actually shows us that a lot of the time the way we're taught about history is we're taught it as though there's like good and bad and we're not actually taught about the complexities and a lot of the time if we're taught in school at all about the British Empire like when i was at school i don't think i was taught about the British Empire at all to be honest but if anyone is taught about it they're quite often taught about it as being a good thing um and solely a good thing and i think that means that if there's anything bad that's put forward about it it gets met with hostility because it's challenging the way that you've been taught and it's challenging a lot of the narratives that you've sort of come to internalise about Britain and Scotland's place in the world i think that's where the hostility comes i think that's why a lot of the work in Glasgow that's been done by CRER and other organisations and other individuals is very much focused on education whether that's adult education or education with young people and actually giving people the sort of facts and the history behind their city and then letting them you know choose what they want to do with it choose how to interpret it choose to you know choose what to do where they live like we i've had the pleasure of um being involved in running our walk-ins for about 18 months now and it's actually quite striking how many people will come up to you after it and sort of be very grateful um to learn more about where they live and this is people who've lived in the city for you know their whole lives and there they didn't know for example um the gallery of modern art in Glasgow part of that used to you're very significant in the city centre part of that used to be an enslavers mansion and there'll be people who've walked past that every day of their lives and didn't know that and i think actually that's where the sort of approaches to educating people on the wider history is powerful and but when it can become fixated on a statue or street name i think that can be quite easy for people to be hostile to because it's like one fixed place as well and when actually you educate people on the wider history i know it's to say be similar histories in Edinburgh you educate people on the wider history and you realise it covers like the whole city it can be quite hard to escape them well i mean not to carry on the Glasgow Edinburgh dynamic but i'll beat your museum of modern art and offer you bute house which is the official residence so the first minister is a constructor from slave money and we also have our own Edinburgh slavery and uh imperial tour by Lisa Williams from the Edinburgh Edinburgh Caribbean society so i think we're we're uh even even though um yeah i mean one of the things i would say is um i think a lot of the time the a lot these kind of discussions can get hijacked by the one particular person one particular monument um and actually when and often i think sometimes these discussions are heightened by a rhetoric but actually maybe not what people think on the ground um and especially as i say we surveyed around 5000 people asking about the legacies and the majority of people were in favour of looking at the subjects and talking about the subjects and and having an honest and accurate portrayal of them and so i think maybe there's often a skewering maybe in the media and the way that things are actually told that that push that the you know a negative us and them you know two sides of of a culture war but actually when you're talking to people on the ground and as you say when you're taking them round on a tour it's just really expanding their understanding of history and their understanding of Scotland's role in the world um and that isn't really the case for most people i think on the ground i think it's it's it's often been portrayed in a way um and then it's kind of hijacked by certain people no do we have any more questions please from the audience thank you it's kind of not really a question i'm actually from scotland's international development alliance and we're very interested in this for to challenge you to go even further that the legacies of all of this are about current global inequalities actually and when the first minister stands up at COP26 and you know to be fair shows some leadership in committing to financing loss and damage and talks about climate reparations those reparations are also part of the legacy of the slavery of slavery frankly as well as colonialisation so i think the challenge is even bigger than you said thank you yeah thank you thank you should we take that as a comment unless any of you i mean i want to pick it up um i mean i would say just quickly as the climate is all wrapped up in this and there's a lot of work to be done to understand the the the intersections there definitely yeah that's a really good point there's a lot of work to do um was there a hand yes a gentleman just on the third row just going back to this question of education and i have learned quite a bit i mean very only very recently about this but i've also learned very recently about a lot of the bad things that we did in the empire in india and middle east all over the place and is the attempt to teach about this being done as part of the teaching of empire the good and the bad thank you did you want to um i don't know enough about what's happening in education to to say what's being done but i think it is very important that we don't have a narrative that says there was slavery then there was abolition and everything was fine after that um because that's a gross distortion and i think understanding the the impact of slavery involves thinking about what happened afterwards which was in part we included the attempt to indentured indian laborer to labor to to replace enslaved labor um and that's another huge movement that people look across the globe um can you just summarize that briefly so lots of people what maybe don't know about them um um people were still making money out of slave plantations at the end of colonial slavery um and that there was this period of then of forced unpaid labor of four years uh and not surprisingly after that a great number of formerly enslaved people did not want to work on plantations or it certainly didn't want to work full time uh they they wanted their own land they they wanted to become small holders um they wanted to become croft um and there was so where people were still making money there was a shortage of labor with an experiment first of all in Guyana they brought over indentured laborers from India so now in Guyana the descendants of indentured indian laborers are the majority population um it and the same will be true of Trinidad to lesser extent of other islands but I mean it's a good example of the continuing problems because what happened right up until the 50s and the 60s is that Britain and the US encouraged racialized politics because they felt that that was that would had a stronger chance of getting them governments that they thought would be sympathetic to the west rather than to the Soviet bloc so Britain stepped in and removed the elected government of Guyana in the early 1950s um after independence there was dreadful intercommunal violence that had been been fueled by by that intervention in the racialized politics and there was a slight upsurge of that only two years ago at again disputed disputed elections so people may people write down to you today in Guyana are living with a legacy that you can trace from slavery but continuing through a whole process of of colonial administration yeah and in terms of the connection to the wider British imperial project and including Scotland's rule within that um a grasp of which helps us to understand where people who were deported from from Kenya and from Uganda why they were there they were taken from India by the British to to work in those industries and they were never they were never really seen as Kenya nor Uganda because in many respects they were a new overseer for the British they were the middlemen middle women who operated the bureaucracies of those sectors nothing do you want to I mean but but the question which goes back to the earlier point about education and a compartmentalized view of the role of Britain empire slavery in making the modern world um your analogy was north sea oil where really what matters less is necessarily the Lord Melville's a more indeed what that helped to create and sustain in a way in which affected everybody everybody was a consumer of sugar everybody was affected by the cotton you know and from the north of England the the Manchester cotton mills wouldn't have been wouldn't have been plausible were it not for the for the cotton that was laboured in this in the colonies in the in the south of of what today's USA these are deeply connected histories of which it seems that um we we struggle even to have a partial account at times let alone try to grasp their contemporary contemporary resonance have things changed since black lives matter became the movement that it was has it helped to uplift what ought to be um um an opportunity for shared for understanding of shared histories I mean on the education point just to come back I do know that there is work going on and I think Syria are a part of that work within the government to look at the curriculum and changes to that it's what will come out of that is still to be decided but there there is um there is work being done and we've as part of the our project as well we're in a lot of conversations about how we can ensure that we kind of have that joined effort to to do this work together so there is there is work happening within the education system and hopefully that will actually be a fruit and have something really exciting at the end of that yeah absolutely um I was also the top out as well when I think about education obviously schools absolutely essential um as you mentioned but I was thinking about one of the questions actually came from the front there about making sure that this history is spoken to in every museum and not just in a potential museum of empire slavery colonials and migration and like how important that is um in terms of our education uh as important as schools are it happens in a range of places and that's why I think heritage and culture are so key and I think that's why actually having hopefully a museum of empire and slavery but also embedding the teaching of that history into lots of different spaces is really key as well like in the sort of current coordination of our program for black history month in october there are um sort of like walking tours exhibitions being put forward by heritage organisations sort of across scotland about that area specific ties to slavery or empire and I think that shows us how um sort of deep that connection went across Scotland but also that there are lots of different spaces in which people can learn these histories as well as essential schools are I think particularly thinking about adult education there are also lots of spaces where this history can be learned if it wasn't taught at schools and I think that's why this sort of work within the museum sector is so important as well yeah yeah please david and then the question the I mean as well as the impact of black lives matter I think something else that is having quite a big impact is is lockdown and zoom that suddenly there's the opportunity to be part of discussions that are in my experience much wider than than they were before and I took part in the conference a couple of weeks ago in sin Vincent I just wouldn't have had that opportunity and it's not that I'm taking part of matters but that I'm hearing the voices of students and teachers in sin Vincent and getting something of their perspective on what matters in this history and I find that I found that transforming challenging and it's really made me think about some of some of the way I phrase things some of the things I've thought before thank you there's a question here just on the third and then was that your hand up at the back that you could be our last question oh you're there you're very welcome I'd like very much to expand black lives matter to be black lives matter brown lives matter all lives matter and I'm thinking of the British Empire in India Pakistan and particularly in the Middle East and the utter humiliation that we made on people there and I'm thinking perhaps particularly of the Palestinian people who've really been broken and their land has been lost the least we could do would be to recognise Palestinian people recognise the land thank you and I guess the challenge is in drawing attention and emphasis to undervalued black lives not to place it within a sense of not competition but tension with other forms of historic injustice so there is a movement to recognise Palestinian lives matter and it's something which which may be mutually connected to those imperial histories but they also have distinct genealogies too but even your question speaks to the frustration in terms of an ignorance of understanding where that state emerged from in what context and what our relationship to it was that point is very much taken oh good please go ahead yeah sorry sorry to to intervene again I wanted to make two very brief points firstly about Edinburgh and Edinburgh's reassessment of this history and I'd live in Leith myself let's not forget the Edinburgh council-led committee sitting under Sir Jeff Palmer one of the heroes of educating people like me about Scotland's connection to slavery which is still due to report here and is still subject to political attack and needs support um Sir Sir Jeff three days ago doing an event in in East Lothian he's tireless about getting around the country I mean and and asking Scots to wake up and see why this is relevant today the other point is is I think we can be a little complacent about denialism of slavery and the racism and inequality that toxifies this country and others today which come directly from it and complacent about the forces against whom we're fighting I mean it's perfectly true that the the time Scotland and a few red transit people in the new town made a very big noise about the Dundas statue and and it was foolish and and it and we as a city have got over it but if you go to Waterston's today the the history book on the front table for tourists to to buy Michael Fry's recently republished history of Edinburgh 500 pages contains no mention of the word slavery whatsoever so it is an academic establishment there's a political establishment that not just wants to tell people to shut up about this but also keep faith with the version the white supremacist version of history that I was taught at school thank you thank you well I think that's bringing us towards the end of the Q&A and um but it gives us an opportunity for a final few comments for each of our panelists so I started David with you maybe yeah sure um I was actually yeah when you were talking about that I was thinking this is why to me reparative justice needs to be at the heart of anything we do around this because I think actually you know talk about that history of Edinburgh and there've been similar histories of Glasgow histories of Scotland written I think sometimes it's actually this lack of acknowledgement that in the past in our you know work as potentially historians or work um in whatever field might be whether it's education heritage um it's actually acknowledging that in the past sometimes we've got it wrong and then that can help you to you know acknowledge actually these histories did happen it can help to like I think counter some of the hostility and denialism by actually um rooting ideas of reparation at the heart of what you do to acknowledge that you've got something wrong in the past and to acknowledge that um and sort of do better in the future and but the sort of I guess the final point I would make I think one thing that's become clear throughout this conversation is that as important as it is to discuss and acknowledge the legacies and impacts of um transatlantic slavery on modern day Scottish society and that we can't actually do that without acknowledging the wider um impact of empire as well it's sort of so underpins everything else and lets us have these wider conversations about you know British atrocities committed in places like India and in places like Myanmar and things like that and I think it's just so key to any of this work that that understanding of empire is there because I think that's how we also have sort of solidarity between different communities as well so a lot of time in our approach to Black History Month at CRER and Black History in general we take an approach that looks to build that sort of multi-ethnic solidarity and part of that is rooted in that idea that a lot of people from minority ethnic backgrounds living in Scotland have a shared experience of empire or colonialism or migration and I think that's really key I think the next sort of step for a lot of this work is to start to look at the wider ties to empire because like even in Glasgow even though there's been a lot of work done on Glasgow's ties to slavery into the slavery trade actually that work looking at our ties to empire is still to be done and still needs to be done as well I think that's the sort of next step in building our understanding of our sort of history as a nation as well thank you Sheila yeah no I would really I would echo what else it says and that broadening out and understanding the kind of the legacies across the board are really really important and I think for for us as well I think it's really important that we understand that this isn't just something that we do in silos and that it's not just for museum sectors not just for education but we really need to be having more conversations across the different areas so that we kind of can get together to move move all of this understanding of all of these histories forward and so yeah for me it's really really important that we do that in a concerted way that we talk to each other and that we kind of really make sure that that the future generations have a much deeper understanding but also for me it's really really important that we do that with while working with the people in Scotland and understanding how things are on the ground for people and how we can actually be part of improving people's lives games yeah thank you sure I'm just thinking about what Alex Renton said I think I think Scotland is a whole and Edinburgh and the Highlands perhaps in particular suffer from being tourist destinations so there are there are stories we we tell to tourists and the difficulties we start believing them ourselves I think and we need to find a way of breaking through that so that we have and so you know and I think 25 years ago that's what happened with the the Museum of Scotland because there was there was a narrative and the narrative was predetermined and it it then dominated so we've got to find ways of breaking through that and so maybe we need to look to places that are dealing with difficult histories and I mean there are there are lots of them but I think I think Liverpool is a good example but also you know Germany how it deals with it with it with its past and that doesn't and I think the reality is that doesn't frighten people away as I think there is there is a respect you can earn for dealing honestly with your past yeah it's reminiscent of that James Baldwin comment that accepting your past is not the same as being chained to it it's about learning how to use it well can I thank you all for your contributions David Olson, Sheila Sante and Nelson come in for your contribution to the panel and as well as our partners in co-organising this the Coalition for Race Quality and Rights in Scotland's International Development Alliance and not forgetting our BSL interpreters who have joined it this afternoon may I take this opportunity also to remind you that there are many more cognate events this year's festival of politics including in conversation with John Barnes and oh no sorry John I'm a lifelong Liverpool supporter in conversation with bestselling poet Lem Sisi that's still on good the state of the UK union just to name two formally three and I'm also contractually obligated by my publisher to tell you there are copies of the Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice in which I try and cover some of these topics for sale in the lobby feel free to walk directly past it and enjoy and enjoy the rest of your weekend and thank you again for coming this afternoon thank you very much