 Dyma'r lleoriad ar gael cwybarth ddaeth i'r parlym yn ymddangos o'i ffordd o'r ffordd o blodau. Wrth gwrs, mae'r mewn gofyn yma yn ymddangos i'r bydd yma i'r tyfnodol, a'r ddaeth i'r bwysig. Felly, rydyn ni'n dweud ymddangos i ddweud y ffwrdd yma yn y pwysig yma yn bwysig o Professor Sir Trom Devine. Yn ymlaen, ydych chi'n gweithio'n gweithio. Okay, mae'n yn fawr i'n ddysgu. Mae'n ddod, wrth gwrs, profesor Tom Devine yn ymddiolio'r llwythiau ymddangos yng nghyrch. Felly, mae'n grwp o'r Unifredig, a mae'n ddod yn edrych ei wneud yn ymddangos y cerdd iawn. Yn ymddiolio'r hefyd, mae'n ddysgu'n ddysgu'n 2014 anodd yr amser yn mynd i'rddorol, ond hefyd yn oedda'r cerddwyr hefyd, yn ei ddiweddol, yn rhoi oば nhw'n ardal. Mae'r nesredig yn vehiad o weak-eon o eu ddylch chi. Mae'n meddwl arall, os ond, mae'n meddwl i gyda i fod yn ei ddweud. Rwy'n meddwl ar hyn yn meddwl. Swrth Tom has won numerous awards, fellowships, prizes, ac yn concordio i gwaelio a resarch adev, a maewe i'r oeddedd fel oeddydd o 100 artigol We are delighted to have Sir Tom here today to talk about his recently edited book. Due for publication numbers in October titled buns in the day when there is a government the Caribbean Connection, a book which challenges us in Scotland in our belief that Scotland had no significant involvement in slavery. Can I now ask you to join me in welcoming Sir Tom Devine to the stage? Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, for what I can only describe as an over-generous introduction which I will not be able to live up to. Si sicrhau gall na sicrhau ar gael ei fod am gamesh, i ffodol i'mu nesaf i'r byw bethau si'n dellawer. Fe wnaeth eu bobl a chi yn ni parageladau menthowechia ydynol over the centuries as Scots. Between the early 17th century and the end of the slave system in the British Empire in 1833, ships of that empire transported by coercion 3.2 million Africans across the so-called middle passage from their homelands to a life of servitude and sometimes even an early death, including an early death, on the voyage itself. To the North American colonies, principally areas where tobacco rice cotton was produced and perhaps even more notoriously to what became known by the time of abolition as the graveyard of the slaves, that is the West Indian islands, the Caribbean area, which for reasons we might pick up during the presentation or in questions afterwards or in discussion with my distinguished colleagues, had a regime which ensured a very high level of mortality among those transported to those islands. The principal cultivation of course was sugar, rum and molasses and eventually in the later 18th century even more emphatically raw cotton. The system of slavery practice, ladies and gentlemen, was known as chattel slavery, which the translation of course is chattel as property. These individuals therefore, these men and women and their children eventually born over there, were regarded as commodities in the same way as the seats that you are sitting on today. They had no, well at best they had minimal rights and practice the rights were virtually non-existent and that of course gave enormous possibilities for exploitation and degradation of people who were probably not regarded by many of the master class, the plantation owners, the merchants, the factors, the bookkeepers, bookkeeper being a kind of euphemistic term for overseers of the actual slave population itself and the horrors of that experience have been to some extent described in the film, which I don't know if any of you have seen it or are going to see it later, about a slave experience in the United States. When you see that film you need to understand that the experience of degradation in some of these islands of the West Indies in the 18th and early 19th century was even worse, was even more acute. We need to keep in mind of course the fact that we cannot judge the past by 21st century criteria. Perhaps other people can do that, moralists, politicians, commentators, but the function of my trade is to try and understand the past, to try and investigate the past and understand why people behaved in the way they did and taking into account the fact that until about the 1760s, 1770s, in the UK as a whole, there was hardly even a murmur, hardly even the smallest voice articulating opposition to what was at that time a conventional wisdom. That is the way that the unfree regimes in the transatlantic colonies operated. That itself of course is a very intriguing historical question in its own right, why that kind of set of assumptions survived for so long. Now if we go to the Scottish dimension we end up with a mixed picture. There has been much work done in Scottish historiography on aspects of the slave history and particularly the history of the North American colonies and the the Caribbean zone that I referred to earlier. But it's an imbalanced history, it's an imbalanced set of historiographies. The imbalance is so acute until very recently that it's therefore a distorted vision of the Scottish connection with this aspect of European and indeed world history. The distortion is because most of the material we have and the analysis that has come down to us until I would say around about the year 2001, 2002, 2003 has focused virtually exclusively on the Scottish role in abolitionism. And in fact the Scottish record in abolitionism is a record of which this nation should be truly proud. With 10% of the British population circa 1800 normally in every year about a third of the anti-slavery petitions emanating from the UK came from came from Scotland. And at the same time we spawned several of the leading figures, many of them singularly charismatic figures, second only to William Wilberforce in the campaign against the so-called nefarious trade. And one of the very important aspects of the Scottish role in relation to the abolitionist project was the intellectual one. You know there were kind of two, there was a duality which broke down the walls of prejudice, the walls supporting the slave trade and the slave economies. The first which was very important was religion and especially Protestant evangelicalism in the late 18th and 19th centuries. What is that? I thought it because I didn't think you were allowed to imbibe alcohol in this precinct. The duality, the second aspect was the intellectual one, that the morality was okay but in order for a resounding victory for the anti-slavers that also had to be the second one to demonstrate that at an intellectual level, a practical level and an economic level, this horrible system had had its day. And again we know from the writings of a former boss of mine, the very chance that Aberdeen University in his earlier days, Duncan Rice, that the phyllisof of the Scottish Enlightenment were at the very heart of the project demonstrating the immorality of this process. That these individuals who were enslaved were human beings, not commodities and that every human being had a duty of benevolence to every other. And even Professor Adam Smith from the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow illustrated quite convincingly that not only was this nefarious, not only was this a wickedness, but it was also stupid in economic terms because as he acidly demonstrated, free labour in the long run was actually less costly than slave labour in terms of opportunity costs. The problem is however that the Scottish engagement with slavery, that darker side has been quite effectively lost to history. In one of the chapters in the book that I have written I'm very intrigued by why this should be. I won't necessarily say more than that at this stage except perhaps if there's time to wind up this lecture with a few comments about Amnesia. Because as late as 2001, an authoritative overview of the Scottish past, the Oxford compendium of Scottish history, published by Oxford University Press, had a few words to say about abolitionism and the trade to the Caribbean, but not even one paragraph about the Scottish role, the Scottish role in the trade or in the slave economies themselves. Now when we look back upon this historiographically, which is one of the things people in my business are interested in, we can see that that was the high watershed, that was in a sense the high noon of forgetfulness. Because from about 2002-03, although non-Scotish historians had already begun to explore this aspect, it was from about that time that Scottish scholars started to become interested and started therefore to produce a series of quite important articles over the period between that time and 2015. So, ladies and gentlemen, this project, recovering the Scottish past which will be published as a volume by Edinburgh University Press in October, brought together virtually all of those scholars, not simply in Scotland but elsewhere in the world, who had been at the cutting edge of this new dynamic, of this new exploration, of lifting the lid on something that was forgotten about. Forgotten about, I would say, from about the 1860s, 1870s onwards until the end of the last millennium. But what is distinctive, truly distinctive about the Scottish aspect, because France, Portugal, the Low Countries and Spain and of course England also went through a process of deep amnesia. What is distinctive about the Scottish experience is two things. One, how late it was before we actually started to work on this and discover the realities hidden from history. I mean, from the 1940s, 1950s English historians were at work in a very effective way examining various aspects of their nation's connection to the slave business. And one reason why the quite extraordinary, quite extraordinary flourishing of commemoration at the time of 2007, which was the anniversary of the abolition of the trade itself in 1807, BBC programmes, school courses, hundreds of lectures and events, and up here, something but very little. One distinguished literature of Canadian, one distinguished literature, poet and dramatist of Nigerian and Scottish origin, in a feature in the garden newspaper that year, commented on how minuscule was the Scottish coverage. Although at the same time, as I've said before, scholars were now beginning to move into the territory, but in terms of popular usage, that was not necessarily our popular knowledge, that was still by no means the case. And the second aspect of the Scottish one, which is fantastically intriguing from my point of view as an historian and why it should be, is not simply amnesia, is not simply amnesia but denial. Denial. In the 1860s, quite bizarrely, ironically, but also brazenly, the Glasgow Herald newspaper produced a statement from the Glasgow West India Association. The Glasgow West India Association being, of course, in the early 19th century, a pressure group for Caribbean merchants and plantation owners and a very effect of organ of anti-abolition at that time. In its later incarnation in that period in the later 19th century, it stated triumphantly that Glasgow had in no part in this wicked business. It pointed out that virtually every stone, virtually every stone in all thoroughfares of Liverpool were covered in the blood of slaves, but not so on Clyde's side. And whether it is overtly and brazenly is that, or simply and consciously in terms of assumption, that has lived on, that assumption of the negligible or very limited Scottish role in the slave business has lived on over many, over many generations. When seriously important histories of Scotland started to appear from the 1960s onwards, led by great scholars such as Bill Ferguson and Christopher Schmout, if you look at their indexes, there's no run reference to SLAVE or slave trade or whatever. In my own first book in 1975, equally myopic was essentially a social and business study of the great merchant community of Glasgow, and it's particularly its trading activity to the North American tobacco colonies called the Tobacco Lords. There's a few references to slavery. There's even in the paperback edition images of slaves loading tobacco, but no real investigation of the, excuse me, the human horrors that lay behind that. That wasn't because the information wasn't there. It was just because at that time scholars had a different focus, had a different emphasis. And it's only when the emphasis changed that, for example, I was able to go back to my earlier work, carried out as a young 14-year-old in the early 70s, and revise it. So what I'm going to do now for the rest of the presentation is to set a context for the discussion, which will follow after I've finished, by giving you some of the key findings of this book. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have to buy it, because a lot will have to share the booty with the other authors, since it is an edited volume. I always say that, although we are not down at heel and my immediate children are okay, there's always the problem of those we grandchildren. You know, all my royalties always go to them to help them along the passage of life. Age from two years to 12, there are eight of them, and they require serious support. But the problem is, you won't actually be able to buy this until October, but given the demand that they'll be for it, you need to get your orders in very quickly. Okay, I'll try my best, guys. Okay, the first thing is this, and this in a sense was to give support almost to, if you like, the deniers. We now know that between the later 17th century and the 1760s, only about 4,300 slaves were actually transported from Africa by ships sailing directly from Scottish ports. A 27, perhaps 30, voyage is an all, maybe in the future slightly increased, but that's a drop, horrible phrase to use, a drop in the ocean compared to the 3.2 million. And that absence of a direct slaving connection gave an historical basis, in my view, to much of the amnesia and also to much of the denial, which underpinned this subject area for so long. But what happened was this. This was not, this lack of direct connection was nothing to do with moral scruple. What it was to do with, as the great Jack Price, now unfortunately no longer with us, he died several years, he died earlier this year, a professor of history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the great historian of the tobacco business from Europe to the, from the Americas rather to Europe. As Price pointed out as long ago as 1964, the reasons why the Glaswegians did not participate to any extent in direct slave trading was because Liverpool, Bristol and to a significant extent London were already entrenched within it. And to cut a very long story short, if you study the history of Scottish traders in Europe, they always went for the soft underbelly. One of their vady makum was always to avoid areas of intense competition and go to areas which were opening up, which were relatively virgin territory. And it's my own view that this functionality, this specialisation of function in the west coast ports with Bristol and Liverpool and sugar and slaving, down at least until the 1770s, the outbreak of the American war, and Glasgow eventually moving in great strength into the tobacco business. That explains it. It's a set of economic criteria and influences. It's not necessarily in any sense, as we'll see as the lecture goes on, of concern with the inhumanity of the commerce and question. So then the book demonstrates that in response to the Liverpool, Bristol, London hegemony in the actual transportation of the unfree, the Scots react in this way. One, they migrate, or at least some Scottish traders and professionals migrate to the slaving ports. We know that in London by about 1770, 1780, something like 15 to 20 percent of those merchants active in the slave business were first generation Scots. We also know from the recent work, the marvellous work in fact published by the University College London team, or recently described on the TV on compensation data when owners of slaves were compensated for their quote property after 1833 when the slave system was abolished. We also know from those data that of the 10 biggest syndicates by that stage, that is the early 1830s, it's a kind of snapshot. The 10 biggest syndicates, three to four of them were either run by Scottish merchants or were originally founded by traders from north of the border, traders from this country. Even more intriguingly, one particular port which was the epicenter not simply of the British trade but of the European trade, that is Liverpool. Liverpool was if you like the centre of the British imperial slave trade in the 18th and early 19th centuries, that if you examine as some of the colleagues in the book did, the professional input into the Liverpool slave trade, then the Scottish presence is notable. If for instance of the skippers or masters of slaving ships at the high noon of slavery, round about 1800, one-fifth were first generation Scots, mainly from south west Scotland in the borders, and about 20% of the surgeons because this country, perhaps even to this day still does it, but certainly in the 18th century, the enormous oversupply of trained physicians. In almost every imperial territory I've looked at in the last several years, Scottish physicians were over-represented and they were very much involved therefore, especially during the period when slavers wished to reduce the mortality on board and also quite when in the Caribbean particularly, plantation owners wished to move away exclusively from the habit of buying what were called salt water blacks, that is straight off the ship and trying to produce, if you like, new generations within the enslaved population of the islands, and for that they require medical input. It's very intriguing also that many of the doctors whose life history have been examined in the West Indies eventually moved from medicine into plantation ownership with the profits they had made in that previous profession, and also into slaving directly from West Africa. So that's the first thing, migration, not necessarily occurring in Scotland, but people moving to take advantage of these opportunities in areas where there were already established networks of the business. It's the classic Scottish performance in the 17th and 18th and early 19th centuries of penetration by stealth. You know, at Darien, this is the way the symbol I have in mind, the Darien disaster represented, if you like, a stupid attempt to knock down the front door of the English Empire. The Scots learned very quickly that bitter lesson and decided to go in the back door and sometimes even through the back windows to burglarise the rich pastures of what was before 1707 exclusively the English Empire. So you find then in the period of adaptation to this, and probably starting round about the mid 17th century, according to one chapter in the book, you begin to see Scottish merchants, plantation owners, managers, colonial officials, physicians, accountants and what we're called attorneys. That's West Indian language for managers, not necessarily lawyers but managers of the estates which were usually held by absentees. You begin to see a movement which peaks after 1750, after 1760, and the reason for that is during the Seven Years War and then in the Pluronic Wars, a whole variety of new Caribbean islands and areas in South America come under British rule and the Scots are the first to move in. They were already beginning to ensconce themselves in Jamaica and then it's into the Leeward Islands or the Cedid Islands sometimes referred to and then finally the last bastion of the slave business into Demerara, Demerara and Berbys on the northeastern part of the South American continent, now known today as British Guyana. The one figure that comes to mind is again 10% of the British population, a third of the population, the white population of Jamaica in the 1760s where Scots and you know the number of Scottish names. I mean it almost makes you think that this is a Campbell empire because of the number of names, the number of names you come across in the material with that name there because again as of old, this was what I referred to in my work, neo-clanship, that clanship had been dead from the mid 18th century but it was reincarnated as commercial corporations whereby families not simply in the highlands but elsewhere created these vast dominions, these huge intercontinental dynasties of Scottish influence. Everywhere from Southeast Asia eventually China and Japan through India, Australasia, New Zealand, South Africa back to the original colonies across the Atlantic in the Caribbean and in the tobacco colonies. I mean it's an extraordinary story for a nation that at the high point of this development which is probably just before the probably just after rather the first world war in terms of the coverage of red on the global map which had just less than round about 4 million people and it was the centre of this concentration of power of 700 million people across the globe. So the functionaries of empire were very obviously in there and the third piece of information which demonstrates the extent of it is the compensation information that I referred to earlier. Many of you may have seen as I said the programmes which revealed in one sentence a truth about the Scottish reality and that truth was 10% of the compensation 10% of the population of the country UK at that time were born in this country but 15% to 17% of the claims came from this country in other words the disproportionate role in terms of slave ownership. If you look as you can look online today, anyone could look online for that information. You can see the extent to which you would have for example a single widow living and sterling owning two slaves to very high profile business organisations owning several hundred in that period and I mentioned earlier on ladies and gentlemen the fact that the reality is that the Scottish nation played a significant part in abolitionism that is also part of the tapestry of our history but equally unknown until the last few years was anti abolitionism that is petitions against the end of slavery and what as in England these petitions mainly came perhaps you would think naturally and predictably from the great slaving ports of Bristol, Liverpool and London in Scotland they were spread across the country right from the western highlands and islands if you examine the role of the highlander they'll hold the role of the gail in this business it adds a further complication to the history of the gail as victim and of course the gail as victim is an aspect of the history of gaildom but as more and more scholarship begins to come through it's a more complicated and complex story than that not least when you see the role of evicted highlanders in New South Wales in relation to aboriginal peoples in the early to mid 19th century so the I think we can say I think we can say after the project was completed with really very little in the way of equivocation or ambiguity that Scotland was at least involved in this project in this business as was England but the most controversial aspect and my my colleagues are not responsible for this but in the conclusion which I wrote I raised the question when you look at the statistical evidence is it possible that of the four home countries Scotland was most involved because certainly the evidence is clear on Ireland and Wales was very limited a very limited aspect to it the one thing the one area particularly where there could be an argument that the impact on Scotland was more powerful than the impact on England is the last area I want to look at now the issue of the effect the effect of this aspect of our history on Scottish development or what we might term the Scottish economic miracle you see Scotland did experience a true industrialisation unlike England whose movement towards industrialisation and revolution was evolutionary many historians have tried to link the slave business with the capital and the markets for English industrialisation their arguments have to this day to this date not been entirely convincing or well and universally deceived the reasons for that are twofold a England was a rich society didn't really require the externalities of more capital supply from the colonial businesses and secondly as I've said it was very much a process of long-term development in south of the border whereas the Scottish industrial revolution was cataclysmic cataclysmic in the sense that not until forced Soviet industrialisation in the late 1920s early 1930s was that another example and that was coerced by the state was that another example of an industrialisation process of such speed the way the best way to see this is the extraordinary fact that one in 10 Scots in the 1760s lived in towns where cities are above 5000 as early as the 19 the 1820s it was one in three by the 1850s it was 60 of the population you know that sandwich of light that you see from outer space in lowland Scotland darkness to the north because of the prism of where the photographs are taken darkness to the south the sandwich of light at night between the fourth and the Clyde only other three such concentrations of light in the whole of western Europe one the the roar arching into the paris basin and in England the black country although of course at night is very much the light country because of the concentration of urbanism that process in scotland was an historical process it wasn't always like that it occurred between 1750 and 1850 and so the question begs itself where did the capital resources in such a poor country come not simply for the industrial dynamic but also because at the same time the infrastructures of the new society had to be built and unlike England an agricultural revolution occurring at the same time you see these tidy fields surrounded by hedgerows all right the roads are tarmacadam now that the farmhouse is many of them date to this period the rectangular fields that was the remaking of the Scottish landscape between the 1760s and the 1820s and apart from the motor cars and the telegraph wires etc those structures would have been recognisable to a person in the 1840s but they would not have been recognisable to a scot living in the 1730s so my point is this there might be much more potential in investigating the relationship between the slave colonies and Scottish industrialism than there is in England and here are three or four ways in which that connection as I argue in one of the chapters called did slavery make Scotland great one in the first textile based phase of the Scottish industrial revolution almost all the sea island rock cotton came from the Caribbean two Scotland was engaged in not simply one but two of the slave base colonies of the 18th century the tobacco business by these by 1775 47 million pounds of tobacco coming into the Clyde ports by far the biggest tobacco on top on podium in the whole of western Europe bigger than all of England in its outpost outputs combined and then from the middle decades of the 18th century especially after the American war of independence sugar by sick by 1815 at the end of the point war 64 percent of Scottish trade was done with the Caribbean so these were the two pillars of external trade tobacco up to the 1770s sugar and to some extent cotton thereafter both of them impossible without the unfree without the armies of unfree men and women who worked in the Caribbean and North American plantations and inferred the capitalisation process of those who had made money in these activities second only to north to eastern sorry second only to Indian Nabobs in the returning wealth buying estates 1770 to 1815 about something like 64.3 percent of Glasgow merchants in that period in the tobacco and west indies business had at least one industrial investment i've counted between 80 and 90 of them in the west in the west central area which of course was the heartland of Scottish industrialism and then in the eastern lowlands the many thousands of linen weavers who produce slave cloth slave cloth for those islands across across the Atlantic ocean so with two minutes to go the the wind up of this exposition two things to say one this project and the book in which it's involved is a pioneering volume it is not intended to be and cannot be the final word on a subject but it's an attempt to if you like bring together a work done on material which has which has so far appeared in learned articles into a coherent volume to act as if you like a a basis for future inquiry and written in a way which is accessible that's the important thing this is such an important area probably in terms of discovery the most important certainly the most shocking i've ever because i've ever been involved in as an historian that it needs to be got out there people need to find out about it but it's as i say it's not definitive yet and the third thing the third thing is this sorry the second thing is this for those who may find these territories troubling it seems to me especially speaking in this historic chamber it seems to me that scotland now by any standard a mature and argumentative democracy can face its past and its various shades from the very light to the very dark because to do otherwise is actually to betray the past it's actually in a sense how would one put it it's actually in a sense to distort the distort reality and there's nothing wrong with mythology because many human beliefs are mythical but some are more mythical than others this is a story that needs to be known thank you so tom thank you very much indeed and can i say i found that fascinating we will get a chance to discuss and we'll leave some time in hand for you to ask questions too as sir tom said recovering scotland slavery past is not available right now it's not going to be there till october but after this session sir tom will be signing some of these previous books downstairs in the garden lobby and is a grandma i'm mindful of his grandchildren so please join us and buy and he will sign for you joining us to take part in the discussion a free very distinguished people who have a great interest in this subject too firstly professor sir jeff palmer oba is an international renowned brewing expert who received a knighthood in recognition of his services to human rights science and charity he is also a prominent anti-racism campaigner professor palmer is currently writing a book on the consequences of slavery called the enlightenment power and the powerless louise well she's a writer living and working in glass school she is the author of six novels has produced many short stories and articles and written for radio and the stage her books include the cutting room for which she was nominated for the orange prize for fiction and has won numerous awards including salter society scottish first book of the year award in 2014 she was a collaborator on the empire cafe 2014 conwealth games project which explores scotland's relationship with the north atlantic slave trade and include for example music poetry academic lectures and historical walks our final guest is steven mullen who was appointed as a postdoctoral research associate in history at the university of glass school in january 2015 working on the project runaway slaves in britain bondage freedom and race in the 18th century his research is focused on the historical connection between scotland caribbean slavery with a particular interest in glass school west india merchants planters in the 18th and 19th centuries in 2009 steam published a general text on the theme it was the us so i think that's probably quite a good place to start our discussion could you join us thank you much could we maybe just start by asking each of you to say briefly um a few words about some tom's lecture kindly i hope yeah yeah you've got to be nice you've got to be nice yeah it's everybody's nice in this chamber no they're not i know that well good evening good afternoon ladies and gentlemen um tom i i think gave a pretty um accurate um description of um what we now call um the a history of enlightenment i shall call it because what sir tom was trying to say and i shall just give a few examples and i i was brought up in a biblical tradition and therefore stories or examples tend to stick longer with people than a general um uh uh um discussion and if we start very close to where we are and i've given many lectures in scotland and you can go nowhere in scotland where you will not be near the history that tom is talking about and if we just leave from this um building and go up the road to st andrew square then we've got henry dunthas and henry dunthas stopped will before us from abolishing the slave trade for 15 years if we go to glasgo and look at the gallery of mothernaught the gallery of mothernaught is a slave master's house if we go to earshire in in orcancroove orcancroove is the house of richard oswald of oswald street in glasgo his wife burns refers to her in his poem old sacred to the memory of mrs oswald of orcancroove and he said she was on 10 000 pounds of newity a year and he hoped she never gets out of tradition if we take richard oswald just to to talk about what tom was saying it wasn't just about money it was about power if we take richard oswald of oswald street he in fact is the son of the the his father was a minister he went to jamaica and he and grant of the grant clan bought an island called barns island outside serillion and from that island they shipped slaves to the caribbean he became one of the most powerful men in the world so that when the american revolution was being discussed oswald was britain's representative and he decided to keep canada rather than give it to the united states so that's a sort of power slave scotish slave masters and therefore um what tom was talking about is not just about money it's about power and it's about most importantly i feel the scotish black diaspora which in fact um dominates the caribbean in terms of politics wealth etc so thank you very much i hope that gives a flavour of what i think tom was trying to say please yeah so i don't know the audience probably couldn't see but uh professor defined that you had no notes there at all it was very impressive to watch you speaking with no notes no autocu and uh i really found it a very useful lecture i guess is a writer um i'm not restricted by the rigor that historians have to to inhabit and i think um writers and visual artists and filmmakers we tend to be i don't know we we tend to leech i think on historians and your rigorous research but i think we can also add something to the discussion and to the debate because um the voices that are missing from the history are of course the the voices of um the enslaved people we've lost those voices and i think it is also important to remember when we talk about the people who are taken from africa that they didn't go quietly that there were lots and lots of rebellions and many people of course committed suicide rather than be enslaved and i think one of the things that uh that i find interesting also about the the discussion of our history are the voices of um individuals like uh Frederick Douglass who came to scotland many time and to other parts of um britain and who um contributed to the abolitionism uh debate who freed himself and who helped to free other people and i think within Scottish art and literature we we begin to see um that desire to try and draw in some of the the lost voices you mentioned Jackie Kay's play fantastic play lamplighter um which was released staged last year and of course there's James Robertson's Joseph Knight uh the artist Graham Fagans um collaboration with ghetto priest on the slaves lament which may or may not have been written by burns um but professor divine started off by saying that uh that we need to see this history in order to see ourselves and i think that's hugely important we cannot know ourselves without knowing our history but perhaps to use burns again we have to see ourselves as others see us and this may be a history that we did not get in school but it's not a secret history and when other people come perhaps to the national museum of scotland and look at the display that they have on the tobacco merchants and read the little um thing that says tobacco was a good news story for scotland they may wonder what we're talking about because it wasn't a good news story for everyone i guess i'm also interested in the impact that it has on the contemporary period because of course the people who were compensated for slaves um now i think the idea of land reform and who owns lands in scotland is directly connected to this experience as well even okay i thought the lecture was very good as always professor divine i need to clear an interest i have a chapter in the book so you know i think it's an awesome collection so so buy it please um my own chapter is a case study of a glasgo west india merchant firm john cambell senior in co but you of course you know this is a very timely account why has there been no collection of this type before about scotland's role in the slave trade and slavery so it's pioneering and also very timely and it's entirely appropriate that a historian of sartom divine's magnitude that's it so so thank you very much for allowing me to share my views in the collection what this book does it peels away the myths surrounding scots and their involvement in new world slavery we now we know that not not just were we abolitionists you know were philosophical critics of slavery we also had a disproportionate role across the new world so this book does that of course the compensation money is one way we can quantify this disproportionate involvement so there's numerous there's other studies in the book as well and it's tom's a little detail in the lecture you know this this was a bit great wealth income you know scotland at a really firmate of time in its history was accumulating large capital that was you know getting put in the industrialization commerce so this is the the big question for me is it is an economic and social historian of glasgo west india merchants these planners the sigurners of the temporary economic magnets we should really be thinking about how far this capital that was generated through the expropriation of labour you know based on what can only be termed a genocide you know slavery the slave trade and slavery was a genocide let's let's not be about the bush so when a historian of tom divine's magnitude says that the impact was more powerful in scotland than england wales or island we need to listen so from after this book after the project you know and it leads to more does it then become accepted wisdom that scottish capitalism and scottish industrialization was driven by new world slavery okay thanks very much um can i just maybe start off the discussion sir tom um you said that you know it's taking us so long as scotland to acknowledge our own history with slavery you go to the glasgo herald that you know surprised me enormously about the call then the glasgo herald that you know as you know yeah um you know the the glasgo herald was it denial was it shame um to recognize that the slaves were anything other than commodities and has the failure of us to recognize that history got something to do with the lack of teaching of that history in school itself um in the same way that my generation you know did not get our own scottish history of our own country and you know you're going to do a fantastic lecture next week about tomas mur one of my heroes um i was never taught tomas mur at school and i just wonder is you know the failure to acknowledge our role in the slave trade um got as much to do with the failure to teach any of our own scottish history yeah well it's um it's a powerful question trisha because you know in a sense the um you could start and give another lecture on this in fact in the november i've got the honour to be given um i was thinking at the beginning it was something that happened i hadn't found out about and i'm giving the tc smout lecture at st andris university a place i usually avoid okay um the uh uh you know the great christopher smout and in fact that lecture is actually on that question it's called lost to history so without taking too much time up basically um and to take one of the causes because it's multiple multiple and why this has been forgotten but one of them one of them definitely is our knowledge of the scottish past and our instruction of the scottish past this in a sense is probably the most extreme example of the ignorance um just to just just to explain that it is extraordinary thing to to reflect upon the fact that as late as 1959 there were only five historians in the scottish universities teaching modern history and doing some research in it professor john hargreaves of abardin university recently dead said and is inaugural is an englishman or was an englishman the history of yorkshire is better known and more studied than the history of modern scotland so there were two culprits in this one of the culprits were the universities because really i mean my my career because i started teaching in universities in 1969 my career has seen the transformation because that transformation dates from the 1960s and the problem was that inevitably my colleagues would go for the domestic history of scotland um the first book published on the imperial relationship between scotland and the british empire from 1937 until today was published as late as 2000 so it's not that my colleagues and i include myself in this or in any sense avoiding the realities we just didn't know and we only begin to see the movement outwards the study of diaspora the study of empire which automatically leads to this subject area sooner sooner rather than later which has only really begun since the late 1990s and is now one of the most flourishing aspects of the past now as far as the schools are concerned as some of you may know um because i've said it so often i gave up history at second year in the senior secondary school that was the school that you went to if you were fortunate enough to pass 11 plus to no longer exist of course and because it was so utterly boring and i took geography now geography is actually quite a pleasant subject stimulating at school level but it doesn't have the intellectual challenge of the queen of all disciplines in my view at university level right and so i was i i found myself being taught by some of the most able research historians at the period of that renaissance almost all of them english working on scotland's economic history remember those great names even you probably do although although you weren't there at the time you would probably remember who they were exactly um uh there were so committed to research before the research assessment exercise that they even gave prizes at the end of the year you know metaphorically like king of the secondary sources kss that is somebody who was not actually looking at original material i regularly won the prize in the early 70s um the um thomas malthus prize for over production but this was not because of my many writings it was because we had five children under the age of six um uh two of them were twins by the way so it's okay okay right so anyway the the um so that the university is being like that the schools teaching in a very boring way almost everybody in my generation and i'm now almost senile um almost everybody in that generation is the same thing to say one of the most boring subjects at school and now again there's been a radical transformation um and it's just a matter of time it's already happening i know some people are doing it it's just a matter of time because before this becomes almost core or deja vu trisha in terms of the school curriculum um because the other thing is it's a horrible thing to say this but one of the things that fascinates pupils at school is violence you know i remember listening to one of my colleagues in the british academy giving a lecture on london why are people fascinated by the natse past you know and there is something in us and one of the horrible things about this topic is it's got that intrinsic interest and it will appeal um it will appeal to uh to future generations of scolish school children to study why this happened why it was allowed to allow to go on for so long and what effect if any did it happen in their country but but there's a whole variety of other reasons why the forgetfulness set set in steven um yeah certainly there's been tomer lidge to you know the outright denial on the glasgo hero but also what you see in some of the contemporary 19th century um publications though country houses as though glasgo gentry for example these are he's written by an inheritor of a slave fortune the guy who's writing it is connected with the smiths of jordan hill he's describing the other slave owners as they are but he's using glorious euphemisms west india landowner west india estate owner you know so these glorious euphemism have then fed into well oxford dictionary now oxford dictionary national biography for example there's very little mention of slavery in these biographies just as a footnote to steven to emphasize upon late 19th century glasgo these figures were described as heroic as the people who established the second city in the british empire sorry for interrupting yeah not agree you mean this is this is a heroic history so it's written for that perspective you know so essentially when we know that scots had limited involvement in the direct trade in slaves but where they had found their niche was the trade with the plantations so for an economic perspective this was essentially a business relationship where the capital was flowing back so this money has seeked into you know industry banks insurance shipping so it's been a bit easy to wander the money i feel like so historians mean tom's acknowledged that you know historians there's there has been a collective failure but certainly we've upped our game now and we're working on it but also we need to acknowledge that the means and methods that the academic research percolates into society there has been a failure there as well in particular museums the national museum in scolawn has has no mention of the caribbean i'm reliably informed in glasgo for example is the only transatlantic port city the connections with caribbean slavery the others of course being bristol london and liverpool that doesn't have a permanent exhibition and it's in the city's museums or it doesn't have a plaque i know the kelvin grove museum for example they're leading the way we're just they're moving they're moving but they're not yet moved well there's a collaborative phd with the university i know that i know that i'm talking about the displays display well you know the research is underway in collections and stuff so moves are afoot you know but i think scots as well you know we we seem to revel in this hero or victim history we like to think about burns david livingston best weak country in the world not that john prebble john prebble prebble is i'm coming into the the victim the victimology this historiographical victimology you know we've preferred to concentrate in the role of scots's victims the subjugated province of england you know glenco colloddon daerion disaster you know and i think it's just been harder for for scots to accept you know the more unpalatable aspects here history you know but now we know we had a deep and very powerful and pervasive influence across the new world and involvement in plantation slavery anything on to yeah i think that i think that tom and steven have put it very well i think basically there's a degree to which it doesn't fit with the national story the image that we have of ourselves but i would say that scotish people have always been enthusiastic self educators many of us didn't get didn't get history in school and then people go and they seek out books they go to the library they buy all of this stuff i think there is a passion for education and there's a passion to know about the past and when these books exist or when the documentaries are on the television people are very keen to find out about it and i feel that actually often in a sense the general population is ahead of the establishment on this sometimes i feel the i don't know what i mean by the establishment but you know them that there's an idea that the establishment feel perhaps that the rest of us are not quite ready for this information would be a bit squeamish about it actually i think we're hungry for it and we want to know more about it and it's not about beating yourself up and getting ashamed it's about knowing our past so we can know ourselves can i just give a short anecdote about this if the first time i'll alone because it's very it's very relevant first thing is that in relation to what you said louise the paradox of the failure to transmit an understanding of the scotish past and an acceptable way it's schools for my generation and for the generations before is this hunger this is why there's the hunger because people were denied the national story the national narrative i would say you know as a book seller in the past i would say that we have a hunger for other subjects as well so philosophy i was just putting that i was just putting that that point in as an additionality but the main thing i wanted to tell the audience was the story of the failed attempt to tell the Scottish people about all this in 2007 because two of my colleagues ironically enough in the book okay eric and Ian were hired by this is before um the Scottish government this was the Scottish executive so there's no blame there's no blame on you or yours i just blame everybody okay right so so so the thing is this that they were hired to write um a descriptor for the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade with specific reference to the scotish factor the bureaucrats if i can call them that in the scotish executive at that stage not the politicians the bureaucrats thought it was too heavy thought it was too you know it was really really heavy stuff and you know people don't know about this and not only did they boudlarize it to the extent that both scholars resigned but it was then delegated to an english not an english story an english writer to write up and that that that pamphlet still exists to this day and if you compare it with some of the things that we're all been saying this evening to that expurgated volume it's not you're not wrong it's a small pamphlet then that that makes the point about liez's concern or her her argument that there was almost you know people shouldn't really be be we shouldn't really be talking about this it's a bit too dark and maybe a bit too destabilising jeffrey um i i think the um tom's view and um er my colleagues there i i would say that to me it somehow seemed that we had no historians in scotland with any voice before 2007 and somehow if we had historians you don't need historians that the history is all around us you walk past it every day robert burns writes about it i mean robert burns bought his ticket to go to jamaica in 1786 and he says so himself to be a slave master at 30 pounds a year we even knew his salary and somehow if we are interested in burns and we don't seem to have a clue about that he wanted to go to the caribbean he wrote the slave's lament which is the main focus at the moment we got reggae artists in jamaica recording it the point is that he wrote old sacred to to the memory of mrs oswald of orcancroof and it is probably his most vitriolic poem and in that poem he cites richard oswald's wife as i said before and he was probably one of the he negotiated the american settlement and i'll repeat that that was the power of the slave master and if he's not in the book you better put him oh yes definitely and to me um if we look at scotland land ownership today you type in who owns the land and i can assure you three or four of the most senior families in scotland will be mentioned they'd be the grounds the weatherbans the bailies from invaness or in fact um the the clerks or the whatever the fact is that the land ownership today is in the ownership of these families still in fact when i wrote my little book on the enlightenment i had a phone call from lord gront of space i and i didn't know i i lived in pennicom and the voice said um jeffrey i have a bone to pick with you i've seen your little book but he says i'm terribly busy i'll get adrian to speak to you so adrian comes on the phone and adrian says my lord has read your little book and what he wants to point out is that the ground's treated their slaves better than the than the sterlings have curded theirs so what you have is a history and it is that funny sum of it because it it seems so ridiculous and when you leave this building if you go to 20 for fort street which is at the down from john lewis and if you want to see this history what we're talking about go along to fort street standard 24 24 fort street is on the compensation list 24 fort street was there in 1833 look at the house 26 and look at 22 24 is the only house on fort street with a balcony a wrth iron balcony it was owned by a person who owned slaves they only owned 30 slaves but it made that difference so with the weatherbans and the grants and the cambells who owned thousands that was you can measure the economy in that sense and therefore i won't want to conclude on a a negative note because if you look at your brochure it's how we see things the brochure you're handed out with from for this event in fact my wife looked at it and she said it's saying exactly what you were saying jeff she says what the brochure says scotland was involved in abolition but at the beginning of slavery they were involved in slavery itself the scots were involved throughout the whole thing writing it that way is repeating the omission and we are doing it in the brochure you were given today okay lees i want to direct this question to you um the empire cafe project in calm wealth games 2014 um how successful do you think that was in introducing people to the history of slavery and the involvement of glass school um the empire cafe project which i directed with them my colleague jude barber of collective architecture was a multi disciplinary exploration of scotland's relationship with the north atlantic slave trade and everybody on the panel contributed towards it because of course i'm a writer of fiction i'm not a historian and we could only do it with the the help of historians uh steven mullen was our our special he was our special historian uh historic advisor we um we had a cat working cafe we had we commissioned artworks we commissioned a poetry anthology that was written half by caribbean poets half by scotish poets on the subject of scotland and the the north atlantic slave trade we commissioned short stories we had lots of discussions and events music all about this subject and we had it over i think 4 000 people that came through the door and um when you do these things when you're getting funding they always ask you what is what what do you think um the risks are and one of the risks of course was that people just might not like it you know they might get very offended and but uh we felt it was important to do it in the year off the commonwealth games to explore empire and just explore those connections and also of course as we came up to our vote for referendum to look at ourselves in this way and uh we weren't scared of offending people we didn't we weren't going out to offend people but this is a history that we have to look at and we got i think over 4 000 people through the door we had great discussions really great discussions and it just reaffirmed to me that people are willing and and they're eager to talk about this our last debate was scotland colonised or colonizers and we had over 300 people and it was a great discussion okay louise thank you very much for that what i'm going to do is i'm going to open it up so that we can get a few very very brief questions to the panel if you would like to ask a question could you raise your hand um and once i acknowledge you keep your hand up until we get the microphone either up in front of you or indeed a microphone will come to you um the gentleman just to my right yes right okay a minute you're on right yeah hello hello right um i was part of mccos last year i was studying the history of the findings the foundation of the realm of embra and it was originally in what's in firmistry it was hidden down to high school yards and there was the medical school the surgical hospital of drum industry you know that what i found out in doing that was that there's a doctor paterson or doctor palmer sent a donation of £400 from Jamaica to the foundation of the emerald infirmary with an apology saying he couldn't afford any more as he only had 12 slaves on his plantation so this is this is a let's what you're saying about the um the power in the wealth the other thing being the the i couldn't find the the the provenance of the name of the infirmary sheet but based on it was infirmary prior to being named infirmary street it was named Jamaica street there's also another Jamaica street in down down in the new town there's also Jamaica street which is now the ncp car park in in Glasgow just near central station um so how much power and wealth did they have to to enable the fathers in Glasgow and then but to name a street after the island in the west indies and build massive houses and how much of the the medical establishment in the 1700s was was based on i think that's you know an interest point yeah and i think it maybe comes into a wider area i mean we've talked about you know the money coming here for building the institutions and the like if it hadn't been for the slave trade and i heard you alluding to england's industrial history with different ffars if it hadn't been for that the slave trade if it hadn't been for the money coming in here yeah where would Scotland have been at that point the thing is that um you know that in a public lecture especially when you're trying to cover the the range of contributions and new thinking that's come in in this volume inevitable you simplify now the thing about it is this the movement of an entire society from one rural base to a new industrial urban base is terribly complex in other words that feeding into the causes of its Scottish industrialisation i would say would at least a dozen prime variables but one of the central ones was a question how does a poor society one of the poorest in western europe managed to galvanize the capital resources required at least in the first stages of industrialism not right through the 19th century but i would say to about the 1830s and the two streams in my view to answer that question are one what we've been talking about today the slave based economies of the colonial americas and the carabine and secondly and not to be underestimated either especially given the reference that people have been making to to streets and palatial houses the indian subcontinent it's very important as well in terms of capital return and money's being sent back and then people retiring to this country and don't forget the opium trade one mac drug who has come from canton with a million of opium in each pocket and bought loose in 1842 and was then knighted they used to give knighthoods away in those days and neither so have them don't they tommy and jeffrey they're very very rigorous to use the term being used here like lordships these days oh no no i mean one would never accept one of those and i mean they are tarred and feathered especially given the most recent news or what one might say the most recent speculation but cut that out now cameraman now do you think so you know the the thing about it is this there's a disproportionate role for people from this country especially at middle rank level um out there in the world and a lot of what they make and but and by the way many many many of them died the american scholar who has put who's introduced this book for us very distinguished historian of the caribbean has pointed out from johns hopkins university in usa has pointed out one letter that he picked out from his files about a scottish scottish merchant who is saying always send out three factors because two of them might be dead during the seasoning so there was there was you know it was a high risk business but because of this i would say certainly distinctive if not unique disproportionate embrace that middle rank scots had professionals merchants in the rest with the world um that's what makes scottish history in a sense or one of the things that makes it so fascinating to me that you know this very small country tiny by any comparison had this global effect yeah if we look at take an example of um a small town i gave a lecture to the royal college of physicians recently and i pointed out to them that their building was owned by a mr blackburn and mr blackburn uh came from cilia you know he's just near glasgo small lovely little town and cilia was rebuilt by mr blackburn so he didn't only own the the the building in which the royal college of physicians are in ed queen street he went to jamaica made a fortune came back and cilia was you know in a very bad bad way he actually rebuilt cilia it is his town i went to cilia and to have a look and i found the local um a library and i looked it up and it said yes mr blackburn rebuilt cilia but and he was a successful merchant that's it and and therefore this is the sort of um history i don't think in fact i've lectured all over scotland and nowhere have i found any scottish person once they hear this history their main comment has been why haven't they told us this before and those people who had the knowledge and the authority and did not tell the people before 2007 are responsible and they're responsible in a in a very serious way because i deal with the jamaica community i'm jamaican and i've just spoken to the jamaican people in longdon because it's of their independence seven of the jamaican national heroes are scott's descent and they weren't aware because this history wasn't in longmans the textbooks they were given so we have a responsibility today to actually try not only and put that right but also to recognise what we call the black scottish diaspora which were left out of the burn celebration until we complained thank you the gentleman with the checks set two rows back three rows back keep your hands up thank you can you hear me yep yes um professor by in divine thank you very much for your usual erudite informative and enjoyable lecture um those who do not learn from history are forced to repeat it while it is sad that 3.2 million people were enslaved during the time of the transatlantic slave trade it does actually pale into in significance almost with the latest un figures on child slavery in 2014 which at a conservative estimate number 36 million children i just wonder if is there any lesson to be learned from the uncovering of scottans involvement in the earliest slave trade that might be applied to eradicating the current slave trade i mean as you say rightly the magnitudes are quite different but on the other hand the possibility of controlling that magnitude are also greater because a global authority like the un should be you know at the forefront of doing that in the uk in the late 18th to 19th centuries despite many obstacles um the abolitionist movement eventually succeeded um we've been talking very much about the realities of the iniquities of slavery but the other side of it was it was eventually defeated and i think in the same way although evil can never be entirely eradicated the the horror that you've talked about it could certainly be dealt with to a much more significant and muscular extent if there was international will to do it and if you want to see will in action against vested interest both moral philosophical and religious and aspects of the abolitionist dynamic in the 19th century in britain um and then of course the campaign against slavery in the usa during and after the civil war these are these are good lessons these are good lessons for you because it demonstrates the fact it can be done okay i'm going to take that lady and i'm going to take the gentleman there and um i'll let everybody sum up then lady here um it's just a point about people being treated unjustly usually when people are treated unjustly the victims themselves speak up you know if women want a more eco position women speak up and if the irish feel that they're not getting treated properly in scotland they speak up as the descendants of the irish but we're in a situation in scotland where black people who were enslaved were not here to speak for themselves i would just be interested in people's comments and that's actually one of the main arguments in the the lost to history chapter i refer to um because there's the question of comparison why is it in england that this has got such high profile and has done since the 1960s 1970s i think one answer to it is the different demographies you know that even if you take london and leave out the rest of england there is a very considerable afro-caribbean population in the capital that population has contributed some very articulate artists writers dramatists and indeed also historians and certainly my english colleagues tell me that one of the reasons why the museums in england have been have been had to radically alter their displays and one of the reasons for the success of the 2007 collaboration commemorations has been a dynamic west indian population descent population south of the border whereas in scotland although i think there are clear shrines now of a fair amount of activism from that demographic background that even in relation to our pakistani and indian neighbours the west indian population is relatively minuscule compared to its proportionality in the english population it's not the only factor but i think you've put your finger on one of the one of the elements because i know that some of the west indian activists today from that background including jeffrey that they are they are now articulating loudly and clearly why this needs to be paid attention to i would have to say in this glasgo is leading the way jeffrey palmer has been doing admirable work for a long number of years in glasgo um as well we have grem campbell who's involved with african caribbean centre african caribbean culture listen to the name grem campbell scottish english jamaican but also the coalition for racial equality and rights former ligara have been a strong voice on scotland's involvement with slavery for a long number of years and in fact that was how i started the research in 2007 into this area you know so they there have been voices you know from the black community so certainly um there is now a cacophony of voices you know this is growing jeffrey would you like to add something to that yes so just to the gentleman there so we don't leave him out and you were talking about the modern slavery and i absolutely agree with you i think it's also that people should be treated um you know work their rights taken away but i've always said to my students it it doesn't do us any good to compare evils because it is usually used to then ignore one evil and i think each evil should be addressed separately and the consequences of that evil and we have the consequences in the caribbean in terms of poverty etc which we are responsible for in terms of what we've done so i quite agree with you and something should be done that one of the differences is that the the evil which we're talking about here was legal and it's another lesson for us we must not legalize evil because then it allows bad people to say it's okay and just finally in terms of people we are talking about the diaspora you're absolutely right if somebody is agitating but i feel that good people should recognize no matter who they are are wrong when it's there you don't need the victim to tell you that it's wrong because if the victim is voiceless then you'll do nothing but i think i've got a letter here just one second and i taught at the Harriet Watt for 30 years and i was looking through a box five years ago and i found this letter in a box at the Harriet Watt University at Rickerton nobody had seen it since 1838 i took it out and i looked at it and i saw two numbers 96 and 93 it is that what made me look at it because all historians about slavery know the the vote in parliament one of the votes for abolition was 96 to 93 so these two numbers attracted my attention i then read it this document was the rickerton was the home of the Gibson craig in 1838 and this is Gibson craig mp writing to his father at rickerton after the vote which one of the votes for abolition and just one sentence in this letter which i've given to the university they'll have it and i'll leave a copy anybody wants it he writes to his father and he talks about the politics of the vote and what he says over 500 mp only 90 was it 180 odd turned up they weren't going to vote for it but the one statement phrasing this letter which is important for all of us it says to his father despite all the politics whatever i voted for abolition and i will do it again and to me if there's a lesson it's not about what other people make us do is what we ourselves feel is right and should be done final brief question to the gentleman in the front in the debate and discussions of Jamaica i'm actually part of an organisation called flag up Scotland Jamaica with Graham Campbell that's trying to highlight the links both negative and positive between Scotland and Jamaica and we're in the Scottish Parliament is there a case given the fact that there are countries such as Malawi, Canada and New Zealand which are priority countries for the Scottish Government in terms of trade and in other areas that Scotland actually has stronger links to Jamaica so is there a case that Jamaica should be a priority country for the Scottish Parliament? Well the Scottish Parliament itself as opposed to Scottish Government we have got a relationship with Malawi it's only country that we've got a direct relationship with and we support them as parliamentarians and we support the country as well as that and that goes back of course to the David Livingstone connection and it's for the Scottish Government to determine its own priorities but if you wish to take forward the relationship between the Parliament and Jamaica you might want to get in touch with some of the MSPs and suggest that for example they set up a cross-party group on Scotland and Jamaica there's also other alternatives and that is that you know you could encourage for example some of the MSPs to put down motions and we can have members debates on the subject so there's a number of ways that you can engage with the parliament to get wider recognition but we can't support financially whereas you know the government in terms of their trade they've got their own priorities but you know there's nothing there's nothing that we can't do in here provided that you engage with the MSPs and we can you know make sure that these cross-party groups are set up to allow much much greater discussion okay right can I thank you all very much for your question we're now about seven minutes over and I get around for never keeping to time wouldn't that happen when I'm up in that year that's for sure but anyway just before I thank the panels I just wonder if each of you would like just a couple sentences just to sum up your thoughts and I'm going to start with Jeffrey first and what through Louise and Stephen and then of course well let's have Tom have the last what almost almost well what I'd like to do is to thank the the Scottish Parliament for setting up this meeting to today and I think that as far as I'm concerned one little story sums it up the most senior Rastafarian in Jamaica came to Scotland quite recently and we were having a coffee and I said you know and I was telling about the Scottish history and links with Jamaica and he said well there's nothing to do with him his name is Yasusafari and I looked at him because I'm Jamaican I can look at a Jamaican and tell his links genetically so I looked at him and I said Yasus what's your father's name and he stopped for a minute very Jamaican and he says why because I know his name is Yasusafari I said I just want to know your father's name Yasus he said it's think clear so what thank you well I think flag up Jamaica are doing a great a great project really and I guess for me I would like the next homecoming not only to look towards Canada and Australia and America but also to turn towards the Caribbean and to welcome and acknowledge our brothers and sisters there because we are related and there are things that we can do in terms of culture but also actually good hard educational links because I think we're due to pay some kind of reparation and education seems to me a very good way forward that was actually my final question that was actually going to be my final point to Sir Tom but you have already started to address it's a a lot Stephen and Tom do it as well and the question really is I mean you know we're now getting at this wonderful work coming out of the universities but how long do you think it's going to percolate before it percolates down to your schools and that we're actually getting taught at there you know are we talking 10 years 20 years and what do you think should be done to make sure we don't Stephen I'll let you come in first schools in particular they want me to sum up yes sum up but you know yeah well I'm delighted as a research historian you know I'm delighted to see you know this work that's underway it's really exciting for me to be part of something you know you can see it as having a tangible change for me there's two questions what did Scotland give to Caribbean slavery and what did Caribbean slavery give to Scotland you know so we know the Scots are involved all over the next level analysis that has to be done how much these fortunes were made and how much it came back what Caribbean slavery then gives to Scotland we need to quantify an objective serious analysis to see the impact you know much more work needs to be done in this you know but you raise the important point is is how does this percolate in a society our project on runaway slaves we're a study the black community in Great Britain in the 18th century so what a big part of your project is public engagement and knowledge exchange and with schools you know teachers pack so so we're already ahead of the game on that but we know that Scots in Scotland profited for this so yeah the reparations point there has to be some form you know reparations can come in many different forms but there has to be a serious debate surrounding this and eventually reconciliation. Tom well I think the problem the problem about reparations is that we can't simply talk about Jamaica I've got the whole of the Caribbean and perhaps some other parts of the world including the Indian nations of Canada and Aboriginal peoples in Australia so I personally I wouldn't want to go down that route but at the route I've always the route I've always preferred is a recognition awareness recognition and also the lamentable fact that despite pleading from a certain quarter at the last year of homecoming the official invitations did not go out to the Caribbean peoples I think that was an error on the part of the government hope it will not be repeated next time and the second the second thing is looking at the commonwealth games with some of those delectable third generation divines. Papa why are those runners from that country why are they all called Scottish names that gave me another interest in this an impetus to get get the work done the book is designed to appeal widely please read it and remember it is meant to shock okay on that point can I ask you to join me in thanking our panel Sir Jeff Palma, Louise Welsh, Stephen Mullan, thank you all very much and of course I'm sure you would like to thank Professor Tom Devine for his absolutely fascinating, interesting, stimulating, thought provoking, it's getting good isn't it? Don't stop, don't stop. The great thing about doing this job is that you get to meet people and talk to people that you've admired for many many years and I have admired Sir Tom Devine for more years and perhaps I would like to think. Anyway, Sir Tom will of course be down in the garden lobby signing the books for the fund for his grandchildren. Will you please come down and join us because we are launching the festival of politics there's music and there's fun so join us in our great garden lobby can I also remind you that there's a screening of 12 years of slave at half past seven tonight in the members room there's a few tickets left and they're available from the ticket desk in the cafe bar so on that point can I invite you once again to come and join me and ask you just to see thanks again to a panel.