Glasgow apologises to descendants of slaves over role in ‘heinous’ slave trade

Council leader Susan Aitken called on the council to issue an apology following a report on the city’s links to the transatlantic slave trade and the wealth accumulated as a result.

Her amendment to the report from Dr Stephen Mullen, which was presented at a full council meeting today, received unanimous support from councillors.

Councillor Aitken said the report uncovers in more depth part of Glasgow’s history that the city has “often preferred to marginalise, to downplay or indeed to ignore altogether.”

The SNP politician said: “Follow the Atlantic slavery money trail, as Dr Mullen has done, and it’s tentacles reach into every corner of Glasgow.

“Let’s clearly acknowledge what this report tells us, that the blood and pain of trafficked and enslaved African people, their children and their children’s children is built into the very bones of this city.

“Chattel slavery stands as one of the most heinous crimes in human history and Glasgow was complicit and for that we apologise today, unreservedly without excuses or justifications or attempts at self congratulation of the type we have too often employed in the past.”

The report by Dr Mullen, an academic historian at the University of Glasgow, was commissioned by the council. He found eight statues and 11 mansions or urban buildings in the city are linked to slavery as well as 62 street names, including Buchanan Street and Glassford Street.

Dr Mullen said how to deal with these legacies was “up to the politicians and citizenry of the city.”

Councillor Aitken’s motion agreed to apologise “fully and unreservedly to the descendants of enslaved people and to the nations they came from for the city’s significant role in Atlantic slavery.”

A slavery legacy working group will now bring recommendations to the council by the end of the year on a number of issues, including street names, monuments and buildings with links to Atlantic slavery and Lord Provosts of Glasgow who were involved.

It will also look at investments made by the council’s predecessor institutions and legacies held or managed by the council today that are connected to the slave trade. The group will consider how Glasgow should permanently acknowledge the city’s role and memorialise victims.

Consultation will be held with the people of Glasgow and groups representing BAME citizens.

Councillor Aitken said: “Many will ask what good an apology does, it can’t change the past and no one alive today took part in chattel slavery, but many who are alive today still live with the legacy of racism whose roots can be traced directly back to what was white supremacy codified in law.

“An apology tells them that we understand finally, or at least trying to, the enormity of what was done in our city’s name and who actually was affected, who it was done to, who must be at the centre of this conversation.”

She added: “To BAME residents of Glasgow who might justifiably be sceptical that an apology is a cosmetic exercise, I say that today is just the beginning.”

SNP Councillor Graham Campbell, Glasgow’s first African Caribbean councillor, will chair the working group. He said: “I’m in the position of being able to support this amendment and make this offer of an apology on behalf of the citizens of Glasgow but also partly to accept the apology on behalf of African Caribbean descendants as the first one present in this chamber.

“Perhaps the 40 Lord Provosts who are mentioned in the Mullen report who have wealth derived from slavery, ill gotten gains, would never have anticipated that someone like me would be here to admonish them.”

He added: “Slavery and colonialism, and particularly this form of slavery, are the origins of the racism that we face today, how people think, the stereotypes and prejudices they have about the character or otherwise of non-white people, they derive from that period of time.

“We can’t change the past but what we can do is change how we react to the knowledge of that past and how we do better to tackle the racial inequality of now.”