Edinburgh will apologise for suffering caused through the city’s involvement in slavery, while statues, street names and buildings associated with the trade will be “re-presented” to explain the consequences to the public.
City councillors on Tuesday unanimously accepted all 10 recommendations made in a report on Edinburgh’s historical links with slavery and colonialism, the result of a review set up in 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and chaired by Scotland’s first black professor, Sir Geoff Palmer.
Palmer said the council’s decision to accept the full recommendations was “very significant” and a civic apology was another move towards redress.
“An apology doesn’t buy bread but it gives another form of sustenance,” he said. “It is about feeling that somebody has looked at something and recognised it was wrong. They are saying to you, the person offended, that they regret what has happened.
“Even though many people say ‘we weren’t there, it wasn’t our doing’, we all have responsibilities. We are responsible for what happened in the past, because the past has consequences. We can’t change the past but we can change the consequences of racism.”
The report outlined that statues and other parts of city architecture celebrating people who made money from the suffering of others should not be removed but reframed in order to educate future generations.
This has already been done with a monument to Sir Henry Dundas, a controversial figure, which was vandalised in June 2020 during protests precipitated by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Palmer and others believe Dundas, the leading Whig politician of Scotland in the late 18th century, has been unfairly credited with fighting slavery in Scotland when he held back abolition for a generation through delaying tactics in parliament. A revised plaque explaining this background was erected at the monument last year.
The report also highlighted the first minister’s official residence in Charlotte Square, three historic owners of which “directly benefited from Atlantic slavery”, as well as India Street and Jamaica Street in the city’s new town, which were “named as a celebration of empire”.
The decision follows similar formal apologies by Glasgow, Liverpool and London.
The Edinburgh council leader, Cammy Day, said the review, which cost the local authority £18,500, showed “commitment from the council to be progressive, open and honest about the history of Edinburgh”.
When the public consultation for the review ended in January, the previous council leader, Adam McVey, revealed it had generated thousands of “blatantly racist” responses from supporters of rightwing organisations looking to interfere with the process.
He said: “The personal targeting of Geoff that I’ve seen is appalling. I’ve seen groups that are nothing to do with Edinburgh throwing abuse and scaremongering about a process they clearly know nothing about.”
