Links to slavery “weak”
Christopher Watley, a professor of history at Dundee University, said it was clear that Livingston was “bonded” with hundreds of thousands of Scots at the time. However, he said the connection could be seen as “patient” and questioned whether it made sense to expect a 19th-century child to question his employer’s links to the slave trade. “Should we condemn ordinary people like Livingston, who had little or no choice but to work for a living, at a time when state support for the unemployed was non-existent?” he said. “There were definitely a number of factors besides salaries that explain Livingstone’s later career.” Livingston’s depictions of how slaves in Africa were treated shocked audiences in Britain. He also reported on a massacre of prisoners in 1871 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was thought to have had an impact on ending East Africa’s slave trade. However, the exhibition omits it, instead of focusing on his work in the mill. He states that the owner of the mill, where Livingstone began working in 1823, “was in collaboration with two Glasgow-West India merchants in the 1810s.” He added that the “cotton” he worked with was “probably from the West Indies”, with his “high pay” allowing him to study at university. When he returned to Blantyre Mill as a famous explorer in 1856, he denounced slavery as “the greatest evil ever committed.” However, the report says it made a “strong defense” of “paternalistic and well-meaning” cotton at the same time.
“Complicity in slavery”
The 119-page document, by academic Stephen Mullen of the University of Glasgow, also identifies 62 streets and locations in Glasgow, as well as 11 buildings that have a “direct” or “cooperative” connection to slavery in the Atlantic. He claims that Glasgow, an important port during the Empire, had not done as much as other cities in the UK with historical bondage links, such as Liverpool and London, to acknowledge and apologize for its past. Susan Aitken, chairwoman of the SNP council, said the report provided “an indisputable basis for evidence of the extent of Glasgow’s complicity in domestic slavery”. A council spokesman said: “It has always been our intention to hold a wide-ranging public debate and consultation on the findings. Therefore, it will be up to the people of Glasgow to determine the next steps of the city “.
