Secret £2.5bn pay-off to Scotland’s slave owners: Effects of money can still be felt today

[DOS_patos]

Secret £2.5bn pay-off to Scotland’s slave owners: Effects of money can still be felt today

The fortune – the equivalent of £2.5 billion today – was given to Scots slave owners for the loss of their “property” when the trade was shut down in 1833.

Inverness business baron George Rainy was the top earner from the compensation payments.

The slave master was paid £146,295, the equivalent of £124m in 2017, to free 2794 slaves from his 30 plantations in British Guiana.

Merchant George Parker, from Ayrshire, was paid £91,000 to free his 1741 slaves from nine sites in British Guiana – which works out at £77m today.

John Gladstone, father of former Prime Minister William Gladstone, had nine plantations in Jamaica and British Guiana totalling 2500 slaves. The knighted slave owner banked £106,000 in compensation when he was forced to give up his slaves – £90m in today’s money.

Boyd Alexander, of Mauchline, Ayrshire, and David Lyon Jr, of Balintore Castle, Forfarshire, were also beneficiaries of the payouts. Alexander received £43,259 and Lyon Jr £46,854, the equivalent of £36.7m and £39.8m respectively in 2017.


The figures come from an online database assembled by researchers at University College London.

Researcher Dr Nick Draper said: “The wrong people were compensated. The owners were compensated instead of the slaves, who really suffered.

“The money that Scotland enjoyed for 200 years, directly from slavery, and including the compensation payouts, benefited the country greatly. But the contrasting thing is that those who were compensated often went on to do good things with that money. We’re all still benefitting from it today.”

Sir Geoff Palmer, professor emeritus from the Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, is among those who believe that the compensation money paved the way for a modern Scotland.

He said: “The statues and landmarks in our cities, the streets we walk on and live in were all paid with money from the slave trade. The amount of money they were paid in 1833, and its effect, is incalculable today.

“They bought land, streets, they educated the young. Bathgate Academy, Dollar Academy and Inverness Academy – these are all institutions paid for directly from that money.

“Money from slavery was propping Scotland up for a full 200 years. The influence slavery money has had on Scotland is immeasurable.”


David Lyon Junior (18 September 1794 – 8 April 1872)
Sir Geoff believes that the money still drips into today’s society. The echoes of Scotland’s involvement in the slave trade can be seen throughout the country.

But Glasgow’s affiliation with the trade is on display more than any other city.

Many of its street names and buildings have links to slavery, named after – and often built by – the business barons who made a fortune at the expense of others.

Andrew Buchanan, John Glassford, Archibald Ingram and James Dunlop have streets named after them while Jamaica, Virginia and Tobago streets highlight their business interests abroad.

Despite all of this, the country’s involvement in the slave trade is one of Scotland’s best kept secrets, according to Sir Geoff.

He said: “I would say it is historians’ fault. Either the people teaching this part in Scottish history genuinely didn’t know, or were embarrassed and kept it a secret.

“Scots see themselves as fair and level-headed. So they can’t see themselves being involved in slavery. But the reality is I don’t think we can drive half an hour in Scotland without happening upon this history.”

Dr Ima Jackson, a researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University whose work has focused on slavery, said: “The people in Scotland who were compensated are our establishment as we know it today.

“Scotland has erased that part of history so successfully, it hasn’t simply forgotten – it’s more purposeful than that.”

 

[DOS_patos]

Secret shame: The Scots who made a fortune from abolition of slavery



EVEN when Scotland was prospering from the transatlantic plantation slave trade, strident voices in the Scottish Enlightenment railed against slavery.

James Beattie, who held the chair of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen's Marischal College, wrote in 1790 that black slavery was "utterly repugnant to every principle of reason, religion, humanity and conscience".

But now it has been revealed large numbers of prominent Scottish slave-owners shared in £20 million compensation paid out by the British Government when Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 – 26 years after the trade itself had been done away with.

The sum, which is equivalent to £2 billion today, was said to be equal to 40% of the government's entire budget.

Many thousands of pounds were given to Scots in compensation for slaves in the British Caribbean who had been emancipated.

The beneficiaries included Colonel John Gordon of Cluny, who in 1851 forced some 3000 of his tenants on the Outer Hebrides to emigrate to Canada. Cluny died in 1858, unmarried but with a number of illegitimate children.

A database, assembled over three years by researchers at University College London, indicates that Gordon received a total of £24,964 in compensation, relating to 1383 slaves across six plantations in Tobago, in the southern Caribbean.

Other Scots on the database, highlighted yesterday by prominent Scottish historian Professor Tom Devine, include James Cheyne, who cleared tenants from the Isle of Lismore in the 1840s and 1850s; the Malcolms of Poltalloch, who were involved in clearances in Argyll; Sir Archibald Alison, a noted social commentator; James McCall and Patrick Maxwell Stewart, who both had substantial holdings in railways; the Marquis of Breadalbane, and Sir William Forbes.

Mr Devine, director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at Edinburgh University, told The Herald: "Although the database is hugely significant, it still doesn't reveal the full extent of the [slavery] connection [with Scotland].

"These are people on the list who were compensated for owning slaves but it does not include professional people, such as physicians, overseers, merchants and military people, who all gained from the plantation economies.

"The list is mainly, perhaps even exclusively, concerned with the Caribbean. The great Tobacco Trade of the 18th century in Glasgow could not have existed without un-free labour, though that has gone by the 1840s, which is the time of this database.

"However, one of the things that the database brings out quite clearly is the sheer treasure which many of these people gained."

Mr Devine added: "Glasgow is usually the place that is cited as having a colonial connection, but if you look at the range of names and locations on the database, it is everywhere in Scotland, particularly in rural areas. This is why some people have argued that these monies were very important in terms of such things as agricultural improvement and the like.

"Women [on the list] almost certainly had annuities based on the plantation profits of the period," he added. The extensive database lists 46,000 individuals who received compensation. Of these, 3000 had addresses in the UK – and some 20% of these had addresses in Scotland.

Professor Catherine Hall, the leader of the project and professor of modern British social and cultural history at UCL, said it was "very striking" how many slave-owners there were in Scotland.

She said: "The empire offered opportunities to the Scots on a very significant scale and working on the plantations was a favoured choice for Scots seeking their fortunes in the late 18th and early 19th century. One of the things we found is that far from the slave-owners all being concentrated in the great slaving ports of London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Bristol, there are people all over the country making claims of compensation."

Eric Graham, an honorary post doctoral research fellow at the Scottish Centre for Disapora Studies, said the compensation differed between the Caribbean islands. He said: "The figure was £6 for a child, an average of £50 for an able fieldworker, or between £18 and £20 if the fieldworker didn't have any specific skills to offer.

"For the top craftsmen within the slave population, like the sugar-boilers, who had a dangerous job and were particularly well sought-after, the figure might be £100.

"Slave-owners were allowed to claim compensation according to the composition of their workforce.

"A white artisan worker in Scotland would have been paid 25 shillings, of £1.25, a week, which is an instructive comparison."