The Scottish Parliament could make a national apology for slavery, according to the proposals of the Scottish National Party.
A resolution included in the agenda of the provisional conference of the party details the historical participation of Scots in the tobacco, sugar and cotton trades, based on slave labour.
The motion, if passed, would see the Scottish government charged with deciding whether an apology would be possible by the Scottish Parliament.
It has been proposed for the debate at the conference by Anne McLaughlin, Parliamentary Minister for North East Glasgow, and Glasgow City Council Councillor, Graham Campbell.
Such a move would follow Glasgow City Council’s decision to apologize for its role in the slave trade.
Council leader Susan Aitken said the blood of trafficked Africans and enslaved was embedded in the “very bones” of Glasgow.
This followed the publication of a study by 85 pages by Stephen Mullen of the University of Glasgow, detailing the city’s links to the slave trade.
He listed eight statues and 62 street names along with a number of buildings that were linked to slavery, usually through the links those with trade related to Scots-owned plantations or ships transporting slaves against their will across the Atlantic.
Edinburgh City Council has undertaken a similar review of its links to the slave trade, asking people for their opinion and highlighting statues, buildings and street names that could be linked to the slave trade.
This followed protests in the Scottish capital during the global Black Lives Matter movement in July 2020 following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
These protests led to a new plaque detailing the man’s links to the slave trade commemorated on Edinburgh’s largest monument, the Henry Dundas Monument in St. Andrew Square.
The resolution also calls for the Scottish National Party to support calls for a national slavery museum in Glasgow and to scale up links between Scotland and Jamaica as an act of “ restorative justice”.
Earlier this year, the Prime Minister formally apologized to those killed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563 and pardoned the miners arrested during the strikes of 1984-71.
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