I AGREE wholeheartedly with Ian W Gray (Letters, August 6) that the guilt over slavery should be shared.
Recently while talking to friends in Texas I discovered there is a movement in Texas pushing for the state capital of Austin to be reamed as the original Austin had owned slaves. On further checking I discovered that there is a similar group trying to change the name of the US capital, namely, Washington which is of course named after the former president George Washington.
I have to say that I find these actions not only idiotic but also simplistic in the extreme. Sadly they have their parallel in Scotland where a vociferous minority attempt to embarrass us regarding our city buildings because of their historical links to merchants who benefited from slavery. Which buildings do they wish us to pull down to assuage their conscience? Perhaps we should flatten Scandinavia as the Vikings practised slavery across most of Northern Europe? Or how about most of North Africa as the Muslim ships regularly raided southern Europe for slaves as Islam prohibited the taking and keeping of Muslim slaves. Then we should consider flattening both Italy and Greece as both those ancient empires considered keeping slaves as normal.
However why are we not berating and flattening areas of Africa where tribes hunted and captured prisoners to sell on the coast to the slave traders? Is it because they are not white, yet records show that many of the first slave owners were in fact black and the defeated Jacobites were sold into slavery by the British government were of course white?
Changing names and destroying buildings and statues will not change one single historical moment. Slavery was totally abhorrent and sadly still exists to this day. However it is a fact of history that it existed and these campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic would be better occupied fighting modern day problems including slavery rather than the tokenism which they currently practise.
David Stubley,
22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.
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