Those urging Glasgow to apologise for slavery (Apology for slavery is not enough, Letters, May 5) should also ask the Westminster government to apologise for the transportation of boatloads of English and Scottish Jacobites as slaves to the West Indies, and also for the Highland Clearances.
The Clearances lasted for more than 100 years, the longest period of ethnic cleansing in the history of Europe: from 1784 when the Duke of Atholl evicted the people of Glen Tilt, until the early 1900s when islanders from Uist and Barra were being crammed into fetid emigrant ships by Lady Gordon-Cathcart.
Tony Blair, on behalf of the British government, apologised to the Irish for Britain's role in the potato famine and also to the Africans for the abuses of the slave trade, but he refused to make any apology for the ethnic cleansing of the Highlands and Islands.
Let us not forget that, when Highlanders and Islanders were being evicted, their sons were fighting and dying in battles from the Plains of Abraham [in Quebec] to Trafalgar for the greater glory of the British state that was destroying their culture, Gaelic language and banishing their families to foreign shores.
Donald J MacLeod
Bridge of Don
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