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Scotland has a bitter history with the sugar industry

BRIAN Cox is right to draw attention to Scotland's long sang with "succar" (greetin for a wee bawbee tae buy some succar candy), with the sugaries (the factories that refined the stuff), with sugarallie water, sugar biscuits, sugarbools and sugardoddles (sweeties) and a sugar-piece (butter and bread sprinkled with sugar) ("Actor Cox reveals he visited a Mumbai opium den", The Herald, November 14).

But Scotland and sugar has an even more difficult history from as early as the 17th century sugar-boiling houses in Glasgow, the making of rum and of course the rush into slavery, particularly after the 1707 treaty. Sugar was king in Glasgow for many years and Professor Tom Devine tells us that "by 1790 the sugar islands become the Clyde's premier overseas centre of trade".

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