A pair of old boots might seem an unlikely object to inspire strong emotion, but sitting on top of a plinth in the park outside Budapest, it is one of the most amusing yet sinister monuments I’ve seen. For these are Joseph Stalin’s boots – all that was left of the massive statue of the Soviet dictator torn down by demonstrators in the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

When Hungary finally gained its freedom in 1989, the new regime was faced with the problem of how to address the iconic history of communism, represented all over the cityscape. All those statues of Lenin in heroic poses. Karl Marx, Bela Kun. The Martyrs of fascism. Those thumping images of Soviet soldiers shaking hands with Hungarians after the Second World War.

People hated them, and wanted all memory of communism erased from their sight. Much as supporters of Black Lives Matters want to see statues of slave owners like Bristol’s Edward Colston dumped in the nearest canal.

Budapest’s solution was Memento Park, a kind of anti-communist theme park on the outskirts of Budapest, where the various monuments were collected and placed in a historical context. It’s maybe something we should consider in Scotland, now that attitudes are changing. It solves the problem of reassessing history without erasing it.

Mind you, when I was there a member of the Communist Party was taking a group of elderly Marxists around the place explaining, in English, why Hungarian Communism wasn’t such a bad idea. This was not entirely what the city fathers wanted – but then again, it was their history too.

Such is the trouble with statues. They mean different things in different times. Speaking personally, I could very well do without the old rogue, Henry Dundas, looking down from on high every time I pass Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square.

Quite apart from his role in extending the slave trade he was impeached for misappropriating naval funds, so it is a mystery why he is up there at all. His statue was paid for in 1823 by officers and men of the Navy, which seems bizarre.

The former Scottish Secretary was a significant historical figure, of course, regarded as “uncrowned King of Scotland” at the end of the 18th Century. But that doesn’t justify his elevation on a 140ft column, so tall and heavy it had to be built by the lighthouse engineer Robert Stevenson.

However, the Melville Monument (he was Viscount Melville) is also a Grade A listed monument and regarded as one of the heritage treasures of the City of Edinburgh. Moreover, Scotland’s first black professor, Emeritus Professor Sir Geoff Palmer of Heriot-Watt University doesn’t actually want it brought down. He wants it kept where it is as a kind of mini Memento Park

Prof Palmer wanted a plaque explaining Dundas’s and Scotland’s historic links to the slave trade. How his activities in Parliament in 1792 delayed its abolition by 15 years. Edinburgh City Council agreed four years ago to set up a committee to decide what the plaque should say. It’s been arguing ever since.

The historian Michael Fry, a supporter of Scottish independence and a leading authority on Scotland’s role in the British Empire, pointed out that Dundas actually supported the abolition of the slave trade –he wanted it phased out rather than abolished overnight. Dundas was also acquitted, eventually, over the money.

It may seem a fine distinction since some 600,000 slaves were transported during the “phasing out” and it was pretty transparently a delaying device to keep his wealthy friends happy. But then again, history has to be accurate.

Also, in his earlier life as a lawyer, Dundas fought for and won the freedom of a Jamaican slave, Joseph Knight, who had escaped from his nominal owner, James Wedderburn. The case in 1778 was a sensation and established for the first time that slavery was illegal in Scotland.

But no one wants Henry Dundas, pillar of the East India Company, commemorated as some kind of human rights lawyer. At any rate, four years on from the original petition demanding that Dundas should fall, nothing has been done.

Glasgow has been beaten around the head for years about its involvement with slavery, immortalised in street names of the “tobacco barons” like Andrew Buchanan. So there may well be some wry amusement at pompous Edinburgh getting its moral knickers in a twist over its own connections to slavery.

Like most imperial cities, Edinburgh is littered with Victorian monuments to obscure military figures and forgotten provosts. I’ve long believed that there should have been a clear-out, a sculptural triage – keeping the best in a museum or park and melting a few for scrap.

Alternatively, perhaps there could be a degree of monumental redistribution to reflect the changing moral climate. Why isn’t Joseph Knight himself considered worthy of representation – to mark the moment Scotland abolished domestic slavery?

Many of us would be happy to see monuments to the Scottish Radical Martyrs more prominently displayed in Scotland. There is one already but hardly anyone knows about it.

A 90ft obelisk devoted to the democracy campaigners the late 18th Century, like Thomas Muir and Thomas Palmer, stands neglected in the Old Calton Burial Ground in Edinburgh. How about putting that in a more prominent location?

Henry Dundas was no representative of the Scottish people. He was an unelected member of a privileged elite of landowners and businessmen who ruled Scotland and hoarded the wealth. Ordinary Scots had no say in what he did because they didn’t have the vote. The vast majority lived in poverty while the lords of land and trade built their palaces and erected monuments to their vanity.

The Scottish Radicals, inspired initially by the French Revolution and Tom Paine, sought to introduce universal suffrage and inspired the Chartist Movement. For their troubles they were transported to the colonies where most died. The man responsible for their miserable fate was one Henry Dundas.

They Scottish Martyrs put their lives on the line in the cause of freedom and ending slavery, but are largely forgotten in Scotland today. Let’s use this energy generated by the Black Lives Matter to educate Scots about this country’s contribution to slavery. And also its opposition to it.

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