If Glasgow University Is Serious About Slavery Reparations, It Would Pay Those Still Affected

A walk through the streets of Glasgow is proof of what slave labour made possible in Scotland. Merchant City, the posh part of town, was named for the men who grew rich off tobacco, cotton, and sugar. Its stunning architecture was funded by the backbreaking work of enslaved Black people. Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art was originally built as a mansion for William Cunninghame, a tobacco merchant. Buchanan Street, Glassford Street, Ingram Street, Oswald Street – each is a tribute to the Tobacco Lords whose ill-got fortunes flowed through the city. 

Yes, there is intense poverty in Glasgow. But there is also extreme wealth – and its source was systematic, brutal violence against black people. Jackie Kay is not wrong when she says that Scotland still has a long way to go when it comes to unpacking our colonial legacy. The poet Makar points out that Scotland is yet to “grow up” and accept accountability for mistreating people of colour.

On the surface, it looks like the Glasgow University is starting to take responsibility for its stake in the enslavement of black people. But it will also be the main beneficiary of the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research. I can’t help but feel that creating this centre does more to bolster the university’s liberal image than serve restorative justice.

If the establishment truly wanted to provide reparations through education, they could have given the money directly to the University of the West Indies to spend as they see fit, or used it to fund full scholarships for generations of African and Caribbean international students. Instead, the University of Glasgow has named and prioritised its institution first in this project.

Reparations are meant to redress the structural and profound financial imbalances created by the slave trade, not to boost the reach and status of a western university. Campaigns for reparations exist because that money has the power to improve not only the quality but the very length of lives in which the material harms of Britain’s imperialism are still felt to this day. And no university venture, however well intended, has the scope to right one of the world’s most horrifying wrongs.

Claire Heuchan is an author and essayist who blogs as Sister Outrider