BLACK LIVES MATTER: Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, (born and died in Edinburgh, 1742-1811), was the most influential politician in the British Government of his time: Home Secretary, War Secretary, Chief Secretary for India, and First Lord of the Admiralty, arguably more powerful than his friend William Pitt the Younger (Prime Minister of the time). Dundas was among the most corrupt politicians Scotland has produced.
He supported Wilberforce’s Bill in parliament to abolish slave trading, but added the word ‘gradually’ as an amendment, in full knowledge that THIS ONE WORD would effectively anaesthetise the Bill, allowing the capturing and trading of another half million slaves for a further generation.
Dundas's monument dominates St Andrew Square in Edinburgh, and has no place in a modern Scotland. Many people say that you can't wipe out history, that such monuments should remain, and that a plaque on the pedestal, contextualising its presence would do the trick. How could it? The visual impact of this massive tribute to Henry Dundas literally praises to the skies all he represents. In being removed, the monument does not need to be vandalised - it could be placed in a museum, with its true history revealed, as part of what should be a permanent history of Scotland's significant role in the slave trade, and an educational exhibition about contemporary, global racism, such as the superb one at the museum of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. This action would be progressive and timely from those who hold power in Scotland's capital city and in the Scottish Government. I learned about Henry Dundas from reading 'The Enlightenment Abolished', by Geoff Palmer, Professor Emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and human rights activist, the first black professor in Scotland. It is time for Scotland to remove this obscene monument to an ugly part of Scotland's past.  BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville

You may bleat your outrage,

but it’s beneath me, and won’t take its toll.

I’m above all that, solid as my column,

and mighty as the Empire I strove to build –

I’m a Scot, after all, and can thole time’s weather.

Granted, we lost America under my watch,

but my sights were always high enough

to view the long game. Tell me this:

did your forebears complain

when my single-word amendment to the Bill

prolonged the slave trade’s gravy train?

They were content, I think, to sup with me

the profits for another generation.

I got things done – reined Ireland in,

took India, rolled out the penal colony

in Botany Bay, corralled South Africa,

my favourite child, into the fold:

Hear the ring of a global brand:

Melvillle, Dundas from land to land!

The winds of change might blow me down,

but I’ve earned the heft of every block

you’ve built to laud me on this plinth.

Poem by Gerda Stevenson, photo by Allan Wright.