The city of Glasgow is founded as much on slavery as the pride the people have for it. Many of our streets are named after slave owners, such as John Glassford, Andrew Buchanan and Archibald Ingram. As a city, it must be acknowledged that these plantation owners are not to be praised and we cannot function as an anti-racist community in Scotland while we still hold onto these plantation owners. We must recognise the slaves who were brutally forced into plantations in Jamaica and America, and let their names be known.

This petition aims to ask the Scottish Parliament and Glasgow City Council to make the history of these slave owners known. Whether by renaming the streets to honour those who deserve praise and fought for civil rights, by putting the names of the slaves who these men used to gain notoriety up there, or by further enforcing the history of the city of Glasgow and Scotland’s history of colonialism and slavery into education, something must be done. We must not abandon the past, but we must look at it through a clear lens, not obscured by pride in these men or pride in an Empire built on genocide and slavery.

Please sign this petition to make Glasgow an anti-racist city, and share it even further. Glasgow is a great city, but we cannot appreciate it fully while this history of white supremacy and racism is embedded into the names of the streets we walk.