Experts have rejected claims that the legacy of David Livingstone, the explorer and abolitionist, is tainted by links to slavery.
The Glasgow Slavery Audit, commissioned by the city council, has examined any historical links of monuments, streets and buildings to colonialism and slavery. The council will now consider further actions, including the removal of statues.
Livingstone’s statue, which stands in Cathedral Square, was highlighted by the report’s author, Stephen Mullen, as the explorer worked as a boy at Blantyre Mill, which used cotton from the West Indies slave trade.
Natalie Milor, curator of the David Livingstone Trust, said: “The report is not correct in comparing Livingstone’s involvement with that of others who did directly profit from enslaved people. It’s not the same thing.” She also pointed out that Livingstone spent the majority of his life working to end the trade.
“In terms of the work Dr Mullen has done, we fully support research that helps us learn more about this and help Scotland face up to its history and we do agree that people should talk about the justification for statues in public places. However, we believe his statue should remain because of his status as a life-long abolitionist.”
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The Livingstone biographer Stephen Tomkins, author of David Livingstone: The Unexplored Story, was also critical of the report’s approach, which he said was far-fetched. “Livingstone as a child working for a mill was not responsible for the global economics linking their working of cotton to the slave trade.”
Tomkins did acknowledge that Livingstone’s enthusiastic support for the British Empire was problematic for some people, but the biographer said even this was motivated by abolitionist beliefs. “He was deeply engaged in fighting the slave trade and was keen on the establishment of the British Empire in Africa as a way of making sure that rogue slave traders would come under the authority of the Empire and put a stop to their activities.”
More criticism of the report came from the historian Sir Tom Devine, who said it was impressive in its thoroughness but that the section on Livingstone was ludicrous. “Livingstone’s only fault was he was a famous person,” Devine said. “He was a poor young worker in a cotton mill using raw materials that just happened to be produced by slavery.
“Every nook and cranny of Scottish life in the 18th and 19th centuries was directly or indirectly affected by the slave connection through sugar, cotton and tobacco. It was no fault of his own — and by that criterion everybody in Scotland was guilty.”
