I am a person with a West Indian heritage living in Scotland, so your article “Pressure grows for Scotland to pay slavery reparations” (News, last week) raises some interesting issues for me. Like many West Indians in the UK and the West Indies, my DNA analysis and my family history indicate that I am descended from both slaves and slave owners.
No part of me is entitled to feel a victim of the evils of slavery as I felt none of the pain. Similarly, I feel no shame as I did not perpetrate any of this evil.
Payment of reparations by our government or institutions would mean that some people in this country descended from slaves would, in effect, be funding reparations to citizens in well-functioning democracies, some of them descended from slave owners.
In the same edition, Kevin Pringle (Comment) rightly mentions “the entrenched inequality that continues to characterise the global economy” and urges that “we ought to meet our responsibilities as a nation . . . even under devolution”.
Overseas aid from rich countries such as the UK should be targeted where it can be best used to alleviate the suffering and inequality of people alive today — which may well include some of our former colonies. Aid will be most effective as part of a UK-wide co-ordinated programme — and not used politically by devolved administrations to appear more caring or moral than our representatives in Westminster.
Mark Openshaw, Aberdeen
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Ignore the agitators
Pringle suggests that Scotland, as well as the UK, has a slavery debt. But while slavery was going on, people in this country were going down mines, climbing up chimneys and crawling under looms, enjoying a life expectancy of about 45. In this context, it is difficult to ask their descendants, who have never had slaves, to pay compensation to people who have never been slaves.
The UK sends humanitarian aid all around the world. Community cohesion will not be helped by agitators telling us that we are bad and that other countries, with their own historical drawbacks, are our victims. Is there an end to victimology? Should our government be pleading for reparations from Italy for the Romans, or Scandinavia for the Vikings?
John Leonard, Falkirk
CAESAREANS A NECESSITY FOR MANY
Your front-page report says that more than a third of mothers now “choose” to have their baby by caesarean section, giving the impression that Scottish women are “too posh to push” (News, last week).
My husband and I “chose” an elective caesarean after our baby was found to be breech at eight months and a procedure to turn him was unsuccessful. We were advised that this was the safest option and that trying a natural birth carried serious risk to the baby. I was glad I made this “choice” when our son weighed in at nearly ten pounds.
Several friends “chose” emergency C-sections, being wheeled into operating theatres after more than a day of labour when their babies were found to be in distress. According to NHS Inform, this is far from rare. Emergency C-sections account for about one in six births — roughly half the total of caesareans.
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There are, of course, some reasons to be concerned at the rising percentage of caesarean births in Scotland. But it would be helpful to clarify that most of these “choices” were made following medical advice — often in life-or-death situations.
Hazel Close, Edinburgh