Thank you for having me

The National and the National on Sunday run extensive letter pages and the letters are often pretty good. Last Sunday, I saw this:

<<I am surprised that, in all the kerfuffle over the British involvement in slavery, nobody has objected to the office of the Secretary of State for Scotland being headquartered at 1 Melville Crescent.>>

 No, don't google it! I've done it for you.

Here he is: Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville. And he has this distinction:

<<The 150ft Melville Monument in St Andrew Square honours 18th Century politician Henry Dundas, who delayed the abolition of the slave trade.>>

I could google some more and find Old Henry's life story on wikipedia, but why would I bother? I didn't know anything about the man before and I don't need to know any more about him now. 

Remember the old saying: In this life, you can serve as a wonderful example or a dire warning. I know which camp Old Henry is in. 

He can make no difference to most of us now, except to make us promise that for the sake of our children and grandchildren we will not allow people like this to live among us from now on. We won't collect money to put up monuments to them (no, I don't know if that's what actually happened but I'd put money on it). We won't name streets after them and we won't let them get rich on the bodies of poor Africans. We won't glorify what people like him did to make money and we won't kid ourselves for centuries that this was normal - or that we didn't know about it. 

All these 'nos ' and 'nots' are depressing, aren't they, so let's be positive. 

Here's what we will do: we will take Scotland's history out of the hands of the National Trust and private museums and lords and lairds. We will ask real historians to evaluate the stories about Scotland's past that we've all grown up with and tell us the truth. We will evaluate our national languages, national literature - our national culture - so that anyone who is interested can see who we are and where we came from. 

We will stop saying: 'I wasn't taught any of this at school' and go and find things out for ourselves. We will stop thinking that Robert the Bruce learned a lesson from watching a spider in a cave on Arran. We will learn why Fort William in Gaelic is called 'an Gearasdan'. Short answer? The Gaels have a better understanding of what it feels like to be a conquered people than the rest of us do. 

We will stop thinking of ourselves as being in any way connected to - never mind dependent on - the UK and take control of our lives.