Dear Editor
It is shameful to note reports that Edinburgh University has pulled the plug on financial support for a proposed £750,000 sculpture in the heart of the city’s Old Town, marking the capital’s historic links with the slave trade in the Caribbean.
This comes less than a year after a review of its own historic links to slavery and racism revealed that the university had received the equivalent of at least £30m in “philanthropic gifts” that can be traced to the profits of colonial commodities like tobacco, sugar and cotton.
Based on present-day earnings, that is equivalent to £202m today, or as much as £845m based on the UK’s growth in overall wealth and productivity since then.
The Edinburgh report found 27 specific endowments from donors directly linked to the slave trade and colonial profiteering. These were responsible for funding professorial chairs in music, agriculture, and engineering, as well as student bursaries, prizes, and scholarships. Funding also contributed to the construction of university buildings, including Old College, New College and the Medical School.
To put matters in context, in its most recent financial year, the university reported a surplus of £43 million on a total income of £1,477 million.
It is quite disgraceful that a university that has benefited so extensively from the wealth created on the back of slavery is not willing to contribute what is a relatively paltry sum to deliver a memorial to mark this hideous trade.
Yours faithfully
Alex Orr
2/3 Marchmont Road
Edinburgh EH9 1HZ
