Alex Renton & Geoff Palmer

Two personal stories - a descendant of slave owners and a descendant of enslaved people discuss how their actions help us to address Scotland’s colonial and slavery past.

Professor Sir Geoff Palmer OBE, a descendant of slavery in Jamaica, who was aged 15 when he joined his mother who had arrived on the Windrush in 1948, has been appointed to lead the group investigating the street names, monuments and buildings of Edinburgh. Sir Geoff, published author on the history of slavery in the West Indies, Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University and a leading anti-racism campaigner, has been closely involved with the current Black History debate and says: “Don’t take down statues – take down racism. If you remove the statue you remove the deed, and our statues are in the context of our history which must not be forgotten.”

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