FOR the last 180 years, the Duke of Sutherland’s likeness had stood on the top of Ben Bhraggie, looking down over the lands where, in his name, thousands of Highlanders were evicted from their homes.

The Mannie, as it’s known locally, has long been one of Scotland’s most controversial statues, and attempts, some legal and some not quite-so-legal, have been made over the years to see it taken down.

With debate raging over the future of Confederate statues in the US, some are starting to look again at the monuments littered around Scotland, and ask if they’re worthy of their place.

Two years back thousands signed a petition calling for the Mannie to be taken apart. There is, however, a surprising amount of local support for Sutherland’s statue to remain.

It would be crass to claim a similar context for any argument for toppling the Duke of Sutherland to what’s happening in the States.

Over there it’s partly a reaction to Dylan Roof, the White supremacist, who two years ago killed nine black Americans, and in pictures taken before his murderous rampage draped himself in the Confederate flag.

That led to politicians in South Carolina agreeing, eventually, to take down a Confederate flag that had flown over the state capital for years, which in turn led to other to states and cities thinking again about their own confederate symbols.

The other difference between there and here is that in the States some people support the statues remaining as they see the toppling as an attack on Southern pride, or they see Confederate General Robert E Lee as someone who deserves being immortalised in marble.

You would be hard-pushed to find many who would argue that George Granville Leveson-Gower, the Marquess of Stafford and 1st Duke of Sutherland is worthy of a statue, and certainly not the 100ft tall tribute, technically the largest portrait statue in Europe, that is visible for miles around.

He came to Scotland to marry the Duchess of Sutherland and become one of the 19th century’s richest men and biggest landlords.

Keen to “improve” the estates in a bid to make them more economically viable, the Sutherlands wanted to establish large-scale sheep farming. In order to do this, most of the tenants would need to be moved away to make room for the sheep runs.

The Sutherlands had hoped the dirt poor populace would be able make a decent living from fishing on the coast. The tenants weren’t given much of a choice. The first eviction notices were handed out in 1814. Those who refused to go had the four walls around them burned to the ground, by notorious factor Patrick Sellar.

Some estimates say as many as 15,000 people were cleared from their houses on the Sutherland’s estates.

Now the region is the least populated in the UK. The sheep farming, bar a couple of fruitful years, was also a failure.

When the Duke died, his commissioner, John Loch, proposed putting a statue in the estate, and making the people who lived their pay.

All those who could pay did and those who didn’t “awaited in terror for the consequence of their default,” a local stonemason claimed at the time.

In 1994, the late Sandy Lindsay, a retired councillor applied to Highland Regional Council to have statue demolished, broken into pieces and scattered on the hillside, so that people visiting a new monument in memory of the cleared could walk on Sutherland’s remains.

Lindsay said the Duke was “perhaps one of the most evil men there ever was”.

“Like Stalin and Hitler he destroyed people’s homes without cause. He has no honour in Scotland and he is despised in the Highlands,” he argued.

His bid to topple the Duke sparked debate in newspapers across the world, and he was offered support from all over the world.

Lindsay’s application was unsurprisingly thrown out, but the council agreed there should be an indicator board, detailing exactly what happened in the Duke’s name.

Rob Gibson, the former SNP MSP, and a colleague of Lindsay’s, has never been a fan of the statue, but says most people in Golspie now see it as part of their skyline.

“I think most people actually see it as a warning.

“It’s a warning about what happened and the Clearances that took place under their regime, that the Clearances should never be allowed to happen again.”