THANK you for Rob Gibson’s letter (June 11) about the outline planning permission requested by my late husband Peter Findlay and his good friend Sandy Lindsay. This was to be allowed to remove the statue of the Duke of Sutherland and put it in the garden of Dunrobin Castle and replace it on the plinth with a colossal Celtic cross. How this Herculean task was to be achieved Peter, being a civil engineer, had no doubt worked out!
For oddly enough, this statue is the largest to any man in Europe. The Duke was from an immensely wealthy English family and may, like Henry Dundas, have married his wife for her dowry, the vast land of Sutherland. But he had never known its people, he did not understand their language and did not share their Christian fidelity. His interest seems to have been chiefly economic, replacing a cattle-keeping people with sheep-stock.
READ MORE: Letters, June 11
Whether he or his factors were more to blame, they cleared the people out and shipped them ruthlessly to the "new world".
However, the people of Sutherland were not sold into slavery. The situation for the Africans, who were sold as slaves, was a thousand times worse. Perhaps one similarity is that the conditions on the boats were so appalling that many Highlanders never arrived.
A Celtic cross would be a fitting memorial to the Highlanders cleared from Sutherland.
Lesley J Findlay
Fort Augustus
THE real memorial to the clearances is Gerald Laing’s family group in which he depicts the feelings of “loss, disorientation and anxiety” caused by all human displacements. It stands by the entrance to Helmsdale on the A9 for all to see.
The year after it was unveiled, its twin was unveiled in the new Kildonnan in Winnipeg by the banks of the Red River, where Sutherland families arrived in 1814 and 1815.
This is the statue that brings tears to the eyes when we remember what it represents. It was mainly financed by Dennis Macleod, who left Sutherland in 1960 and finally settled in Canada.
Catriona Grigg
Embo
YOUR feature on “The statues that shame Scotland” was certainly interesting in providing a list of some of our civic monuments; but does nobody see an unbecoming element of what I believe is called “virtue-signalling” in the process of ferreting through the lives of the individuals commemorated by statues in order to expose their connections with the slave trade, or other discreditable historical facts such as the Boer War concentration camps?
Most of the men listed in the article (perhaps not all, the Duke of Sutherland and Henry Dundas being the most likely exceptions) were individuals of real distinction in their fields, whose positive achievements are the reason for their having been honoured in this way.
READ MORE: Do not forget the Duchess of Sutherland's role in the Clearances
Thomas Carlyle, one of the most capacious intellects of the Scottish Enlightenment whose statue apparently “shames” his country, wrote that all heroes are flawed, and that the “greatness” of outstanding individuals does not consist in moral perfection. Perhaps we should consider this point before knocking his statue down.
Incidentally, Wellington Square, where the statue of James George Smith Neill stands, is in Ayr, not Glasgow.
Derrick McClure
Aberdeen
THE insult of the recent defacing of the statue of Sir Winston Churchill is peanuts when compared to the insult inflicted by the far-right-supported UK Government to his deep conviction that only a united Europe would be able to stand up to Russia and play a significant role on the world.
The recent announcement by Mr Gove that the Brexit negotiations phase will not be extended is a slap in the face of two unions: the European Union, which is the embodiment and condition of peace in Europe, and the British Union, of which the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales were told by implication that the views of two nations of the United Kingdom made no difference to him at all. These are insults that we should really worry about.
Dirk Bolt
Aberfeldy
REGARDING the discussion about statues, as to whether “bad” people’s statues should be taken down or left up, why not take them down but leave a plaque on the base saying who this was and what was done, and put up also on the base a statue of a “good” person with a plaque saying who this was and what had been done. The comparison of the two plaques would be useful.
Also, change the “good” statue and plaque every few years. There are many people deserving of this.
Maybe even a local vote to say who should come down and put up.
Willie Haines
Edinburgh
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