MY childhood memories are dominated by visits to “the museum” on Chambers Street in Edinburgh. I was in awe of a “totem pole” sited on the ground floor that seemingly went all the way to the roof. Long before I knew anything about the Elgin Marbles or the Kohi-I-Noor diamond, my parents had explained about artefacts, vandalism, looting and cultural appropriation, though those words weren’t common currency then.

It was normally wrapped up as part of “theft and colonialism’. So last year it was a fond but necessary farewell to the pole as it was returned home to the Nisga’a Nation in British Columbia, Canada. Or Glasgow and the ghost shirt? Yes, that too and more. It may take us some time, but we will get it sorted, eventually. Will London follow and well, are they the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles? Will they ever be returned? I suppose I could go on, tit for tat, so how about the Lewis Chessmen? Edinburgh or Lewis? Where should they be homed? Does it smart even more when a loss, a removal, is self-inflicted? When we do it to ourselves: acts of cultural vandalism?

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On Monday George Kerevan wrote about the closure of The People’s Story in Edinburgh. How very sad! But I must acknowledge a connection. Friends and communities of mine, some of whom I worked closely with, were pictured in a large pictorial near the museum entrance. Not kings, not queens, not “nobility” with their riches, but the workers, the ordinary folks whose labour made the profits for others. People who helped “make’”the culture of the city: their present, now our past, our history. And for what? To save “less than 1% of the budget deficit?” The implications, in the round, must be that the artefacts, the stories, the history of those people, their streets, factories, their cultures, are expendable.

I appreciate that there is no direct equivalence between that which is happening across Palestine and my memories or George Kerevan’s poignant article, but in the genocide currently happening in the Middle East, what of the deliberate and wanton cultural destruction going on there? Yes, people first, but Palestine was no wasteland before, far from it, and an earlier count from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture reported that 207 out of 320 heritage buildings and sites had been reduced to rubble.

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It’s been confirmed that as early as October 2023, one of the most significant losses was the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, considered to have been the world’s third-oldest church. Not just the church itself was lost, but at least 18 Christian Palestinians taking shelter there were murdered. That action been called out as a war crime by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem when he accused the Israeli military of targeting the church and the civilians sheltering there.

It has been discussed and sadly evidenced before that when a people have their language derided and downgraded, there is a loss: the spoken words become a memory, and worse, someone else’s memory before that too fades. Books, written words become “dead languages” to be studied, not spoken, not used every day. When your music, your art, your culture is removed from the public domain, it culminates in the removal of your specific identity. You become that footnote in history.

So, City of Edinburgh, over to you.

Selma Rahman
Edinburgh

SADLY it only warranted a small article in Tuesday’s National headed “About 100 jobs to go as firm shuts”. Albion Automotive based in Scotstoun will close on Friday, less than a year after the company celebrated its 125th anniversary.

It was founded on December 30, 1899, as the Albion Car Company Ltd. The company’s radiator symbol was a rising sun and its marketing slogan was “sure as the sunrise”. Albion was a significant employer of generations of local people, producing and developing engines and vehicles during both world wars and into the late 20th century.

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In contrast, I watched with interest the recent TV series on the day-to-day operation of CalMac ferries. One of their largest ferries had spent a considerable amount of time in dry dock and in a last-gasp effort to get it back into service its propeller shaft had to be sent to Denmark for repair. One of their smaller ferries had to wait for 15 weeks for a replacement part for one of its engines to be fabricated.

I struggle to think of anyone from my current family, friends, neighbours or acquaintances who now works in a manufacturing industry of any kind. Over the decades we, both Scotland and the UK, have become nations of service industries. We import almost all our basic requirements ready made, and run up annual balance-of-payments deficits to add to our already massive national debt now approaching three trillion pounds. This is very near 100% of the UK’s GDP (it was 30% 20 years ago) and equates to about £40,000 per person. The impending closure of our only oil refinery at Grangemouth is virtually the last nail in Scotland’s industrial coffin.

Looking around the room, the only item I can see which is manufactured in the UK, let alone Scotland, is my chocolate digestive biscuit.

Brian Lawson
Paisley