THE last time I wrote for The National, we had just entered phase one of the Scottish Government’s roadmap for exiting lockdown. Or, to be accurate, when I was writing it, we were just about to enter phase one, and when it was published, we were into our first Saturday in many months where we were able to meet with other households.
The weather was great, people were excited to meet up with family and friends for the first time in months and, frankly, some people had a bit of a wild one. The weekend after was dreich and I reckon a lot of people had got their pent-up energy from months of lockdown out of their system the previous weekend. However, some still continue to act as though lockdown has ended.
Lockdown has not ended – you should still be staying at home as much as possible. You can meet with one household per day, outdoors and keeping a two-metre distance. Please, as another weekend arrives, do not be tempted to throw away all the work we have done in the past few months by breaking the rules now.
The trends continue to be positive; coronavirus cases continue to fall, numbers in intensive care are dropping, and the number of deaths is also, thankfully, continuing to go down. But it is so easy to undo that good work and set those numbers rising again than it is to keep them down. Stay home, save lives.
Similarly, shortly before I wrote my latest column for The National, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. This sparked huge protests that resonated around the world.
In Syria, artists painted a moving mural of George Floyd including his last words: “I can’t breathe.” There is video of this killing, and I’m sure almost everyone reading has seen at least part of it by now. It sickened me to my stomach, so I can’t imagine how any person of colour felt as they watched it.
It is not, of course, the first time that something like this has happened, nor is it the first time it has been filmed and shared for the world to see. But, in a world in economic decline, with huge numbers of people newly out of work, facing the existential threat of a virus we cannot currently cure and a climate emergency, it seems that some of the factors that normally lead to people being unable to continue the fight after a short burst of intense protest have crumbled.
Protests are still taking place daily in America, despite threats from Donald Trump to use the American military against American citizens on American soil (that good old Land of the Free, eh?).
READ MORE: Black Lives Matter: Every Scottish street linked to slave-trade revealed
Protests have also continued in the UK, including citizens pulling down a statue in Bristol of slave trader Edward Colston, before pushing it down to the harbour and dumping it in. For what it’s worth, the statue has now been removed from the harbour and will be placed in a museum, keeping the messages protesters sprayed on it intact.
This statue discourse has led to the most upfront, and long overdue, discussion I’ve witnessed about the UK (and yes, that does include Scotland) and the part we played in the slave trade.
The UK’s ties to the slave trade are far-reaching and all around us, from the statue of Edward Colson in Bristol to far closer to home.
In George Square in Glasgow there are statues of slavers and many of the streets are named after those who made money off the back of slaves. Even in my own constituency there have been calls to rename some buildings and parks that are named in honour of slavers.
I was asked my opinion on this by journalists over the last few days and, frankly, it seems to me that now is the perfect time to have a reckoning with our history. To ensure that we teach it accurately, diversely, while making an effort not to honour and celebrate those who built their wealth through the kidnap, buying and selling of human beings.
Importantly, I must state that as a pale white person it is not my place to take charge of this conversation. Other voices that have been silenced too long have much more authority on the matter than I ever could.
So, what I will be doing, and what I think all white people should be doing as we move forward, is listening to the voices of people of colour.
Not simply hearing what is being said, but by truly listening. If you are speaking and saying anything other than “Black Lives Matter” then you aren’t doing it correctly.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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