City council spends £200,000 on walking trail to illustrate the 'lasting impact of its role in the transatlantic slave trade'

By GRAHAM GRANT, SCOTTISH HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 11:33, 23 July 2026 | Updated: 11:34, 23 July 2026 Scotland's biggest city has set up a walking trail to illustrate the ‘lasting impact of its role in the transatlantic slave trade’. Glasgow City Council used taxpayers’ cash from a £200,000 ‘City Stories’ fund to set up the route which aims to ‘give residents and visitors a better understanding’ of the ‘past and its legacies’. The launch of a website linked with the project coincided with the Commonwealth Games getting under way in Glasgow, with the trail still under development. It will involve plaques in locations associated with slavery and colonialism, with QR codes which people can scan to get more background information online. Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland’s leading historian, said the trail will ‘add to the knowledge of Glasgow citizens and visitors alike of this controversial period of the city’s history’. But he said it was wrong that there was ‘no mention of the role of Glasgow intellectuals like Adam Smith and John Millar in undermining slavery’. Sir Tom said: ‘Nowhere is it stated that Glasgow was hardly involved in the Africa trade - the forced transportation of human beings to the colonies. ‘Rather the Scottish involvement was mainly via ownership and working of plantations and carriage of slave produced commodities like sugar, raw cotton and rum to the UK and Europe.’ He said the impact of the slave economies was ‘waning by the 1850s and had little effect on the great Glasgow heavy industries of Victorian times such as shipbuilding, coal mining and engineering’. The first phase of the Legacy of Slavery and Colonialism Trail takes in sites including the City Chambers, Merchant City, Trongate, and the Gallery of Modern Art, revealing how ‘wealth generated through slavery helped shape Glasgow’s growth and institutions’. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Glasgow merchants amassed fortunes through the tobacco, sugar and cotton trades, all of which the council said were closely linked to enslaved labour. The wealth generated through these industries had a ‘profound influence on the city’s economic, physical, social and political development’. The new trail has been ‘informed’ by the research of Dr Stephen Mullen, lecturer in History (Legacies of Atlantic Slavery) at the University of Glasgow, and builds on the work of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER), whose Black History Month walking tours have helped raise awareness of Glasgow’s connections to slavery. Councillor Susan Aitken, leader of SNP-run Glasgow City Council, said: ‘Glasgow’s history is rich, complex and, at times, deeply uncomfortable. ‘Many of Glasgow’s glories were built on a legacy of slavery and colonialism. ‘The consequences of that legacy for the descendants of enslaved and colonised people continue to this day, whether right here in Glasgow or in other parts of the world.’ The launch of a website linked with the project coincided with the Commonwealth Games getting under way in Glasgow Key locations on the trail include Glasgow City Chambers. Between 1636 and 1834, 40 Lord Provosts of Glasgow were connected to slavery. Cochrane Street, named in 1787 after Andrew Cochrane, a prominent Glasgow tobacco lord, was originally called Cotton Street. Ramshorn Kirk was the burial place of several tobacco lords, including Archibald Ingram, John Glassford and Andrew Buchanan, founder of the city’s first bank, the Ship Bank. Meanwhile, Trongate was home to a number of colonial merchants linked to slavery, with views towards the River Clyde where tobacco, sugar and cotton products arrived from across the Atlantic. Glassford Street was named after tobacco lord John Glassford, whose family portrait includes an unnamed enslaved child which is now displayed in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The Gallery of Modern Art was originally built as the Cunninghame Mansion for William Cunninghame, whose wealth came from the tobacco and sugar trades. The building later became a meeting place for the Glasgow West India Association, one of the largest pro-slavery lobbying groups outside London. Professor Gordon Graham, a philosopher and Anglican priest ordained in the Scottish Episcopal Church, said the initiative risked turning slaves into ‘passive subjects of contemporary lament and breast-beating’. He said: ‘It was slaves who built the pyramids… and thus left traces of their existence far more significant and enduring than many better human lives have done. ‘So too, it might be said, with Glasgow’s glories. ‘In acknowledging this, we don’t diminish the great evil of slavery, but we do herald slaves as more than objects of pity, guilt, and remorse.’ Scottish Tory culture spokesman Murdo Fraser said: 'Glasgow's history should be taught in a balanced and factual way, and if colonial history is to be highlighted then the leading role that Scots played in the abolition of slavery needs to be prominent, as well as the actions of the Royal Navy in disrupting the Atlantic slave trade. 'Moreover, at a time when residents are paying more in council tax while seeing frontline services cut, many will question whether this is the SNP administration's top priority. 'With roads crumbling, bins overflowing and local services under pressure, Glaswegians expect the council to focus on delivering the basics before spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on projects like this.'