Can Edinburgh really blame Henry Dundas for the evils of slavery?

In March 2021, in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matters protests, Edinburgh City Council approved plans to install a new plaque on the Melville monument to Henry Dundas in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh. Part of the text referred to ‘the more than half-a-million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.’ Now, bitter controversy rages in the Scottish press about the historical accuracy of those words and whether Dundas deserves to be held solely responsible for the evils of continuing the slave trade.

A leading figure in the government of Prime Minister William Pitt, Dundas (later Lord Melville) was Secretary of State for the Home Office, Secretary of War, and First Lord of the Admiralty. He spoke during parliamentary debates on abolition of the British slave trade, including in 1792 when he proposed an amendment for gradual delay when the House of Commons was set to yet again reject William Wilberforce’s proposal for immediate abolition.