Matthew Lee, a PhD researcher on Scotland and the Caribbean slave trade says people in Scotland have begun to talk more about the country’s links to slavery (Photo: Albert Evans/inews) Matthew Lee, a Glaswegian PhD researcher from the University of Aberdeen who has been looking into Scottish figures who were involved in the slave trade, said: “Various scholars have talked about this idea of popular amnesia that Scots can have. That sense of cultural amnesia is something that numerous Scots fell prey to following Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1834. Although, given how little it’s mentioned in discussions about the trade, I may have overlooked it. I don’t particularly remember being in the dark about Scotland’s role in slavery either. I don’t remember being under any illusions about the reason that both sides of my family had ended up in the Caribbean, despite their ethnicity betraying clear ties to countries on the African continent.

Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade – the financial “perks” of which extend beyond slavery’s abolition (the Government only finished paying off its debts to beneficiaries of slavery in 2015) – has been apparent to me ever since I was a young child. But what is now apparent is that the wealth of information that could potentially tell me about my ancestors has been on my doorstep – well, almost – since well before I was born. A quick Google search some years later and I found that she was right on both counts: our surname was indeed Scottish, and a member of the Royal Family, the Duchess of Cornwall, was born Camilla Rosemary Shand. “Yeah right,” I thought, utterly unconvinced.

Kuba Shand-Baptiste was inspired inspired in her search by watching David Olusoga’s Black and British – A Forgotten History (Photo: David Levenson/Getty)

Grey mother the long dark