Mike Wade: 'Do not forget role of Scots in slave trade'
[Mike Wade writes for the Times.]
In the bar of an Edinburgh hotel, Geoff Palmer is hooting with laughter. After decades toiling away in the drinks industry, that most masculine of trades, he is amazed to find he is suddenly something of a ladies' man.
A year ago, he gave a lecture on Scotland and the Caribbean slave trade to 2,000 women from the Church of Scotland Guild. They were enraptured; now wherever he goes, a tweedy woman will be ready to accost and tell him how wonderful he is. “There's nowhere to hide, they always find me,” he laughs.
It seems faintly ridiculous that such a engaging man should be cast as a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad. Yet Palmer has recently become a thorn in the side of the SNP administration, one of the fiercest critics of Homecoming Scotland, its £5 million tartan, golf and whisky tourism initiative for 2009 which has been aimed at people described as expatriate “affinity Scots”.
“'Affinity Scots?'” Palmer growls in disbelief. “They mean 'affinity Scots with money'. No Scot I know would use those words.
“Affinity means white money and this is all aimed at wealthy Americans. But you could go to Jamaica, and find as many Scottish towns as there are in Scotland: Glasgow, Dundee, Inverness. In fact, why not hold Homecoming Scotland in the Caribbean?”
Palmer, 68, was born and brought up in Jamaica, but has lived in Scotland since 1964 (“in other words, longer than Sean Connery”).
Two years ago he retired as professor of grain science at Heriot-Watt University, where in the course of a distinguished career he compiled the standard work on beer and whisky-making.
Even in retirement he still regularly advises the industry giants. “You should inform Mr Salmond that he has insulted his leading expert on whisky,” he says with mock solemnity, before subsiding into laughter.
For all his good humour, there is a gravity to his message. Palmer's quest is to make the Scottish government and VisitScotland, its tourism agency, understand that Jamaica should feature prominently in any “Homecoming” campaign, because Scotland's imprint is all over the island.
This is a moment, he says, for Scots to get to grips with an untold history, a past which still divides the world today.
His focus is slavery and its legacy, which has left most of modern Jamaica in poverty while Scotland, whatever the talk of credit crunch, still basks in the glow of prosperity...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
In the bar of an Edinburgh hotel, Geoff Palmer is hooting with laughter. After decades toiling away in the drinks industry, that most masculine of trades, he is amazed to find he is suddenly something of a ladies' man.
A year ago, he gave a lecture on Scotland and the Caribbean slave trade to 2,000 women from the Church of Scotland Guild. They were enraptured; now wherever he goes, a tweedy woman will be ready to accost and tell him how wonderful he is. “There's nowhere to hide, they always find me,” he laughs.
It seems faintly ridiculous that such a engaging man should be cast as a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad. Yet Palmer has recently become a thorn in the side of the SNP administration, one of the fiercest critics of Homecoming Scotland, its £5 million tartan, golf and whisky tourism initiative for 2009 which has been aimed at people described as expatriate “affinity Scots”.
“'Affinity Scots?'” Palmer growls in disbelief. “They mean 'affinity Scots with money'. No Scot I know would use those words.
“Affinity means white money and this is all aimed at wealthy Americans. But you could go to Jamaica, and find as many Scottish towns as there are in Scotland: Glasgow, Dundee, Inverness. In fact, why not hold Homecoming Scotland in the Caribbean?”
Palmer, 68, was born and brought up in Jamaica, but has lived in Scotland since 1964 (“in other words, longer than Sean Connery”).
Two years ago he retired as professor of grain science at Heriot-Watt University, where in the course of a distinguished career he compiled the standard work on beer and whisky-making.
Even in retirement he still regularly advises the industry giants. “You should inform Mr Salmond that he has insulted his leading expert on whisky,” he says with mock solemnity, before subsiding into laughter.
For all his good humour, there is a gravity to his message. Palmer's quest is to make the Scottish government and VisitScotland, its tourism agency, understand that Jamaica should feature prominently in any “Homecoming” campaign, because Scotland's imprint is all over the island.
This is a moment, he says, for Scots to get to grips with an untold history, a past which still divides the world today.
His focus is slavery and its legacy, which has left most of modern Jamaica in poverty while Scotland, whatever the talk of credit crunch, still basks in the glow of prosperity...