Highland clearances, are Scotland getting an apology for them?

Question

With the apologies for the Slave trade being banded about, is Tony Blair prepared to apologise for this atrocicty.

Oh just in case anyone got me wrong im Canadian, i live and work in Scotland and just happened to read an article on this. The Scots who cleared the Highlands were flying the English flag at Culloden and fighting on the side of the Crown.

Answer 1

We perhaps ought to, not just for the clearances, which were an atrocity in themselves but also for the terrible massacre of the Highlanders by the Duke of Cumberland and his men. This included mass rape and the slaughter of innocent children and culminated in Culloden which was a bloodbath.
Unfortunately there were a lot of lowland Scots fighting on the English side. So any apologies shouldn't be confined to the English.

Answer 2

This has obviously touched a few raw nerves.

I am ambivalent about the history (I have no connection to it) but, I have to be honest that my recollection of my studies of the period would tend towards the Clearances actually being carried out by Scottish land-owners (albeit that they did employ some experienced English "factors" to do the dirty work).

I remember these names coming up as being those that were heavily involved in the Clearances. Could someone tell me if they are English.....or, as I think, Scottish ?

Admiral John Ross of Balnagowan Castle
MacLeod of Dunvegan
Elizabeth Gordon, 19th Countess of Sutherland
Alasdair Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry

............and I have to be honest, why do we feel the need to apologise for something that we, ourselves, did not do and could not prevent? Such an apology is meaningless, surely, and changes nothing.

Answer 3

Apologies only mean something if they are made by the people who perpetrated an event. Instead of making apologies for things that have happened in the past it would be far better to learn from the past and try to make a difference in stopping some of the terrible things that are happening around the world, here and now.

Answer 4

Being of scotish heritag I often wonder the same thing!!

the "in thing" at the moment seems to be aplogising for past atrocities.
Im Australian and we have to do it to the aboriginals continuously. The americans do it to the indians... the japanese to the chinese and everyone else during the war.. etc etc etc etc...

but when it gets down to it, every single ethnic group on earth has experienced something bad at the hands of another.

All this apologising becomes somewhat prejudice and insulting when not every group recieves one - like the scots.

bottom line... time to get over it or we will be apologising til the end of time.
Its only use these days is entirely political... the actual apology means nothing.
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Answer 5

The slave trade was a legal activity when it was being carried out. What was their to apologise about?

They won't be getting the Arabs and Africans who were providing the slaves to apologise, will they.

Anybody can apologise but they don't have to believe it when they do. It is an act of appeasment to the bleeding heart liberals that we are allowing to set the agenda on our thought processes.

Answer 6

The Scottish Highland Clearances were an activity carried out by the Scottish Aristocracy, Clan Chiefs and major land owners. It really had nothing to do with say the English. There was an opportunity for land owners in the Highlands to make more money from sheep than the Crofters who rented the land. Many such crofters were in any event simply relocated to another piece of land within the estate where they 'rented'. Many of those who left the Highlands made good elsewhere in spite of the deprivation which was caused. The result of all of this was a much richer Scotland.

There is going to be no apology.

Answer 7

NO

The highlands were cleared of people to make way for sheep because the English market demand was very high.

However the people doing the clearing were the SCOTTISH landowners with their eyes on the profit.

My family was cleared out in 1826 and have been born and bred in England ever since. We have worked the coal mines and served in the armed forces and generally got on with our lives.

I decided to go to Aberdeen university in1998 and the Racism I met there because of my English accent was appalling. I don't mind a bit of Anglo bashing from the Scots, national pastime and all that, but the difference between what I was expecting and what I encountered was unbelievable.

One of the thing that was thrown at me repeatedly as a representative of the Fu*king english was the issue of the Highland Clearences.

Learn Your History.

Your own people shafted you but its more fun to blame the southerners.

Grow up get a life and you can stuff your apology.

Answer 8

If it comes to that, who's going to apologise for The Enclosure Acts which stole common land from the English agrarian poor?

Answer 9

I do wish people would stop apologising for things they didn't do. It's rather too easy to do, and it's meaningless.

Now, if he wants to apologise for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I'll be listening.

Answer 10

I don't believe he's apologised for the slave trade. Anyway, Tony B was born and educated in Scotland. So was Mr Broon. I'd rather have someone like the Queen apologise as it was her ancestors who perpetrated the crime.

Clive H, you're an idiot. And wrong. Bet their weren't any Jacobites in your family! Plenty in mine and we killed plenty English.

jennylee, I don't think it's because of your English accent that you were ridiculed and made an example of, I think it's because your quite obviously so far up your own **** you've lost sight of the ground. Go back to England