Heritage Series Episode 3: Legacies of Colonialism

Content warning: this episode contains discussion about racism, chattel slavery and colonialism.
In this series of A Brew & A Blether, we’ll be talking about our experiences collaborating with Paisley Museum, poorhouses and poverty in Renfrewshire, the legacy of slavery in Scotland, and Section 28, LGBTQ+ education and representation.
In this episode we hear from 11-year-old Erin McAleer and her mum Leah McAleer who live in Lochwinnoch. As head of her house in P7, Erin campaigned to change the name of her school house from ‘McDowall’ after Colonel McDowall, a slave trader from Scotland who settled in Renfrewshire. Erin reads us an article written in the Kairos Chronicle by Leah about Cato’s story - a runaway enslaved child from McDowall’s estate in Castle Semple, documented in a newspaper clipping from the Caledonian Mercury (2nd February 1748) - and why this story deserves to be told. We will then hear an interview by Kairos volunteer Arti Gosai with Erin and Leah about their experiences as anti-racist campaigners and the wider implications of not acknowledging the brutal aspects of Renfrewshire’s past. We leave you with Laura Hamilton talking you through Renfrewshire Leisure's (now renamed One Ren) Frederick Douglass walking tour, which you can do in your own time to remember his work as an abolitionist campaigner and his time in Paisley in 1846.
Find more information about Colonel McDowall's involvement in the slave trade at: www.mearnshist...
Read the article by Leah McAleer in our Kairos Chronicle (Issue 4, October 2021): kairoswomen.or...
Find out about the One Ren Frederick Douglass walking tour here: educationteam7...
Pachedu is a charity working with Black and Minority Ethnic communities in Renfrewshire: pachedu.org/ab...
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