PRIME Minister David Cameron’s visit to Jamaica may not have generated the publicity he was hoping for, but it was quite helpful in revealing his refusal to consider UK reparations to Jamaica for past involvement in slavery. Pity that, considering his own family’s benefit from slavery to the tune of £3 million payment for the loss of slaves.

Professor Geoff Palmer’s suggestion of developing a Scottish/Jamaica Project in the way the Scottish Government has developed links with Malawi, seems to me a very practical and positive idea ("Call for Scotland to atone for decades of slavery in Jamaica", The Herald, October 2).

Just as the links with Malawi had their roots in Empire and missionary activity, a similar Jamaica project could well develop educational and health links that could produce better long-term benefits, than a one-off payment to salve the uneasy conscience.

I also believe there is a case for considering the setting up a Scottish Slavery Museum that could include information about the many Scottish victims that were sentenced to years of indentured Labour in the Colonies in the 18/19th centuries.

This is not to diminish the horrors of the Jamaican slave plantations but to widen the parameters of that history. Liverpool has developed a marvellous museum about slavery that is always full of school children and tourists from all over the world.

It would be an opportunity to bring together exhibitions of some of the paintings and artefacts of the Glasgow merchants of the wealthy tobacco families, from Jamaican plantations, and mansions across Scotland that were built on the profits of slavery.

There are many ways to develop an anti-racist, diverse, multi-cultural, multi-faith Scotland. A project of this kind could add to this process by acknowledging these shadows from the past and developing a creative and positive narrative for our future.

Maggie Chetty,

36 Woodend Drive,

Glasgow.