It's time to stop honouring despot Dundas

I read with dismay the Evening News report today that the council are planning to refurbish the statue of former Scottish Home Secretary Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, in the centre of St Andrews Square.

Can I suggest when they take him down they make the arrangement permanent?

Dundas enjoys two very prominent statues in St Andrews Square which is pretty disturbing when he personally ran one of the most politically repugnant and corrupt administrations in Scotland's history!

It was Dundas's brother Robert who as Lord Advocate arranged to send Edinburgh lawyer Thomas Muir to Botany Bay for the 'crimes' of demanding universal suffrage, reform of the British House of Commons and Scottish independence.

The Dundas brothers and their allies claimed that the British constitution was 'the finest in the world' and there was no need to change it despite the fact that it was blatantly rotten with corruption and wholesale bribery and he and his brother were forced to regularly use troops against their own countrymen to maintain the established order.

Henry and Robert Dundas ran a huge network of spies and in a recent book by Hector MacMillan (Handful of Rogues - Thomas Muir's enemies of the people) it is explained that they even went so far as to execute one of their own informers to ensure a high profile conviction for sedition!

Sadly, since Edinburgh council is today led by Labour politicians who take a similar approach to Scotland's national rights as the Dundas brothers did, I'm sure they will be happy to resurrect this shameful statue to this corrupt British despot, just as they have blocked any plans to commemorate Edinburgh's James Connolly in the city.

Hopefully next year Henry Dundas and the racist imperialist state he represented in Scotland as 'North Britain' will be finally and completely consigned to the dustbin of history. When that happens hopefully all the assorted statues of the exalted ruffians of the British Empire which are scattered all over Edinburgh will be discarded as well.