TODAY will see the final meeting of Full Council this term.

It will also be the first council meeting since February 2020 where a councillor can attend in person in the grandeur of the City Chambers.

Inevitably there will be an “end of term” atmosphere, there always is at the final meeting. For some councillors, it will be their last hurrah after decades of service. Quite a number are standing down and will not be candidates in May. Still, others fully intend to return, but the electorate may have other ideas.

We will, however, be considering one quite literally historic item of business. Dr Stephen Mullen of Glasgow University was commissioned some time ago to prepare a report on our behalf into Glasgow’s connections to the slave trade. His report has now been published and will be presented to council during our morning session.

READ MORE: Eight Glasgow statues singled out for links to slave trade, report revealed

Glasgow’s intimate connection to slavery and the exploitation of enslaved people has long been ignored or deliberately understated. It is only in the past few years that serious historians, such as Dr Mullen and Prof Tom Devine, have seriously begun to assess and recount Scotland’s connections to slavery and the profits and benefits that flowed into Scotland as a result of that involvement.

When I first started studying Scottish history one of the standard textbooks was A Scottish History for Today. I still have my copy. Slavery has only one significant mention. The tone and content of what is said is utterly astonishing: “But many folk in Britain were probably much worse off than slaves. A master usually saw that his slaves were housed and fed properly, because they were his property. He had paid for them, and he did not want to let them become ill and unfit to work.” This was the work of two trained historians. This was taught in Scottish schools well into the 1970s.

READ MORE: 62 Glasgow street names and areas with links to slave trade

The murder of George Floyd in 2020 in the US set off a chain of protests on both sides of the Atlantic and led to widespread demands for a reappraisal of the historic legacy of slavery. The toppling of the statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston in June 2020 highlighted the particular connection of cities such as Bristol and Glasgow to that trade.

Dr Mullen’s report catalogues the deeply ingrained legacy of the slave trade and slave-based economics still visible today in Glasgow for those who care to look. Many of the streets and statues, gifts and endowments, buildings and parklands, enjoyed by Glasgow citizens in the 21st century, are all connected to slavery to a greater or lesser extent.

In 119 pages of meticulously researched evidence, Dr Mullen lays bare our shared past and the inheritance which surrounds us to this very day.

Dr Mullen does not set out any personal recommendations. He is at pains to point out: “I am not a resident of Glasgow. I am not entitled to provide a view on how to deal with these legacies in any future consultation; that is up to the politicians and citizenry of the city.”

I sincerely hope that our final meeting today accepts the report in its entirety. I also hope that we will unanimously agree, as the administration has proposed, that we apologise on behalf of the city fully and unreservedly to the descendants of enslaved people and the nations they came from.

After generations of denial, the time has come to recognise our history and to own its consequences.