‘Clearance’ acts now as a portmanteau word, a spark for a whole set of political and emotional responses, demonstrating the importance of language in this debate. It is worth remembering that ‘clearance’ as a term was not used regularly by contemporaries, but became established in the later nineteenth century: the terms evictions or expulsions were more commonly used before that. The Clearances are part of this much larger discussion and constitute a major element in the competing perceptions, mentalities, emotions and assumptions of what we understand modernity to be. 3 There has not been and will likely never be any consensus or resolution in this debate, because there is no simple answer to the question of what to do about the demands and costs of development which confronted all peasant societies in the industrial and imperial era in Britain, Ireland and Europe. It has become one of the symbols of the disagreement about what the Clearances were, what they did and what that means today: as such it is a cultural cypher but also one rooted in contemporary and future economic and political realities.
This statue has become a conduit for the acrimonious debate – public, political and academic – about the Clearances it has been attacked in print and in person and alternative statues have been raised. This statue has long focused the ire of those who remember the impact of the house of Sutherland in a very different way: as the most prominent perpetrators of the great tragedy of Scotland's modern history, the Highland Clearances. One such statue can be found near the small town of Golspie in Sutherland, the so-called ‘Wee Mannie’ honouring the first duke of Sutherland in an inscription from his grateful tenantry. The past few years have seen major controversies in the West around the place and symbolism of historical statues, often of individuals who act as lightning rods for difficult national and colonial histories. Introduction: ‘a history of controversy and deep cleavage of feeling’ 2
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