A HOTEL chain has been accused of “insulting” Scotland after it used an image on its website of a neon sign saying: “We [love] the Highland Clearances.”
The Address Collective, which runs three hotels in Ireland, is looking to expand into Scotland and has a site due to open in Glasgow in late 2023.
Our sister title The National was contacted by a concerned reader who, when browsing the Address’s Glasgow website, spotted the picture of the neon signage.
On a section titled “Our offers”, the hotel uses the image showing signs which read “We [love] the Highland Clearances” and “We [love] Parsimony”, as well as “We [love] Robert Burns” and “We [love] Bonnie Prince Charlie”.
![Glasgow Times: A screenshot from the Address Collective's Glasgow website showing the controversial 'We [love] the Highland Clearances' image](/resources/images/17124507.png?type=mds-article-620 "Glasgow Times: A screenshot from the Address Collective's Glasgow website showing the controversial 'We [love] the Highland Clearances' image")
The neon signs are not a decoration at the hotel, but from an art installation by Professor Ross Sinclair which was shown at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art in 2015 and 2016.
As a whole, the piece (below) is titled “We love real life Scotland” and is interpreted as a message about accepting the country for its faults as well as its beauty – rather than a shortbread-tin fantasy of Scotland.
Sinclair told The National he had no idea the hotel was using an image of his artwork.
He said: “I’m completely in the dark. I think they’ve just lifted it from some online source and it doesn’t make any sense in this context and I haven’t approved this at all. Bloody typical.”
The artist added that the entire piece may be put on display again in the near future but that discussions were ongoing around whether to include the Highland Clearances signage due to concerns of it “being misunderstood out of context”.
Rob Gibson, a former SNP MSP who has authored several books on Highland history including The Highland Clearances Trail, told The National that the sign as presented on the hotel website was “insulting”.
Gibson said: “The PR department of that Irish chain really need to read my book!
“We really need to understand that the clue to the Highlands of today is an emptied landscape, a man-made wilderness. The company needs to think about how it portrays Scotland.”
He added: “The brutality of the clearances in Ireland during the same period means that this use of the phrase is not just inappropriate it is insulting.”
The Highland Clearances, the forced eviction of Scots from their ancient homes as land-owning gentry wanted to clear space for farming or hunting, took place in two main waves from 1780-1855, according to the Scottish History Society.
The Irish Famine Clearances took place between 1849 and 1854 and saw 100,000 farm families evicted by landlords and their holdings absorbed into larger estates, according to resources from state broadcaster RTE.
The Address Collective was contacted for comment.
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