Little Bit Of Trouble Among The Rohertsons

Chronicle (Levin), 18 August 1949, Page 5

Little Bit Of Trouble Among The Rohertsons

KINGSTON (Jamaica), August 16. -j .Muv.t-Langton George Dunoan Haldane' Robertson, aged 51, history master at Jamaiea's M:;nro •College, said today that efforts xvere being made to oust him from the chieftninship of the Scottish elan Donnaehaidh (the Robertsons). Mr. Robertsou, who is the 25th ehief of the clan, said he had caneelled his ceremonial visit to Scotland because he would not submit to "a. revolting and insulting parade and examination of his colour." He would wait in Jamaica until "his right bv birth and law irrespeetive of colour," had been established. He had heard from Scotland that when he .visited there he would apparently be "paraded, microscoped and even vivisected. " Action had been taken in Edinburgh bv a minority group of the clan, to oust him ! and probably set np a "clan republic."! Mr. Robertson said he was in " no | hair tearing state about his inheritance of coloured blood." Giving the" history of his aneestry, he explained that his great grandfather, Robert Joseph Robertson, settled in Jamaica early in tbe nineteenth eentury. By a Scottish declaratory marriageawhich was also solemnised by a priest, his great grandfather married Jane Eliza Chambers who was so beautiful that she was known as the '7 Venus of the Island." Mr. Robertson said his great grandfather was "the younger son of Cap. tain Alexander Robertson of Struan of Drumachine and of Inverack, the seventeenth chief of the clan Donnaehaidh." Mr. Robertson concluded: "It should be remembered the English have a strain of coloured blood. There has not been a pure race of any colour on earth for 10,000 years." Mr. Robertson has sent a long airmail letter to Scotland bitterly criticising eertain faetions of the 100,000 strong Robertson clan for assertions that their chief is a "black man." In Edinburgh, Mr. James Robertson, secretary of the Clan Society, said the society had not objected to its chief but some members thought the clan should have a chieftain resident in Britain rather than one 3000 miles away.