A People's History of Scotland

by Chris Bambery

  If we can create a more just and equal Scotland it could help refute the idea popularised by Thatcher that ‘there is no alternative’ to the free market. Some of us are thinking further, to Maclean’s idea of a Workers’ Republic, a dream we hold in our hearts and minds. Many more look back to the legacy of ‘Old Labour’ and the creation in 1945 of the welfare state. The best way of ensuring that it survives is to break with the policies of successive Westminster governments, which have eroded it relentlessly.

  The Glaswegian novelist Alasdair Gray has written of how, postwar, he benefitted from a decent, low-cost council home and from free education. He states simply: ‘We do not want an independent Scotland because we dislike the English, but because we want separation from that union of military, financial and monarchic establishments calling itself the United Kingdom.’21

  Throughout this book we have heard the voices of ordinary Scots who have stood up and put themselves on the line in pursuit of justice, equality and the greater good. Come referendum day we know what some of them – John Maclean, James Connolly, Harry McShane and Jimmy Reid, for instance – would have said, which is to say yes to independence. They supported that because they were internationalists and democrats.

  I think it’s a safe bet to say that the bulk of those voices heard in this book would say, ‘It’s time to go.’ If we can take control of our destiny and the wealth of this country in our own hands the Scottish people can go forward to make a far better chapter in their history.

  Acknowledgements

  I have been lucky to know some of the people I have written about and quoted in this book. As a young student I had to pick up Harry McShane to bring him to a student meeting in Edinburgh and could not believe I was in the same car as someone who had been John Maclean’s right-hand man. I was in Hamish Henderson’s company at Sandy Bells and Morris and Marion Blythman’s daughter Joanna took me to meet them over dinner and good malt afterwards.

  Mike Davis and Tariq Ali suggested I write this book and for that I am grateful but also owe them a debt for the inspiration they have given me over the years.

  My engagement with Scotland’s national question began some four decades ago. The late Neil Williamson wrote on independence as part of a debate among members of the International Marxist Group to which I belonged in both Edinburgh and Glasgow in the 1970s. In the following decade my own clumsy attempts to write on it were superseded by those of Neil Davidson who’s Discovering the Scottish Revolution, 1692–1746 I would urge everyone to read.

  James Foley and Pete Ramand were writing their own book on the Scottish question at the same time as me, and far from being rivals I learned much from them, and I hope they too learned a wee bit from me. Marion Blythman and Jenny Donaldson also commented on what I wrote about the Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland.

  I owe thanks to Jonathon Shafi, key organiser of the Radical Independence Campaign, as well as thanks to all the comrades of the International Socialist Group in Scotland.

  My editor at Verso, Leo Hollis, was my best critic and a tower of strength. Thanks to him and all the team at Verso.

  Lastly, apologies to my partner, Carmela, and to our two sons, Malcolm and Leonardo, for the time this project took away from them and for keeping the boys off the computer; double apologies to them for lumping them in with supporting Hibs – as well as Arsenal and Roma. No apologies that they can choose to be Italian or Scots or both – a great choice.

  Any mistakes or faults are my responsibility. Whether the analysis is right, we can debate.

  Notes

  1. Scotland Emerges

  1 ‘10,000 Years Old: World’s Oldest Calendar Found in Scottish Field’, Herald, 15 July 2013

  2 Friedrich Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, Resistance Books, 2004, p. 67

  3 Gordon Menzies (ed.), Who Are the Scots and the Scottish Nation?, Edinburgh University Press, 2002, p. 9

  4 A. P. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Submission of the Orkney Islands to Claudius: New Evidence?’ Scottish Archaeological Review 8, 1989, pp. 123–29

  5 Neil Oliver, History of Scotland, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009, pp. 36–37

  6 Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000, Allen Lane, 2009, p. 154

  7 Ibid.

  8 Ian Johnston, ‘The Truth About the Picts’, The Independent, 6 August 2008

  9 N. J. Higham, The Convert Kings: Power and Religious Affiliation in Early Anglo-Saxon England, Manchester University Press, 1997, pp. 255–60; William Douglas Simpson, The Historical Saint Columba, Oliver & Boyd, 1963, p. 46

  10 James Earle Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795, Edinburgh University Press, 2009, p. 215

  11 Neil Oliver, History of Scotland, pp. 56–57

  12 G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Anglo-French Influences’, in Gordon Menzies (ed.), Who Are the Scots and the Scottish Nation?, pp. 89–90

  13 Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350, Penguin, 1994, pp. 54–55

  14 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People: 1560–1830, Fontana Press, 1987, pp. 27–28

  15 Thomas Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, Forward Publishing (no date), pp. 21–22

  16 Ibid., p. 73

  2. The Wars of Independence

  1 The Society of Ancient Scots, Lives of Scottish Poets, Volume 1, T. Boys, 1821–22, made available by David Hill Radcliffe (ed.), Centre for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech, pp. 51–52, http://scotspoets.cath.vt.edu/select.php?select=Wyntoun._Andrew, accessed 17 September 2012

  2 Thomas Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, p. 32

  3 Patrick Fraser Tytler, History of Scotland, William Tait, 1828, p. 122

  4 Andy King and David Simkin, England and Scotland at War, c.1296–c.1513, Brill, 2012, p. 43

  5 A. D. M. Barrell, Medieval Scotland, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 127–28

  6 Neil Oliver, A History of Scotland, pp. 89–90

  7 Hector MacMillan, Handful of rogues: Thomas Muir’s enemies of the people, Argyll, 2005, p. 248

  8 G. W. S. Barrow, Robert the Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, Edinburgh University Press, 2005, pp. 113–16

  9 Andy King and David Simkin, England and Scotland at War, c.1296–c.1513, pp. 49–50

  10 G. W. S. Barrow, Robert the Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, pp. 132–35

  11 Thomas Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, p. 23

  12 G. W. S. Barrow, Robert the Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, pp. 177–79

  13 Ibid., p. 179

  14 A. D. M. Barrell, Medieval Scotland, p. 113

  15 Ibid., p. 117

  16 Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707–1977, George Allen and Unwin, 1977, p. 23

  17 A. D. M. Barrell, Medieval Scotland, p. 135

  18 Katie Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland: 1424–1513, Boydell Press, 2006, p. 152

  19 Neil Davidson. ‘Marx and Engels on the Scottish Highlands’, Science & Society 65 (2001), no. 3, p. 314

  20 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830, p. 38

  21 Neil Davidson, ‘Marx and Engels on the Scottish Highlands’, p. 317

  22 Neil Oliver, A History of Scotland, p. 132

  3. Reformation and the War of the Three Kingdoms

  1 Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolutions: 1692–1746, Pluto Press, 2003, p. 24

  2 Thomas Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, p. 44

  3 Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII, Oliver and Boyd, 1971, pp. 215–28, 284–90

  4 Ross Cowan, ‘Lairds of the Battle’, Military History Monthly, 32 (2013), May

  5 Victor Kiernan, ‘Banner with a Strange Device: The Later Covenanters’, in Terry Brotherstone (ed.), Covenant, Charter and Party: Traditions of Revolt an
d Protest in Modern Scottish History, Aberdeen University Press, 1989, p. 25

  6 Thomas Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, p. 146

  7 Edward J. Cameron, ‘Andrew Fletcher and the Scottish Radical Political Tradition’, in P. H. Scott (ed.), The Saltoun Papers: Reflections on Andrew Fletcher, Saltire Society, 2003, p. 161

  8 John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolution: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 35

  9 I. J. Gentiles, The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1652, Pearson, 2007, p. 6

  10 Rev. W. P. Breed, Jenny Geddes or Presbyterianism and Its Great Conflict with Despotism, Philadelphia Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1869, pp. 18–19

  11 Ralph Lownie, Auld Reekie: An Edinburgh Anthology, Random House, 2011, p. 137

  12 Professor John Stuart Blackie, ‘The Ballad of Jenny Geddes’, 1842, http://grantian.blogspot.co.uk/2005/04/ballad-of-jennie-geddes.html, accessed 26 April 2013

  13 Victor Kiernan, ‘Banner with a Strange Device: The Later Covenanters’, p. 31

  14 I. J. Gentiles, The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1652, p. 3

  15 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People: 1560–1830, p. 153

  16 Christopher Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution, Penguin, 1971, pp. 165–66

  17 Neal Ascherson, Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland, Granta Books, 2003, pp. 278–79

  18 Richard L. Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 66–74

  19 Ibid., p. 78

  20 Neal Ascherson, Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland, p. 280

  21 Peter Hume Brown, A History of Scotland to the Present Time, Oliver and Boyd, 1908, pp. 323–25

  22 Edward J. Cameron, ‘Andrew Fletcher and the Scottish Radical Political Tradition’, p. 162

  23 Neil Oliver, A History of Scotland, p. 238

  24 Lewis Grassic Gibbon, A Scots Quair, Penguin, 1986, p. 464

  25 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People: 1560–1830, pp. 165–66

  4. Union, Jacobites and Popular Unrest

  1 Winnie Ewing, Stop the World: The Autobiography of Winnie Ewing, Birlinn, 2004, p. 291

  2 Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, 1692–1746, Pluto, 2003, p. 109

  3 http://www.robertburns.org/works/344.shtml, accessed 26 April 2012

  4 T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation 1700–2000, Allen Lane, 1999, p. 32

  5 John Leonard Roberts, Clan, King, and Covenant: A History of the Highland Clans from the Civil War to the Glencoe Massacre, Edinburgh University Press, 2000, pp. 187–94

  6 Ibid., pp. 233–35

  7 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830, pp. 184–85

  8 Karen J. Cullen, Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 50–51

  9 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830, p. 201

  10 Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, 1692–1746, p. 99

  11 Christopher A. Whatley and Derek J. Patrick, The Scots and the Union, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, p. 11

  12 ‘How Was This Kingdom United?’ Socialist Worker, 2 October 2004, accessed 27 April 2013

  13 Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707–1977, George Allen and Unwin, 1977, p. 64

  14 Christopher A. Whatley and Derek J. Patrick, The Scots and the Union, pp. 11–12

  15 Ibid.

  16 Neil Davidson, The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, Pluto Press, 2000, p. 54

  17 T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation 1700–2000, p. 14

  18 Rosalind Mitchison, Lordships to Patronage: Scotland 1603–1745, Edinburgh University Press, 1983, pp. 154–55

  19 Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, p. 216

  20 Alistair Livingston, ‘The Galloway Levellers: A Study of the Origins, Events and Consequences of their Actions’, a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, for the degree of M. Phil. (Research) in History, May 2009, p. 7, http://theses.gla.ac.uk/874/01/2009livingstonmphil.pdf, accessed 16 October 2012

  21 Ibid., p. 55

  22 Chris Bambery, ‘The “Nineteen” – The Forgotten Jacobite Rebellion of 1719’, Military History Monthly, June 2012

  23 Alistair Livingston, ‘The Galloway Levellers’, p. 7

  24 Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, p. 257

  25 Alistair Livingston, ‘The Galloway Levellers’, p. 65

  26 Ibid., p. 86

  27 Peter Aitchison and Andrew Cassell, The Lowland Clearances, Scotland’s Silent Revolution, Tuckwell, 2003 p. 49

  28 Christopher A. Whatley, Scottish Society 1707–1830: Beyond Jacobitism, Towards Industrialisation, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp. 154–56

  29 Ibid., pp. 189–92

  30 Ibid., p. 192

  31 Ibid., pp. 167–68

  32 Ibid., p. 197

  33 Ibid., pp. 197–98

  34 Ibid., p. 198

  35 Ibid.

  36 Murray Pittock, The Myth of the Jacobite Clans, Edinburgh University Press, 1995, p. 60

  37 Stephen Brumwell, Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe, Continuum, 2006, pp. 53–54

  38 Ibid.

  39 Ibid.

  40 John Prebble, Culloden, Penguin, 1996, p. 301

  41 Ian Gilmour, Riot, Rising and Revolution: Governance and Violence in 18th Century England, Hutchinson, 1992, pp. 105

  42 Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, pp. 244–47

  5. Enlightenment and Capitalism

  1 Sir Walter Scott, Waverley, Claire Lamont (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 34

  2 Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World: Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, vol. 3, Phoenix Press, 2002, p. 372

  3 Ibid.

  4 Austin Cramb, Fragile Land: The State of the Scottish Environment, Edinburgh University Press, 1998, p. 194

  5 Neil Davidson, The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, p. 110

  6 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, Yale, 1992, p. 130

  7 Neil Davidson, The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, pp. 94–95

  8 Rosalind Mitchison, Lordships to Patronage: Scotland 1603–1745, Edinburgh University Press, 1983, p. 162

  9 Hugh John Massingberd, The Great Houses of Scotland, Laurence King, 1997, pp. 83–91

  10 Michael Fry, The Dundas Despotism, Edinburgh University Press, 1992, p. 1

  11 Ibid., p. 4

  12 A. P. W. Malcolmson, The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marrriage in Ireland 1740–1840, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2006, pp. 222–24

  13 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People: 1560–1830, pp. 299–300

  14 Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It, Crown Publishers, 2001, pp. 20–21

  15 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People: 1560–1830, p. 215

  16 Neil Oliver, A History of Scotland, 2009, p. 307

  17 T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People: 1560–1830, p. 246

  18 Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707–1977, p. 128

  19 Adam Smith, The Works of Adam Smith: The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, T. Cadell, 1812, p. 6

  20 Ibid., p. 7

  21 Ibid., p. 88

  22 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Edinburgh University Press, 1966, p. 187

  23 Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery, Macmillan, 2005, pp. 25–27

  24 Ibid., pp. 170 and 202

  25 Ibid., p. 228 Robert Crawford, The Bard, Random House, 2011, p. 383

  26 Jock Morris, ‘The Patriot Bard’, in Chris Bambery (ed.), Scotland, Class and Nation,
Bookmarks, 1999, p. 149

  27 Alexander Wilson, The Chartist Movement in Scotland, Manchester University Press, 1970, p. 88

  6. Radicals and Chartists

  1 Iain Gray, ‘Six Strikers Who Wove a Legend: The Calton Weavers’, scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org/Pages/SRSMArticlesSixStrikerswhowoveaLegend.aspx, accessed 25 March 2013

  2 H. W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution, Frank Cass, 1969, p. 64

  3 Iain Gray, ‘Six Strikers Who Wove a Legend: The Calton Weavers’

  4 Ibid.

  5 Donnie Fraser, ‘The Dawn of Republicanism’, scottishrepublicansocialist-movement.org/Pages/SRSMTheDawnofRepublicanism.aspx, accessed 23 April 2013

  6 Samuel Bernstein, Essays in Political and Intellectual History, Ayer, 1969, p. 42

  7 John McGowan, Policing the Metropolis of Scotland: A History of the Police and Systems of Police in Edinburgh & Edinburghshire, 1770–1833, Turlough Publishers, 2010, p. 92

  8 Rosalind Mitchison, A History of Scotland, Routledge, 1985, p. 363

  9 Alternative Perthshire, ‘Friends of the People and the United Scotsmen’, alternative-perth.co.uk/frdspeople.htm, accessed 24 September 2012

  10 Donnie Fraser, ‘The Dawn of Republicanism’

  11 H. W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution, pp. 96–97

  12 Thomas Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, p. 219

  13 Kenneth J. Logue, Popular Disturbances in Scotland 1780–1815, John Donald, 1979, p. 14

  14 Ian Bell, Robert Louis Stevenson: Dreams of Exile, Mainstream Publishing, 1992, p. 34

  15 John Hostettler, Dissenters, Radicals, Heretics and Blasphemers: The Flame of Revolt That Shines Through English History, Waterside Press, 2012, p. 142

  16 Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins: Reformers in Late 18th Century England, Transaction Publishers, 2010, p. 185

  17 Peter Mackenzie, The Life of Thomas Muir, Esq. Advocate, Younger of Huntershill, Near Glasgow, W. R. McPhun, 1831, p. 107