More pledges to Scotland and Wales: Wider democracy in New Britain
Labour talks of the House of Lords having powers restricted.
Only talk.
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1970: ‘Let’s make Britain Great’
By ‘spreading prosperity and opportunities more evenly’.
Repeats House of Lords must be reformed.
Industries and jobs ‘drain out of Scotland’.
Growing discontent in Scotland and Wales.
Proposal for devolution for Wales, Scotland and English regions.
Up to a point. ‘Preserve the union’.
Scottish Labour reject a Scottish legislative assembly.
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1974: February. ‘Labour’s Way out of the Crisis’
What crisis?
North Sea oil revenues.
Labour welcomes opportunity for extra tax from oil company profits.
Promises assemblies in Scotland and Wales.
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1974: October. ‘Britain will win with Labour’
Oil in Scottish waters welcomed as ‘transformatory’ for the economic future of the UK.
Labour pledges to ‘remove the House of Lords’ in the ‘first session of a new parliament’.
Talks of assemblies in Scotland, Wales and English regions.
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1979: ‘The Better Way’
Labour will increase England’s regional powers.
Act of 1978 for referendum for a Scottish Assembly to go ahead
But with stipulation to succeed at least 40% Scottish electorate vote yes (not 40% who vote).
Labour stresses how North Sea oil offers a ‘golden prospect for wealth’ for the UK.
Labour pledges to ‘review the Honours system’.
And ‘restrict the power of the House of Lords’.
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1983: ‘Britain back to work. Rebuild shattered industries’
Labour will ‘introduce an early Bill to abolish the House of Lords’.
Another plan for Scotland.
North Sea oil riches Labour complains are being ‘poured down the drain’.
Labour complains that ‘unprecedented advantage of North Sea oil and gas’ are squandered.
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1987: ‘Britain will win with Labour’
Pledges to ‘create a British Industrial Investment Bank’
With ‘strong base in Scotland, Wales and English regions’.
Talks of Scottish Assembly for Edinburgh.
Vast oil revenues still being wasted.
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1992: ‘Time to get Britain working again’
Perpetual problem of unemployment in the UK.
Repeal Thatcher’s poll tax in Scotland.
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1997: ‘New Labour because Britain deserves better’
Pledges to ‘end the hereditary principle in the House of Lords’
Pledges to ‘create a modern House of Lords’.
With party appointees as life peers. Not at all cronyism.
Devolution not federation.
Westminster parliament must be ‘sovereign’ power in UK.
The ‘Union strengthened’. ‘Separatism’ to be ‘banished’.
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2001: ‘Ambitions for Britain’
Five pledges: economic, schools, health, crime, families. (Four out of Five England only)
Separate Scottish manifesto: increase role of PFI (that left Scotland shelling out £bns to private companies)
Pledges to ‘half child poverty by 2010’.
No word of abolishing the House of Lords.
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2005 ‘Britain Forward Not Back’
‘Decentralise power’.
‘Strengthen’ Welsh Assembly.
Complete ‘reform of the House of Lords’.
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2010: ‘A Future Fair for All’
Pledges high speed rail ‘London to Scotland’.
‘Union will be protected’ at all cost.
‘Fairer partnerships’.
‘New Second Chamber to replace House of Lords.’
‘Fully elected’. ‘Senate of the Nations and Regions’.
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2015: ‘Britain Can Be Better’
Labour/Tory/Libdems agree Smith Commission proposals and Gordon Brown Vow for greater powers to Scotland.
Labour vows to implement the Vow in full.
Greater powers for Scotland.
‘Safeguard the future’ of offshore oil and gas.
Scotland will ‘continue benefitting’ from the UK.
Wales will ‘have devolved powers similar to Scotland’.
‘Unless specifically reserved’.
Commitment to ‘replace the House of Lords with elected Senate’ – see 2010.
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2017: ‘For the Many not the Few’
Labour opposes a second Scottish independence referendum.
Labour will ‘establish a Scottish Investment Bank’.
Pledges to ‘reduce size of the House of Lords’. To ‘abolish’ it.
Repeats pledge to run ‘HS2 as far as Scotland’.
‘Protect North Sea assets’ .
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2019: ‘Real Change’
Labour will give referendum on Brexit.
HS2 will run to Scotland.
Increase pay to workers in Scotland.
Jobs for Wales.
Tax oil companies.
Pledge to ‘abolish House of Lords in favour of Senate’ – see 2010/2015/2017.
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2022:
Labour ‘backs Brexit’.
Vow Mark II to Scotland
Labour promises ‘biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster’.
House of Lords to be ‘abolished’ – see 1910.
Labour ‘will consult’ on abolition of House of Lords.
Denies majority independence government in Scotland is a mandate for an independence referendum.
Labour still sends members to the House of Lords. Currently there are about 200 Labour members there. Labour continues to claim to speak for Scotland although it has not been in power there for twelve years, is the third party in the Scottish parliament and repeatedly goes into power sharing with Tories in councils across Scotland. Labour supports Brexit.
Look, look, look – here’s a flag. This is who you are. Look. Closer. Can’t see it? Here, I’ve got more. How many flags will it take you to recognise yourself in it? Look. Just bloody look. We’re British. A proud sovereign nation. Look what the union has done for you. See this bit of blue under the cross of St George – that’s you Scotland. This is what 300 years of union has given you, a place behind England on a flag.
Nothing expresses the shoogly peg that’s only just haudin’ up the union than the appointment of a minister for the union in London – a minister plus a union unit, which carelessly lost its first two chairs in double quick time. Perhaps they discovered there really is no case for retention of the union after all.
No such thing as a cooling off period back in 1707. Once the ink was dry on the agreement that was it. A nation sold out in a scandal that makes 2020’s PPE under-the-counter deals appear the embodiment of integrity. Nor was there democracy but that’s another story. Since then there have been reasons/excuses after reasons/excuses as to why Scotland should not be able to pick the lock on the shackles that fetter this outdated and shady merger.
Now is not the time. Now is never the time.
Brexit was to have been the deal breaker. But then there was, um, Brexit shambles – Brexit where sovereignty was everything (except for readers in Scotland.) England was largely in favour of Brexit, Scotland was largely against Brexit for the disastrous impact it would have on our largest trading market. On that 50:50 basis England always wins because – well, England always wins. England sneezes and Scotland gets covered in snot.
Brexit arrived with promise of more powers for Scotland and better trade deals – the best trade deals in the whole wide world, nay, the whole wide universe. It would be FANTASTIC! Win, win, win. Or, in the real world – the removal of powers from Scotland’s parliament and as for trade – well, is this what success looks like?
Scotland’s fish exports down nearly 90%; salmon down 98%; whisky down 40%
Scotland has lost £5.4bn of potential EU funding to recover from Covid-19 while being denied the ability to borrow money to maintain services and plan for the future, unlike Westminster where chancellor Sunak has borrowed, borrowed, borrowed to cover the bare essentials.
With 8.4% of the UK population Scotland outdoes itself in natural wealth for we contribute (or did) 34% of the UK’s natural wealth – renewable power, water, timber, fish, oil and gas and the like. Between 64% – 70% of the UK’s fish and seafood were landed are Scotland.
Make that was – pre-Brexit. Post-Brexit Scotland has been devastated by us being dragged along in England’s wake.
Scotland is home to 40% of the UK’s offshore wind and tidal power, industries which are the future. That’s Scotland that unionists try to tell us is too wee economically to succeed.
Scotland’s whisky exports make up a whopping 21% of the UK’s food and drink exports worth £5bn to the UK annually. That’s a straight £5bn that should come back into the economy of Scotland to fight child poverty and deprivation but is diverted to Sunak’s money chest instead.
Remember Westminster’s promise that Brexit trade would be FANTASTIC for Scotland? Unlike the rest of the UK, Scotland exports a huge amount of its products and services across the world – 100% more than the rest of the UK. Unlike the rest of the UK Scotland exports more goods than we import providing Scotland (2018 figs) with a surplus in international trade in goods in the region of £5bn. The rest of the UK’s deficit stands at £135bn. Put that in your pipe Andra Neil.
Now is not the time for an independence referendum. Now will never be the time. There is no appetite for a referendum in Scotland spouts every other Britnat MP from somewhere south of Hadrian’s Wall and a number from north of the wall who echo whatever is said by their Westminster superiors. Concentrate on your terrible education system, is the cry of the south. Most of those shouting most loudly to condemn Scottish schools know nothing about Scotland’s education system. Here goes.
Scotland’s population is the most highly educated in Europe with 47% having a college, university or vocational qualification. Don’t hear Keir Starmer repeating that stat. I’ll spell it out for him – that’s 5% more than in the rest of the UK. Your bit.
Pre-England’s Brexit Scotland’s GDP was £32,800 per head – £900 higher than the average throughout the UK at £31,900.
Scotland’s potential wealth as an independent nation is obvious. David Phillips of the Institute for Fiscal Studies acknowledges Scotland’s wealth enables her to succeed as an independent state – read behind the headline https://www.ft.com/content/ff6c0f6b-2d65-4a4e-bbba-878e2260cf3e
In addition to her natural resources there are Scotland’s newer and growing sectors including IT, biotech and space. Then there is tourism; Scotland is a magnate for visitors because not only are we smart and talented but we’re richt bonnie, too.
In September 2020 Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons:
“…this House acts to preserve one of the crucial British achievements of the last three centuries: namely our ability to trade freely across the whole of these islands …unfettered access to the rest of the UK” which is a fairly comprehensive definition of insularity further illustrated by his boast that producers can “move Cornish pasties to Scotland, Scottish Beef to Wales…” – is this really a positive case for the union?
Selling to johnnie foreigner is still an ambition. Apparently. It seems an age away since all that talk about Canada-style trade agreements. Is Canada still a thing?
Unable to construct any case of persuasion through reality or reason that the union should be preserved Johnson’s Tories have decided to blitz Scots (and others) with the jack, the union flag. The flag of the empire. It worked once so why not again seems to be the argument.
Look, look, look – here’s a flag. This is who you are. Look. Closer. Can’t see it? Here, I’ve got more. How many flags will it take you to recognise yourself in it? Look. Just bloody look. We’re British. A proud sovereign nation. Look what the union has done for you. See this bit of blue under the cross of St George – that’s you Scotland. This is what 300 years of union has given you, a place behind England on a flag.
Boris Johnson rolls over in bed, farts and belches simultaneously, reluctantly removes his hand from beneath the duvet and reaches for the phone. “Govie (Henry Dundas reincarnated), Murray Ross, Alastair Jack – this isn’t working. Dominick – where’s Dominick Raab, the johnnie in charge of foreigners? He must know how to deal with these uppity Scots. Do any of you have Gordon Brown’s number? No wait, that man’s never the answer. Just get me another flag.”
Flagopolis is coming to a UK government building near you. Aberdeen Council Chambers (oh, it already is) and BBC Scotland (sic) at Pacific Quay in Glasgow and other such Westminster mouthpieces will hoist a jack and in direct competition with the Scottish government’s baby boxes Westminster will provide each new born with its very own union jack. Scots will have flags rammed down their throats in a display of how much the UK government cares for its northern outlier. There will be no point in resisting for increasing London’s trade links with China is dependent on flagopolis Britain.
The jack, its name is (probably) a corruption of jacques, Norman French for jacket – the tunic carrying the symbol of whichever authority was being followed, such as the Knights Templars’ red cross from the period of the second Crusade. Anyone who has seen the Netflix Turkish series, Insurrection Ertugrul, will know how bloodthirsty and terrifying those adventurers were. And ugly.
In 1606 following the union of the crowns the red cross of St George was superimposed on the white diagonal of St Andrew on its blue field. The English flag as we’ve seen derives from the 12th century and the Scottish saltire from 832AD, making it the oldest continuously used flag in the world which is neither here nor there but interesting. The diagonal cross of St Andrew is said to have been his decision to distinguish the cross on which he was crucified from that of Christ.
Although English kings controlled Ireland from the 12th century Ireland was not included in the flag flown in England until James VI introduced the Hibernian harp onto his royal standard in 1603. Under the tyrant Cromwell Scotland and Ireland were forced to submit to adopt a different union flag that included the George cross, the saltire and Irish harp with Cromwell’s family badge of a silver lion rampant in its centre.
In 1707 the Scottish and English parliaments were joined, or rather the Scottish parliament ceased and a token representation of Scots was permitted to sit in England’s parliament. Various versions of a union jack were put to a committee comprising the queen, Anne, and her privy council. A design from Scotland had the cross of St Andrew superimposed on England’s St George cross. A far bonnier flag, I think you’ll agree, than the brash and hideous version we have today. However it was decided it was more appropriate that England’s cross dominated the union which in truth was more realistic of the state of this union.
Scottish post-union flag
With the Act of Union of 1800 (so many unions so little sense of union) – this was when the union parliament ( with me?) of England and Scotland (the Kingdom of Great Britain) united with the parliament of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland – hence the UK came into being. This union necessitated a different jack. A red saltire representing St Patrick of Ireland was added and an already busy-looking flag got a whole lot busier. As for Wales, nobody seemed to care that it was omitted altogether.
The union jack has flown across the whole British Empire to stamp Britain’s authority over its colonies and protectorates and leave them in no doubt who was in charge. When India succeeded in freeing itself from the British Raj in the 1940s it replaced the union jack, that symbol of its oppression, with a tricolour displaying the Ashokan wheel to mark the country’s emergence as a democratic and secular nation of different peoples.
India’s flag reflected the country’s battle in shaking off the shackles of a foreign power. Empires don’t usually relinquish power and authority over their subjugated peoples without a fight. The British crown and governments were strongly against Indian independence and fought tooth, nail and dirty to prevent it. Britain used carrot and stick tactics. Well, mainly stick. It dropped forcing India to pay for the British garrison on Indian soil that had been used to impose British control. It used starvation and violence. It used ridicule and racist slurs against the people. Churchill, a man who didn’t mince his racist words, was freely abusive. He derided India’s leaders, men such as Gandhi, for having the temerity to believe they were as good as the average white man.
The India Defence League might be comparable to the Better Together movement that was such a feature of the 2014 Scottish independence campaign. Better Together, a coalition of unionist forces, was intent on preventing Scottish independence while the IDL was similarly a group of British politicians; councillors, MPs and peers along with the usual suspects from the military and law hellbent on stopping Indian independence and retain British control of its milch cow. Churchill was an active member, so, too, was author Rudyard Kipling, he of The Jungle Book and The White Man’s Burden – an overtly racist piece of writing which encouraged ‘superior’ civilisations such as the UK and US to bring ‘inferior ‘peoples out of their darkness towards the light of civilisation. His contention was that imperialism was positive for lesser folk who weren’t capable of governing themselves – thus this burdensome responsibility fell on the shoulders of white people, like him. It is pure evil filth. What Kipling, Churchill and the rest of that unholy alliance fail to mention is that empires exist, not to ‘civilise’ but to exploit and rob through brutality and terror.
Then as now the British press played their own dishonourable part in disseminating jingoistic nonsense aimed at preserving the Empire or in our own case, the UK. It won’t surprise you to know that the owner of the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, ensured his own propaganda broadsheet kept up the rant against Indian independence. And so highly did he regard his own bigoted beliefs he issued them as pamphlets, sold at a penny a time. His essential message was India never had it so good once Britain took it over and anything that was good in India came as result of Britain. India’s weakness came from its own feeble native people. Any of that sound familiar in relation to Scotland’s independence struggle? It should.
Rothermere assured gullible and equally bigoted Britishers that it was the British India Defence League that represented the people of India not their own Gandhi and the Indian Congress. Better Together, or was it Rothermere? stressed the dangers of independence on grounds its people didn’t want independence/were too stupid to govern themselves/the economy couldn’t sustain it/the country would go to rack and ruin. Sound familiar? It should.
Churchill was in denial about the support for independence in India. Sound familiar? He was warned that India could not be retained by force. Sound familiar? There were cheers in the Commons when in 1942 Churchill raised the possibility of bombing pro-independence rioters in India.
The truth that could not be told was independence would lose the British government valuable resources and income. Empire building is never altruistic. Empires come about through force – they are imposed; actual violence or threatened. Before the British government took over running India, the British East India Company didn’t take any chances when ransacking India’s industries so maintained an army of 260,000 men to impress its intent.
When the marquess of Salisbury, secretary of state for India, said “India is to be bled” he spoke for politicians, Queen Victoria and thousands of British industrialists. Westminster would take and hold India as long as India proved a major source of revenue. And when Indians sick of this foreign tyrant demanded independence Britons were astonished at her ingratitude.
Britain’s desperate attempts to keep hold of India against the wishes of the majority of India’s population was a masterclass in racism and vindictiveness. Winston (I hate Indians) Churchill was not alone in Westminster to hold these views but then you don’t have to listen very long to voices from the green and red benches today to hear xenophobic and racist slurs. Scottish MPs in the Commons are frequent targets for jeers and accusations of being “subsidy junkies.” An English Tory MP, Lucy Frazer, targeted the Scottish people for a particularly nasty attack when she encouraged her follow Conservatives to laugh at previous generations of Scots sent into exile and sold as slaves to the colonies. Racist filth like this has been a feature of Westminster politics for its whole existence. In the 1930s and 1940s MPs spoke about Indians who dared question the right of London to govern their nation as “a beastly people” “breeding like rabbits” – and of their leader, the pacifist Gandhi, that he should be trampled into the dirt.
In 2003 – 2003 mark you – historian Niall Ferguson in his book Empire was still peddling myths of the 1930s about the positive contribution of British rule to the lives of Indians. These same Indians whose native manufacturing and shipping industries were devastated to enable fortunes for British companies.
Scotland’s growing ambition to return to an independent state has made her a target for attack from government in London and British Radge mouthpieces around the four nations of the UK. In contrast to India and Ireland whose struggles for freedom involved violence Scotland’s independence movements have not turned to armed assaults against British rule. Both India and Ireland indulged in and were subjected to terrible violence and brutality, and in the case of India to enforced starvation that remains an indelible stain on the troubled record of the British Empire. When challenged the UK state will defend itself through its armed wings as well as using deceit and fabrications to undermine those who dare question its oppressive rule.
Westminster has not moved on from that day in 1928 when Tory Home Secretary, Joynson-Hicks, said, “we conquered India by the sword and by the sword we shall hold it.” And by god they did for far too long. Scotland is in for a helluva dirty fight for her right to exist as a sovereign nation, preferably within an economic bloc that values her voice as an equal partner – a society that values the collective voice of a nation in which justice and fairness are prized and where privilege is abolished. That is an ambition worth fighting for and fight it will be because the British Radge will try every dirty trick in the book to scupper our ambition and stuff its jack down our throats in its attempt to keep our country subjugated, as it has done for 300 years.
Brexit – England’s Declaration of Independence as penned by Homer (Simpson) – a fish oddity.
Jaculator fishmonger, Pufferfish Johnson, blowing out his well-exercised blowhole that Brexit is destined to lead to a national revival. The great Clownfish spouts blanks whether –
an additional £350m a week to the NHS
40 new hospitals (that’ll be 6 plus some refurbishments)
50,000 new nurses or in the real world 30,000
his ‘do or die’ pledge that Great Brian would be out of the EU by October 2019,
he’d rather be dead in a ditch than extend Article 50
he’d never suspend parliament to force through Brexit – before illegally proroguing it for the longest period in the modern era
squirming u-turns on proxy voting in the Commons
free school meals in England,
the NHS visa surcharge
dodgy NHS appp
face masks in shops
face masks in schools
England’s exam fiasco
England’s national lockdown
extension of the furlough scheme
world beating track and trace
millions of tests every single day
operation moonshot to combat Covid
Those not Zipfish-ed up the back Smelt a Ratfish at being led by the Elephant Nose fish to Flounder as flotsam and jetsam on the seabed of international prosperity. Given Clownfish’s reputation to not give a Dogger Bank about anything, his only Porpoise in life being himself, they Otter have known Betta over his promises of Sea Pie in the sky.
Now we’re in for a Cat and Dog fish fight because a Bighead Carp of a Prime Minister, the Blowfish PM, doesn’t give a Bombay Duck about a Dealfish.
The Chubsucker PM’s Loosejaw Minnows; Moray Eel, Douglas Ross; Parrot fish, Andrew Bowie; chief Toadfish and Hogsucker, Alister Jackfish, are in the Halibut of Swordfish propagandising straight off the John Dory party’s handbook, as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks.
Barracuda done Betta cry the people of Scotland, ye Bass! And when the Britfish and Mudsucker Flounders on the iceberg of destiny the Sturgeon (or Salmond) of Scotland will lead us Herring back to tell the EU we’ve Haddock enough of Batfish Englandshire and leave them Abalone to all their racist, supremacist Pollocks.
So Dab your eyes and open the Dory to a Brill Goldfish Plaice in the sea of opportunity that’s lapping at our shores.
A familiar sight to Aberdonians Rob Roy MacGregor at the Culter burn
Those pesky Scots (Welsh and Irish), complained a writer in a London newspaper called the Pall Mall Gazette on 30 May 1896. Pesky, uppity Scots – just when Britain thought the ‘Kelt’ was dead and a stone added to ‘his cairn’ the pesky Scot – that nuisance who has ruined the English language ‘by mis-spelling’ blah, blah, blah refuses to go away.
Speaking for England Pall Mall insists they are heartily sick of these pesky, ‘scant kilt’ wearing Scots reeking of Glenlivet and the rest of their ‘eccentricities.’
Just as well kilts are water-resistant the amount of abuse hurled at their wearers. Tongue-in-cheek, of course, that relentless racist ranting – and yet and yet.
Their language – not the racist’s you dope – is deplorable. Deplorable! Like Welsh. As for Gaelic with all those consonants! How is an Englishman supposed to be able to understand that! I bet the same was said of just about every other language on the planet apart from God’s own tongue, English. But don’t mention the origins of English … German, Italian and Scandinavian from migrants landing their boats on proud England’s xenophobic shores.
Steer clear of Scotland Pall Mall warns its readers or you’ll have to speak English adulterated by Scots and the local lingo – go to Blairgowrie and you’ll have to be proficient in Scot-English and Blairgowrie babbling. Ach, that rich vein of bigotry and intolerance has always been the mark of the Union.
Determined the reader is left in no doubt to his views the green-ink contributor goes from ridicule of the contamination of the English language by the Welsh and Scots into full-throttle racism explaining the chances of any quality Welsh and Scots literature is as likely as the ability of ni***rs to develop sophisticated society.
Picts – the race whose stone-built heritage amazes, impresses and confounds us – he dismisses as fairies. His inkwell of green ink is fathomless. Abdy frae Scotland is by definition contemptible. Keep the Scots out of England, behind Antonine’s Wall; banish the Irish from ‘the sacred precincts of Westminster’ and ‘shut up’ the Welsh in Wales – or best of all – shouldn’t England be able to ‘abolish’ these pesky Celts?
The House of Commons a year or two earlier was facetiously referred to as having become a “Scotch Assembly” in which too much was heard from Scots members. They were boring, these Scots, their debates “duller than an Irish” debate. And then, as now, Scots opinions scarcely tolerated were irrelevant at the end of the day because on every occasion they could be outvoted by English MPs whose interests lay in what benefited England not Scotland.
Abuse and prejudice tarted up as journalism drew a response from a Donald MacGregor writing from London. Clearly a Scot, he refused to rise to the bait over the use of the term ‘Kelt’ but agreed that, yes indeed, the ‘Celt is Rampant’ and a good thing, too. He was stirred to write because Celts have for too long been too passive, forbearing, and forgiving of attacks from south of the border. He guessed the frothy-mouthed green-inker was English, but wrote he might have been one of those Lowland Scots who revels in belittling fellow-Scots. Finally he decided the writer was, in fact, a Sassenach with a grudge. As for green-ink wanting to ‘abolish’ Celts – MacGregor wrote that this had been attempted – by the most successful empire builders of all time, the Romans and some pushy Anglo-Saxons but they couldn’t hack it though a ‘goodly number of them’ (Anglo-Saxons) were ‘lodged’ around Bannockburn.
The essence of his letter was that Celtic culture can match anything produced by Anglo-Saxons; that Scots heroes and champions are demonised as degenerates and outlaws by English commentators e.g. Rob Roy (a MacGregor like him) driven off his land is dismissed as a cattle thief while the perpetrators of land clearance – nobility who having acquired lands through nefarious means trade them as they would any speculative venture. A practice evident throughout the British Empire when Johnnie Foreigner’s lands were there for the taking by rogues such as Cecil Rhodes who had he been a poor native in what became Rhodesia would have been shot for his audacity.
What is Pall Mall, I hear you ask. A place, aye, but what was it originally? A game, readers, a game. Can you think where that game started? Go on – take a punt. England? Nah. England? Nah. England? Nah. Pall-mall, palle-malle or pelemele was a Scottish and French pastime. It was the Scottish King James VI aka James I in England – a man too lazy to get off his horse to pee (allegedly) who encouraged the English to play it. And they loved it so much they named a street after it. The Duke of York was very keen on pelemele – but you probably don’t need me to tell you that.
Pall-mall, palle-malle, pelemele are reminders that Scotland’s thousand-year-old Auld Alliance with France is way longer than an embittered, xenophobic, corrupt Union. Lady Violet Greville wrote that, or words to that effect. French and Scottish Celts – we are all Celts.And in a Celt union we’d like to stay.
Where I live we are surrounded by fields of grazing sheep and cattle and I doubt if any one of them would willingly swap their lush grass for a diet of human excrement, cement, Fido scraped off a road following an encounter with a truck or pelleted plastic. Of course farmed animals have no choice over what they eat and whatever the farmer dishes up is largely down to economics. Grass is good although what the grass is sprayed with is another matter entirely.
Gibberellic acid sprayed grass grows faster and extends the grazing season and research has shown that cattle raised on grass produce better milk – milk from grass-fed cattle is higher in omega 3 fatty acids, linoleic acid and vaccenic acid. Who’d have thunk that doing things the way nature intended was the best way to raise stock?
Quality in = quality out. If humans are what we eat then so, too, are animals. Spray their food with herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers and where do you think that lovely cocktail goes? Into whatever eats it, of course. When the initial consumer becomes the food it goes into consumer number two. That said, grass is better than much else that has been and is fed to beasts.
Food safety in the UK has been regulated by the EU. Goodness knows how slack livestock feed regulations will become once Brexit is implemented. From my reading just about anything and everything goes in, or has gone in, to animal food – ground up corpses of other animals, what’s scraped off roads and shovelled out of hen deep litters.
I don’t farm but I do feed my pet cat and goodness knows his pet food sometimes smells so awful even he won’t eat it.
Unlike cats cattle are herbivores – they graze – on grass or seaweed but there are people who try to prove this wrong – I’ve no idea the word for animals who eat plastic or cement – let’s just call them factory farmed. And don’t panic. It was a phase that’s passed – I believe – but in the world of food production never say never.
Experimenting with food for livestock hasn’t stopped. Many will remember when those who are paid to know about animal nutrition thought it swell to make swill out of dead beasts – turn herbivores into carnivores and cannibals. Mad cow disease was the result. It should have been called mad food producer disease. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a horrible disease. Recently there was an outbreak near where I live but when BSE hit the headlines in the 1990s a Tory government minister, John Gummer, publicly fed his daughter with a beef burger to prove the disease could not spread to humans. BSE variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) was shortly after shown to be able to spread to humans.
There are controls but cattle now are fed on cattle. Pigs are fed mashed up pigs. Hens are fed on rendered hens. And so on. Animal feed contains all sorts: road kill, dead horses, cats and dogs. The name of the pet food you buy might be more literal than you imagine.
Cutting costs, disregarding logic and glib reassurances do not make for a trustworthy food industry. The bottom line will always determine feeding policy for those who think they can get away with it. And hang the consequences.
What on earth were people thinking in the 1960s when experiments were carried out on plastic ‘hay’? Money that’s what. And what about plastic and cement pellets as food?
The US Department of Agriculture tested animal food made from cement dust (high in calcium) and found cattle’s daily weight gain doubled. By comparison experiments feeding animals with sawdust appear innocuous. Hardwood pellets were a fraction more expensive than pelleted sawdust with around 56% the energy value of corn feed. Whether anyone used them – no idea. A company called Farmland Industries produced plastic made into pellets and branded as Ruff-Tabs.
Justifying their behaviour the mad scientists who experiment with trash feed observed –
‘Animals are like people in that they can consume quite a variety of feeds and survive.’
In this country in the 1990s the Environment Agency considered cement kiln dust for animal feed. Cement kilns can be used to incinerate all kinds of material including those containing highly toxic heavy metals – lead, chromium, mercury which are highly carcinogenic. What kind of warped minds could envisage this is suitable material to feed to animals?
Animals crap out the crap they take in. That is wasteful. And occupies a lot of space – specially in farm factories where livestock never experience the great outdoors but spend their entire short lives inside. What to do with the waste? In the States 10% ground polyethylene added to alfalfa and cottonseed animal feed led to animals putting on weight but the cost of polyethylene was the issue not feeding plastic to animals. The aim was to find ways to cut the amount of food each beast would consume in the hope of reducing the amount of manure produced. Manure is not really a problem in a field but in animal meat factories the space taken up by manure presents difficulties for the ‘farmer.’
Ching! Collect the stuff and make it into pellets to feed back to the animals. Economic poetry. Poultry litter, faeces and plastic pellets all bound up together and sold as roughage. Roughage used to be plant-based but Kansas State University experiments feeding plastic pellets to cattle discovered much of the plastic was recoverable after the animals were slaughtered and so could be melted down and recycled into new pellets to feed to other cattle. Capitalism had found the perfect answer to production. Feed, retrieve, reconstitute, feed, retrieve, reconstitute, feed, retrieve… the word cattle meant capital. Synergy.
Animal crackers is not only found in the USA. Here in the UK human and animal waste have been incorporated into feed. This means anything eaten by an animal, including veterinary medicines – anti-biotics and arsenic which is included in many animal medicines passes into the feed. Arsenic is not advised for human consumption.
The UK has banned micro-beads in personal care products – toothpaste, laundry, cleaning products, shampoos and cosmetics. They are a menace to wildlife and the handiwork of yet more mad scientists responsible for dumping 8 million tons of plastic into the oceans annually to top up the 150 million tons they’ve already dumped there. On its own this is bad enough but plastics absorb contaminants in water making them a million times more toxic. Fish swallow these toxins and we swallow the poisoned fish.
Recycled plastic water bottles are ‘washed and dunked in chemicals to get the labels off, then chopped into bits. A flotation pool is used to separate the lid plastic from the bottle plastic. Three different materials come out at the end: lid flakes, bottle flake and labels. The final step is to “extrude” the flakes, or melt them down into pellets. This requires energy to heat the flakes, and can emit harmful chemicals into the air, due to additives in the plastic. The pellets are then sold on to manufacturers who use them as a feedstock. It is possible to do all of this in an environmentally friendly way: treating the wastewater correctly, disposing of chemicals properly and making sure harmful emissions don’t escape. Done right, this uses less energy and resources than virgin material. But if shortcuts are taken, the consequences can be devastating.’ (Financial Times)
Our polyethylene diet includes fish, honey, table salt, beer and meat and our anti-biotic overload comes from eating animal flesh, consuming dairy products and from our drinking water. I don’t eat meat but I do drink water and my water comes out of the land behind our house where the pee and poop of grazing animals no doubt doused with vet medicines leeches into the rainwater that is piped into my house. That said I should probably be more fearful of the spill-offs from forestry chemicals.
The biggest damage of all is created by farm factories and not our traditional farmers who graze their beasts in grassy parks. Keeping cattle inside and feeding them on a diet that is most definitely not natural creates physical changes and damages their livers leading to high levels of medication compared with animals raised on grass which are far healthier.
Eating organic food can improve your chances in the lottery of life. Brexit promises fewer controls over animal welfare and the prospect of imports of cheap factory-farmed US food which will not be its organic best produce which restrict the amount of animal drugs, including hormones to promote growth, and which exclude plastic pellets for roughage and feed containing urea or manure. No, this is not the food that will compete with good quality food here but something cheaper and nastier in all sorts of ways, not least the cruel exploitation of the animals soon to be appearing on your plate – or bucket if you eat in those kinds of places. Just watch out for the odd wood splinter in your tongue, a bit of concrete grit between your teeth or a belly-full of plastic garbage.
In the land of Brexit Union Jack-adorned Britain creaks and splutters like an old jalopy incapable of engaging first gear she pitches into reverse … to a time when girls were submissive and obedient, boys wore the trousers, mam spent her evenings mending and making do and dad was digging spuds when he wasn’t trimming his prize leeks.
What a place that was. Bloody proud to be British before all this political correctness now that you can’t call a spade a spade – know what I mean? Nudge, nudge. When an Englishman’s home was his castle and you could decide who came into in it: – no blacks; no Irish – bloody Paddies – no damn likely; bloody Welsh and no bloody Scots – uppity Jocks.
***
We’re back in January 1940 and the 51st Highland Division of bloody Jocks has landed in Le Havre in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) but it’s a baptism of fire for allied forces around the French coast as the situation becomes untenable with constant and escalating German attacks.
It’s April and the 51st are separated from the rest of the BEFs and deployed deep into France to the very vulnerable area of Hombourg-Bundage under the French Tenth Army on the defensive Maginot line. Casualties are high as the Germans advance at lightning speed towards the French coast.
Early June and the German panzer division makes ground as it heads for the coast protected and aided from the air.
At 3 o’clock on 4th June French and Scots men pressurising German positions find themselves under intense fire and dive-bombing Stukas. As the 51st struggle desperately to defend the front line French tanks forge ahead the infantry in their wake and one after another are blown to smithereens by mines or disabled by heavy gun fire. Many are consumed by fire. Men of the 4th Seaforths are cut down by heavy machine-gun fire.
On 5 June a huge offensive comprising 124 German divisions launch a major attack, Fall Rot, along 70 miles of front line including the 25 miles the 51st are struggling to hold. Beleaguered the Highland Division fight a losing battle to defend the area around le Havre.
On 7 June two German armoured divisions split the French Tenth Army. The Highland Division along with their French comrades are separated from part of the Tenth.
On 8 June the 51st are cut off in Rouen-Dieppe.
On 9 June the 51st are 35 miles north of Rouen which has fallen into German hands. They receive orders to withdraw to le Havre. This is not possible as Germany launches an attack from the east and the 51st are cut off.
On 10 June the 51st along with the French IXth Corps drop back to St. Valery, hoping to be evacuated by sea.
On 11 June Brigadier Stanley-Clarke issues the order for a new line be held to the last man.
Radio contact is lost with the 51st as the evacuation of Stanley-Clarke’s own force from Dunkirk continues. It is decided to abandon the young men of the Highland Division too deep into France but hope lives on among the men that they might yet be evacuated from St. Valéry.
Fog prevents any chance of this happening and in any case the Germans now occupy the steep cliffs at the coast.
On 12 June the French corps surrenders and shortly after so do what remains of the 51st Highland. A few escape but are captured by General Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division.
Land of Hope and Glory plays in the background
“Out from the hell that is Dunkirk. Out from the steel thrust of the German war machine they come – the BEF (some of them – not those abandoned) footsore and hungry. Never defeated or dispirited. Around these men there hangs an atmosphere of glory. The men who’ve got back to Blighty are grateful – to the navy and to the merchant service. And grateful to the French navy. The BEF is grateful to the Royal Air Force. The BEF is grateful, too, to its French comrades. The BEF is grateful to the girls in uniform who’ve stayed with them to the end.
But not it appears grateful to the men of the 51st.
While these men live and breathe Britain is safe. The enemy will never pass
For the lucky ones evacuated from Dunkirk there were jam sandwiches and hot tea waiting for them in England.
Iron-spined Major-General Harold Alexander is undaunted by Nazi bombers screaming overhead shelling sea and land; explosion after explosion. Without (much of ) a thought for his own safety he waits offshore, binoculars in hand, till satisfied there are no more living creatures left on the beach or water and with a final nod to the captain they sail off into the blue yonder to more than a jam sandwich. Mission accomplished.
Hunkered down in his Westminster bunker sustained on a diet of Scotch whisky and cigars national hero and Prime Minister Winston Churchill exalts the ‘miracle of deliverance’ of the Dunkirk retreat.
‘We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender,’ he insists 200 miles away from the men of the 51st.
I well remember a very old lady, a former schoolteacher in the Highlands, who could not bear to hear the fawning adulation of Winston Churchill presented through newspapers, histories and radio and television. It took me many years to realise just why she despised him so much. Britain’s greatest hero Mr Churchill regretted the fate of the Highlanders but drew solace from the Division coming back to its own when other Scots were drawn into its ranks.
To illustrate his feelings Churchill drew on a poem by the Aberdeenshire poet Charles Murray, A Saugh o’ War – which I published recently here on the blog. The poem is too jingoistic and sentimental for my liking
So as Britain goes Dunkirk delirious just like it did back in 1940 there are parts of these islands where the hysteria is just a little tempered for knowing the picture of blood and guts and bravery played out in cinemas across the land is not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The abandoning of the 51st Highlanders does not fit the narrative of British pluck and victory loved by rightwing commentators – historians, film makers, journalists or anyone who prefers myth to reality and preferably all tied up with a ribbon of red, white and blue.
Britain and its people exist on a diet of myths. Dunkirk was a major success in terms of saving many lives and an illustration of the courage of individuals but it is also an example of the British state’s coyness to admit it also creates victims as a result of its actions while readily exploiting for propaganda purposes an event that is very partial in the telling.
Britain would “never abandon her ally in her hour of need” bellowed Churchill – at the same time he didn’t think twice about ditching men of the 51st Highland Division.
The ‘Dunkirk spirit’ might be said to have a second meaning – the sacrifice of people – of Scots, bloody Jocks (and others serving with the 51st.) They were heroes but heroes largely written out of the story of Dunkirk.
The flag-waving hurrah over Dunkirk will go on for a long time but does plucky British heroism conceal a shabby and uncomfortable reality of bravery plus sacrifice?
Capt Ian Campbell, General Fortune’s intelligence officer said:
“It has always been abundantly clear to men that no division has ever been more uselessly sacrificed. It could have been got away a week before but the powers that be – owing I think to very faulty information – had come to the conclusion that there was a capacity for resistance in France which was not actually there.”
Never Surrender
We shall never surrender
H O M E
Over 330,000 made it home
It was the Scots Highlanders who didn’t get home but were abandoned in France.
Back in the war everyone pulled together – that Dunkirk spirit characterizes us. Britain at its best – all in the same boat…
Inver granite memorial to the 51st Highland Division at St Valery
(The 51st Highland Division comprised men from the Black Watch, the Seaforths, the Queen’s Own Camerons, the Gordons and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders under Major General Victor Fortune aka the Duke of Argyll.)
In Part 2 of the account of Archibald White Maconochie we find those issues affecting his business and the country are redolent of today’s headlines.
Guest blog by Textor
Nearer to home, in the waters of the Moray Firth, Maconochie complained that local fishermen, in particular line-men, were having their fishing grounds destroyed by trawlers both British and foreign. Steam powered vessels were out-competing older fishing technologies and something needed to be done; trawlers should not take the bread out of other men’s mouths complained Maconochie. Just as he called on the state to intervene in overseas markets he also wanted it to be active here; with strong policing to protect the three mile limit even if this meant prosecuting skippers from Aberdeen. Here we can see a clearer expression of self-interest (or perhaps a hint of sentimentality) on the part of Maconochie for his business at Fraserburgh was dependent upon older less technologically advanced fishing methods.
Maconochie’s stance seemed to fly in the face of his deep-seated belief in progress and competition. He had, after all, enthusiastically adopted mass factory production in his food preservation business employing the latest technology and would (as we shall see) lead a campaign to introduce American business techniques to Fraserburgh but he failed to accept trawling as just another leap forward in competition, albeit one that would leave associated industries and communities managing to survive as best they could. Surely this was progress in his own terms? Interestingly Maconochie did favour some seasonal restriction on fishing as a means of preserving stocks a stance which further alienated him from trawling but which found support amongst line fishermen.
Returning to international competition, Archibald began to realise that the Liberal dogma of free trade was problematic in situations where rival nations were introducing tariffs to protect young enterprises or where they had developed industries which could compete on a cost basis with British goods. He allied himself with Joseph Chamberlain’s protectionist politics, denouncing the dumping of foreign imports on the home and colonial markets as unfair – that the free market had broken down and British industry needed protection through the state imposing tariffs to stop such surplus products finding their way onto the British market. In his view such a tax policy would not, as the Free Trade Liberals claimed, result in shrinkage in commerce but on the contrary would encourage foreign manufacturers to open businesses in the UK and so competitors would be forced to employ British labour.
This has a familiar ring about it as the very competitive nature of capital at one and the same moment brings success for some and ruin for others. The squaring of this particular circle, up until post 1945, involved variations of protectionism as each industrial concern and national capital struggled for solutions to failing competitiveness. The British had the advantage of an empire which not only could restrict foreign competition through tariffs on some imports to local markets but also put up barriers to prevent penetration of the colonies; the latter question of colonial markets being open to all-comers became a bargaining chip between debt-ridden UK and the solvent USA after World War 2.
In his six years as an M.P. Archibald Maconochie was constantly harassed by the liberal Aberdeen People’s Journal. Apart from being damned for having no political depth he was also criticised for his frequent absences from Parliament including several visits to the USA where he met with major industrialists including Andrew Carnegie. Being a kingpin in the preserving industry his travels in America took him to Chicago the home of a vast beef slaughter and packing industry famously documented by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle. AWM established business contact with The Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company and eventually he became a director of its British division.
Impressed by American industry, in 1903 he began negotiations to open a “steel works” in Fraserburgh. This was a radical proposal which would extend modern mass production to the fishing-rural economy and introduce a factory system that exploited advanced machine tools and in turn give birth to a concentrated industrial working class in part mirroring the setup already operating at the Kinnaird Head Works but unlike the tinning plant labour would largely be male. The liberal Press’ dismissal of the idea was misplaced as the proposed “steel works” was not a steel mill that required vast quantities of iron and coke but a tool-making business, as stated in the company name.
Criticism fell by the wayside still Liberal opinion fulminated against the new works and Maconochie’s role in bringing it to Fraserburgh. The Unionist M.P. was accused of buying votes with promises to hire local labour but Archibald remained undismayed by the criticism. Neither was he perturbed by the notion of American capital, a “Yankee Trust,” getting a foothold in Britain. So in 1903 plans were advanced for a 50-acre site for the venture and eventually by 1905 Consolidated Pneumatic Tool Co. (better known as CPT) was up and running in the fishing town.
Maconochie had hoped that tariffs would be placed on imported European-made pneumatic tools giving a competitive edge to the US firm but in this he was disappointed. Nonetheless the enterprise proved to be profitable.
However this achievement was undermined by a scandal which threatened to destroy Maconochie Brothers’ reputation when military authorities in Pretoria condemned thousands of cases of their preserved food as unfit for human consumption. Maconochie was not the only firm involved but it was by far the most prominent and the only one whose owner was a sitting M.P.; elected on the basis of his commitment to empire. The well-being of troops in South Africa and millions of tins of contaminated rations appeared to tell a different story.
Maconochie was confronted in Parliament by Keir Hardie. The socialist member for Merthyr Tydfil turned his anger on the member for East Aberdeenshire accusing him of threatening the welfare of troops as well as wasting tax payers’ money. Maconochie acknowledged that some discolouration of rations might have occurred but this, he claimed, was no fault of the manufacturer rather it was due to storage in tropical conditions. He maintained that Maconochie’s good name was being tarnished to a greater and unjustified extent than the canned meat and vegetables for irrespective of who tinned the rations Maconochie was global shorthand for tinned food. Speaking for the Government Lord Stanley sided with AWM on the stringency of testing of military rations and pointed a finger at the commanding officer in Pretoria for hastily condemning foodstuffs which Stanley claimed were probably edible (although there was no indication any government minister might be prepared to sit down to enjoy a Maconochie for lunch.) In debate Stanley gave voice to the ingrained and prevalent casual racism of the period when he spoke of natives stealing the condemned rations and apparently displaying no ill effects. And he drew laughter from the Chamber when he said it was questionable whether a thing which agrees with a native would always agree with a European. Archibald Maconochie then asked fellow members to give all manufacturers of rations the benefit of the doubt.
An issue which has resonance in 2017, namely migration, was of concern to Archibald Maconochie towards the end of his political career, in 1906. Not that he held to an absolute yes or no on the topic. In response to the question of whether migration was good for Britain and its empire he said it depended upon the immediate context – for example in 1904 he favoured the importation of Chinese labour to the mines of South Africa. At the end of the Boer War private capital and the British state were keen for the systematic extraction of minerals, particularly gold. War had disrupted production; local black labour had drifted to rural areas and towns and was showing a disinclination to accept the harsh conditions of mine owners. A suggestion that white labour might be imported from Europe and beyond to support mineral extraction was opposed on grounds that whites working for wage rates and in conditions formerly the preserve of black labour would undermine the racist division of South Africa. Cheap Chinese labour was the answer. As one commentator for the gold interest put it the greatest hopes lay in China where vast hungry populations vainly sought outlets for their energies. Poor wages, harsh conditions, racism and exclusion from civil rights would be the lot of the Chinese labourer who faced expulsion from the country when its energies were no longer required.
This type of migration was favoured by Maconochie who like so many of his contemporaries did not mind Chinese labour being imported into South Africa yet he had no wish to have Eastern European Jews admitted to Britain.
The Jews in question were not simply migrating on a whim in search of a different life but were refugees fleeing the bloody pogroms overwhelming Russia and Poland. A report in Aberdeen People’s Journal on a pogrom at Homel (Gomel) in September 1903 described the destruction of hundreds of homes with Jews beaten, bayoneted and stabbed as police, the military and civilians ran amok and again comparisons with today are clear with women, men and children fleeing similar persecution. Many thousands sought safety in the USA whilst others came to Britain seeking sanctuary only to find a growing wave of anti-Semitism which culminated in the landmark Aliens Act of 1905. This weasel-words measure couched its ant-Semitism in terms of undesirable immigrants, travelling steerage and landing at British ports without means of “decent” support and those arriving owing to a disease or infirmity . . . [who were] likely to become a charge upon the rates were to be summarily shipped out. A wall of officialdom was built around Britain’s coasts. Humanitarian need found no place in this legislation.
In an election address of August 1900 Archibald Maconochie had told his audience at Maud –
“I have visited many parts of the world, and I know of no part I go to where strangers, no matter of what nationality, are treated equally, the same as every British subject. Can we say that of any other country, and can we point to any other country where strangers are so well treated as in ours? We cannot.”
Constable John Bull: We’ve admitted a good many aliens before now – in fact I’m a bit of an alien myself. But in future we’re going to draw the line at the likes of you! 1905
Liberal, we might say, to a fault and of course Maconochie found the fault in 1905 when migrants who travelled first class were quite acceptable but the poor, the disabled and the sick in steerage were altogether another matter – that is if they were east European-Russian Jews. His rhetoric, typical of so much at the time caught the vile spirit of the Act. AWM contrasted the historical example of the Huguenots (significantly Protestants) who he held up as having provided yeoman service in the development of our trade with those immigrants then landing in Britain. According to him these new asylum seekers were criminals, paupers, lunatics, or diseased persons and altogether were not the types of people who were wanted in this country and to allow them in would open the door to crime and moral degeneration as well as threaten the livelihood of British workers. The “Aliens” were willing to work for starvation wages, he complained. He recognised that there were no boat-loads of immigrants coming ashore in Buchan and that the “sweat shops” found in London were unknown in Peterhead but he told his constituents that it remained their bounden duty to keep them out. All this apparently said without using the word Jew, the weasel word “foreigner” standing in for open anti-Semitism.
This was a last hurrah for East Aberdeenshire. Standing on a clear pro-Tory Unionist platform and without the benefit of war psychosis to rouse the electors Maconochie’s racism and protectionist politics were insufficient to see-off the Liberals. On a bigger turn out, although with a far from universal adult electorate, the constituency reverted to its trust in Liberalism. James Annand received 6149 votes to Maconochie’s 4319.
Nelson and Britannia May 17 1905 Shade of Nelson – What do you call these, Ma’am? Britannia – Oh, they’re some of my alien pilots. Shade of Nelson – What, in British waters? H’m – in my day we kept our secrets to ourselves! (59 foreign pilots were employed on British coast while British ships abroad were compelled to take native pilots let to calls for an Act to prevent aliens from being granted pilotage certificates for English [sic] waters.)
In 1910 the “Lipton of tinned fish”, as he was once called, asked the voters of Partick to support him. As he’d done ten years earlier he hammered home the message of the German threat. On this occasion Archibald emphasised Germany’s growing naval power as a dangerous challenge to Britain. Germany was after colonies and Maconochie feared a mortal injury would befall the British Empire. Four years later he might have found electors more willing to listen to his woeful prognosis but as in 1906 the electors of 1910 decided to go for the Liberal.
At a time when political rats of all descriptions are scuttling to fight for or against Brexit it’s worth bearing in mind that ghostly shadows of today’s dogmas, bigotries and self interest are to be found in the past. Not because the world never changes, but because the stresses and strains of capitalism presents supporters and opponents of different factions with a limited bag of solutions. Eerily for today the brief party political career of Archibald White Maconochie (AWM) mixed the “common sense” of a businessman, ill-trained in politics, with bellicose aims, scandal, racism and demands for something to be done about unfair international trade.
Archibald White Maconochie’s business was canning; putting fish, meat and vegetables into tins as well as preserving fruit and making pickles. In the early 1870s with his older sibling James he became one half of Maconochie Brothers. Based in Lowestoft the firm initially dealt in handling and curing fresh herring; a massive trade in late Victorian Britain and supplied fish to the British and European markets. Business grew and by 1878 the brothers had developed a network of contacts around the British coast and in Ireland. Skippers and their boats were contracted as sole suppliers of herring while at the same time the brothers bought fish on the open market.
Keeping an eye out for opportunities the brothers turned to food preserving – an industry pioneered by Pasteur’s science of sterilisation and with expanding global urban markets the commercial potential was enormous. The Maconochie Brothers while still curing food by older methods enthusiastically entered the new world of tinned foods so much so that by 1878 they were promoting themselves as The Largest Fish & Meat Preserving Factory in Great Britain. Thriving and struggling to cope with the demand for preserved fish James and Archibald decided to go to the heart of the Scottish herring industry, to the Buchan coast and specifically to Fraserburgh where they built Kinnaird Head Works. There at the factory’s two-acre site literally millions of herring were filleted, cleaned and washed by fifty “girls” and either packed into wooden barrels or preserved and canned using up-to-date scientific methods. Above the fish processing area was the tinplate department where men manufactured cans for the busiest season, July and August. The store had capacity to hold up to 2 million tins. With smooth continuous factory production being one of the keys to the profitability of the new industry the empty tins were carried by a shoot to the processors below. Five herrings were packed into 1lb tins by women and lids were soldered on by men prior to entering high pressure steam vessels for sterilisation. It’s worth noting how important female labour was in this system and how up until mechanisation was introduced the handicraft skills of the tinsmiths were crucial in the early days of the trade.
Archibald White Maconochie (AWM) was aware of the potential for tinsmiths to hobble his business for he knew these skilled men could withdraw labour at the height of landings, and with herring being highly perishable there was a real threat of losing fish, losing profits and customers shifting to competitors. This could be managed either by introducing new technology or taking a hard line with workers. In 1888 at Lowestoft the extent of AWM’s enthusiasm for stopping fractious labour showed when he grabbed tinsmith David Brown by the throat, knocking him down with the apparent intention of strangling him and shouting I’ll have the life out of you yet. Violence was his negotiating stance when workmen had the temerity to question the rate of work and the tools supplied for soldering. The boss was charged with assault and at the Police Court he was found guilty and fined £2 with the option of one month imprisonment. He chose to pay the fine. But the Maconochie Brothers had the last laugh as they vindictively sued men who walked out in sympathy at the Lowestoft factory at the time of the assault. The company claimed men had broken a legal contract and that under the conditions of the Employers’ and Workmen’s Act of 1875 they, the company, were entitled to £10 compensation from each of the six men pursued. In the event the firm was awarded £1 damages from each man with the tinsmiths also forfeiting two days wages. Not difficult to see who came out of this affair least affected.
An endnote to this tale is that machinery had been developed in the 1870s to put lids on tins which removed one component of the canning process to semi-skilled status. This was not enough for AWM and in 1901 he still fretted over the canning operation and eventually came up with a machine for beading tin lids and so doing away with the need for soldering. With a single operator the mechanism could manufacture 2500 containers per day but this was further improved by his design of a 4-man operated beader which could deliver 6000 tin an hour. These machines he said gave the edge to employers and tinsmiths could no longer hold up the trade.
And trade was not held up. The world became the company’s marketplace especially countries of the empire and as provisioning of British military forces became a necessity Maconochie found the State an enthusiastic customer for his products. Late Victorian imperialist wars were fed by Maconochie and what better to supply the troops than rations with a shelf life of at least two years. According to Baden-Powell
With morale and Maconochie the British soldier can go anywhere and do anything.
“Maconochie” had become a global brand Unsurprisingly when Archibald Maconochie turned to politics the problems of the British Empire were central to his campaign.
It was the General Election of 1900 that achieved a small political profile for AWM when he was elected to represent the constituency of East Aberdeenshire. He’d stood on a Liberal Unionist platform against the sitting Liberal member T. R. Buchanan a man who favoured Gladstone’s Home Rule for Ireland agenda. In Maconochie’s eyes Irish Members of Parliament, and by extension their supporters, through their demand for Home Rule threatened the very existence of Britain and its empire (it seems that his anti-Irish bias extended to him having a condition in his will that should any of his sons marry a Catholic they would forfeit their inheritance.) As much as he loathed home rulers it was not this that brought him to politics but the more immediate and bloody struggle being fought out in southern Africa, the Boer War. Fought essentially over who would control the area’s goldfields and get access to the strategically important ports round the Cape this, the final war of Victoria’s reign, was a sure indication of mounting international tensions which divided liberals such as Buchanan and socialists like Keir Hardie from bellicose defenders of the rights to empire.
Maconochie fell into the pro-war camp and found a ready supporter in Aberdeen’s conservative paper the Daily Journal. However, regardless of the fact that his business was selling vast amounts of tinned food to the army it would be wrong to attribute his support solely to self-interest. Like so many others of the time his notion of what was best for Britain inextricably linked business and politics with Britain bringing civilisation and some form of material well-being to the rest of the world: plant the flag and let business follow and so native populations could be given proper “care and protection”. He believed what he described as the Anglo-Saxon race had a great and heavy responsibility. If we look at the way Maconochie treated his own white labour, from direct assault to paternalism, we can conclude how he thought the colonised should be handled. Archibald had in fact a very straight forward way of addressing politics. Sophisticated notions of negotiation, of moral authority and international law were beyond him. In his view all government required was application of business principles to the nation’s affairs.
Mr A W Maconochie, MP, had a nasty motor spill on his way to political meetings at Tarves and Methlick last Saturday. The Liberals of East Aberdeenshire are doing their best to effect another spill later on.
Britain was not alone in the imperial chauvinist dream; Germany and France in particular envied and challenged her as the then premier world power. Archibald Maconochie recognised these growing threats; to take an anti-war position was to open the door to competitors. The only way of confronting commercial-political enemies he said, was the extension of the Empire in order to keep open markets for British trade. Supporters of AWM stressed his local connections and in particular the hundreds employed at the Fraserburgh works pointing to the fact that full employment meant no need for a soup kitchen in the town. Addressing electors Maconochie said Boers needed to be defeated, integrated and made part and parcel of our Imperial Empire. His rival the anti-war Liberal Buchanan fought to retain his seat but he was denounced for his support for Home Rule as giving succour to the enemy and of not supporting troops who were dying on the battlefields of the Transvaal and despite Aberdeen’s liberal newspaper the People’s Journal condemning AWM for having no other platform than being anti-Boer Buchanan lost the election by 73 votes.
In local terms this was a big event as liberalism had long been backed by the area’s agricultural and fishing electorate. The conservative Press was ecstatic; Maconochie had broken the evil tradition of Aberdeenshire Radicalism. In Fraserburgh Kinnaird Head Works declared a half-holiday and workers marched through the streets shouting Maconochie forever. We can imagine that the local anti-war and pro-labour voters were all but silenced at the unionist success but we can only wonder what they thought when in the midst of Fraserburgh celebrations the new Member of Parliament found eager workers willing to unhitch horses from his carriage and yoke themselves to draw Maconochie to his factory. It is undoubtedly the case that Archibald’s victory was down to his opposition to the Boers and defence of British troops then dying on the veld. Fourteen years later a similar febrile, pro-empire mood also had men swarming to the flag.
Columbia to Britannia: You mustn’t mind those noisy boys of mine, it’s election time. May 16 1900
Maconochie’s anti-Boer view reached fever-point in 1901 when he told the good folks of New Deer that it was for every man to do his utmost to support the Government . . . If a man encouraged the enemy he was no patriot, and was not fit to live among us . . . kid gloves must be taken off and war ended as speedily as possible a sentiment endorsed by the editor of the Daily Journal who described Radicals as a cause of humiliation and shame to Scotchmen in all parts of the world. Addressing constituents at Strichen AWM went so far as to sympathise with the view that anybody expressing support for the Boers should be shot.
With the end of the Boer War in 1902 the central plank of Maconochie’s platform fell away. He was a bit like Donald Trump left with a rag-bag of opinions and prejudices which mingled commercial instrumentalism with half-digested economic theory. For example on taking his seat in Parliament he was astonished at how backward and hidebound by tradition the process of parliamentary voting was, with walking in and out of yes-no lobbies. This he said could be made easier, more efficient by giving each member electric bells to register approval or disapproval of motions resulting in more or less instantaneous results. In a similar rejection of tradition AWM wanted to throw out aspects of the humanist education syllabus in particular he saw no need for Greek and Latin to be taught. These languages served little purpose in a world of competitive commerce he claimed, better that students spoke German and French. Maconochie did fall in with fellow liberals in his support for old age pensions and as for trade unions he judged them okay so long as they did not actually interfere with employer’s right to set the rates of production. Too often, he said, unions were implicated in ca-canny policies, robbing management of its rights and undermining competitiveness. In other words they might be fine as friendly societies but unacceptable if they challenged the distribution of property and economic power.
As manager of a business with international reach Maconochie’s view of the world was saturated with notions of competition. He saw the world in terms of struggles, between firms, between nations and also a social-Darwinist hierarchy of racial division. And there’s no doubt that he was correct to identify deepening international competition as being profoundly important to the well-being of the British Empire. Times were changing, the historical advantage industrial and commercial Britain once had was under threat. Across the pond the USA had emerged as a growing power with its state providing protection to some home-grown industries. In Europe Germany in particular was aggressively pursuing industrialisation and colonisation with the intention of promoting what it regarded as its national right. In Britain these antagonisms highlighted the need for an active and even aggressive defence of national interest. Private capitalism and state institutions were in deep embrace, or as Archibald put it trade followed the flag, for trade was sustained by the flag, and the trade led the flag. So it was with some prescience he predicted that this competition would lead to war with Germany.
Planting the flag
Part 2 to follow
The demonisation of foreign workers; the emergence of the Consolidated Pneumatic Tool Company; dodgy war rations; continuing xenophobia- Chinese, European Jews and threat to the Empire.
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