The Scots that built Russia’s army and navy

Why did so many men from northeast Scotland play such an important part in the development of Russia’s army and navy? According to the American writer, Washington Irving, it was down to the topography of their homeland – the flat coast, eastward-facing that produced

men of the clearest brains, the strongest arms, and the most determined wills, to a country in which these commodities have never been wanting.

Russia’s military and naval might might not be what it is today had it not been for a few Scotsmen. Quite a few Scotsmen as it turns out but one or two who were instrumental in reorganising the Russian empire’s defences (and lines of attack.)

Russian Imperial Navy 1700s

Since boats were boats Scots sailed to the Baltic from Aberdeen and Leith and points in-between to trade, to study and ply their crafts – including the arts of war. Mackenzies, Lindsays, Watsons, Farquhars, Hays, Elphinstones, MacLeods, Learmonths – George Mikhail Lermontov, ensign in the Russian army and descendant of Thomas the Rhymer, Gordons.

There are a lot of Gordons in Scotland and quite a lot were to be found in Russia over the past four hundred years.

Patrick Gordon from Auchleuchries in Aberdeenshire was in danger as a Catholic from the religious civil wars that brought Cromwell to power so at the age of sixteen he was taken by his father and uncle to Aberdeen to purchase clothes and put him aboard a merchant ship sailing to Danzig. Danzig (now Gdańsk) then held within a union between Poland and Lithuania was an important Baltic port. There he found accommodation with another Scot, John Donaldson, before making his way across Europe, lodging as he went mainly with Scots with whom he was put in contact. For a time he travelled with fellow-countrymen, Thomas and Michael Menzies and a Jesuit priest, Father Blackhall.

Not familiar with the local languages and dialects young Gordon struggled at first to get by speaking Latin and a smattering of Dutch. One particular day it all got too much for Gordon and he sat down on the roadside and wept from desperation but on being comforted by a stranger the young lad found the determination to continue.   

In 1655 young Patrick Gordon, a capable swordsman, did what thousands of his compatriots did, he sold his battle skills to the highest bidder, as a mercenary soldier. He enlisted with the Swedish army as a cavalryman. Opportunities there were plenty for mercenaries with Europe in constant turmoil battling over land and power. Gordon’s allegiances switched about. He fought with the Swedes at times and at other times with the Poles, against his former comrades. It was while in the pay of the Swedes he found himself a prisoner of a Russian force led by Scot, Colonel John Crawford (Crawfurd). Crawford persuaded Gordon to cross to the Russian Imperial army where he was told he’d be in the company of many Scotsmen.  

Patrick Gordon proved himself again and again on the battlefield and he rose through the ranks becoming a Major General, later Lieutenant General and Chief of Command at Kiev (Kyiv in Ukraine). By this time Gordon had become Pyotr Ivanovich, a trusted adviser and friend to the Tsar, Peter the Great. Gordon was the first foreigner in Russian history that a Tsar visited privately, when eighteen-year old Peter went to Gordon’s house in Moscow’s German Quarter. Trusted implicitly by him, Gordon laid the foundations of Peter the Great’s army that became the strongest in Europe.

Gordon died in 1699 at the age of sixty-four having served under three Tsars. The young Scottish laddie broken by loneliness fifty years earlier ended his life deeply mourned by a Tsar who provided his friend with a state funeral.

By the Grace of God, We Peter the First, Tsar and Sole Monarch of all Russi …blah blah blah …Be it known to Every one, That We have Graciously Appointed and Constituted Thomas Gordon (Captain Commander in our Navy for his well recommended to us Experiences, Dilligence and Zeal for our Service) to be our Rear Admiral the first day of January, 1719…  blah blah etc etc.

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Gordon’s namesake who made a career for himself with the Swedish and Polish armies in which he attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and earned the nickname, Steel Hand for his swordsmanship, is sometimes confused with the Auchleuchries Gordon.

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Another Gordon was Thomas Gordon, sometime captain of a merchant ship, Margaret, that sailed out of the port of Aberdeen, and was in 1703 in charge of the Royal Scots Navy ship, Royal Mary. Until the Union in 1707 Scotland was often the target of English aggression and ambition – some incidents were deadly and others petty though revealing such as Scottish vessels being denied the right to fly the Scottish pennant when in English waters. Following Union with England the Scottish Navy was scrapped in favour of the continuation of England’s Royal Navy. Scottish vessels and crews were absorbed into it and where both navies included identically-named vessels Scottish ships were ordered to change names – a move that was unpopular with Scots crewmen. From the start of the Union it was clear Scotland would be an inferior partner.

Royal Scottish Navy vessel

Thomas Gordon tholed so much English high-handedness but he refused to take an oath to the newly-crowned George I and left the navy, sailing to France where he stayed for a time before joining the Russian navy in 1717. He was promoted to Admiral in 1727 and later made Chief Commander of the Russian maritime port of Kronstadt. 

In common with numerous other Scots of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Thomas Gordon’s family settled in Russia, either marrying Russians or bringing up their families as Russian. Ann Young was Thomas Gordon’s granddaughter. She married Thomas Mackenzie (Mekenzi) a Rear-Admiral in the Russian Navy. Their son, Thomas, also became a Rear-Admiral in the Imperial navy and founder of the city of Sevastopol – the largest city in Crimea and principal port on the Black Sea, in 1783. Sevastopol under him became a vital station for naval supplies as well as developing its shipbuilding capacity. The Mekenzi mountains in Ukraine are named in honour of him.

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The ’Father of the Russian Navy’

The Sevastopol Thomas Gordon served under another Scot, Samuel Greig. Greig, the son of a merchant captain from Inverkeithing in Fife, became an Admiral and then Grand Admiral during the period of Tsarina Catherine the Great, who tasked him with modernising the Imperial Navy. She was the godmother of Samuel Greig’s son, Aleksei Samuilovich Greig, who was given the rank of midshipman at his birth. Almost inevitably the younger Greig made the navy his life. In 1816 he was appointed Commander in Chief of the Black Sea Fleet and ports at a time when Russia had full control of the Black Sea. Other Greigs enjoyed status roles in both the Russian army and navy. This family were part of the elite of Russian society for a century and a half but the sons were educated in Edinburgh.  

When the ‘Father of the Russian Navy’, Samuel Carlovich Greig, died he was given a magnificent funeral. Laid out with full pomp Greig was dressed in his Admiral uniform, his many medals illustrating his service to Russia Governor of Kronstadt, Chevalier of the Order of St Andrew, St Alexander Newski, St George, St Vladimir, St Anne. A crown of laurel was placed on his head. At the foot of the black-draped bier in a silver urn were his bowels.  

If Great and Good Actions
Command the Respect of Mankind,
The name of Greig will live for Ever.
He deserved good Fortune,
And he found it under the Banners of Cath.II.
He scattered the Enemies of Russia . . .

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James Keith from Inverugie in Aberdeenshire who became a General Field Marshall in the Prussian army, a major military leader in Europe and trusted friend and adviser to Frederick the Great was for a time responsible for the Russian forces in Finland then being fought over by Russia and Sweden. Keith was one of three Inspector Generals of the Russian forces – his responsibility being the frontier with Asia along the rivers Volga and Don and a section of the border with Poland. Keith, however, did not settle in Russia but transferred into the service of the Prussia’s Frederick the Great. Like so many fellow-Scots, Keith was forced to flee Scotland because of his religion and/or his support for the Jacobite cause. He did briefly return to Aberdeenshire once no longer branded an outlaw but couldn’t settle having lived so long on the Continent. He returned to the army and died, killed by cannon fire at the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758. He had been let down by the man whose ear he normally had, Frederick the Great. Keith had warned him his Prussian troops were in grave danger from the Austrians if they didn’t alter position. Frederick disagreed, and Keith paid the ultimate penalty, knocked out of his saddle, he was killed instantly. Generalfedlmarschall Jacob von Keith has a granite memorial at Hochkirch.

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An earlier army reformer with Russia’s Imperial forces was Alexander Leslie of Auchintoul in Banffshire (now Aberdeenshire). Alexander Leslie fought for the Swedes and Poles before transferring to the Russians and becoming Russia’s first General. Leslie recruited men from Scotland as part of his army improvements. He returned to the British Isles and took up arms in the Civil Wars for the Duke of Montrose and was ultimately banished from Scotland. Returning to Russia he lived out his life there, dying in Smolensk in 1663. His son, John, was killed while a Colonel in the Russian cavalry. John was married into the Scot-Russo Crawfords mentioned above.

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Thomas Dalyell (Dalziel) of Binns, West Lothian, Bluidy Tam, fought in the Scottish Royalist army. In the civil wars a price of 200 guineas was put on his head. Not unsurprisingly he fled to Russia, into the service of Tsar Alexis I where his brutal reputation earned him the nickname, Muscovite De’il. He did not remain in Russia but returned to Scotland to crack down on the Covenanters with such force he came to be known here as Bluidy Tam.

Russian Imperial Army in the 18th century

Robert Bruce, not that one but a later scion of the clan, whose family under James Daniel Bruce settled in Russia in the mid-1600s – Robert, Roman Vilimovich Bryusov, served in Peter I’s personal guard and he became the first Commander of St Petersburg. His army career lasted around thirty years and when he died in 1720 he was buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg,

Other members of the Bruce family were prominent in Russian society. Robert’s son, Alexander Romanovich Bruce was a Lieutenant-General in Russia’s Imperial army. Alexander’s uncle, Jacob Bruce, was primarily a diplomat and scientist (astronomer and naturalist – and also an alchemist and magician) but he also did a stint in the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish war and the Great Northern War when he was promoted to Major-General of Artillery – and rewarded for his successes by being made a count, one of the first in Russia, almost exactly 300 years ago.  Other Scots would follow into the Russian nobility.

When they travelled Scots took with them their birth brieve – a birth certificate with details of their origins. Additional documentation was kept in the Propinquity Registers of Scotland. Aberdeen holds some of these among its unique collection of archives dating back to Robert the Bruce’s time. Propinquity Books provided early modern travel documents. There’s an entry on 9^th July 1725 relating to the family of the late James Gordon of Auchleuchries, ‘brigadier in the service of the Emperor of Russia’ that records the disposal of his property to his kin in Scotland.  

Aberdeen’s Propinquity Registers reveal the importance and extent of Scotland’s east coast maritime trade with Europe. Sailing from Scottish ports such as Aberdeen to Baltic ports “the path to the Baltic ports was easier, and the welcome greater, than the highway that led to England” it has been said. Europe provided opportunities for wealth and reputation and many a Scottish family counted their fortunes in Russian rubles.

What’s in a name: royalty a very English affair

What’s in a name? Quite a lot.

British Air Force man Derek Neilson, who was fined £5 for throwing a tyre lever through a shop window stocked with British Coronation emblems. Following his court appearance he was locked up overnight at army barracks in Edinburgh for refusing to stand up during the playing of “God Save the Queen.” And his tie emblazoned with Elizabeth I, was confiscated.

Neilson was the extreme end of protest across Scotland from Benbecula to Auchtermuchty in the early 1950s over the naming of the queen. Reminiscent of the women’s suffrage movement protests, poster campaigns, petitions signed, windows were smashed and a pillar box in Edinburgh bearing the insignia, E.R. II, was blown up.

Back in 1901 similar protests had taken place in Scotland when Edward VII was named since there had been no Scottish kings called Edward, only English, how could he be Edward VI of the United Kingdom? Didn’t do any good then. Scots were told to just swallow it.

Then in 1953 a petition lodged with the Court of Session by the Scottish Covenant Association to veto the imposition of Elizabeth II as the queen’s title on grounds the United Kingdom of Great Britain that came into being in 1707 had no queen called Elizabeth since that time and as she was said to be queen of the Union she could not possibly be called Elizabeth II.

Dr. John MacCormick

The petition was rejected on grounds it was up to her what she called herself. This was challenged by Dr John M. MacCormick, chairman of the Scottish Covenant Association on grounds that the numeral was not a description of her Crown but of her, a person. He referred to an Act of Parliament on the subject –

Nowhere in the Act of 1953 has any authority been given to Her Majesty or her Ministers to adopt in her personal name a numeral which is contrary to the provisions of the Act of Union.

That it is well understood in England the numeral is to convey her as Elizabeth of England . . .

It cut no ice. Scotland was then fairly solidly unionist. At least those in senior roles in Scotland were solidly unionist and pleased themselves about constitutional matters irrespective of popular opinion.

Names do matter. And names do change. Place names tend to be changed to underline domination. The British Empire was famous for doing that but it’s a common practice among powers replacing traditional native names with ones honouring political, military or royal figures. Think of Volgograd becoming Stalingrad in honour of the Soviet leader or Maryburgh that became Gordonsburgh then Duncansburgh and finally, Fort William, in Scotland. The William being the bloody butcher Duke of Cumberland, himself. I hope in a future independent Scotland someone with a morsel of decency will arrange a competition to rename the place. There are 26 towns called Independence in the US alone and that has a certain ring about it.

Names matter or else place names wouldn’t be altered. Names mattered a great deal in 1953 when Princess Elizabeth came to the throne. Which ordinal number should be added to the new queen’s name, I or II, was debated in Westminster. It used to be that a description was good enough to differentiate monarchs of the same name – descriptive term like Alfred the Wimp, Margaret the Cow or such. Then they began to number them, like farm stock.

It is not compulsory for a monarch to be known by his or her given first name. Usually with royal types they have several to choose from. Queen Elizabeth’s own father chose to be George VI even though George was the last of his many names and he was Albert or Bertie before his coronation. Elizabeth might have chosen to be Queen Alexandra or Queen Mary (both her names.) Mary would was been an interesting choice, and legitimate since she was becoming the monarch of a union formed only since 1707. If it is, as was stated then, the UK was a successor state to England then equally the UK is a successor state to Scotland. But that was/is assuming the UK is an equal union and nobody but a dissembler would say it has ever been that. It was most definitely not regarded this way in London, where it mattered.

In the event Elizabeth Windsor – now there’s another example of changing identities for the House of Windsor and other similar wings of the family took their name from royal castles when their own names became too embarrassingly German during war with Germany.  So Saxe Coburg Gotha was dispensed with in favour of Windsor. It could so easily have been the House of Balmoral. But wasn’t. It’s an English/Scottish thing. Again.

As I was saying, in the event Princess Elizabeth and parliament decided she should present herself as a successor to Elizabeth Tudor of England – which she isn’t. Okay, let’s stop there for a minute. Elizabeth of England had no children. The English line of Tudors therefore died out with her. However, in that way that royals are inter-bred she is kind of related, wait for it, through the Scottish House of Stuart. So, no direct link with Elizabeth of the rotten teeth. Cut to the chase, Lena. The Tudors line ran dry. The Stuarts in the form of Mary Queen of Scot’s son, James VI, took up the English as well as the Scottish throne – Scotland and England were separate nations in 1603. A bit of cut and pasting heads and the Stuarts were replaced by the German cousins, the Hanovers – and hey presto we have the Saxe Coburg and Gotha dynasty that was renamed, Windsor. Hope that’s clear.

It won’t have escaped the notice of those of you paying attention that James VI is never referred to by the big 6 in England but the wee I since England had never had a King James previously. Sounding familiar? Rules are there to be broken, as they say in Westminster. Talking of Westminster the debates over the royal name chuntered on.

3 March 1953 –

After the passage of all this various legislation through the Parliaments of the Commonwealth the Queen will be as much the Queen of India and of Ceylon as she is of England or of the United Kingdom,” said Gordon Walker, Labour MP.

His conflation of England with the UK did not go unnoticed. Walker, continued

I think one is still entitled to talk about the “Queen’s English” and the “Queen of England.”

Labour MP, John Rankin, representing Glasgow, wanted to know who advised the choice of title pointing out it was incorrect in reference to Ireland and equally wrong in its reference to Scotland,

We in Scotland have always recognised the English as a very kindly and generous people” to which M. McGovern of Glasgow Shettleston piped up, “Who circulated that?”

Rankin ignored the comment. Referring to the man who was the accepted authority on all things coronation, Lawrence Tanner, Keeper of Muniments and Library, Westminster Abbey, who described the new queen as Queen Elizabeth II the sixth Queen Regnant of England. Rankin said this was

phrase that gives offence to many people in Scotland … where does Scotland come in? Does it mean that she is not Queen Elizabeth II of Scotland? If so then what is the position of Scotland in regard the proposed style and title?

The right honourable Gentleman the Prime Minister, dealing with the Coronation Oath, in a statement to the House on 25^th February, said that the change to which he was referring was introduced “as a result of the act of Union with Scotland. Then he went on to point out that in the Oath Scottish religion was preserved as a right guaranteed under the Act of Union. But the right hon. Gentleman did not tell the whole story. There were more than Scottish religious rights defended as the result of the Act of Union. As a result of that Act, Scotland and England ceased to be independent countries. The Act of Union was not a merging of Scot-land into England. We are not a satellite of England. I am no Nationalist – I want to make that perfectly clear – but the Act of Union did away with England and Scotland as independent units. It substituted a new name, a new flag and a new Great Seal.

These are the things which have been consistently ignored, not merely in the attitude of England – and I forgive them for that – but time and again in this House. People look on us as taking a rather narrow attitude, but our attitude is defended by a treaty which established that Act of Union between two equals, not between one who was dependent and another who was a great Power.

Welsh member, Cledwyn Hughes, for Anglesey, reminded him there were three great nations in the Union.

It became clear that little consultation had taken place with any of the three other members of the Union and all consideration of the event was based solely on what suited England and conformed to English history and heritage or a cobbled-up version of that.  

A.C. Manuel, MP for Central Ayrshire –

At election time, the Prime Minister always likes to go to Scotland …to parade at huge meetings in big football stadiums…give pledges…he doesn’t appear to have consulted on this.

The second reading of the Bill took place on 11 March. Viscount Swinton prattled on about how inclusive the monarchy was and how it was based on what was contained in Bagehot’s English Constitution. The tunnel vision was and still is, stark.

There was ridicule over Scots getting hot under the collar about the royal title from people who openly admitted they knew little about Scottish history.

“Lawlessness and violence” that greeted the appearance of pillar boxes bearing ER II in Scotland was condemned. Representing the Scottish National Party’s view was Lord Saltoun though he was not a member. He explained that people in Scotland were angry at the country continued in being sidelined and not taken as an equal partner in the Union. He suggested that when Prince Charles (then a baby) came to reign he could choose a Scottish title such as David III or Robert IV, to demonstrate the UK was an equal union.   

On the 15^th April Commons debate on Royal Style and Title, Lieut.-Colonel Elliot asked the Prime Minister whether,

. . . in advising the Sovereign to assume the title of Elizabeth II, he took into consideration the desirability of adopting the principle of using whichever numeral in the English or Scottish lines of Kings and Queens happens to be the higher.”

Notice what he did there? The principle he referred to had never taken Scottish monarchs into account – didn’t happen with James VI then I (by which he is universally known) and with Edward VII it was never contemplated he would be known as Edward I of the UK. Westminster’s love of tradition was/is its love of English tradition. It can’t handle unions because of something it calls the importance of its sovereignty. England doesn’t do compromise. Don’t mention the EU and Brexit.

The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was quick to share out responsibility for this obvious stitch up, with the Accession Council. The Accession Council is a group comprising privy counsellors, members of the Lords, the Lord Mayor of London, aldermen of the City of London, high commissioners of Commonwealth realms and assorted civil servants – top heavy with south east England interests. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland – less so. This was their speel back in the day –

WE, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm, being here assisted with these His late Majesty’s Privy Council, with representatives of other Members of the Commonwealth, with other Principal Gentlemen of Quality, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, do now hereby with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart publish and proclaim that the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is now, by the death of our late Sovereign of happy memory, become Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of all Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to whom Her lieges do acknowledge all Faith and constant Obedience with hearty and humble Affection, beseeching God by whom Kings and Queens do reign, to bless the Royal Princess Elizabeth the Second with long and happy Years to reign over us.

There was unease among many Scots at having a right royal rug pulled out from under them. Churchill (despised by much of Scotland for very good reasons and the feeling probably mutual) toyed with Scots when he suggested that a future monarch might choose a regnal number that represented past Scottish monarchs, such as a Robert.  

. . . thereby emphasising that our Royal Family traces its descent through the English royal line from William the Conqueror and beyond, and through the Scottish Royal line from Robert the Bruce and Malcolm Canmore and still further back.

Still further back! All those references to tracing monarchs back to 1066 England and all that is just an arbitrary stab into the past. It is meaningless gibberish in terms of tradition. Why not go back to the 10^th  or the 9^th century? Why the reference to the Norman Conquest? Why not a reference to the great Kenneth MacAlpin? We know why – a) it was likely Churchill, schooled in ancient and European histories knew next to nothing about Scotland and b) MacAlpin wasn’t English. Of course neither was William the Conqueror but back then people arriving in boats from France were able to settle in England, especially when equipped with a mighty bow and plenty of arrows. It’s pretty hilarious that accepted English constitutional rigmarolling stems from a French takeover of the land previously run by Denmark, Norway and rump England? Plenty shared sovereignty back then.

Churchill was pressed to to formalise his remark about considering Scottish monarchs in the future but he declined to have any such policy written down because it was all just so much hot air. He was at it. What about the difficulties in issuing Scottish currency given this was the first Elizabeth of Scotland? he was asked. Nothing.

As usual Wales was omitted from the conversation. A Welsh MP, Gower, piped up,

. . . what course will be followed if a future British monarch should bear the name Llewellyn?”

The PM prevaricated. As he did on many concerns of the union of equals.

Sir William Darling, MP for South Edinburgh, handed into the Commons police what looked like a bomb but was a machine gun cartridge sent to him by someone from Glasgow in response to a speech he made in support of the title Queen Elizabeth II. A Darling doesn’t change its spots.

Nobody listened to Scottish or Welsh objections over the monarch’s title but irritation over the high-handed behaviour of the Westminster clique has never faded which might help explain the greater support for republicanism in Scotland and Wales than in England. Will Charlie do a Robert? We’ll soon know. Oh, and the Queen got to keep her choice of title but the ER II post boxes got the heave-ho out of Scotland to be replaced by ones bearing the Scottish Crown. They tried it on again with an ER II post box in Dunoon in 2018. Still at it.

Let us end with a song, once very popular in Scottish folksong circles.

The Scottish Breakaway (Coronation Coronach)

_{Chorus:
Nae Liz the Twa, nae Lilibet the One
Nae Liz will ever dae
We’ll mak’ oor land Republican
In a Scottish breakaway}

_{Noo Scotland hasnae got a King
And she hasnae got a Queen
How can ye hae the Second Liz
When the First yin’s never been}

_{Her man he’s cried the Duke o’ Edinburgh
He’s wan o’ the kiltie Greeks
Och dinnae blaw ma kilt awa’
For it’s Lizzie wears the breeks}

_{He’s a handsome man and he looks like Don Juan
He’s beloved by the weaker sex
But it disnae really matter at a’
‘Cause it’s Lizzie that signs the cheques}

_{Noo her sister Meg’s got a bonny pair o’ legs
But she didnae want a German or a Greek
Poor aul’ Peter was her choice but he didnae suit the boys
So they sellt him up the creek}

_{But Meg was fly an’ she beat them by an’ by
Wi’ Tony hyphenated Armstrong
Behind the pomp and play the question o’ the day
Wis, Who did Suzie Wong}

_{Sae here’s tae the lion, the bonnie rampant lion,
An’ a lang streitch tae his paw
Gie a Hampden roar an’ it’s oot the door
Ta-ta tae Chairlie’s maw}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_Box_War

Bottom Lining: blood and soil Tories, a mad monarch and debauched Duke of York

The UK is not a migrant friendly country. It says it is. It isn’t. The UK is hostile to migrants. Not all of the UK but certainly that bit that controls migration.

People have migrated. That’s it. People have migrated the whole of human existence. Migrated to find the essentials of living – basically what it takes for survival.

When humans migrated across continents they came from Africa. Oh, yes. Even you racists out there, pucker up because you are basically, African. Learn to love your genes. Of course none of those emigrants who landed on these shore about 1,000,000 years ago would be welcome today. Imagine the scene  – boats loaded with terrified people attempting to make safe landing. But wait, back then there was no evil little Home Secretary shooing them away. There was nobody here at all. And so the British African arrived. And that was that. People forgot who they were. But we haven’t got all day – fast forward to – not Patel but a government not unlike today’s unscrupulous Tory gang of spivs and toffs.

James Gillray’s depiction of British MPs getting ready for the daily grind

The year is 1803. Britain was at war with France. Again. They didn’t want any queer democratic revolutionary happenings in Blighty. So war it was. Tories were in charge. Again. A guy called Henry Addington and a mad King. Just call him George.

The mad king has his sights on Boney

Like most Tories the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Back in 1803 it was all the rage – on the take, doing a mate a favour, you scratch my back. We’re well acquainted with the idea. Well acquainted. Pub landlords getting squoodles of millions for making virus test tubes. Turns out they were – well not test tubes as science understands the term. But. Well, always a but. Didn’t have viruses back then. They did but didn’t know them as viruses.

Anyway. 1803. War. Tories in power. Tories everywhere. Even those who didn’t call themselves Tories were Tories. Tory = look out for the bottom line. In Tory minds that meant squeezing the last sweat of profit out workers. One of the most horrible jobs back about 1803 was cutting, gathering, laying out to dry, burning and collecting the ash of kelp. Kelp is a type of seaweed that was essential to manufacturing soap and glass. Everyone needs glass and/or soap – except the Hudsons. In-joke involving cruel snorting schoolkids at sight of 19^th century add for Hudson’s soap because of a local family of that name who weren’t too familiar with soap. Enough of this nonsense. Soap and glass back in 1803 delivered excellent bottom lines because so much of the hard graft going into them was done by kids. What do child workers mean? Profits. Kids and their folks were sick of this work. They’d been farmers until thrown out of their homes by their lairds. This is Scotland, in the Union, in 1803. Highland lairds (landowners) found a better bottom line by throwing impoverished natives off the lands of their ancestors and replacing them with sheep. People pay to eat sheep and wear wool and sheep don’t need much looking after. Bottom line, remember.

Where were we? Yes, people were sick of this kelp drudgery. They couldn’t return to their burnt out homes invaded by sheep so many chose to migrate to North America. Migration was quite a thing across the British Isles and families who claimed to own the Highlands were so bottom lining with sheep they’d persuaded lots and lots of people to pile into boats and take their chances in North America where they might eventually be able to farm.  What I mean by persuaded is forced. Some had a choice. Some had no choice. People wept, said their last farewells to any too old or decrepit to migrate. They wouldn’t see them again. Or the land. Or the graves of their families. Choice wasn’t really a thing back then – for the poor.  One way out was to risk everything, basically everything these folk had was their lives, and emigrate. No Union bonus for them.

Pause for a link but come back a’body. Kelp, Clearances, Clanranald, Speculators and Scottish Scoundrel Lairds

Furious lairds did what they could to dissuade them from leaving – apart from paying them properly and improving their working conditions. When this didn’t work they lobbied their friends in government to make it all but impossible for these poor folk to leave the country and so leave proprietors without labour to do their dirty work for them.

The Tory government and the mad king were happy to play their part. The Passenger Vessel Act was quickly pushed through parliament in London. To add insult to injury it was tarted up as being in the interests of migrants – to protect them from being exploited by transportation organisations with less overcrowding and better treatment of passengers. Bunkum, of course. The motivation was entirely to prevent workers leaving the United Kingdom to settle in North America, for example, the fare to Canada tripled from £3 to at least £10 which in today’s money is a hike from £300, still a small fortune back in 1803, to an outrageous £1,000 per person; on a par with people smugglers skinning desperate immigrants nowadays. And we’re talking about the most impoverished folk with virtually no money to their name. It’s worth saying at this point that the Act was repealed in 1827 when prices for kelp plummeted and Highland lairds wanted rid of what had become unwanted workers – 20,000 once employed in the kelp industry. Westminster was only happy to oblige them once again by dropping the cost of migration onboard vessels to North America. Westminster politicians were as unscrupulous then as they are today.  Alexander Macdonell, chaplain of the Glengarry Fencilbes, said the 1803 Act was passed on a

specious pretext of humanity & tender benevolence towards the emigrants.

Passengers were crowded onto vessels

The swiftness of the Act’s passage through parliament took some Hebrideans by surprise. They had already given up their tenancies and were abandoned by the government for a generation.

However – always a however – there were exceptions allowed. What are friends in high places for if not to pull strings. The Earl of Selkirk who had ambitions to resettle Scots in Prince Edward Island in Canada was indulged as was the Hudson’s Bay Company (echoes of PPE contracts). Selkirk set up travel agents at Portree and other Highland ports to collect prospective migrants’ deposits, some very large amounts.

Highlanders were being pushed from pillar to post. They were despised by most of the rest of the United Kingdom as uncivilised brutes and scum. But uncivilised brutes were exactly what UK military leaders, government, the mad king and the Duke of York (who was involved in sex scandals which seem to be an occupational hazard for Dukes of York) wanted as recruits to fight its wars. A regiment was formed in North America to absorb some of these hulking Highlanders who had proved so willing to spill their blood for king and country; the Canadian Fencible Regiment appeared then disappeared in 1804 when recruits grew disgruntled over their treatment and were condemned by the military authorities, parliament, the mad king and the debauched prince as strìopach (stroppy). The government, mad king and the grand ol’ Duke of York were feargach (angry) and raged at the men they’d soft-talked into signing up for becoming ‘troublesome’. Though not so troublesome they’d leave them be. Parliament and royalty – mad and bad – were desperate for cannon fodder, fit and brave young men they could sacrifice on the altar of Empire. The 1819 Military Register refers to Highlanders’

blood copiously shed in our service.

In 1810 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register asks why government grants that were provided to the Highlands to keep the young from migrating was not available in Ireland. Perhaps it was something to do with the copious amount of blood shed by the youth of the Highlands and Islands.

So, sheep were moved onto land where once there were people; families and villages and the communities scattered hither and yon. Not untypical were the seven or eight families who lived on a farm in Argyleshire forcibly evicted and the farm let to “a gentleman because he can give more rent” and the 100,000 acres of lands of Glenshiel (then Glen Sheal), Morvich and Dornie on the west coast of Ross-shire once filled with communities of people was advertised in 1810 as pasture for sheep and black cattle, game, fishings, lead and other minerals. 

Oh, why I left my hame by Thomas Faed

There was panic on both sides – months before the Act with warnings over the “destructive depopulation of our island” and calls for “immediate and vigorous interposition of our Legislature” to stop the removal of desperate Highlanders with no means of support by what amounted to ‘unwilling banishment’. Highlanders whose only language was the Gaelic were approached by human traffickers armed with travel documents in English. Some were inevitably duped by them.

Highlanders were the disposable property of landowners in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. After the ’45 uprising and the butchery and cruelty that followed there were Scots desperate to leave to find safety. The Highlands were treated as alien territory by the British army which built forts which it filled with loyal troops to remind Highlanders who was in charge and put down resistance to its hegemony. The incursion of sheep and sporting estates created other incentives to leave. The 1803 Act was another means of controlling Highlanders. And that was another bottom line for the Union.

Unions and Alliances: Divorce and the Bidie-in

D I V O R C E sang Tammy Wynette, an expert on the subject.

Divorce, yes divorce. Divorce is in the air. Have you noticed? When the UK filed for divorce from the EU it was complicated because there were four partners in that relationship – five if you count the EU. Two of the partners got their way and three did not. Now it should have been possible in those circumstances for those three unhappy with the breakup to stay in the relationship; being consenting partners. Actually one of the partners has, albeit by quirk rather than design. The remaining one of the original four, hope you’re keeping up, has been told she must cut off all connections with the former fifth partner even though she really wants the relationship to continue because one of the four is less of a partner and more of a tyrant. Isn’t that so like many unhappy marriages – in which one partner is overbearing?

Let’s put some names to the partners. The four are, of course, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales and the EU that has already been identified as partner number five. It’s a poor sort of marriage in which one partner is controlling but that’s always been the way with the constitutional setup of the UK. Scotland and Northern Ireland did not want this divorce but they’re stuck with it – only NI is being treated with more care and consideration than Scotland and now embarking on a ménage à trois with the EU and UK.

It is not that Scotland is averse to divorce. The majority of Scots would love to divorce the UK and reinstate relations with her Continental suitors. She would not be against rekindling some kind of relationship with the UK but on a more equitable footing – not the current one under the domineering and manipulative partner, let us call him England. England holds all the cards and for three hundred years has been playing with a marked deck.

England and divorce has a troubled history. I’m talking personal relationships now for I think it reasonable to compare how a nation handles its personal relationships with the way it handles constitutional ones. In the case of England marriages have always been unequally skewed with men of power and wealth able to obtain an annulment whereas wives, on the other hand, have struggled to extricate themselves from an obviously failed marriage, even where the husband is controlling and abusive. English laws have been written by men for men. Even from the grave a vindictive rogue of a husband and father could continue to harm his wife and children by omitting them from his will so leaving them penniless and homeless.

Vindictive and controlling are the traits that mark out England’s attitude towards Scotland’s desire for divorce. Okay, so to begin with the attitude was more derisory – to belittle and discredit but the tone has got more shrill and tinged with threat. Only days ago in a debate in the Commons, former Tory minister Liam Fox suggested in the event of divorce between Scotland and the rest of the UK Scotland would be punished by blocks on trade (that is so close to the events in 1707 which led to the Union it’s uncanny.)

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman [Ian Blackford MP]for giving way. Perhaps he could tell us what estimate he has made of the cost to the Scottish economy of losing access to the UK single market through independence. (Liam Fox, Tory MP for North Somerset)

Dissolving the Union –

What? Nonsense! You can’t pull out of it now! Why? Surely not? What have I done? I haven’t done anything wrong! No, I won’t agree to any divorce! I’ll make your life miserable! I’ll punish you in every way I can! You’ll be made to suffer! Divorce me! How dare you even try!

These ridiculing and hostile attitudes have not gone down well with the majority of Scots who are expected to believe the Union is one of equals while experience shows it is nothing of the kind. This Union was always a marriage of convenience that quickly turned into a loveless trial. The dominant partner has never concealed his lack of respect for the other, denigrating and belittling her and keeping a tight hold on the purse strings to prevent her from leaving him. Confiscating the house keys will no doubt come next. Like almost every failing marriage there’s bad contemptuous behaviour, constant criticisms, secrecy, avoiding each other, arguments and the sex is lousy.

Scots attitudes to divorce have always been fairly liberal with both sexes tending to be treated equally and the assumption is this progressive perspective is shared. Far back in the mists of time Scottish marriages could be simply annulled or couples choose to go their own ways and lead separate lives while technically still married. Women as well as men could obtain formal divorces on grounds of adultery or desertion from the 1500s. When a relationship was shown to have irretrievably broken down the Scots were more pragmatic over the hopelessness of the situation and the union terminated. Threats of punishment and coercion were not considered suitable alternative actions.

Women’s standing has always been more robust in Scotland than in England. A Scots woman’s individualism did not get extinguished on her marriage, as was the case in England and you can see the majority of older Scottish gravestones display women’s own last name along with reference to her status as wife or relict of a man. Until relatively recent times that is. Now the English habit of a woman relinquishing her identity to her husband has become common here in Scotland. For a time it was the norm for a married woman to be addressed by her husband’s name – as in Mrs David Macdonald. That piece of nonsense is now hopefully relegated to the misogynist dustbin of the past.

You know why divorces are so expensive? Because they’re worth it. 

Scots women and children have always been better protected by the law than their English counterparts. For example a Scottish widow  could not be deprived of her jus relictae and the children of a marriage of their legitima – meaning they could not be written out of a husband’s/father’s will. A wife was entitled to one half of the movable assets of a marriage and her children to the other half and in the case of there being no children, the wife’s share comprised one-third. That should tell us about the type of society that operates in this way and the type of society that does not. As we’ve seen above this has never been the case in England.

A marriage in which one partner enjoys more rights than the other so able to restrict the rights and freedoms of the other partner is no worthwhile relationship. A union in which one member nation assumes greater privileges than another nation and gets to impose rules unilaterally is no worthwhile union. Under Scots law this union would have been dissolved long ago. Under English law Scotland remains a chattel of England’s.

The English state does not respect Scotland because Scotland’s status within the Union is so weak. Scratch a unionist and they’ll argue that Scotland’s position within the Union is comparable to an English county. Labour leader, Tony Blair, in 1997 epitomised this view when he described the Scottish parliament as having no more powers than an English parish council because sovereignty would remain “with me” i.e. the prime minister at Westminster.  So much for Scotland having an equal voice within the UK. This Union is nothing more than an abusive relationship but mentions pulling out of it and unionists are aghast then angry then more abusive.

Divorce after 300 years!

300 and a bit years. Call that a union?

Here’s a union. France, you know that country that a section of English xenophobes love to describe as their ‘traditional enemy’ (to which the obvious retort is – who isn’t?) has never been on the receiving end of such animosity from Scotland. Quite the reverse for links between Scotland and France are greater than those between Scotland and England.

This is a Union

The Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, established in 1295, has never been formally ended so the Union with England is bigamous. England is the bidie-in. It has been argued the Auld Alliance was wound up in 1560. If this is so it means Scotland’s union with France lasted over 260 years, just 38 years shy of that other union with England.

When Scotland was badgered and blackmailed into the Union in 1707, against the wishes of the people who signed petitions, demonstrated and rioted their disapproval, Scotland lost her legislative powers, many of her public offices to London, with a knock-on impact on Scottish trade and commerce. Resentment within Scotland has simmered ever since with fluctuating degrees of support for independence or Home Rule.

Divorce is a piece of paper

Back in 1890 a piece in the Westminster Review described how the demand for Home Rule for Scotland was gaining popularity on the back of the movement for Irish Home Rule. The article went on to observe –

“But the grievance that impelled her [Scotland] to do it [go for Home Rule] have been long and severely felt.  And they have a deeper root than the English people seems yet to understand. It is not only that Scotland has been shabbily and unfairly treated in the matter of Imperial grants; it is not only that the Scottish people have been put to enormous and needless expense, vexation, and trouble in connection with so-called private Bills; it is not only that Scottish affairs have been grossly mismanaged in London; Scottish legislation trifled with by the leaders of both parties, and the verdict of the Scottish constituencies on Scottish questions reversed in Parliament by the overwhelming votes of English members knowing little, caring less, about Scottish affairs, and merely voting as their party leaders bid.”

Those observations could have come from yesterday in parliament at Westminster. In 1890 the two parties in question were the Liberals and Tories. Labour would later traipse along in their wake and with some notable exceptions follow the line of England knows best, back in your box Scotland – that has been the attitude of all the UK parties.

A feature throughout the life of the Union has been the English tendency to deride Scots and Scotland – as the Westminster Review put it – “wrong done thus and otherwise to Scotland’s life and honour and progress as a nation.” And nothing has changed.

“England seems scarcely to know that Scotland remains a nation.” (Westminster Review)

And nothing has changed. That is the position of Johnson, Starmer and their party acolytes. What the English know or think they know about Scotland comes from Anglicized Scots, the Westminster Review tells us. These people rarely represent their own country and so misrepresent the Union.

Divorces are made in heaven

Scottish Secretaries of State at Westminster represent Westminster in Scotland not Scotland at Westminster. Their role is to squeeze the life out of Scotland and ‘denationalise’ her. Scotland’s junior position within the Union has meant from the very start she was being milked for whatever she was worth by London, from the malt taxes to oil and gas.

Against the grain: Scotland pays the English Exchequer | Lenathehyena’s Blog (wordpress.com)

As an illustration take an example from 1851 when Ireland’s revenue was just over £4 million Westminster took £153,547. About the same time Scotland’s revenue was just over £6 million and of that England took £5,614,847. Astounding. If astounding is another term for theft.

Heavy burdens in the form of taxes and customs duties and making Scotland pay for England’s national debt – if only England wasn’t such a xenophobic country it wouldn’t always be spending money on costly wars against other nations – kept Scotland indebted to England and diminished her freedom as a nation within the Union. Scotland had no national debt when the Union knot was tied and England made sure that she could never have England’s freedom to borrow money. That still applies today with Scotland having to balance her books while England can accrue as much debt as it likes and demand Scotland pays a share. What kind of Scot would have agreed to a contract like that? Not any kind of good one.

Article 15 of the Treaty provided a lump sum – the so-called Equivalent – was paid to Scotland as compensation for having to agree to take on a share of England’s national debt. That and to compensate Scotland for various disadvantages imposed on her by the Union such as a reduction in the value of Scotland’s currency to match that of England’s, winding up the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies so it was not in competition with England’s East India Company.  To quell the protests from Scottish businessmen London agreed to provide subsidies as compensation for Scotland’s lost markets for its successful exports such as woollen goods. In keeping with so many promises made to woo the handful of Scots nobles who played fast and loose with Scotland’s independence those subsidies were never paid out. You can see the direction of travel this Union was taking. The Equivalent was paid to 25 commissioners who first and foremost took care of themselves with the cash – and it was mainly cash. So you can imagine how widely this was (not) spread. The Union that England holds so dear was created on a catalogue of lies and deceptions.

In place of promised financial help came an increased tax burden for Scots. Prominent Scots, such as the eminent economist, Adam Smith, tried to prevent Scotland being penalised so heavily by England but to no avail. Why would England’s government aka Westminster relinquish the grip it had on Scotland? It didn’t want to risk having a rival and potential threat to its security on its border. Which reminds us this Union was a marriage of convenience. Time for the bidie-in to sling his hook.

 I don’t see divorce as a failure. I see it as the end to a story. In a story, everything has an end and a beginning.

References:

(Julian Hoppit, University College London, Scotland and the British Fiscal State, 1707-1800. )The Westminster Review (19^th and 20^th centuries)

The Westminster Review (19th and early 20th century editions)

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Break the Chains of Empire: nationalism and independence

The British Empire lasted some 300 years; about the same length of time that the United Kingdom has existed. The British Empire has gone. It is time the remnants of colonialism within the UK were also relegated to the past.

Good morning, Scotland. What is it you want?

Please, sir, I want some more.

What! More!

Yes, sir. I want more.

There is disbelief all round.

You already have devolution. What more could you want?

Independence, sir. I want my independence.

Independence? What nonsense is this? Not everyone can be independent. If everyone was independent nobody would appreciate it.

That’s not fair, sir. I want to be independent.  

Want! Want! It’s not your place to want! You’ll take what you’re given. Who ever heard of such a thing! There are people who make the rules and people whose duty it is to follow our rules. You are the latter. People who want, don’t deserve independence. And that’s the end of it.

The meaning of empire

The British Empire began as the English Empire although it adopted the name British before the Act of Union. England’s imperial expansion began in the 1500s, enabled by its aggressive navy expanded to break into the slave trade. Union in 1707 was sought by England primarily to remove potential support by Scotland for England’s enemy, France – henceforth Edinburgh was denied decision-making powers over foreign affairs and so has that remained. That the Union gave England control over Scottish trade was an additional, if secondary benefit. The Union of 1707 was not set up to benefit Scotland but to protect England politically and economically. And there was no whiff of democracy anywhere about the agreement struck between a few monied interests in Scotland and England’s parliament.

The Union of 1707 colonised Scotland in much the same way England then the United Kingdom colonised other parts of the world over three hundred years. As with its other colonies the Union parliament never envisaged equality between its heart, in London, and authorities in the peripheral parts of its empire. Power lay with London and there it would remain. That was the intention and nothing changed over three hundred years. Devolution of powers has not altered the conception of hierarchy and subordination within the United Kingdom. Within the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are subordinates which are not provided with the same levers of power provided to England.  

The idea the United Kingdom represents equality between the four nations is a chimera. Power lies with Westminster and in Westminster Scotland’s representatives are outnumbered 10:1. There has never been a time Scotland has been able to influence decisions in Westminster. And there never will be a time Scotland will be able to influence decisions made in Westminster, nor will Northern Ireland and Wales ever be placed on an equal footing with England.  

United does not mean equal

Like empires throughout history which have risen and declined so has the British Empire. Empires establish themselves when in a position to wield power against weaker nations and can crumble when their dictum of might is right is questioned by the powerless within their dominions.  

When under threat empires tighten their grip on the reins of power through brutality, corruption and threat. Opposition is condemned as treachery – anti-patriotic. In the case of the United Kingdom, loyalty means Britishness and Britishness has always been largely based on Englishness.

Not only does Scotland have no power whatsoever at the heart of England’s rump empire, the United Kingdom, for most of the past 300 years of its existence Scotland has scarcely been considered. Similarly with Wales and Northern Ireland – their representation at Westminster is as tokenistic as Scotland’s. Influence they have none. The populations in the three peripheral areas of the England’s rump empire are demeaned, patronised and the butt of humour as demonstrated in national ‘pet-names’- the equivalent of the racist term ‘boy’ in farther-flung parts of the empire – Scots are Jocks; Irish are Paddies; Welsh are Taffies. Jocks, Paddies and Taffies are invariably depicted as lacking sophistication, feckless, mean, chippy, grievance monkeys – ungrateful for the protection the ‘broad shoulders’ of the empire/UK affords them.  Empires evolve cultural myths. Given the hierarchical nature of empires it is the interests and culture of the dominant state that come to embody them.  Cultural values of the peripheries are defined as archaic curiosities and sources of derision and humour which tend to be abandoned in favour of those of the dominant power.  

Faced with ingratitude/challenge from within the peripheral nations the dominant power tends to act more aggressively. Troops might be sent in/ stationed in the troublesome periphery. We see this across the world and within the Union the population of Scotland was threatened and subdued by General Wade’s army in the 18^th century. Empires might impose control through more sophisticated means such as installing bureaucracies into peripheral areas for greater control in parts far away from the centre of power. A recent example of this type of imperious incursion is Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh, embedding Westminster-rule into the heart of Scotland in defiance of devolution and meant as a visible reminder to Scotland of who really is in charge; and it is not the Scottish people or their own parliament. 

It is an observation often made that the farther away populations are from the centre of power the less the centre represents their interests. Westminster’s Queen Elizabeth House may be a recognition of this but given that Scotland has never figured in its consideration of what is best for the Union as opposed to what suits south-east England it is more likely this hub is the equivalent of General Wade’s force – intimidation and reminder that authority rests with London.

Where threats to empire exist but are less threatening to the dominant power degrees of autonomy are sometimes used to diminish calls for independence. This gives an impression of a benevolent centre of power willingly sharing responsibilities but powers transferred are an illusion for the centre of empire retains the ability to withdraw those same powers whenever it decides. Remember the Union like any empire is a hierarchy in which ultimate authority is retained by the dominant nation; democracy is limited to partial self-government in peripheral areas. Democracy under the Union favours England’s needs and ambitions above those of other parts of the UK through the makeup of the Houses of Parliament and chain of command of government based in London.    

India was the British Empire’s greatest source of wealth. Britain’s ransacking of it began when England set up the East India Company in 1599 and by the 1700s Britain was imposing taxes on India. By stealth greater and greater controls were imposed until eventually Britain ruled India directly, governing it with a rod of iron and keeping the ‘peace’ through a policy of divide-and-rule in which divisions between Hindus and Muslims were encouraged.  A period known as the British Raj, notorious for luxury and moral decay lasted from 1858 to 1947. This was rule from London to benefit London, the heart of empire. Rarely were native authorities and peoples consulted on any matter. When the British prime minister declared war against Germany in 1939, the announcement was made without consultation with Indian ministers although India was expected to provide millions of troops and provisions for the war effort. High-handed, disrespectful, racist and xenophobic – qualities demonstrated by the British Empire.

Sick of centuries of exploitation by the racist empire, Indians demanded self-determination instead of being administered by London. In London this was regarded as outrageous ingratitude. Lord Linlithgow, the Empire’s man-in-charge in India at the time, a staunch British unionist, threatened India by further inflaming the very internal divisions that London had so adeptly used in the past to keep India in its place. He and London were implicated in the deaths of millions from famine in Bengal in 1943 because of Britain’s policy of destroying food supplies and requisitioning of boats and other means of transport that prevented the movement of goods and food within India. Ruthless and heartless government by Westminster encouraged support for the Quit India movement that demanded an end to British rule. It’s spokesman Mahatma Gandhi said,   

“I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was an Indian.”

The Empire struck back. Gandhi and fellow Indian Congress members were arrested and imprisoned. Press censorship intended to silence the independence movement and the Empire’s human rights abuses could not happen now with social media but then lies spread about India’s independence movement were fed to a lackey press.  

There are different forms of nationalism just as there are different forms of democracy in the world. Empires exist to benefit a tiny portion of their populations. When people grow sick of being oppressed for the benefit of the few at the heart of empire they try to change the political structure to better reflect their interests and needs. Empires by their nature are parasitic, sucking the life-blood out of the peripheral areas they govern. So nationalist movements emerge offering hope in the shape of government that will take more cognisance of the desires of the affected people. John Maclean the great socialist advocated Scottish nationalism as the path to socialism and a better world for Scots.  

As more Indians saw through the desperate dirty tricks employed by the British Empire so the clamour for independence grew – for India to govern itself in its own interests, not those of the Empire/UK. The Empire/UK struck out – 1,000 Indians were killed during protests and movement leaders imprisoned (Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, died in jail.)  The Empire/UK lost the people’s respect. Once that has gone it is a matter of time before any empire falls. For 300 years India had been subjugated by the British Empire/UK. Soon, Pakistan, too became independent.

The British Empire was once the alpha power and London the alpha capital. This is no longer the case. The Empire created through violence and threat declined because of its arrogance, corruption, xenophobia and disrespect for its peripheral areas. Yes, it was Scots who largely ran the British Empire. It has been said this was because Scots were better educated than in other parts of the UK. Perhaps there is truth in that. It may also have been because educated ambitious Scots had few career opportunities available to them within Scotland because of how Scotland’s infrastructure was run down so that the majority of high-powered jobs were created/preserved for the centre of UK power, London, and Etonian Oxbridge friends of friends in the capital. That Scots participated to a high degree in the British Empire is neither here nor there. Scotland as a nation was as much a victim of the imperial motivations of London as other peripheral parts of the Empire. And while other colonies have won their independence, Scotland remains trapped in a Union founded on inequality.

The British Empire’s decline left behind a debtor United Kingdom, pressurised by the USA because of world war debt to open up access to its international markets. The rump of Empire/UK that remains – the union of the UK – still exhibits the predatory characteristics shared by all empires. They are ingrained in it. The alpha power lashes out whenever its authority is challenged. Whereas India and other former Empire nations were subjected to brutal repression in response to their demands for independence Scotland it is supposed will be subjected to a thrashing by propagandists for the UK. Threats of disaster and failure; of ingratitude have been and will increasingly be made.

Empires resist their loss of power. The mythical hand of friendship extended from the centre of empire to the peripheries is always in the end a fist. Threats escalate as an empire defends its authority. The UK built on violence and threats will die issuing still more threats meant to undermine confidence in the subordinate nation’s future success.

But as India proved, lying and threats, corruption and moral decay, far from saving a venal order leads to its demise. Once people stop believing the indoctrination; once they see it for what it is propaganda concocted to preserve inequalities of the Union/empire they have won – by realising they are the means of changing the world.

Iron-hearted Tories, bloated corruptionists, and hordes of other venal creatures – John Steill and William Wallace.

William Wallace at Aberdeen sculpted by William Grant Stevenson in 1888. Paid by John Steill of 38 Grange Road, Edinburgh.

‘Never was the destruction of an ancient state more complete and humiliating than that of Scotland; – never did a people consent so tamely to surrender their liberties, and submit themselves to the overbearing dictation of another kingdom, as the Scotch have done.’

These are the words of John Steill of Edinburgh. I knew that Steill left money to pay for the colossal statue of William Wallace which dominates Schoolhill in Aberdeen but nothing else. Steill would have loved Twitter, with a handle such as @Patriot for he was like the best of us, opinionated. But Twitter did not exist in Steill’s time and he had to make do broadcasting his views through letters to the press and published as pamphlets. His main interests were the union with England and Clearances in the Highlands and Ireland, all of which he vehemently disapproved. The press, mainly staunchly conservative and reactionary, vilified him describing his words as dangerous.

It was in 1844 Steill wrote his most famous letter, later pamphlet, attacking the union and to place it in some kind of perspective I clicked onto Wikipedia to see what else was happening in the UK in 1844. What I found was that nothing at all happened in Scotland that year. Any events worthy of note took place exclusively in England. I expect John Steill could have told me that.  Towards the foot of the Wiki page was a link to Scotland in 1844 which is odd since last time I looked Scotland was part of the UK – apparently an unworthy part but part all the same whose events were just not important enough to get a mention on the UK page.

The following year Steill took out his pamphlet

On the Necessity of Dissolving the Union between England and Scotland, and on Restoring Scotland to Her Ancient Supremacy As an Entire and Distinct Nation

For Steill signing the union between Scotland and England was

 ‘one of the blackest transactions in history’ which reduced Scotland to becoming a vassal nation and he questioned why any Scot would think it right that a once sovereign state could demean itself to become dependent on another –

not least as betrayal of all those Scots who fought and died for their nation – Scotland’s real heroes who

‘would utterly disown and despise us.’

Then as now apologists for the union insist it was good for the Scottish economy  – an argument that failed to dent Steill’s certainty that any margin of economic benefit was a very bad trade-off for the

‘the annihilation of our independence and very name as a nation.’

The economic advantage argument he states could be just as easily applied to justify slavery as slave owners insisted their people were well cared and even prospered under it.

Any prosperity created by Scots, Steill insists, comes not from being in union with England but through Scots using their intelligence and application to prosper.

Wreath on statue of William Wallace
Guardian of Scotland

Scotland has been the butt of an unremitting propaganda assault since before union where she is painted as uncivilised compared with England. The truth is Scotland far from being nation of savages, feckless and barbaric was one of the world’s best educated of nations with a long and significant literary tradition, its people clever, enterprising and outward-looking Europeans, more open to democratic principles than their English counterparts.

That this modern European state could find itself shackled to an insular and war-like country like England incensed Steill. England in union dominated and overwhelmed Scotland, insisted Scots travel to London to represent their Scottish constituents, no easy matter in the 18^th century (even before the travails of Scotrail.) Having tackled the hundreds of miles to London over several days through difficult and uncomfortable conditions (still prior to Scotrail) Scottish MPs found their opinions drowned out by

‘iron-hearted Tories, bloated corruptionists, and hordes of other venal creatures…’

The equivalent of the little woman who could do nothing without the permission of her husband Scots were forced to seek approval for each and every policy to be introduced into Scotland from English MPs. That any Scot should regard this humiliation appropriate for a nation that was once successfully independent struck Steill as reprehensible. In short Scotland, abundantly equipped to being a normal self-governing nation was constrained by England in a way that was degrading and oppressive.

Steill writes that his country is the victim of tyrants – ‘selfish aristocrats’ who contribute nothing but are idle, spend their time hunting on horseback and living in luxury but who have power to ‘beggar, starve, and banish’ Scots men and women who do work and contribute to the wealth of the country.

Steill points to parts of Scotland devastated as a direct result of the actions of tyrant landowners and distant Westminster and advocates nationalising their estates – distributing the land between the people who live there and depend on it. Condemning landowners who sell their land as if it ever belonged to them Steill insists, correctly, they were just lineal descendants of elected chiefs with no special right of property in the soil of Scotland. The land these Highland lairds sold or cleared, he writes, was never theirs – it belonged to the people of to the clan or sept collectively.

Not impervious to the hardships of English people, either, Steill blames their situation on ‘an imperious obligarchy’ stretching back to William the Bastard and his ilk who claimed entitlement to pillage and destroy right across the British empire for their own enrichment.

As though he had Gordon Brown breathing down his neck Steill tackles federal parliaments being proposed to quell Scottish discontent over the dominance of England in union. Steill is not in favour of federalism which he argues still chains Scotland to England with all that such an unequal partnership brings – its only benefit is not having to send MPs to London to look after Scottish interests. Federalism is a ploy to keep Scotland as an appendage of England with Westminster regarded as the chief government where real power resides with minor parliaments dispersed around the UK as England sees fit. The English parliament at Westminster still gets to dictate how every part of the union will be taxed based on England’s needs not theirs and these subordinate parts of the UK would still be obliged to participate in England’s wars.

Steill had no time for ‘crazed “gown-men” and ‘treacherous nobles and gentry’ who sell Scotland short. These scoundrels ‘sold off their native land to her enemies’ – against the wishes of the greater population of Scotland who deplore Scotland’s fate of becoming a vassal state of England’s instead of ranking equally among the ‘States of Europe’ that was once her position.

He pleads for Scotland to become ‘free and unfettered … independent and absolute, not a controllable and subordinate’ region of the UK. Scotland, he insists, should levy her own taxes, enter her own treaties with foreign powers, have control over her defence and not be a state that interferes with other kingdoms – as England does.

Steill’s Scotland once she recovers her independence should apply universal suffrage for her people and get rid of ‘monarchy and hereditary feudal aristocracy, both these useless, tyrannical, and all-devouring institutions…’ in other words become a democratic republic free to run her own affairs.

Sculptor and his masterpiece

He concludes with a plea for Scots to demonstrate some of that spirit of the past that resisted when Scottish ‘rights were trampled on, and their national honour invaded.’ Those strengths are even more needed now, he argues, that Scotland has become a ‘contemptible province, stripped of her very name (is referred to as North Britain) , deprived of the power to remove those crying evils which afflict her, both socially and politically, and when she is left with no other memorials of her former dignity and independence but the moss-covered ruins of her palaces and citadels, whose gigantic fragments but too emphatically tell what Scotland once was, and what she now is.’

John Steill certainly had strong views but then so did those who defended the union. He was said to have been a pleasant man, intelligent and a great reader who kept a fine collection of books on Scottish history. When he died he left his money to his housekeeper, Margaret Strachan, with the proviso that what remained after her death went to erecting a sculpture of his hero, William Wallace. Money was also provided by him for repairs and upkeep of the monument, left in the hands of Aberdeen’s magistrates.

The monument he declared was to be a colossal bronze raised up on a large pediment. There would be nothing fancy or fussy about it but bold to properly represent the statesman and warrior. Aberdeen’s granite roughly hewed and imposing would be ideal for its ability to support the hero Guardian of Scotland.  

Around the base would be engraved words spoken by Wallace such as his interview with the English Ambassadors prior to the Battle of Stirling Bridge when the English envoy requested the Scots lay down their weapons and submit to the English king at which point Wallace would be pardoned of ‘all his treasons’ – i.e. where treason was defined as daring to protect his country from foreign aggression.  

Wallace, the leader who in England was called the ‘Master of thieves’ told England’s ambassadors ‘to go back to your masters and tell them that we came not here to treat, but to fight and set Scotland free’  and so these words are cut into the plinth.

It should be said this monument is magnificent and undoubtedly the most impressive Wallace statue in Scotland which means in the world. I find it impressive and I’m certain Steill would be pleased at how it turned out. However, I suspect he would have been both amazed and depressed that there are still Scots who are apologists for a union that continues to treat Scotland as a vassal state. Not an admirer of the press which he regarded as apologists and champions of the union Steill reserved much of his ire for the Scotsman with ‘its marked dislike to anything Scotch.’ He dismissed much of the press for being prejudiced against Scotland’s interests and for being “profoundly ignorant” – about Scotland – thoughts that echo through time and are just as relevant today. Yes, John Steill @Patriot would have savaged today’s toady and unprofessional press fawning over ‘iron-hearted Tories, bloated corruptionists, and hordes of other venal creatures…’

What is mine is mine and what is yours is also mine: Scotland in union

Flag of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies

How England colonised Scotland.

A report out this week is critical of Westminster’s handling of the economy and its impact on Scotland – disastrous. It argues that Scotland’s potential for wealth is – big – but the actuality in a decidedly unequal union is – dodgy.

For fifty years we have watched as £zillions of revenue from oil and gas taken out of Scottish waters flows downhill to London to reduce the size of the national debt, support tax breaks and financial incentives for oil and gas multinationals, enable eye-wateringly costly building projects and infrastructure to boost the economy of London.

Tax revenue from the UK’s offshore industries, 90% of which lie off Scotland, could have been (should have been) designated as Scottish revenue. It wasn’t. Instead Westminster dreamed up a make-believe place which they called the UK Continental Shelf. This meant Scotland could not claim oil and gas fields as hers because they were situated in Wonderland aka the UK Continental Shelf.

At one fell swoop the enormous wealth that might have made such a difference to Scotland’s scattered, much of it rural, population – to the provision of health and social care, education, transport was whipped away. Imagine if anything like the money squandered on the bottomless pit that is London’s cross-rail project or HS2 had been invested around Scotland – proper roads and choice of transport in the Highlands – all you can do is imagine for it never happened. Wealth is what goes to southeast England, from Scotland.

Just to be sure that uppity Scots would not benefit from Britain’s offshore bonanza Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, picked up an HB pencil and drew a line through Scottish waters re-allocating a chunk to England – exemplifying that age-old practice of the coloniser to annexe territory wherever and whenever because they have the powers to do so. Westminster must have been gratified at how easy it was to achieve. That sort of thing used to cause wars.

It is one thing to allow fish taken from Scottish waters to be regarded as Scottish but not highly valuable oil and gas. No ifs no buts Westminster ignored protests from Scotland because despite the union of the UK being described as a union of equals it isn’t. The UK is England’s little empire. Scotland is a mere colony; there to provide the mother country with resources not to benefit directly from them.

Scotland’s waters

Imagine the scene – an office deep inside Westminster where a bourach of suited men with dandruff on their shoulders leaning in over a large table – highly polished by a migrant worker on minimum wage – concocting the means by which they could appropriate Scotland’s cash cow like a bunch of 20^th century border reivers.

Of course the colony of Scotland was thrown a crumb in the form of per capita portion of the revenues but as England’s population is ten times that of Scotland you don’t have to be a financial wizard to realise which of the equal partners of the union got the lion’s share.

The plotters in London weren’t even very good at getting the best value out of hydrocarbons. A simple comparison with Norway which virtually mirrors the UK’s oil and gas industries reveals quite astonishingly that the Norwegians generated more than double the revenue of the UK on every single barrel of oil. These civil servants and politicians managed not only to screw Scotland but screw themselves into the bargain. Only just not as much.

Back in 2014 at the time of the independence referendum Scotland was in the unusual position of being a producer of one of the world’s most lucrative products and yet the message coming out from the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats was this was a bad thing for once oil was gone it was gone and then where would Scotland be? Same place England would be. And as the silent and largely forgotten partner in the precious union dependent on crumbs tossed northwards from London, that’s where. Since Scotland has a tendency to see Nordic countries as fellow-nations it is highly likely that had Scotland been in receipt of her own oil and gas revenues Scots would be cushioned from the worst times through a Norwegian type oil fund that could have eased the transfer from hydrocarbons to renewable.

There is no question that Westminster is responsible for severely damaging Scotland’s economy. If what came out of the North Sea had been plastic waste Westminster would have let it alone instructing Scotland to deal with its own problem but it wasn’t waste it was wealth. Like the EU farming funds meant for Scottish farmers Westminster grabbed oil and gas revenues for itself. That’s the thing about colonists, remember – what’s theirs is theirs and what is the colony’s is also theirs – if it is valuable.

This is simply state organised abuse. You know the scenario where an abusive husband insists his abused wife stays with him because she keeps getting beaten up – and he’ll protect her. There’s an Eric Bogle song, Glasgow Lullaby about a woman who keeps taking a beating from her drunken man and never leaves –

Oh my God, it’s a weary, weary life
Who wid be a drinkin’ man’s wife
Who wid thole a’ this trouble and this strife
Who but a silly woman

Scotland is Westminster’s abused wife. She should tell it/him where to get off then take away its/his keys to the shared house. Scotland needs to just say no to Westminster. Scotland too poor to stand on her own? It’s the oldest trick in the bullies handbook. Demoralize, demean, intimidate, undermining confidence. Lie. You’re too stupid. Too weak. We’ll hurt you if you leave.

It is said that clarifying what counts as Scottish in the UK economic stakes is complicated. Well, not that complicated but I’ll simplify it.

Let’s take Scotland’s international trade. Scotland’s exports to the rest of the world are counted as Scottish. Or sometimes they are. If goods or services leave Scotland for England, Wales or Northern Ireland and then get jumbled up with other goods or services and are subsequently exported then whatever Scotland’s input is disappears and the export is recorded as a UK export. I have not been able to discover what an English-produced good sent to Scotland and then exported as part of some other product is designated.

Of course that applies to goods apart from oil and gas which are always listed under the UK. The same applies to services provided by offshore industries – these also get added to UK income not Scottish. Anyone living around northeast Scotland will know that over the past fifty years servicing oil and gas here and across the world has been a major source of work and income.

So what will happen in the coming months with another independence referendum on the horizon? The UK’s media will rediscover its Scottish granny once more and we’ll have wall-to-wall Britain rammed down our throats. Once again Scots will be warned and threatened and sneered at for their ingratitude at wanting their country to regain its soverign nation status. You won’t have oil and gas…and neither will England and rumpUK. You’re too wee…as if size matters.

Scotland’s land area covers 77,933 km² and the population is about 5,424,000. The GDP is currently about $237.628 billion that works out per capita about $43,740. Compare that with other small nations – that just happen to be the wealthiest countries in Europe.

Switzerland is a bit like Scotland – lots of mountains and lochs (they call them lakes) and, like Scotland is a top tourist destination. It doesn’t have oil and gas and it isn’t a major source of wind and wave power. Its population is around 8,600,000 not too different from Scotland’s and its land area a sqeeny 41,285 km². So far so similar only its per capita is about double that of Scotland at US$ 85,374.

How about Norway another small European country, even more like Scotland with mountains and lakes and it does have an oil and gas industry. It covers 385,207 km²  much of that mountainous with a population around Scotland’s at just over 5,000,000. It is almost Scotland’s double – double in that its wealthy per capita is more than double at US$ 97,226 and its GDP again double, running northwards of $400 billion.

Luxembourg is a tiny country of .2,586.4 km² and its population just over 600,000. It has no oil and gas and is not exactly graced with mountains and lakes. It is the third richest country in Europe with a per capita income of US $ 116,560.

If the gloom mongers of Better Together are to be believed Lichtenstein would be an independent basket case  – too wee, no oil and gas. It is tiny at only 160 km²  and its population is the size of Airdie’s at around 37,000. It does have mountains and virtually no unemployment. Per capita income is an impressive US $ 143,000.

The richest country in Europe is minisculy, tiny – only 2.2 km². Monaco has a population of around 40,000 and its per capita runs to US $ 168,000. Oh and it doesn’t have high mountain or oil and gas. And not only is it the richest country in Europe it is the richest country in the world.

Anyone who would deny Scotland’s right to become independent on the basis of size needs to be told again and again and again that size doesn’t matter – it’s what you do with it.

One of the reasons these small independent countries are so successful is that they aren’t tied into an unequal, though precious, union with England run from Westminster.

Westminster has been interfering with Scotland’s economy even before the precious union was a gleam in the eye of some speculators both Scottish and English. In the days when building empires was all the rage and Scots thought they might dabble in just such a thing the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies (and incidentally the Americas) was established. It ran from 1695 – 1707 and the more observant of you will have registered the end date.

This enterprise proved to be an adventure too far – at least for the English state. It was the brainchild of that entrepreneur, William Paterson, the Scot behind the Bank of England.

At the time Scotland shared a monarch with England – the result of the union of the crowns in 1603 – but was otherwise an independent state. However, Scotland was left in no doubt that with the transfer of its king to London so the crown’s interests also moved south. in fact Scotland was regarded as an irritant (not to be dependent upon to back England in its wars of which there were many) and gadzooks a potential economic rival to the East India Company and Royal African Company. Bold Scotland’s attempt to create its own empire – a colony in northeast Canada around what is now Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island in 1621 foundered a decade later – a victim of England’s war with France.

Nova Scotia

Paterson’s scheme to colonise Darien, (Panama) in Central America to provide Scottish commerce with a secure harbour with access to both Atlantic and Pacific oceans found initial support within England as well as Scotland. However, as soon as the East India Company got wind of the plan it lobbied the King and the English parliament to scupper it. English investors took fright abandoning the whole sorry mess to Scots speculators. Those of you familiar with recent banking scandals will not be surprised that bankers and businessmen were equally duplicitous in the 17^th century and to cut a long story short much of the money raised to fund the venture disappeared into various deep pockets.

See Darien and Navigation Acts: https://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2017/11/03/theres-nothing-like-the-smell-of-xenophobia-in-the-morning

The Darien scheme had two enemies, aside from the climate, the Spanish who regarded the area as theirs and the English who regarded everything else as theirs. Scots ships were attacked and relations with England reached their lowest point.

Having an enemy on its border concerned the English court and parliament while within Scotland hardship increased not least through the loss of so much money wasted on Darien, lost commerce from confiscated cargoes on top of several seasons of poor harvests which hit the poorest hardest with severe food shortages. Scotland was on her knees.

England’s Navigation Acts crushed Scottish commerce by forcing all goods imported into England to be transported in English vessels. With the wind behind them England’s parliament at Westminster pressed for union with Scotland – to enable it the better to control the land to the north.

There was no democracy back in the 18^th century and Scottish merchants who lost fortunes because of Darien and England’s aggressive maritime policy that denied Scotland access to its markets, were made an offer they felt they could not refuse. Come in with England and we’ll pay you compensation or else. This was union at the point of a sword – blackmail. England had the whip hand and used it to great effect. The ‘compensation’ was a carrot – and Scotland’s wealthy donkeys bit.

And so some of Scotland’s landed interests and city merchants accepted the 18^th century equivalent of cashback. Cash paid as compensation for losses incurred through the actions of England and Spain. This cashback was called the Equivalent. Needless to say such an enticement came with strings attached. Scotland would have to agree to take on a share of England’s horribly large national debt and – wouldn’t you know – be taxed higher.

Once agreed the Equivalent cashback was distributed from the offices of the former Company of Scotland in Edinburgh and from the ashes a new company emerged imaginatively called the Equivalent Company. This group transformed itself into a banking organisation out of which the Royal Bank of Scotland materialised. And we know what that led to.

Scots were reassured that the proposed union with England would retain Scotland’s sovereignty. Of course that was a lie.

I have read but cannot confirm that a century earlier James VI, the guy who started all this union malarkey, or perhaps it was Sir Henry Savile in 1604, remarked that union between Scotland and England would end with the conquest of Scotland by England. He/he wasn’t wrong.

Ref – A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, John Robertson ed.,, CUP 2006

Scotticisms in our Precious Union or Michael Gove and Sconglais

Perhaps Gordon Brown’s political career would have been more successful had he spent less time trying to reinvent himself as an Englishman. This unfortunate individual suffered from what is known as the Scottish cringe –a state of shame and denial over ties to their homeland and its native tongue.

If any Scots were in doubt before the union with England there was none after it just how much contempt was felt towards them by their new political partners. With the union signed and sealed following a couple of years of scheming by the monarchy and England’s government’s pussy-footing policies such as classifying Scots as aliens and preventing the nation trading with English colonies the gloves were off. Scotland had been emasculated and would no longer pose a threat as a potential backdoor to England’s enemy, France. But this was a union of two very different nations – separated among other things by a common language.

Scots spoke Scots (in a host of dialects) but political discourse with the new partners meant compromise. Let’s be clear – not compromise exactly as that involves give and take on both sides – the kind of compromise you get from an unequal partnership or union where one side dictates and the other complies. To a large degree Scots abandoned their language while the English didn’t. The union or as we now have to call it – the precious union expected those Scots in prominent positions to adopt English as the lingua franca (if you’ll pardon the expression) as the official language of the combined nations. Sometimes it was English with a Scottish frill – let’s call it Sconglais.

Even in areas of cultural life where Scotland was pre-eminent, specifically the Enlightenment, some of its greatest luminaries such as David Hume and James Beattie* sought to eradicate Scotticisms (Scottish words) from their works – possibly to appeal to a broader audience – not England but Continental Europe where the dynamism of the philosophical and medical Enlightenment movement was closest to Scotland’s. Refining the Scotch tongue was regarded as necessary for many an ambitious Scot whose natural way of communicating was regarded as an impediment to advancement.

I was conscious as a child how many Scots sounded clumsy when talking to an English person in English and always felt obliged to adapt their natural flow of speaking to accommodate the visitor, to help their understanding, never the other way round. Scots have long been taught to despise their own tongue and until more recent years were ‘corrected’ at home and school and encouraged to speak ‘proper’ English. It’s often said Scots speak two languages – one among themselves and another in mixed company.  Imagine being led to believe your own language is inferior to someone else’s?

While universities and polite society in the 18^th century weaned themselves off broad Scots this didn’t happen among working people whose communications tended to be localised – so they had no need to interpret their words; everyone understood them.

With the union Scotland became North Britain. Was there ever a South Britain?  The language (s) spoken in North Britain were derided as barbaric, like their peoples. Highlanders with their indecipherable Gaelic were regarded with greatest suspicion and loathing. The people were described as savages.  Ironic it was then that the leisured classes included Highland Scotland in their Grand Tours, in search of experiences (tame savagery) and education (if not enlightenment.) During these pre-Victorian years the brutality of Culloden was a well within living memory, Scots were being cleared off their lands and Highland Scotland was in a sense a million miles away from cosy metropolitan life as lived in London or even Edinburgh.

The lexicographer, Dr Johnson, and his side-kick cum translator, James Boswell, ‘did’ the Highlands. He didn’t like it – couldn’t understand the people and through his dictionary he did his bit to regulate the English language which further relegated broad Scots never mind our rich dialect words and expressions to this country’s savage past.

There was no place for uncouth Scotticisms in the brave new world of the precious union of equals – no matter that broad Scots was more akin to the language of Chaucer than Johnson’s tarted up modernisms. For all that the impact of standardising English, and therefore Scots, was felt more in the homes of the upper and middle classes than among the working classes who could read English but continued to communicate in their own tongues.

Which brings me to Michael Gove. Gove is a hybrid; a Scot/Anglo whose mellifluous vocal acrobatics have resulted in an accent and form of speech that is part Aberdeen (miniscule) but mainly Estuary English – Sconglais. Despite his best efforts Gove absorbed Scots words as a child, yes indeed he was once a child, albeit one who had more in common with 30s-somethings than 13s-somethings. When he spoke of a ‘dunt towards the workplace’ in 2013 his use of the word ‘dunt’ – an everyday term here – created uproar among Britain’s narrow metropolitans. I doubt he picked the word deliberately for effect as Gordon Brown might have done but wouldn’t because that would have highlighted his Scottishness.  Gove was probably as taken aback as we were in Scotland over the reaction created among England’s press.

With radio, television, film and the internet languages across the world are being altered at a terrific speed. Here in Aberdeenshire the unique Doric is fast disappearing – I should say Dorics because there are as many variations as there are communities. The move towards English that began in Scotland with the professional classes continues. You can still hear Scots being spoken where working class folk get together and in farming areas, though not among today’s lairds and lairdesses – though once they spoke as everyone around them did – and would have been proficient in several other languages as well. 

Henry Dundas who more or less managed Scottish political affairs in the late 18^th century – a guy on the make who delayed the abolition of slavery and confused public money with his own – that kind of person; I think the technical description is, a piece of shit. All beyond the point, he was Scottish and brought up speaking Scots and one day he asked the PM, Pitt, for the loan of a horse for ‘the length of Highgate.’ Now any Scot would understand that to mean a horse that could cover that sort of distance but the Englishman that was Pitt replied he didn’t have a horse quite so long. Och but those quaint Scots are a constant source of amusement.

It was to avoid such confusion that Johnson compiled his dictionary. Deliberately misconstruing someone’s meaning might have been the case with Pitt. It certainly was by the Provost of Edinburgh who when asked by the Duke of Newcastle following the Porteous Riots of 1736 what kind  of shot the town guard under Captain Porteous used in their muskets, replied -“Ou, juist sic as ane shute dukes and sic like fules wi.” (Oh, just such as ones that shoots dukes and such fools with.)

His comment was condemned as an insult in the House of Lords (which it was) but the provost’s neck was spared when the Duke of Argyle argued it was merely a funny remark that when translated into English meant ducks and water-fowl not Peers and Idiots. As if!

 Scotticisms will linger on for a long time yet but as sprinkles over the cream of the Scots tongue. There should be no shame felt in our unique and descriptive vocabulary and institutions such as Aberdeen’s Elphinstone Institute provide an important service to our language in celebrating it and collecting examples of our mither tongue.

I grew up knowing that a hog was a sheep and a pig was a coarse earthenware jar but a Scottish servant a couple of centuries ago caused consternation when she set out from her employer’s London home to find “a great broon pig to haud the butter in.”

No self-respecting Scottish butcher would have offered a leg of pork, only a gigot. Gigot is from the French for, well, gigot, and evocative of Scotland’s ancient close relationship with France. There are lots of similar examples – caraff/carafe; gooseberries/groseille; perticks/perdix (partridge); Ashet/assiette; fash – very familiar today through Outlander as in dinae fash yersel – from the French facher; gean/guigne (cherry); ule or yle/huile (oil); serviette/serviette (napkin); gysard/guiser; haggis/hachis; jalousie/jalouser (suspect).

If you were said to be silly in Scotland you weren’t a bit daft but physically under the weather. And it’s common to hear folk here observe that someone’s health is failing whereas this is apparently a term only known in relation to business in England.

Long gone are Scots names for illnesses such as the nirls (measles); blabs (nettle-rash); scaw (clap); kinkhost’ fever (whooping-cough);  branks (mumps); the worm (toothache.)

Imagine the consternation here to be told that political change on the Continent had been brought about by a cow – “a coo dee’t a” (coup d’etat.) Then again in Scotland all things are possible.

At the risk of establishing a cow theme let me remind you, if you need reminding, of the old Scottish proverb, “Do as the cow of Forfar did, tak a standing drink.” It came about because one day a Forfar woman left the beer she had just brewed to cool outside her cottage when up came a cow and drank it. She sued the cow’s owner for compensation but the bailies of Forfar acquitted him on grounds that when Highland folk took leave of one another their last drink would be taken standing up – a dochan doris (deoch-an-doruis) – deoch is a drink/an means of the in Gaelic/ doruis or dorais is the possessive case of dorus, a door so literally the last drink at the door. This last drink was never charged at an inn so it was argued in court that as the cow had stood while drinking the woman’s ale there should be no charge – in both senses.

As usual I have veered straight up a blind alley. Back to the language that divides Britain. The English poet, Charles Lamb, had no time for Scots whom he dismissed as having no humour – presumably it went straight over his head. Some of his prejudice was based on a meeting he had with a son of Rabbie Burns when he wished he’d seen the father instead of the son. A chorus of Scots voices returned, “That’s impossible, for he’s dead.” Lamb considered these Scots didn’t share his wit. And to be honest his droll remark doesn’t strike me as funny, which rather proves his point no doubt.

Perhaps less nowadays than in the past the Scottish sense of humour, a dry pawkish humour, is often misunderstood south of the border (don’t mention the border.) Scots tend to play down situations and are far less respectful of social position – the lack of interest in royal pageantry is a prime example.  

We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns is woven into the psyche of Scots: the take-down is integral to our humour – I kent his faither. Here’s an example from way back. A conceited packman (trader) blawin (boasting) about the grand life of folk in York, London and other English places was asked where he came from.

“Oh, I’m from the Border.’

“Ach the Border, I thocht that. It’s aye the selvedge (seam) is the wakest bit o the wab (cloth)!”

Ah yes there are as many jokes in Scotland about the English as there are in England about the Scots. Here’s a couple of ancient funny stories:  

When an Englishman sneered that no man of taste would spend any time in a country like Scotland  a Scot replied, “Tastes differ; I’ll tak ye to a place no far frae Stirling whaur thirty thousand o yer countrymen ha’ been for five hunder years, and they’ve nae thocht o’ leavin’ yet.”

A Scotsman was making his way back home from an unsuccessful trip selling goods in England. Penniless he reached Carlisle when he saw a notice offering £50 for someone to act as hangman to dispatch a well-known local criminal. He applied and got the job but then a local man condemned him as a “mean beggarly Scot” for doing for money what no Englishman would. Undaunted the Scots trader grinned, “I’ll hang ye a’ at the price.”

Then there’s the story of the Englishman who bought a country estate in Scotland. Travelling abroad one time he tried to pass himself off as a Scot when he met up with a native born one. To prove his claim he went on about Scotland, haggis, whisky, Bannockburn, Queen Mary and even how writers Scott and Burns were superior to all English authors – and so on. Still he failed to convince. The Scot turned to him and said, “Weel, I’m jest thinkin’ my lad, ye’re nae Scotsman; but I’ll tell ye what ye are – ye’re jest an improved Englishman.”  

Time for a last one?

An English tourist enjoying a bit of angling in Scotland asked a local girl to catch a horse-fly for him to use on his hook. The girl stared at him, confused. “Have you never seen a horse-fly?” he demanded. “Na, sir,” she replied, “but ance I saw a coo jumper ower a cliff.” Now if he’d known a horse-fly is really a cleg she’d have obliged him.  

Of course in the union of equals, apologies, the precious union,  it was never England that changed; from its parliament to peely-wally Scots have been the ones to submit to pressure from the bigger partner. I’m sure you have several examples of your own.

*Dr Beattie of Aberdeen wrote: Scotticisms designed to Correct Improprieties of Speech and Writing

Against the grain: Scotland pays the English Exchequer

It was regarded as oppressive to Scotland – tax that is – the malt tax in particular was exercising minds over what was seen as the high-handed treatment of Scotland almost before the ink was dry on the Union agreement.

To pay for their war with France the English government had introduced a malt tax and when the Union was agreed Scotland was temporarily exempted from it.

Between 1713 and 1724 the malt tax was expected to be a temporary tax which was voted for or against annually. But it was imposed on Scotland ‘with great difficulty’ to the extent a ‘Scotch peer had moved in the other House to dissolve the Act of Union’ – and the vote was tight with 55 voting on each side of the proposition that the Union be dissolved.

Article 14 of the Treaty of Union of 1707 specified that no part of the UK would be burdened unfairly with duties but that due regard would be made to particular circumstances and ability to meet responsibilities. Yet only six years after the Union what had been the English parliament and renamed the British parliament did –

‘actually impose a heavy burden upon Scotland, without any regard to the circumstances of the case, viz. the inferiority of Scotch grain, or the ability of the people , in that part of the United Kingdom, to pay a tax, which in several places was nearly equal to the value of the raw article.’

In other words a tax was imposed on Scots farmers that amounted to almost the value of their crop of bear barley. Bear barley was the principle type of barley grown in Scotland because of its climate and soil conditions, to an extent, but it was not as productive or as valuable as barley grown in most of England.

Support for the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 to return the Catholic Stuarts to the throne of Great Britain was boosted by resentment over the London government’s high-handed treatment of Scotland and the crushing fist of the Hanoverian monarchy. That Hanoverian crushing fist was liberally applied to Highland Scots at Culloden and in the brutal aftermath with Hanoverian redcoats unremitting campaign of rape and slaughter when forts, roads and bridges were constructed throughout Highland Scotland to more effectively control and repress the population -which they did successfully.

With the Jacobite rebellion suppressed and voices questioning Scotland’s treatment within the Union bludgeoned into silence the malt tax could be imposed without fear. In 1725 some consideration was paid to Scotland’s problems paying the tax and differential taxes were temporarily introduced with Scotland paying 3d to England’s 6d on a bushel of malt. But sixty years on arguments over the government’s unfair treatment of Scotland raged on.

Scots famers resisted the tax by not informing excise officers they were growing barley and refusing them admission to their grain lofts. And for most of them they had the support of local justices of the peace.  The tax led to riots and their brutal suppression which resulted in deaths and transportations. 

The Scots clergy, however, who had been exempted from all taxes on what was grown in their glebes (land attached to manses on which various crops were grown to provide food and income for ministers and perhaps local people) and who had never been charged any malt tax before volunteered to pay nominal sums to prevent more unrest among their countrymen and women. This squirming hypocrisy was seen as betraying the interests of Scotland – that driven by their hatred of Catholicism they were content to support the Protestant Hanoverian monarchy – brought in to keep the Catholic Stuarts out of power.

Not many Scots were in favour of the Union – not that they had any say in the matter and from its inception it was apparent Scotland far from being an equal partner would be subordinated to larger England whose parliament became the Union parliament with all of its traditions retained as if it was still English.

Over half a century after the imposition of the malt tax complaints raged on that Scots were effectively paying twice as much tax as the English.

Here’s a flavour from the Paisley Herald and Renfrewshire Advertiser in 1867 –

‘A certain class of English newspaper writers, and of Englishmen generally, can never be made to understand why Scotsmen should ever speak of Scottish rights, or have any notion beyond being regarded as a somewhat insignificant appendage to England.’

The author referred to the Union as a source of tension between Scotland and England and the levying on taxes imposed by an English-biased parliament. Obviously before the Union Scotland had its taxes and England its own taxes so everyone was happy, or not.

From the Union taxation was decided by what was still regarded as fundamentally the English parliament and the author went on to state that London treated Scotland as if she –

‘were a conquered country, in so far as it (Scotland) has been heavier taxed than the other divisions of the larger and wealthier neighbour.’

The issue of the malt tax still figured among complaints – the annual tax that had become a permanent tax with its detrimental impact on Scotland (and Ireland) – more so than in England. The argument was now less on the quality and value of barley grown in each of the nations than on what barley, or rather its malt, was made into.

Scots and Irish people when not drinking water – remembering that drinking water was often polluted before piped supplies made it into homes (for many that was not until the 20th century) so they drank whisky. In England beer was the national drink. It wasn’t that people drank all day and night but those were the national drinks (tea, coffee and cocoa were expensive luxury imports and the majority of people could not afford to buy them.)

Malt in Scotland and Ireland was used to produce malt spirits – whisky. This didn’t happen in England. Malt spirits or whisky was therefore being taxed by the Exchequer through the malt tax which given whisky’s importance in the diet of Scots and Irish penalised them far more than English consumers.

The consumption of malt and grain spirits in Scotland, England and Ireland for the year ending 31st December 1866 and the revenue derived from them through the duties paid were –

In England 9,515,040 proof gallons; pop c 20 million
In Scotland 7,691,760 proof gallons; pop c 3 million
In Ireland 5,910,061 proof gallons pop c 6 million

The rates of duty were similar in all three countries i.e. 10 shillings per proof gallon making the amount of duty paid in England £4,757,520; in Scotland £3,845,879; in Ireland £2,955,031.

Taking the population of each country into account this worked out per head of population per gallon tax as –

England paid tax of 4 shillings 9 penny
Scotland paid tax of £1- 5 shillings 1 penny.
Ireland paid tax of 10 shillings

Scots were paying far more per head of population than the English. It was said that the English people would not have stood to be treated so unfairly as to pay greater tax than the people of Scotland and Ireland.

‘That any nation should be made to pay at the rate of £1.5.1 a head on a single article of consumption is unparalleled in the annals of taxation, and no Legislature in the world ever made such an unfair and unjust use of its power as has the Parliament of the United Kingdom.’

What would English people say if they were compelled to pay a tax of £1 a head for their ale? They would not stand for it and nor should they. But Scots were being unjustly taxed and their complaints fell on deaf ears inside the parliament in London.

It was argued at the time that if the English were taxed on their national beverage – beer – at the same rate Scots were taxed on their national beverage whisky – high duties on tea and sugar and other commodities which made them too expensive for the majority of the population could be reduced to make them affordable.

From England the argument came that it was a matter of choice what Scots drank and they could drink beer so their complaint of being unfairly taxed did not stand scrutiny. This failed to tackle the question of why one drink in one part of the Union was targeted to be highly taxed while another was not, notably England’s drink.

Given it was the Scottish beverage that was taxed at a higher rate and the tax collected in Scotland in proportion to the population was greater then Scotland should be relieved of the burden of taxation on other taxes, it was argued. Instead Scots paid the penalty of their whisky being targeted for high taxation and were forced to pay the same rate for taxes which were made common across the Union – in essence they were being dealt a double whammy tax obligation.

‘Were the case reversed it would amount to this, that the people of England would pay £20,000,000 more of taxation than they do, and the people of Scotland would pay not more than two fifths of what they at present contribute to the national revenue. This would amount to £1 per head saving in Scotland imposed through the special whisky taxation.’

Suppose, it was asked, that England was a whisky nation and Scotland a beer nation would it be likely the duty on whisky would have been 10 shillings a gallon and no duty on malt liquors i.e. beer? The opposite would be the case it was argued – ‘Englishmen would never have submitted to be taxed £1 a head higher than Scotsmen.’

Why do Scots submit to such gross injustice?

‘We are sometimes taunted as a nation, by English writers, for our inadequate provision for the poor, but the additional taxation wrung from us by a Parliament in which there are nearly eight Englishmen for every one Scotsman would double that provision, and leave the whole of the eight hundred thousand pounds assessed for that purpose in the pockets of ratepayers.’

There were Scots MPs in the London parliament but they were accused of not being much interested in sticking up for Scotland unlike many Irish MPs who argued in the interests of their country. On the subject of the unfair taxation laws Scots MPs were largely silent.

High taxation of malt spirits led to illicit distillation – making their national drink affordable to Scots and so criminalised them.

We no longer have a malt tax as such but whisky is still taxed at high levels – currently around 76% of the price of a bottle of whisky is tax that goes to the Exchequer in London. Every day the London government collects around £9 million from spirit drinkers in the UK.

I suppose the government in London saw it could get away with the malt/whisky tax paid by Scots to enhance the services and infrastructure around London and so when North Sea oil and gas came along in Scottish waters it was a lesson well learned that the Scots could be ripped off without their MPs complaining. And they were right.

Scotland’s Big and Burly Men have Shrunk

 

Remembering back to the Napoleonic period and the French Wars, the German poet and author, Johann Eckermann commented on how puny Paris’ infantrymen looked and wondered what they could achieve in battle. 

“Wellington’s Scottish Highlanders were a different set of heroes, from all accounts,” replied his fellow German, the celebrated playwright and author, Goethe.

“I saw them in Brussels a year before the battle of Waterloo,” said Eckermann. “They were men! All strong, nimble and free as if they had come straight from the hand of God. They carried their heads so freely and gaily and marched so lightly, swinging along with their bare knees . . .” 

(Conversations with Goethe)

It looks like the Union of equals has proved to be anything but equal in ways you cannot imagine. Scots can expect to live shorter lives than their English neighbours and be shorter in height as well. It wasn’t always so.

Scots were once the tallest of all European peoples with Highland men pushing up the average to between 6ft and 7ft.  

At the end of the 18th century a survey of 600 crofters from Glen Tilt in Perthshire discovered every adult male in the glen was at least 6 feet tall – and broad with calves at least 17 inches around. The population of Glen Tilt were also long-lived, thriving on the traditional Scottish diet of oats, barley, vegetables, milk, butter, eggs, local grown fruit and honey supplemented with small amounts of meat, venison and fish.

Nowadays Scots suffer premature deaths and are puny compared with earlier generations as they tuck into high sugar, high fat junk food, white bread, cakes and biscuits, sugary drinks and over-sweetened  breakfast cereals with scarce a glance at the perhaps boring but wholesome foods that made their ancestors taller and stronger than them. 

It’s well-known that Mary Queen of Scots was taller by some measure than the English monarch Elizabeth much to the latter’s considerable displeasure but tall stature was not confined to the Scottish nobility as the inhabitants of Glen Tilt demonstrated. England aside, European monarchs were so taken by Scotland’s mighty big laddies not only did they seek them out to supplement their armies but hired them as personal guards. The Garde Écossaise was established at the French Court in 1418, and remained a feature in the Court for nearly two centuries. Francis I described his personal guard of Scots as being ‘much comelier’ than others in his pay.

Hundreds of years earlier and later than 1418 big and burly Scots were prized as troops – recruited into the armies and naval fleets of many a ruler and by the nation states of France, Flanders, Russia, Denmark, Poland, Sweden. In the 17th century Sweden’s king Gustavus Adolphus depended on no less than 84 Scottish battalion and regimental commanders. His strapping Scots had been nourished mainly on oats and milk at home in Scotland and as adult soldiers ate a diet 93% bread and oatmeal washed down with ale. By contrast a servant at Gordon Castle near Fochabers in Moray enjoyed more variety in his diet with pickings off the Duke’s table of just 62% bread and meal, 10% meat, a miniscule amount of fish and 19% ale from the castle brewery in 1739.

It was not only Scots men who were famously tall. Our women were also once very tall. Something changed here and elsewhere.

During the early years of the Union Scotland was a poor country but it valued education and with Scottish literacy levels the highest in Britain Scots were soon travelling the length and breadth of the Empire as its administrators however the centre of the Empire was not Edinburgh but London which became the main beneficiary of the wealth created from all those resources appropriated from other nations. The educated Scot drawn to London initially found himself at a height advantage over native Londoners right up into the 1830s but the downward spiral for Scots had set in by then with poverty increasing in the Scottish countryside where a need for cash was becoming a necessity as well as in towns and the steady encroachment of inferior foods along with greater burdens of exploitative labour ravaged health.

It wasn’t only Scotland’s Highlanders who stood head and shoulders above people from elsewhere. While  Appletons’ Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events Vol. 10 of 1871 declared ‘lunatics’ and criminals tended to be shorter than ‘sane and honest men’ even Scottish criminals were found to be taller than English criminals.

Short Englishmen had no need to stand on tip-toes to catch a glimpse of big blokes for their Scottish neighbours from just over the border in Galloway were reputed to reach impressive heights while those from Berwickshire were heaviest of all our big men.

Taller and heavier than the populations from the other nations of the UK Scots towered over Londoners in particular who were reported to be diminutive in stature. Within Scotland the shortest people lived in Edinburgh and Glasgow while rural areas produced the biggest. Why the difference?

By the 19th century more people were moving into towns from the country to look for work and with urban living came deprivation of different kinds. Towns were unhealthy environments – overcrowded, polluted, crampt. Glasgow, said to have the worst slums in Britain and described as a “squalid industrial megalopolis” in Chadwick’s 1842 Report on Sanitary Conditions, produced a population of  ‘stunted wee bauchles’ a good inch shorter than the average Scot.

Towns were notoriously disease-ridden and mainly reliant on importing food from the countryside which was often none too fresh when sold. And food cost money for in towns there was often nowhere to grow your own. Diet was a major factor determining growth and health and poor nutrition was a consequence of low wages. When Scots were the tallest Europeans they existed on what’s known as the traditional Scottish diet – boring perhaps but healthy – made up predominantly of oats, vegetables and dairy – locally produced.   

Those people who remained in the country might have been as poor as urban-dwellers but their living conditions and available foods were better and so they grew taller than their town cousins.

The acerbic and obese Dr Johnson ridiculed the Scots diet of porridge, brose and oatcakes, milk, cheese, vegetables, fruit with just a little fish and very little meat but these were foods on which generations of Scots thrived. With urbanisation came the start of junk food – poor quality and too few vegetables, milk and what was once the Scots’ bread – oatcakes.

From the time potatoes made their appearance in the British Isles, in the very late 16th century, their popularity and availability increased until they eventually ousted oatmeal as a staple food in Scotland. Bread and meal were still being eaten but the percentage declined as potatoes began to make an impression, along with some more meat, fish and cheese.

The bread and meal Scots of the later 18th and earlier 19th centuries were no longer 6ft or 7ft giants but topped just 5ft 7inches though they were still a good two inches taller than a man from the English midlands and three inches taller than shorties from the south of England.   

It is little wonder, then, that post-Union governments were driven to recruit big and burly Scots into their regiments and why otherwise despised Highlanders became targets for military recruitment drives. It has been argued that with the tallest, sturdiest Scotsmen being removed from communities shorter men were left behind to breed equally short children. Following that logic it may not be too far a stretch to link the prevalence of big and burly Scots spreading their genes across the length and breadth of Europe and elsewhere so contributing to the increased heights of our neighbours as our own heights went on the slide.

Site of the brewery and bakehouse at Gordon Castle

At the start of the 19th century, in 1801, the people of England and Wales made up something in the region of 82% of the UK’s population and contributed 52% of the British military. Scots from a population of around 14% of the UK made up a whopping great 16% of recruits. The shortfall was made up by other nationalities: German, French and Dutch included but within the British Isles Scots’ contribution hugely outweighed that of other nations.  High levels of recruitment into the British military from Scotland during the 18th and early 19th centuries began to peter out by the mid-19th century but was still high compared with England and Wales and why the percentage of Scots per population killed in Britain’s wars was much greater than from the UK’s other nations.

Early in the 19th century Scots and men in the north of England were taller by at least a centimetre than their southern counterparts but compared with earlier times heights were diminishing – a trend that continued until now the pattern is nearly entirely reversed.

By the 20th century Scots had been overtaken in the height stakes by the English. In 1908 working-class five-year old boys in Bradford, England average heights were 40.31 inches while middle-class boys from Cambridge averaged 40.44 inches and Glaswegian working-class five-year olds were just 40.20 inches. By 1938 Glasgow boys averaged 41.70 inches while the boys of Bradford and Cambridge were 42.24 inches and 43.29 inches respectively.  

By the outbreak of World War II Scots men averaged 66.82 inches and 138.2lbs compared with English average of 67.14 inches and 135.9lbs. The Welsh were shortest and lightest of all at 66.55 inches and 133.7lbs.

Thirty years later in 1972 a survey of children from Scotland and England found, unsurprisingly, that children from manual working families were shorter than from middle class families. Children of non-manual fathers were taller than those from manual worker families but height disparity was less marked in mothers from different classes. Interestingly discrepancies in height by class were more striking in England than in Scotland where unemployment was more significant in determining height than social class.

This blog has been very male-centred, as my sources concentrated on men and boys but I came across a curious piece of evidence that suggested taller girls were more likely to achieve social mobility through marriage than their shorter sisters – that taller girls attracted taller and possibly better-off husbands.

And sticking with social class for a moment in the latter part of the 20th century English fathers from the wealthiest class 1 measured in at an average of 177.5cm – EU influence! and to appease Brexiteers out there and oldies that’s just under 5ft 10inches while unskilled men in class V were a touch under 5 ft 8 inches. English women from the same classes were 5ft 4 inches and 5ft 3 inches respectively. Scottish men from class 1 measured up at 5ft 9 inches and from class V at 5ft 7 ^1/2 inches with Scots women from class 1 just under 5ft 4inches and those from the unskilled class V 5ft 3 inches.

By now the tallest people in the UK lived in the south of England. Something had changed. Before the Union with England and for a few generations following it Scots were markedly taller than the English. With the advance of the industrial revolution and the concentration of wealth in south Britain Scotland’s populations were subjected to increasing hardships to the extent the physical appearance and health of the populations north and south of the border diverged in opposite ways from how they once had been.

I am not arguing every English man and women prospered in a smoke-infused hell that was once England’s green and pleasant lands. Brutal, alienating hard work and filthy living conditions shortened lives and the nightmare existences for the working classes in England was every bit a trial as it was for their brothers and sisters in Scotland and Wales. But there were other factors at work – a power grab in London and its surrounding counties that sucked away wealth from other parts of the UK, Scotland, yes, but also the north of England and Wales.

In the 1980s Scotland’s average man measured in at 5ft 8inches. The very short Londoner had stretched to a touch over the Scot while in the southwest of England men averaged an inch taller. In Wales men struggled to reach 5ft 7 ^1/2 inches.

I thought when I began looking into the shrinkage of Scots that our past tall stature might have come from our Viking ancestors but it appears that Norwegians used to be some of the smallest people in Europe although they now have become the second tallest, behind the Dutch so that scuppers that theory. It will not escape many of my fellow Scots that not only have Norwegians accumulated great wealth from the North Sea which they share with Scotland but they are now also over-shadowing us physically. There’s a lesson there for us, surely.

Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn’s Spiorad a’ Charthannais (The Spirit of Kindliness),
written in 1874 – translation from the Gaelic

Is anyone presently alive
who recollects that awful day,
on which was fought the fearful fight —
Waterloo of the bloody plains?
A fine victory was won by Gaels
when they rose in battle-arms;
faced with the blade of bravest men,
our fierce foes yielded fast.

What joy came to the fathers
of those who won the fray?
The warm homes of kindliness
towered round their ears in flames.
Their sons were on the battlefield
to save a heartless land;
their mothers were in the saddest plight,
and their homes reduced to ash. . . .

O Britain, it is a disgrace,
should we recount your tale,
relating how hard you dealt
with your own and truest race.
The land that those heroes had,
who saved you in your straits,
has now become a field of sports
for those wasters without morals.

I never included my sources and it is too long ago since this blog was written for me to unearth them now. Here’s a couple but you can scran your own sources. And agree or not.

A Professor Forbes concluded the Irish were the tallest on average. ‘Having measured a thousand of each nation, English, Irish, and Scotch, he gives the following as the average height of each: – English, 68 inches1/8; Scotch, 69 inches, 2.8; Irish, 70 inches; and the age of each twenty one years.’ (The Era, 1850)

Rona, R. J., A. V. Swan, and D. G. Altman. 1978. Social factors and height of primary schoolchildren in England and Scotland. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 32: 147-54.

Riggs, P. 1994. The standard of living in Scotland 1800-50. In Stature, living standards and economic development: Essays in anthropometric history, ed. J. Komlos, 60-75. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.