Tom Devine:The English in Scotland talk Edinburgh book festival 2018

Scotland's leading historian looked at the nation's main migrant group, who have outnumbered all other immigrants combined over the last fifty years — the English. 

Devine has co-authored a book on Immigrant communities –  New Scots: Scotland's Immigrant Communities Since 1945. He spoke of one of the most salient issues of our time - English people in Scotland.  

For centuries the Scots have travelled extensively and in France they spoke of “Rats and Scotchmen, you find them everywhere.” There has been Scots mobility into England, America, Caribbean, India, Australasia. There has been a great loss of skills and young for a very long time. A net emigration.  

He commented that the English have contributed a great deal to our universities and that many English people have moved here to avoid the marketization in England. 

At the 2014 Referendum, the English voted 70% no, which compared to the International group, who voted 42% yes. This did not significantly effect the vote he feels, as the English are less then 10% of the population. He says that any abrasiveness between the English and Scottish has more to do with class than ethnicity - or being in bed with an elephant! 

Devine spoke of history education in schools and he recommended to teach Scotland, Britain and world. He was asked about the teaching of history in Scotland. He replied that the history of Scotland has been spotty, pop-up and dysfunctional and not good enough to teach. There has been a revolution in the last ten decades however. 

 Scotland is the earliest state in Europe and went into a partnership with a bigger state. But since 1707 there has been the evolution of a dual identity, both British and Scots since the18^thcentury. However there has been integration, but not assimilation. 

Historians use representative evidence, to get to the norm. 

Devine’s new Book in 2018 is on the Clearances - The Scottish Clearnces: A History of the Dispossessed 1600 - 1900: which discusses the clearances of the Cottars in the Scottish lowlands.  (October 2018)

Exploring Hebridean Isles: on the Edge

chapel Saint Barr on Barra

boat Oban to Barra

beach on south Uist

We took the Oban ferry to Castlebay on the isle of Barra. On the edge of exploring the whipped dark blue seas held time aloft and the tides carries us across. The bright westward skies shone brightly as we sailed oe’r swells and past looming mountains….

To the edge of Scotia’s Western Isles, to their stunning and varied landscapes, beaches, rocky outcrops, purple mountains, and a haven for wildlife, the roar of the Atlantic surrounds all here.  

This is a place of strong contradictions – from rugged coastlines, to the largest stretches of clear white sands and turquoise waters; and in the late light the bluest softest hues. 

I read of the great Bards and Myth makers. I read of the crofters forced to leave their homelands for unknown fates in far away lands – to Canada, to Indian reservations and not to the farms that had been promised and of how they missed the Atlantic seas.  At the  Castlebay museum I read of Father John MacMillan.  North Uist and south Uist are Protestant and Catholic – and they get along! 

Caisteal Chiosmull castle Barra

And the great war devastated these islands. Before the war Barra was the centre for the herring industry. The war meant all the young men left to fight in the navy. Then in 1921, 22, 23 there was UK government sponsorship to leave the islands. (to populate the colonies with white people)  The population went from 3,700 to 1,800.  Some managed to return, and some died on the journey. I read of the clan chief Macdonald in Edinburgh and his deciding on the fate of those living on the island. I read of Colonel Gordon of Cluny who bought the islands and ordered the clearances to make way for sheep over people.

Vatersay beach

Barra airport

Barra has a 17th century castle Caisteal Chiosmull castle, at the entrance to its bay at Castelbay, owned by the McNeills. Similar to other islands, the drive on the west coast has picture perfect sandy beaches, and the drive on the east coast is rocky and more mountainous. To the north lies the only beach with scheduled flights and we had lunch at the café here.

Out on the peninsula we found the small chapel of Saint Barr.  South of Barra, lies the quiet island of Vatersay connected by a small bridge. We took photos at what could have been a tropical island, although there was cool there. Another photographer told us of the shrine to Eilidh MacLeod, who lost her life a year ago at the Manchester bombing. So sad she left this beautiful place to die at the Arianna Grande concert.

Vatersay

We then took the small ferry over the often difficult crossing to Eriskay and  Uist. Uist has large mountains on it east. We found the bonny location for the Polochar Inn and the drive over the causeways., funded by the EU.  We visited the interesting Uist museum which told the stories of the forced evictions to Canada. There was the nature reserve  to protect endangered birds such as corncrakes. This is part of an important European Conservation Machair environment, conservation, project to save endangered spices. I wondered, will the UK fund and set up a UK Conservation Machair project, after Brexit?

Uist beach

waves at nature reserve Uist

Early on the Friday we headed across on the carefully manoeuvred crossing to the more prosperous isle of Harris. Harris is the most developed Western isles. I had expected it to be more isolated and remote than Lewis. The Harris beaches on the west coast look out over the welcoming Atlantic and are well worth photographing. Tarbert is nestled in its northern mountains – a ferry port with Harris Gin and Harris Tweed shops. Then we took the treacherous Gold Road over the rocky eastern side and stayed at the beautifully renovated old school house.

On Lewis its worth visiting its historic sites – the Callanais stones, the blackhouse village, the Carloway Broche.  Then we headed for the port of Stornaway - it was a Sunday and all was closed except for the church and one hotel - and took the modern Caledonian McBrae ferry, which was like a floating cafeteria, back to the picturesque highland town of Ullapool.

the Callanais stones on Lewis

Ullapool

Carloway Broche

Canadian Scots; 150 years of Independence!

In 2009 I took photos at a Clan Gathering Homecoming in Edinburgh – where many of the Scots diaspora celebrated their roots. There are about 11 million of Scots descent living abroad. As many Scots live in Canada as in Scotland. Waves of Scots were forced to flee their homeland during the highland clearances in two waves – first after the Jacobite wars in 1750s (lets be clear these were European religious feuds /wars and included solders from Ireland, France, Germany – they were not the English fighting the Scots!)

atholl highlandes

The second wave was early 19^th century - and also again after the first world war, people of the beautiful Hebrides and Orkney islands were spun yarns of the great life they could have over the seas. It was a direct de-population and suppression of Highland peoples and their culture and stories. It was a way of spreading the British empire worldwide.

Each year Canada hosts the Glengarry games.

Of course we don’t learn anything of the clearances, Jacobites, Scottish inventions, Scottish writers or artists or even of Robert Burns, if we study Scottish history at Scottish secondary schools. Instead history teachers in Scotland have had to teach of the glories of the British empire, Shakespeare or Tudors. It’s a shocking state that there is such historical ignorance here. Hopefully things have improved today?!

At least that’s what I had to study. Now I am older (and hopefully wiser) I am teaching myself Scottish history. It makes me both very sad and angry that when I walked the ancient streets of Edina in m youth I knew nothing. I did visit the castle and art galleries and I taught myself something of the Stuarts and of Mary Queen of Scots, at those places. There were the poets who wrote to keep Scots culture alive after the union of 1707. Lets also be clear – this was never a union of equal partners – it was about a few ambitious Scots careers and for greed.

According to Janice Charette, Canadian High Commissioner UK, the ties are robust to Scotland: On the calendars across Canada there are Caledonian events, from Highland Games to Burns nights. “Canada prides itself on being a diverse, multi-cultural population - one of strengths.

Also in Vancouver they have combined Burns night and the Chinese New Year into a major event. It is called the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Festival so Scottish and Chinese Canadians and other Canadians of all origins come together for it. They eat haggis and dim sum, drink single malt whisky while watching a traditional Chinese dragon dance to the accompaniment of bagpipes.”  “It was only since I came to live in Scotland that I began to understand my own country’s story. The heritage of the diaspora – the poetry, the songs, the literature - allows you to see through Scottish eyes and appreciate just how much this small country gave to Canada.”

But the real Scots history is not here in royal portraits – but with the ordinary Scots.

Fortunately the Scottish songs and music and stories live on in Canada!

The young President Justin Trudeau, who has a Scottish grandfather, visited Edinburgh in July to mark the Canadian celebrations.

**The Canada STORY

This Saturday marks150th anniversary of the founding of Canada - The British North America Act of 1867 marks the provinces of Upper and lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick “shall form and be One Dominion, under the name of Canada.” Gaelic Scotland were part of the founding of present day Canada. The first Scots arrived in Nova Scotia1620s. Men from Orkney arrived a century later, recruited by the fur traders from Hudson’s Bay Co.

The first Canadian Prime Minister John Macdonald was from Glasgow, his father was from Sutherland and his mother a Shaw from Badenoch. Of Canada’s 23 prime ministers14 have had Scottish roots including Justin Trudeau, whose grandfather hailed from Banffshire. It was Macdonald, along with Scots George Stephen and Donald Smith, who were responsible for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway coast.

Thomas Annan: Photographer of Glasgow

What Happened to the Glasgow Saltmarket slums?

“It is a revolting State of Filth and Squalor”

Photographer Thomas Annan photographed the filthy Glasgow slums in the Saltmarket. 

He also shot images of the Glasgow cathedral and the building of the Loch Katrine reservoir.

And today near the Saltmarket Glasgow is the upmarket area of the yuppie Merchant City. How times have changed!

In the mid 18^th century (1750) – the Saltmarket had the Glasgow college and it was the place to be, the Dear Green Place was like Bond street or Saint-Germain.

The Saltmarket was originally home to the fullers – scourers of woollen cloth.

After the Union of 1707, from 1750 – 1850, the Saltmarket changed utterly - and the population rose from 30,000 to 400,000.

Displaced people from the Highlands and Ireland flooded here and the Salmarket turned into overcrowded, filthy slums. Their closes were dark and damp  Disease was rife. The only time there as running water was when it rained, and mortality rates were the highest in Scotland.

Alan Taylor writes of these disturbing photos in the Herald. “People with nothing to do and nowhere to go’” Overwhelming impression was one of hopelessness and decay. “There is none of the colour of a Neapolitan back street or the chaos of a Mumbai Shanty town. There is no movement or energy."

 A Police superintendent wrote at the time –

In 1842, a government report spelled out the scale of the problem as ever more people flooded in from the Highlands and Ireland:

“In the very centre of the city there is an accumulated mass of squalid wretchedness, which is probably unequalled in any other town in the British dominions. In the interior part of the square, bounded on the east side by the Saltmarket, on the west by Stockwell-street, on the north by Trongate, and on the south by the river, and also in certain parts of the east side of High-street ... there is concentrated everything that is wretched, dissolute, loathsome, and pestilential. These places are filled by a population of many thousands of miserable creatures. The houses in which they live are unfit even for sties, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men, women and children, all in the most revolting state of filth and squalor.”

The Highland Clearances and De-population of the Highlands took place twice, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The Landowners forced the existing people from the land they had farmed for generations, to make way for sheep grazing. The smoke from burning roofs filled the skies, to prevent reoccupation. All the homes would burn for 6 days….We drive still through areas with burnt out shells of cottages. People fled to the coast and to Glasgow or emigrated.

Annan was commissioned to produce a series of photos from 1868 – 1871 of the centre of Glasgow. He made 31 images that show how appalling the conditions were for many poor Glaswegians.

The Glasgow college was demolished and moved to the Glasgow Westend.

As an example of ... "clearing" ... the Duchess of Sutherland will suffice here. This person, well instructed in economy, resolved ... to turn the whole country ... into a sheep-walk. From 1814 to 1820 ... 15,000 inhabitants, [or] about 3,000 families, were systematically ... rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut which she refused to leave. Thus [the Duchess of Sutherland] appropriated 794,000 acres [321,320 hectares] of land that had ... belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6,000 acres [2,428 ha] on the sea-shore – two acres per family. The 6,000 acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no income to their owners. The Duchess ... actually went so far as to let these at an average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre... The whole of the stolen clanland she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited by a single family, [and] for the most part imported English farm servants. [By] ... 1835, the 15,000 Gaels were already replaced by 131,000 sheep. The remnant ... flung on the sea-shore tried to live by catching fish. They ... lived ... half on land and half on water, and withal only half on both.

–Karl Marx, 1867, Capital, Volume 1.