Walter Scott’s fake nationalism and false myths of Scotland

“pervasive, second-rate sentimentalist, associated with tartan nostalgia.”

 For Walter Scott - “the past is gone, beyond recall.” ….it evokes a national past never to revive it.”

.... no part of political or social mobilization of present by a mythical emphasis on

 

Walter Scott’s novels were read across the world, and his contribution to the rising tide of national romanticism, was a great one.  – “however it was great everywhere but in his own nation of Scotland.” Scott wrote of a  “romantic national culture and the rise of a kitsch Scotland.”

 

Tom Nairn, leading political theorist, denounces Scots novelist Walter Scott- ..”the destruction of Celtic Scotland was to haunt Lowlanders or the Scotland of Sir Walter Scott. He showed us “how not to be nationalist during an ascendant political nationalism. Its the language of Tory unionism and of progress”/ 

 

“From Ossian to Walter Scott played a large part in generating and defining romantic consciousness for the rest of Europe while degrading his own nation. Which led to rootlessness, a void, which cultural and literary historians deplore.  The continuity between (heroic) past and present.”…....  The heart may regret but never the head.”

 

Nairn writes of the failures of Scottish Nationalism, during the 1800s under the false romantic myths such as the writing of Walter Scott and of a bereft Scottish literature at this time.  Two examples – cultural emigration and the Kailyard school of vulgar tartanry.”,,, 

 

Scotland reverted to being a province 1800s, while prosperous and imperial. Why? Scotland became void and rootless. 1. Absence of political nationalism 2. Absence of a mature cultural romanticism. The poor Highland's world and comparatively prosperous Lowland world, and the total repression of Highland culture and social structure. The highland were once half of the population of Scotland.

Scott monument Edinburgh

By contrast the real purpose of romantic history was different – cultural nationalism was the mythical resuscitation of the past, to serve the present and the future. 

 

Scott caused disintegration of a great national culture. Elsewhere in Europe, “the middle classes felt the development for people was impossible without rapid mobilization of their own resources and rejection of alien rule.”

 

Nairn claims Scotland is unique in Europe, where nationalism struggled with its national identity and along with the rise of nationalism 1800s and the rise of nation states across Europe, as the "result of the uneven development of capitalism."

 

That the Scottish Enlightenment was very much a Tory project. While Scotland prospered during the 1800s with manufacturing, its literary voice became bereft. He sees Walter Scott’s work of a mythical Scotland and Scots heroes, as very much glorifying a past that was gone and to be forgotten. Scotland became north Britain. While Scott’s romantic and mythical novels were highly successful across the world. 

 

The real interests of Scotland diverge from the auld sang

Tom Devine’s Revelations on the Lowland Clearances

Silence of the dispossessed: Give them back their voice.

No peasant happily gives up his land…

Was there protest, what happened?

Lack of lasting folk tradition of removal, no trace of what went before….

An Elegy for those who’ve gone, reconstruct world no longer there…

The aching beauty, the autumn when the bracken is down,

Devine spoke of the dispossession and social changes of the early 19^thcentury. The connections to the land was severed and the cottar, the tenant farmer vanished. He claims these Clearances were more thorough in the Scottish Lowlands. Devine has been pursuing research on the devastation of the Lowlands for many years with his team of researchers. They searched in the kirk sessions records for notice of removals. 

From the mid 18^thcentury onwards, land improvement meant there was the transition to the - one industrialisation and, two urbanization revolution and three a corrosive transformation of the countryside. The old farm toons were swept aside for centres of farm settlements. Instead now there were landless farm servants, and wage labourers. The will of the landowners ruled and no newspapers reported these Lowland clearances.  In 1720 Galloway lairds set up large ranches parks for cattle and sheep. There was severe dislodgement. Scotland became a grossly unequal society.

He spoke of the resistance of the Levellers revolt who knocked down stone dykes. In 1724, huge numbers of armed gangs, of men, women & children roamed the Galloway countryside levelling dykes built around the expanding number of cattle fields. These cattle fields were introduced by landlords as far back as a century earlier in a bid to make the land more profitable to them, but it was only in the 1720s that the revolt, later named the ‘Leveller’s Revolt’, became widespread and worrisome enough that armed guards were called in to protect the fields and quell dissent. The revolt gained national attention from the church, state and even the King. In this extract, taken from The Scottish Clearances, author Tom Devine looks at the factors that contributed to this very specific armed resistance. 

The clan chiefs lived in fine houses in Edinburgh. Later the sheep ranchers moved into the Highlands. The lawyer Thomas Muir attempted constitution reform, when only 0.12% had the vote (1832 Reform Act) and he was tried and deported for these views.

*The Scottish Tourist board markets Scotland for its solitude and tranquillity. He spoke of the false “victimhood in a kilt” put forward by the Prebble books: of the decline of Scotland over the past centuries and the scale of emigration. All the film, drama, literature is on the highlands as the soul of Scottish identity. Many Scots moved out to try to run the world. There were those many Scots on the make!

There were several interesting questions – one about how the Scots immigrants to Australia badly treated the aborigines there. Devine’s answer was that the Scots immigrants were middle rank Highland society. At that time there were several centres of excellence which supported racism and Darwin’s theory of the fittest. 

Devine spoke passionately about how important it is to understand the truths about our past stories. “A mature, democratic nation recognises its real history with critical and uncomfortable questions.” 

“We must face the past, and not politicise or mythologize it. Social memory makes us who we are and to understand modern nations if we know where it came from. There are real scholars out there, with clear thinking and good research.” Devine is clearly one of them!

Devine was interviewed by journalist Alan Little. 

Sir Tom Devine is Scotland’s leading historian and he came out in support of Scottish Independence in 2014. Devine lectures and publishes books to address the widespread ignorance of most Scots of their recent histories, heritage and past stories. 

BOOKS - 

The Scottish Nation: A Modern History 1707 - present

The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900

The Lowland Clearances were one of the results of the Scottish Agricultural Revolution which changed the traditional system of agriculture which had existed in Lowland Scotland, in the seventeenth century. Thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from the southern counties (Lowlands) of Scotland migrated from farms and small holdings they had occupied to the new industrial centres of Glasgow, Edinburgh and northern England or abroad, or remaining upon land though adapting to the Scottish Agricultural Revolution.

Extract taken from The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900By Tom Devine
Published by Allen Lane

Part of the answer might be found in the economic sphere. By the early eighteenth century the big cattle farms were beginning to encroach on, and enclose, open or common grazing grounds, the ‘commonties’ referred to earlier in the chapter. That process would have proven a serious threat to peasant communities which were not subject to direct eviction. They would have experienced profound problems from strategies which menaced the tight margins of their household economies.

The slender balance between subsistence and shortage might have been squeezed by the annexation of common lands. Again, there is evidence that not only landowners but tenant farmers had tried to exploit the new post-Union market opportunities in the cattle trade. Some had invested in more stock because of those possibilities. Now, however, as ‘parking’ intensified, they stood to lose the vitally important access to the common grazings for the livestock they had purchased at great risk. For them and their families, descent into penury and beggary might follow.

There was also the economic context of the Galloway clearances to be considered. As argued in Chapter 4, in parts of the central and eastern Borders, the dispossession of small tenants and cottars to make way for larger sheep runs was paralleled by the growth of cottage industry and employment opportunities for the displaced in the towns of Kelso, Hawick, Selkirk and Jedburgh. 

But these alternatives were not available to anything like the same extent in Galloway, where woollen working and other manufactures were much less developed. It is likely, therefore, that the poorer rural communities in the western Borders were faced with a much narrower set of options: acceptance of ‘parking’ and eventual likely eviction, or violent resistance in an attempt to reverse the transformation of the old agrarian society. . .

In addition, however, we also need to probe the complex world of west Border political and religious history in order to provide a comprehensive explanation for the Levellers’ Revolt. Arguably it is there that the distinctive origins of the disturbances can be found. Several aspects of the recent Galloway past are relevant to the analysis. 

The long Covenanting tradition of south-west Scotland was important. The restoration of King Charles II in 1660 led once again to the rule of bishops in the Presbyterian church. This action was thought heretical and oppressive by many pious communities and their ministers, and in open conflict with the sacred Covenants between Christ and his church established during the civil wars of the 1640s. As a result, many clergymen left their parishes and held alternative open-air services or conventicles. These were soon outlawed by the state as treason and the army then enforced the will of the King, often in a particularly brutal fashion. This period, known as the ‘Killing Times’, is still marked in the countryside around Wigtown, Kirkcudbright and Dumfries by the many memorials to the martyrs who defied the civil authorities and faithfully clung to their ideals despite savage state oppression. Galloway remained a hotbed of Covenanting activity despite the draconian policies of the monarchy.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the population were therefore enthusiastic about the removal of the Stuart king, James VII and II, in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–9. But then the Jacobite Rising of 1715 rekindled the old fears of a Stuart counter-revolution. Bitter memories were revived, not simply of the Killing Times, but also of the many years of Presbyterian struggle between the signing of the National Covenant in 1638 and the Revolution of 1688.

Island Nations

Scottish indy is about bringing our island nations together in a more united and stronger way than ever, in an equal partnership. 

By contrast to the Faroe islands the beautiful island of Barra faces a crisis. Barra has the only scheduled flights to a beach airport. Imposed restrictions on non EU workers mean fishing boats are idle and this will effect the major employer, fish processing firm Barra Atlantic. Fishermen from the Philippines islands are desperate to come, but cannot get visas. While exceptions are made for Australian sheep shearers. I recently visited the Western isles and it struck me to have a healthy economy we must care about all our remote regions. 

Respect for diversity is good and we benefit from rigorous debate and co-operation. Why does one culture have to be repressed, to benefit another? Equality and fairness does not mean we are all the same – we are actually very different. What it does mean is equal opportunities, which can’t exist alongside patronage and elitism. After the Grenfell fire and the fight for justice, Carillion and more disasters do people still buy into this fake system …. 

The Scots language has been protected within the EU by a European charter. One third of today’s population speak a modern version of the same language used by Burns. Will old Scotia’s heritage, laws, rights, language, culture and arts be protected once we leave the EU? Will our wildlife be protected?

Indy means freedom of choice, being mature, regaining confidence, and adaptable in our wee nation - not to suit bankers. Why don’t the Highland and islands set up their own small, non profit banking system, or mobile broadband (as in the Faroes). Indy will enable change as we build a country best suited to Scotland individual needs, geography, immigration and resources (for example farming is opposite to England’s)   

Indy isn’t about Edinburgh or London, but about more local decision making and much smaller councils. Indy is about finding our own way in order to make the most of our resources. 

The islands were not remote at all – and in those days of the Neolithic Brodgar of Ness as historian Tom Devine says – “the land divides, the sea unites.”

‘Fortune favours the brave. ‘

’To harness our unique potential.’

evening sun on Orkney

Scotland – 5.5m population 

Iceland – 350.000 population

Denmark – 6.5m population- 134.76/km²

Finland – 5.5m  population - 16/km²

Ireland – 6.5m: Population density - ‎77.8 /km²

**Excellent series of programs by journalist Lesley Riddoch’s NATION and with Phantom River films,on successful small countries requires funding. The first program on the Faroe islands – 50,000 land mass,18 barren islands,  All makes Scotland look a substantial and not so wee place, as we’ve been fooled into believing, after all! https://www.youtube.com/NATIONLesleyRiddoch

Also highly recommend Allan Little’s ‘Friends in the North’ BBC - 

Harris beach

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.