Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets

Challenging left nationalism and left unionism in the SSP

• 1. Socialist Approaches to History in Scotland
  • i) Book publication produces political storm
  • ii) Scottish marxists and Scottish history - the long silence
  • iii) The Scottish Left begins to rouse from its unionist sleep
  • iv) The symbiotic relationship between British left unionism and Scottish left nationalism
  • v) A different approach - internationalism from below
• 2. The Medieval Scottish State - The View From Below
  • i) The rise of the English and Scottish states - bad news for the masses!
  • ii) Who supports the Norman-French ruling class?
  • iii) Wallace's Rebellion - revolts of the lower orders rock medieval feudalism
• 3. Jacobites And Covenanters
  • i) The forty year struggle between Jacobites and Whigs - clash of systems, a clash of classes
  • ii) Divisions in the Jacobite feudal lord/clan leader alliance
  • iii) The Jacobite leaders and the politics of reaction and British colonialism
  • iv) Scotland's lost revolutionary tradition
  • v) British Marxists in Scotland open the door to left nationalism and worse!
• 4. The Scottish Revolution And Revolutionaries In Scotland
  • i) The Scottish Revolution from below and the British revolution from above
  • ii) Scotland's revolutionary Covenanting tradition - the Whiggamores in the first phase of the Scottish Revolution
  • iii) 1649, the counter-revolution within the revolution and other historic possibilities
  • iv) Scotland's Covenanting tradition in a period of reaction after 1660
• 5. The Cameronians Organise The Revolution From Below
  • i) The emergence of the Cameronians signals the second phase of the Scottish Revolution
  • ii) Both wings of the Left downplay the Cameronians in their most revolutionary phase
  • iii) Organising for the Revolution
  • iv) The Cameronians debate a new revolutionary opportunity
  • v) The Cameronians push the magnates' Glorious Revolution forward
  • vi) The Cameronians - the Red Army of 1690
  • vii) King William is forced to bow to the revolution from below
• 6. The Ruling Class Organises Its Counter-Revolution Within The Revolution
  • i) The Whig counter-revolution within the revolution hits back
  • ii) The Cameronians begin to fragment in the face of the Whig offensive
  • iii) Left and Right unite and fight! - a Cameronian-Jacobite alliance?
  • iv) The national and international dimensions of the Covenanters and Jacobites
  • v) Neil's objections are over-determinist
  • vi) The Cameronians go down fighting
• 7. The Revolution From Above Leaves The Rulers Isolated
  • i) The negative impact of revolution from above
  • ii) How the Cameronians viewed Culloden
  • iii) What if the Jacobites had won?
  • iv) The British revolution from above and parallels with Stalin
  • v) A ruling class or a socialist definition of progress
• 8. The Continued Relevance Of The Cameronian Tradition
  • i) The internationalist contribution of the Cameronians
  • ii) The split between the progressive secularised Covenanters and the conservative and reactionary religious Covenanters
• Beyond Broadswords And Bayonets References

1. Socialist Approaches to History in Scotland

i) Book publication produces political storm

One issue guaranteed to provoke a flurry of letters to the editor of Scottish Socialist Voice is any perceived challenge to the SSP's support for an independent socialist Scotland. The latest event to provoke a mass scurrying for pen and paper, or the e-mail at least, has been the publication of Neil Davidson's Discovering the Scottish Revolution, 1692-1746, and the review by fellow Socialist Worker Platform member, Joe Hartney (1).

Joe's review was characterised as Brit Left by Kevin Williamson and downright Unionist propaganda by Donald Anderson (2). Reeling from these and other left nationalist attacks, Joe answered by trying to defend the honour of the unionist British left but also argued that if Scotland broke away from the state, it would be a major blow to the British ruling class, and socialists should support independence for that reason(3).

What we are witnessing here is SWP politics in Scotland in transition. Certainly, the main thrust of Neil's new book and his earlier Origins of Scottish Nationhood is that the Scottish working class was formed as an integral part of a wider British working class in response to the creation of the British state and British capitalism. This state was itself a product of the struggle against feudalism and absolutism, in which a British ruling class came about by the merger of both English and Scottish elements. And according Neil, in a left version of the theory put forward by Linda Colley (4), this led to a united British nation. Not surprisingly therefore, the SWP is seen by the majority of the SSP membership as the major platform still upholding the progressive nature of the creation of the British state and the need for a British-wide revolutionary socialist party - an SWP writ large. Yet Joe highlights the SWP's possible escape clause to allow it to wriggle out of such unionist British left politics - if Scotland broke away... socialists should support independence.

What is less clear in any SWP analysis, is just how this situation could arise. Why would such a move necessarily be progressive if socialists in Scotland had been either agnostic or hostile to the political issue of Scottish self-determination prior to such a development? In this scenario the SNP would have made all the political running over the issue. And the SNP's version of Scottish self determination has a real sting in its tail. Their Scottish independence means support for cross-class unity with Scottish bosses, with Scottish workers competing against other workers in these islands and elsewhere. Their internationalism means overtures to the multinational corporations and continued support for the British Crown. Even left Nationalist, Alex Neil, likes to go to the Queen's Garden Party at Holyrood!

Joe, however, crosses his fingers. He hopes that if socialists throughout Britain concentrate on fighting global issues such as opposition to Bush and Blairs' permanent war regime and bread and butter issues of direct concern to workers, then Scottish independence might never be posed as a serious issue. Or perhaps the liberal wing of the British ruling class will come up with another holding option following from Devolution, such as Federalism, to keep the Nationalists at bay. But, what the hell, if all else fails, Joe suggests the SWP will become independistas too!

Despite Joe's attempt to ride two horses, Neil's two very well researched books do remain trapped within unionist British left politics. Yet, unlike the somewhat outraged outbursts of the SSP's left nationalist wing, serious Nationalist historians, have quite rightly appreciated the important challenge represented by Neil's work. Paul Scott, James Halliday and George Kerevan (5) have all contributed constructively to the debates prompted by Neil's books. Socialists in the SSP should do the same.

ii) Scottish marxists and Scottish history - the long silence

Neil's writings on the Scottish nation, Scottish nationalism and the early working class in Scotland represent the most serious work done in this area by any socialist yet (especially from the marxist tradition). However, despite Neil's own trotskyist background, his work still shares a common framework with those orthodox Communist historians of the old CPGB. The highest proportion of the CPGB's membership was to be found in Scotland. Yet amazingly it wasn't until the 1970's that the CPGB, fifty years after its formation, seriously tried to grapple with the history of Scotland. John Foster wrote an article in the Scottish Committee's Scottish Marxist in 1973, whilst Victor Kiernan wrote specifically on the Scottish Revolution in 1975. Party publishers, Lawrence and Wishart, produced Scottish Capitalism, edited by Tony Dickson in 1980. Similarly, it was only in the 1990's that the SWP (the largest British trotskyist group) attempted to do the same, mainly through Neil's writings.

Why is this? Both the CPGB and SWP have viewed the creation of the British state as a major progressive development in world history. It marked the emergence of a new capitalist order and the beginning of the end for the old European feudal system. And with British capitalism came the British working class, which would take a (hopefully leading) part in the struggle for socialism. From such a perspective, any Scottish dimension is at best a subordinate and secondary feature, or worse, a political diversion. Therefore, for Scottish History, refer to British History, subheading - Regional/local aspects! The SWP and the CPGB both advocate/d their own versions of the British road to socialism, hence their long period of neglect of Scottish history.

There was another contributory factor to this. Both have claimed to be Bolshevik and Leninist organisations. Hence the history of the USSR has played a special role in their own history. Like the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of the Socialist Soviet Republics was also a unionist state. Therefore the USSR also developed a left unionist politics which located the essential progressive developments within the dominant nation - in this case Russia. Political events elsewhere in the Union-state were judged by their contribution to Soviet unity (at least up until Stalin took over in the case of the SWP). There is a continuous unionist thread linking the old British Whig and the later orthodox Marxist views of history.

iii) The Scottish Left begins to rouse from its unionist sleep

However, a blinkered approach to Scottish politics and history couldn't survive the impact of a growing national movement in the 1970's. Many on the Left, too young to remember the the mainstream Scottish Left's one time support for Home Rule, resisted any moves to Devolution, as it was now called. They saw it is an unnecessary capitulation to the Tartan Tories - as they dubbed the SNP. Nevertheless, the CPGB had been in existence long enough for its leaders to be aware of the old Scottish Home Rule policy originally introduced to Scottish left politics by the Independent Labour Party.

So, in the face of a rising SNP political challenge, the CPGB once more dusted down this old Home Rule policy. The CPGB was to the forefront in the early 1970's, through its support in the STUC, in trying to get the Labour Party to adopt Devolution (6).The CPGB needed a theoretical buttress for its political support for Devolution. Foster and Dicksons' historical writings emphasised the historic necessity for a British capitalism and state, but also attempted to deal seriously with its distinctive Scottish component.

The SWP, using left unionist arguments (in Scotland anyhow), opposed Devolution in 1979. However, as the Labour Party in Scotland once more took up Devolution from the late '80s, this time with a greater degree of enthusiasm, the SWP followed suit. Scottish Devolution was seen to be a component part of the anti-Thatcher campaign. The SWP supported a Yes vote in the New Labour's 1997 Devolution Plebiscite. Like Foster and Dickson in the 1970's, Neil today also emphasises the historic necessity for a British capitalism and state, and also attempts to deal seriously with its distinctive Scottish component. The SWP too needed a theoretical justification for its relatively newfound support for Devolution. Later, after a period of internal debate, SWP members in Scotland were directed to join the SSP in May 2001. Neil's writings provide some protective armour in the face of the left nationalist adversaries they have met in the process. Although, as Joe has indicated, this left unionist armour may be allowed to rust over time!

The SWP's 'Scottish Turn' is treated with scorn by the SSP's left nationalist wing, particularly the SRSM. Interestingly, its principal spokesperson, Donald Anderson, initially took a very similar attitude to the old Militant's Scottish Turn (7). He took some persuasion to join the Scottish Socialist Alliance. Therefore, perhaps Donald will take note of one straw in the wind which underlines my analysis of the transitional nature of the SWP's politics over Scotland. The SWP, like the SRSM, gave its support in Blair's Scottish Parliament campaign. Joe hints at future possible changes in a Scottish nationalist direction!

iv) The symbiotic relationship between British left unionism and Scottish left nationalism

What this article will attempt to show is the symbiotic nature of British left unionist and Scottish left nationalist politics by examining their attitude (or lack of one) to key events in Scottish history. The tradition I come from is that of internationalism from below. In a Scottish context this means being a Scottish internationalist and a militant republican. John Maclean, advocate of a Scottish Workers' Republic and World Communism, is the best known representative of this political tendency in Scotland; James Connolly in Ireland. Within the wider socialist movement internationalism from below opposes both the social chauvinism of left unionism and the social patriotism of left nationalism. Social chauvinism represents a projection of liberal unionist politics within our class and movement; whilst social patriotism represents a projection of populist nationalist politics. In practice this usually means tailending either the Labour Party or the SNP over issues of high politics, such as the constitution and self-determination.

Left unionist thinking upholds the progressive nature of the development of the British nation and of British capitalism. Now left unionism today can be very critical of the existing, clapped-out UK state machinery, but it still hopes to inherit all the historic gains represented by the British nations existence. In contrast, left nationalist thinking emphasises all manifestations of a separate Scottish culture and any social forces, movements, parties or individuals which can be shown to have supported an independent Scottish state.

For most left unionists (8), the Scottish nation is merely a subordinate part of a British nation which only developed in the eighteenth century. This has given rise to hybrid nationality identities such as Scottish-British or British Scots. For left nationalists, the Scottish nation encompasses all those who have advocated, built or acquiesced to a Scottish state, whatever their class and at whatever period of history. The only national identity they recognise through Scotland's long history is Scottish (9).

As left nationalists, the SRSM are more enthusiastic when lower order forces can be shown to be involved in the struggle to defend the Scottish state. However, defending the Scottish state is given higher prominence than support for the lower orders, especially when they chose not to back this state or its advocates in their conflicts with the auld enemy. In the absence of any democratic element in the Scottish 'nation's make-up for major periods of the Scottish state's existence, the SRSM tends to fall back on ethnic criteria to substitute for this - particularly support for all that is Gaelic or Celtic. They make no distinction between a Scottish state and a Scottish nation. Therefore the formation of their Scottish nation can be dated back either to the MacAlpine kingship of Alba in the ninth century, or to the ringing Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.

v) A different approach - internationalism from below

Internationalists from below, however, are concerned with the idea and reality of a nation which includes a popular democratic element, i.e. classes contesting the ruling class. It is only with the triumph of the French Revolution that the notion of a nation recognising all its members as equal citizens came to the fore. The nation then began to adopt a politically democratic form. This is what allowed revolutionary, liberal and populist nationalism to appear, with mass nationalist politics and parties. Yet, it is worth remembering that it took considerably longer before the franchise was extended to artisans, workers, peasants, women and certain ethnic minorities - and only then after much struggle.

Yet, it would indeed be too restrictive, only to allow the term nation to be utilised when it had taken on its full modern form, with citizens within its boundaries having constitutional political rights, particularly the right to vote. Therefore we can look to earlier periods of state (and related economic and social) development and decide whether the contesting class forces wished to maintain narrow class privileges or to widen democratic rights to involve the lower orders. Neil has used the term, proto-national consciousness, to describe these wider influences on politics before a modern nation can be said to have existed (10). Once a class-based and democratic approach to the nation becomes your focus, then socialists must take a much more critical look at the formation of a Scottish state.

2. The Medieval Scottish State - The View From Below

i) The rise of the English and Scottish states - bad news for the masses!

Many Scottish Nationalists believe in the existence of a malevolent English nationalism with long historical roots going back to the singularly aggessive Anglo-Saxons. They point to the demise of the Ancient British (Welsh) tongue, except in the recesses of the Cambrian Highlands. The suggestion is of wholesale massacre and ethnic cleansing (11). Now the Dark Ages were undoubtedly a fairly brutal period with much rapine and killing. Yet it is most unlikely that the indigenous population was actually wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons. Many Britons (and Romano-British descendents) probably became members of an enserfed or enslaved class. Yet there is also plenty of evidence of inter-marriage between leading Anglo-Saxon and British families, and of political alliances between Anglo-Saxons and Britons directed against other Anglo-Saxons and Britons. Undoubtedly, the descendents of the Anglo-Saxon war bands emerged as the dominant force in pre-Norman England, with significant effects on culture and language, but the descendents of the earlier peoples lived on (and indeed Welsh was spoken in parts of England's Herefordshire hill-country until the eighteenth century).

Now compare this history with that of the Scots (Gaelic) war bands who likewise crossed the sea only from Ireland. They first invaded Pictland, then old British Strathclyde and later Anglo-Saxon dominated Lothian. In a considerably shorter period of time, the Pictish and Ancient British tongues (spoken north and south of the Forth/Clyde line respectively) disappeared. Does this suggest that the Scots Gaels were even more warlike and brutal than the Anglo-Saxons? There were Scots/Anglo-Saxon alliances too, directed against the Ancient British kingdom of Strathclyde. How does this fit into a pan-Celtic view? Furthermore, when Scots and Anglo-Saxons finally clashed directly in the one-time old British-ruled Lothians, it was the Scots who became the dominant force here. The leaders of the expanding Scots state undertook extensive slave raids into northern England. Therefore the majority of the indigenous populations, of either the Anglo-Saxon English or the Gaelic Scottish kingdoms, had little reason to be thankful for the development of either state as they were enslaved or enserfed.

ii) Who supports the Norman-French ruling class?

The next stage in the formation of the English and Scottish states was undertaken by a new group of marauding warlords - the Norman-French. The old Anglo-Saxon ruling class in England was largely smashed by them, after William the Conqueror's victory at Hastings in 1066. As a result English didn't become the official language of the state there until the late fourteenth century, despite it being the language of the overwhelming majority of the oppressed population. The much hated Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, was not another representative of a longstanding aggressive English nationalism but king of an extensive realm covering England, Gascony, Wales and parts of Ireland. He also had considerable noble support in Scotland. It was a Norman-French ruling class (albeit inter-married with the princesses and ladies of the defeated ruling classes) which provided the leadership for this wider Angevin/Plantagenet empire. The official language of this state was French!

In Scotland a somewhat different political arrangement emerged, involving the same brutal Norman-French warlords. The Gaelic would-be high kings of Scotland had to contend with many competitors for the title, given their complex inheritance laws. Therefore, King David I, of the dominant Canmore (12) family, decided to invite some of these Norman-French adventurers into his kingdom from 1124. They provided some muscle for David, particularly their heavily armoured knights - the tank divisions of the Middle Ages.

Every legal artifice was utilised by the Crown in support of the feudal freebooters. The King... decreed that anyone offering resistance to {one of these} charter-holder{s} was subject to the penalty for rebellion, which was death... Possession {of land} for less than four generations was illegal possession and the holders were summarily expropriated... No non charter-holder's oath was to be valid in any suit involving the life and limb of a charter holder... Charter-holders were given the power and privilege of fighting their duels by substitute, thereby facilitating the assassination of pertinacious freeholders and chieftains at the hands of professional champions.

(13).

Each sovereign lord on his estate was given the power of pit and gallows over his inferiors. They could thus imprison any troublesome person in a deep pit, often leaving them to starve to death. Or they could hang them publicly from their gallows and leave their bodies for all to see as a warning against any insubordination. In such a manner was the power of the feudal Scottish state built up. Now, it was the turn of the old Gaelic dominated provinces of Moray and Galloway to be oppressed, provoking numerous rebellions.

The leading Scots and Norman-French families merged to form a new Scottish feudal ruling class. Because it was a merger and not a takeover, Gaelic continued to be the language of monarchist ritual, whilst French and later, English (Lallans), became court languages in their turn as well. Furthermore, the feudalisation of all the areas within the Scottish realm was much slower and less effective than in England, particularly in the western highlands and islands. Yet the names of all the leading contenders in the late thirteenth century were Norman-French - Robert de Balliol, Robert de Comines (Comyn) and Robert de Brus (Bruce). In Galloway, the conduct of Bruces's war to claim the Scottish crown proved to be particularly vicious. This was because many people there took the opportunity of 'their' local lord's difficulties to try and free themselves from his feudal control. They were brutally punished by Bruce for their efforts. De Brus and de Balliol were both Norman French-descended contenders for leadership of the the Scottish realm. Scotland was politically united only in the person of the king. His realm consisted of quite distinct provinces with different laws and customs in Alba (north of the Forth/Clyde line), Lothian, Galloway (and for a period, the Isle of Man). There was no united Scottish nation. Similarly Edward I was the Norman French-descended feudal leader of the multi-province Plantaganet empire, not the leader of a united English nation.

iii) Wallace's Rebellion - revolts of the lower orders rock medieval feudalism

After a long intra-Norman French feudal struggle involving the Plantagenets, de Balliol and de Brus, an independent Scottish feudal regime consolidated itself. However, between 1296 and 1305 new social forces, the non-aristocratic landholders and city burghers led a revolt directed both against Edward's feudal imperial designs and many of the duplicitous Scottish nobility. William Wallace was the leader of this rebellion. He was possibly of old British Strathclyde (some have claimed Welsh) descent. This would also explain his retreat to the Selkirkshire forests (where the old British culture probably lingered longest) to continue guerrilla warfare after his defeat at Falkirk in 1298 and betrayal by Scottish lords. However, as well as minor landholders, such as the Norman French-descended Andrew de Moray, Wallace also won support in the multi-ethnic Scottish burghs. Thus Alexander Pilche (possibly of Flemish origin), a burgess in Inverness, became an important figure in the resistance. The importance of the burghs is highlighted in the one surviving document signed by Wallace in his position as Guardian. This is an appeal to the Hanseatic League ports of Bremen and Lubeck to reopen trade with the burghs of Scotland.

Wallace's Rebellion was one of a number contemporary struggles associated with the first crisis of feudalism which broke out in parts of Europe. Wallaces' stunning victory at Stirling Bridge in 1297 provided a similar upset to the arrogant feudal order to that of Pieter de Cominck's weaver pikemen at Courtrai in 1302, or the Swiss foresters and their urban allies at Morgarten in 1315. However, the Scottish nobility took their revenge and not only on Wallace himself when they handed him over to Edward 1 for a cruel death. One of the first acts of Robert de Brus after his victory at Bannockburn in 1314 was to give certain Scottish burghs - Elgin, Forres, Nairn and Cromarty in the north and Lochmaben in the south - directly to his feudal lordly allies' control. Bruce's feudal reaction rolled back gains the burghs achieved in Wallace's Rebellion. The peasants continued to put up resistance to feudal work levies and monetary rents began to become more common. Needless to say the lords found new ways to screw their tenants.

Indeed, so powerful became the position of Bruce's aristocratic allies, that for long periods of ensuing Scottish history, they developed an arrogance which still allowed them not only to oppress their tenants, but to make continous challenges to the Scottish crown itself. Hence the emergence of the Clan Ranald-led Lordship of the Isles (in reality an attempt to assert feudal superiority in an area where more traditional customs and landholding long held out) and the notorious Douglas family in the Borders.

A good indicator of aristocratic feudal class solidarity prevailing over national interest is highlighted by the case of John Gaunt. He was the Duke of Lancaster and was involved in the King of England's military attempts to seize more areas of the Scottish Borders. However, in 1381 he took refuge in Edinburgh in the face of the English Peasants Revolt! Once this landmark struggle was defeated he returned to his old ways and brought another English army to Scotland! (14)

How do the SRSM and SWP view this Wallace Rebellion? For the SRSM, it was merely another link in the Wars of Scottish Independence. Yes, Robert the Bruce may have been a bit shaky in his allegiances in the beginning, but he took up the torch of Scottish independence after it slipped from Wallace's grasp. They don't recognise Bruce's feudal counter-offensive, so keen are they to champion an independent Scottish state.

The SWP also dismiss the real significance of the Wallace Rebellion. This seems to follow from Neil's own position that no bourgeois revolution can be absorbed into a socialist tradition of struggle and that socialists can not uncritically lay claim to pre-working class radicalism (15). Given that Wallace's Rebellion long predates any bourgeois revolution, for the SWP there is therefore little to get worked up about. Whereas the SRSM see it as an episode in the perennial struggle for Scottish independence, the SWP see it as merely another episode in intra-feudal strife, therefore of little interest to socialists. Its truly radical significance as part of a wider challenge to feudalism, which developed contemporaneously in several countries, is downplayed by both. It needs an internationalism from below view to see this clearly.

iv) The House of Stewart - hammer of the Gaels!

Since pre-capitalist struggles are all but written off by Neil, it isn't until the seventeenth century, that the SWP show any real interest in Scottish history. Of course, the SRSM can identify with this earlier classic feudal period of the Scottish state's independent development - the second golden age after that of King Alexander III, whose death had led to the invasion by Edward I. Yet this new period was dominated by yet another family of Norman French descent - the Stewarts (initially the Fitzalans, they later were renamed the Stuarts and much later still, when deposed, their followers became known as the Jacobites).

However, it is difficult to equate support for the Stewarts' independent Scottish state with the championing of the traditional dominant language and culture - Gaelic. The historical record of the House of Stewart in this regard is clear. In 1380, John Fordun, the Court chronicler began the official demonisation of the Highlanders... a savage and untamed race... given to rapine... hostile to the English people {i.e. Lowlanders} and language... even to their own nation.(16) It was under the Stewarts that the Gaelic language was increasingly marginalised at Court and other centres of royal power and influence, particularly around the royal burghs.

One particularly unpleasant incident took place in 1396. King John supervised a gladatorial contest between Clan Chattan and Clan Kay on the North Inch at Perth. When the grisly struggle was over, while the air stank of warm blood, the King's heralds declared that Clan Chattan to be the victors... Bow and sword, axe and dagger, slaughtered all but one of Clan Kay's warriors (17). This was arranged ostensibly to settle a clan feud, but the king must have been pleased at the smaller number of recalcitrant Gaels in his kingdom at the end of the contest!

Under the Stuarts, Clan Gregor was later suppressed even more harshly than the Glencoe Macdonalds under William of Orange. They were forced to abandon their very name or be killed. The Stuarts broke the power of the Gaelic Lordship of the Isles and imposed the Lowland plantation of Ulster and Kintyre, whilst also encouraging the Gentlemen Adventurers of Fife to colonise Lewis (unsuccessfully as it turned out). They introduced the Statutes of Iona in 1609, with the intention that the Irish {i.e. Gaelic} language... causis of the continewance of barbaritie and incivilitie... be abolisheit and removit. (18) If championing the Scottish nation is equated with support for Gaeldom, then the SRSM have backed the wrong historical horse in supporting the Stewarts' independent Scotland.

And what of the feudal lord/clan leaders alliance led by the Lord of the Isles? They defended a more traditional Gaelic order against the encroaching, more fully feudal power of the now largely English (Lallans)-speaking Scottish kings? Maybe they could be seen as alternative defenders of a real Scottish culture. Unfortunately for the SRSM both the holders and pretenders to the Lordship sought to achieve their ends by means of an alliance with the Kings of England. By this alliance the territory of the Scottish state was to be dismembered! In 1462, at Ardtornish, John Macdonald, Lord of the Isles, enforced his vassals to make a treaty directed against the King of Scotland. By this treaty the whole people subject to him, was to be the vassal of England (19) in return for recognition of his feudal overlordship of an increased area of Scotland. Scotland south of the Forth/Clyde line was to be subordinate to the King of England. This wasn't a one-off. In 1545 the last active claimant {to the Lordship of the Isles}, Donald Dubh, gathered four thousand swordsmen and a hundred and sixty galleys to play his part in the Rough Wooing {of Scotland} by his English allies! (20)

3. Jacobites And Covenanters

i) The forty year struggle between Jacobites and Whigs - clash of systems, a clash of classes

Of course the real reason the SRSM can not abandon the House of Stewart/Stuart is that they are the lineal ancestors of the Jacobites, who play such a prominent part in the SRSM's politics and culture. So it is not surprising that dirks should be drawn when Neil, on behalf of the SWP, gives his critical support to the British Whigs in their forty year struggle with the Scottish Jacobites! However, all we have seen so far in the pages of the SSV in response to the SRSM's fierce clan charge, is a rather rapid, Johnny Cope-like, Prestonpans retreat by Joe Hartney of the SWP (21)!

However a reading of Neil's book reveals the strengths of his position on the Whigs. On this theoretical terrain he is the SWP's Cumberland (22) rather than its Cope! He is clear as to the class character of the Whigs. They were the political leaders of the modernising commercial capitalist merchants and landlords. Unencumbered by any need to support the independent Scottish state, Neil goes a considerable way to explain why this class and its political representatives sought an Anglo-Scottish alliance to promote their aims through a new British union state. Furthermore, he demonstates why this hybrid state, created after the 1707 Act of Union, was forced into a forty year period of internal conflict, as it tried to digest a much more feudalised Scottish polity and economy. In this conflict the Jacobite leaders represented the defence of feudal reaction.

Neil, however, downplays the fact that the Jacobites were themselves an alliance of traditionalist feudal lords and clan chiefs (23). Now, it is certainly true that more and more clan chiefs had come to hold their land by feudal right, rather than depend on traditional (but unrecognised and hence very insecure) clan rights. Yet, the smaller clans, some of whose members broke with their official feudal superiors to join the Jacobites, were still a force which could not be completely identified with the Jacobites' dominant feudal leaders. The lesser clan members were later to become the main victims after the crushing of the Jacobite Risings. Most of the Jacobite feudal leaders were eventually able both to accomodate to, and do quite nicely from the Hanoverian state, particularly in the colonial service. Here they formed the backbone of British loyalism in the American War of Independence!

Neil does try to absolve himself from giving any enthusiastic support to the Whigs and Hanoverians, especially given the brutal role of the British regiments after Culloden. Yet from the stance adopted in his book, Neil would have been forced to don his redcoat in 1746. Yet, like the humanitarian Whig (there weren't many around at this time!), Duncan Forbes of Culloden, he would have tried to show some consideration for the wounded clansmen left on the battlefield of Culloden! (24) For Neil the tragic consequences following from the Jacobite defeat at Culloden are a case of what happened, happened and the resulting capitalist triumph provided the basis for a future working class, without which no socialism is possible (25).

ii) Divisions in the Jacobite feudal lord/clan leader alliance

However, two of the SSP's left nationalists - Donald Anderson and Kevin Williamson [who had yet to read Neil's latest book! (26)] - are far less clear when it comes to the political nature of the opposing Jacobites. Kevin finds the Neil's characterisation of the Jacobites as counter-revolutionary and allied to French absolutism as stomach-churning. For Donald all the Jacobite Rebellions of 1708, 1715, 1719 and 1745 were both anti-Unionist and popular resistance movements among the very poorest Highlanders (27).

Now certainly the Jacobite contingents included very poor Highlanders (nearly all armies recruit from the poorest sections of society). However, in most cases even they had been summoned to struggle by their clan chieftains. Ordinary clansmen played no part in the war councils of their chiefs. These decisions were confined to the chiefs' immediate male relations and followers (28). Furthermore, the bigger the assembled host, the more likely it was that feudal duty (and the real threat of punitive disciplinary action from their feudal superiors), not clan solidarity, which brought them out. There were of course clan warriors well-seasoned in fighting who could be drawn voluntarily into the Jacobite ranks. Some of these had deserted their Hanoverian loyalist feudal superiors to do so. These clan forces did indeed make formidable opponents, at least until confronted by experienced and well-drilled Hanoverian soldiers at Culloden. But the feudal lords were always the dominant element in the Jacobite alliance.

However, there was a continuous tension between the Jacobite feudal leaders and many of the Jacobite-following clans less than willing to accept feudal discipline. In the previous century, the Marquis of Montrose, serving King Charles I, found considerable difficulty keeping the clans under his control. In his battles against the Covenanters, Montrose was constantly hindered (despite his undoubted military talents) by many clans' unwillingness to fight for King and Country. They instead wanted to pursue their own more limited aims, particularly feuding against the Campbells led by the Earl of Argyll. In 1644 Montrose's clan forces (Scottish and Irish) brutally sacked a largely royalist Aberdeen in a totally counter-productive action from the king's point of view. Montrose denied them a follow-up sacking of Glasgow after their further defeat of the Covenanters at Kilsyth in 1645. Clansmen, led by Alasdair Colkitto (a Macdonald), deserted him to pursue their vendetta against the Campbells.

Similarly, in 1715, the feudal Jacobite lord, the Earl of Mar, found that 1,300 men had deserted his ranks before he had reached the first battleground at Sheriffmuir. Rob Roy MacGregor, the epitome of the independent-minded clan leader (29), ensured that he was well-positioned in the battle to leave the field unscathed. He had early resolved "to be no general's fool, least of all Mar's" (30). In the last Jacobite Rising of 1745-6, Bonnie Prince Charlie did prove to be an inspirational leader to the diminished number of clans who still supported the Jacobite cause. They also had a capable general in the feudal Lord George Murray, depute sheriff of Perthshire. It was Charles and the greater feudal leaders, not the minor clan chieftains, who decided on Jacobite strategy and tactics. Therefore, the British socialist historians, G.D.H. Cole and Raymond Postgate, were not far off the mark, when they stated that Bonnie Prince Charlie was marching... with a feudal army into a bourgeois society. (31)

iii) The Jacobite leaders and the politics of reaction and British colonialism

Nowhere did Bonnie Prince Charlie, or to give him his official name, Charles Edward Louis Casimir Silvester Xavier Maria Stuart (not a Mac to be seen!), advocate defence of a Gaelic clan order. Yes, a certain Jacobite romanticism did attach to his loyal clans; much in the same way as British imperialists later adopted the Gurkhas. They were needed as Jacobite cannon fodder - quite literally at Culloden in 1746 as it turned out. And once the Jacobite Rising had been finally defeated, both the Pretender and most of his feudal supporters were able to escape to the royal courts of absolutist Europe or to the Papal dominions. Many of the minor clan leaders, office bearers and ranks, had no such guaranteed safe haven. They had to go on the run, persecuted at every turn, with their lives constantly threatened.

There is a world of difference between the boak-inducing Jacobite songs dedicated to Bonnie Prince Charlie - Charlie is My Darling and Wha'll Be King But Charlie - and Robert Burns' songs - Ye Jacobites by name and Macpherson's Lament (32). An underground sub-Jacobite culture did linger on amongst the defeated and persecuted minor clan leaders and their fellow clansmen and women. This largely oral culture developed in response to continued state and landlord (including former leading Jacobites') persecution. This culture made its way with the Highland migrants into the new urban and industrial centres found mainly in the Central Belt, which grew rapidly in the late eighteenth century. Here Highlanders (and later the Irish) met the Lowlanders moulded in another culture, that of the seventeenth century radical Covenanters.

The oppositional sub-Jacobite oral culture, with its songs and ballads, did contribute to a new artisan and working class culture. It certainly wasn't the politics of Jacobitism, with its mystical emphasis on monarchy, legitimate succession and hierarchical deference to kings and lords. The leading Jacobite families and their high Tory politics, therefore, contributed nothing to the new democratic culture emerging amongst the radical weavers and other artisans of Glasgow, Paisley and elsewhere.

Where were the traditional Jacobite leaders at this time? Many had long become turnkilts, giving their support to the conquering Hanoverian regime. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, page to Charles Stuart at Holyrood in 1745, served first as colonial Governor of New York in 1770 and a year later as Governor of Virginia. Simon Fraser, son of Lord Lovat, fought at Falkirk with the Jacobites in 1746, but emerged as a leading British general in the Seven Years War against France. The Jacobite heroine, Dame Flora Macdonald, when living in exile in British American colonies, took an active part in ensuring Royal authority was not overthrown in North Carolina...{She} threw herself into the task of recruiting men, with determined energy (33). Four of her sons and a son-in-law went on to fight for King George.

The final political destination of the last prominent Scottish Jacobite families in the revolutionary years after 1789 is most revealing.

Revolution destroyed this ethos absolutely and at once... The spectre of Republicanism rendered the traditional opposition of Hanoverian and Stuart obsolete at a stroke. By 1816, Alexander Campbell could write that the immediate offspring of the true Jacobite families are the most zealous supporters of the illustrious House of Brunswick. Jacobitism was thus revived as a component in an aggressive counter-revolutionary movement determined to enhance the power of the British state by presenting the Hanoverians as a focus of kingly mystique

(34).

Faced with the prospect of the 1797 United Scotsmen-led Rising, the husband of prominent Jacobite, Lady Nairne, joined the local loyalist militia, the Perthshire Light Dragoons! Nor was this an isolated event. James Connolly, a leading upholder of internationalism from below, noted the following in his superb Labour in Irish History.

The old Franco-Irish (35) in a body volunteered into the English army to help put down the new French Republic, and as a result Europe witnessed the spectacle of the new republican Irish exiles fighting for the French Revolution, and the sons of the old aristocratic Irish exiles fighting under the banner of England to put down that revolution.

(36)

Donald is therefore way off the mark when he writes that it was an easy step from Jacobitism to the Republican risings of 1797 to 1812 (37). Individuals with a Jacobite background, like Robert Burns' friend and political ally, the redoubtable Dr. William Maxwell, certainly became Jacobins (38), but no recognised Jacobite tendency, least of all its remaining leaders, supported the French Revolution - quite the opposite.

The political essence of Jacobitism was and remains support for the House of Stuart's claim to the Scottish (or British) crown. Today's Jacobites try to put a modern democratic gloss on the Jacobites' support for the restoration of the Scottish Parliament after 1707. The Stuart record on both the Scottish and English Parliaments is wholly part of 'the divine right of kings' tradition. They saw parliaments solely as instruments of royal policy. The most independent parliaments in relation to the monarchy were those formed in the revolution of 1649 and after the post-1688 'Glorious Revolution' in opposition to the Stuarts. The Jacobites' main sponsors were the absolutist Bourbon kings of France. Louis XV hardly bothered to summon parliament in his lifetime.

A quick look at any current Jacobite-promoting website (39) shows a sycophancy towards royalty and the aristocracy which can match anything emanating from the forelock-tugging supporter of Elizabrit Windsor or from readers of Country Life! Some Jacobites are still, even today, hawking around yet another pretender, Prince Michael, albeit with the more limited aim of only claiming the crown of an independent Scotland! Crivens, help ma boab!

iv) Scotland's lost revolutionary tradition

So who represents Scotland's revolutionary tradition in the struggles between 1638 and 1692? The rest of this article will show that it is the radical wing of the Covenanters - the Whiggamores or the Western Association in the first phase of the Scottish Revolution and the Cameronians or the United Societies in the second phase - who can best claim this legacy.

Why is it that Scottish socialists today are largely unaware of this important part of Scotland's own revolutionary tradition? Certainly this tradition was appreciated by later revolutionary and radical organisations - not least the United Scotsmen and their successor organisations up to 1820; by nineteenth and early twentieth century radicals and even as recently as the heyday of the Independent Labour Party in the 1920's.

One reason is that in today's increasingly secular world, it is much harder to understand the motivation of people who held deep religious convictions and used biblical language to articulate their feelings and demands. Furthermore, when you are dealing with part of the Presbyterian tradition, it is hard not to think of the deep social conservatism of the Church of Scotland right up to recent times. When Robert Burns wrote his highly entertaining Holy Willie's Prayer he was challenging a force which still had political and social clout and could affect people's lives. Today we can more easily laugh at the Reverend I.M. Jolly. When James Hogg wrote his brilliant novel, Private Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Sinner in 1824, he produced a scathing attack on the contradictions and hypocrisy found in Calvinist theology, with its concept of the elect. To the Cameronians the elect were the equivalent of the twentieth century vanguard party (40).

Are there not still dangers today in trying to rehabilitate a bunch of Prods, thoroughgoing Calvinists, whose seventeenth century representatives are to be found on banners carried by the Orange Order, Pastor Jack Glass and Ian Paisley?! Religious sectarianism remains a force to be reckoned within Scotland and particularly in Northern Ireland. Yes, this should certainly give us pause for thought. However, look at what today's reactionary unionists celebrate in the Covenanting tradition. It is the now outdated religious chaff (especially its anti-Catholic aspects). They totally ignore its revolutionary and republican kernel! Revolutionary republicanism became the dominant feature of the politics of a later group of radical left-wing Presbyterians. They were to be found in the leadership of the United Irishmen in Ulster in the 1790's. Does Paisley celebrate them? United Irishman martyr, William Orr, was hanged at Carrickfergus in October 1797. His last words on the gallows were, I am no traitor. I die a persecuted man for a persecuted country. Great Jehovah receive my soul. I die in the true faith of a presbyterian! (41) Is Orr on Paisley's Independent Orange Order banners? Paisley the republican - aye right!

Socialists in revolutionary organisations nowadays hear very similar arguments, particularly from enthusiastic new supporters of the anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist movement. Why bother with all that outdated guff about the Russian Revolution. Just look at what happened! Organised parties lead either to Stalinism or New Labour - don't they?!

Of course, the ideologues and apologists of the global corporations and the Right, don't ignore history. They misuse such examples to pour scorn on any challenge to their 'New World Order' and to their own ongoing crimes against humanity. We need to know that people have always fought back against oppression and exploitation - to show that struggle for freedom is part of human nature! Another world is possible. The Cameronians believed that too in the late seventeenth century.

v) British Marxists in Scotland open the door to left nationalism and worse!

If the reactionary unionist Right is very selective in what it sees in the radical left-wing Cameronians, then most of today's socialists in Scotland are confused and misleading. When the old CPGB began to pay more attention to Scottish history, Willie Thomson wrote that, the intransigent sectarianism dispayed by the irreconcilable Covenanters {the Cameronians} evokes parallels with the Provisional IRA! (42) Now what would Paisley make of that?!

The question today is - why does somebody like Neil, a committed socialist activist and serious left wing historian, also feel forced to downplay the radical left wing Covenanting tradition and the Cameronians in particular? This is where Neil's left unionism takes its toll. He claims there was no unified Scottish polity and economy before it was imposed from above by the British state, so there couldn't have been a Scottish revolutionary tradition. He devotes a special section of the final chapter of his book (43) dismissing the radical left wing Covenanter/Cameronian challenge.

Therefore, it is not surprising that, if self-declared marxists can't identify Scotland's own revolutionary tradition, then many socialists are going to be attracted to a seemingly radical alternative. It is precisely this which is offered by the pseudo-Jacobite politics and ersatz-Gaelic culture of the left nationalists. Judging from the left nationalist assault in the SSV letters page and on the SSP electronic debate, it would appear that Jacobite illusions are far more widespread amongst our members than Whig illusions!

How did Jacobite politics (which had their origins in counter-revolution) come to have such an influence on the Left. One obvious reason is that because British Left-orientated parties and groups have until very recently have had nothing significant to say about Scottish history. Therefore the field was left completely open to the romantic Jacobite view. Ever since King Geordie's Jaunt in 1820 (44), stage-managed by High Tory, anti-Radical, Sir Walter Scott, this Jacobitism had formed a subordinate part of British culture. The kilt is an acceptable form of Court dress. There have long been 'Hooray Hamishes' to supplement the Hooray Henrys from south of the border. As well as the dominant Whig view, this Jacobite alternative has been there in the background, particularly in Scotland. It has also contributed to a maudlin (Skye Boat Song) and comic (Hey Donald, Whar's Your Troosers), yet distinctly, Scottish culture. However this has been so non-challenging it long formed part of the British Broadcasting Corporation's TV output, particularly on the White Heather Club and Andy Stewart Show.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a small group of Scottish cultural nationalists began to take their inspiration from events in Ireland - particularly the emphasis on championing Gaelic identity. This meant making a sharp break, at the cultural level anyhow, with all things British (45). They also emphasised the Jacobite connection. The Honourable Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr founded a nationalist, Gaelic/English magazine, Guth na Bliadhna. Sometime, soon after the First World War, he, along with William Gillies, formed the Scots National League.

James Connolly, however, had gone to considerable lengths in his Labour in Irish History, to show that many of the figures celebrated by Irish Nationalists were quite reactionary. In particular, he challenged any radical pretensions of Irish Jacobitism. The only time when such politics might have been debated in Scotland, was in the short period when John Maclean began to see the significance of Connolly's support for a Workers' Republic in Ireland. Maclean transferred his own previous support for British socialism to support for a Scottish Workers' Republic. This formed part of a strategy to break-up the British state and Empire in the international struggle for World Communism. The International Revolutionary Wave only lasted from 1916-1921 and Maclean himself died in 1924. Therefore the job of producing a Labour in Scottish History was not undertaken by the revolutionary left in Scotland. Maclean's Scottish Workers' Republican Party seemed to confine itself to more bread and butter issues, whilst the new CPGB was hostile to Scottish self-determination.

Instead, the beginnings of a debate over the history and future of Scotland took place in the cultural sphere. It is often the case that, after a major political setback, the only radical arena open to express opposition is that of culture. The Irish Literary Renaisance itself took off, shortly after the containment of the Land League struggles and the ruination of Parnell and therefore the Irish Home Rule Movement in the 1880's. More recently, we saw an explosion in Scottish cultural production after the defeat of the 1979 Devolution Referendum. However, the first such cultural revival here, the Scottish Literary Renaissance, took place in the 1920's and '30's in the face of earlier major political setbacks. Christopher Grieve, better known as Hugh MacDiarmid (46) is the best-known representative from this period. However, two other cultural giants also dominated the scene - the Gaelic poet, Sorley MacLean and the north-eastern novelist, James Leslie Mitchell, better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon. All would call themselves communists. However, in the case of MacDiarmid, it was a troubled support - he jumped from an admiration of Mussolini to that of Lenin!

MacDiarmid adopted a very firm pro-Jacobite stance (47). It was particularly the aristocratic element of Jacobitism which appealed to him. Only he thought that a new Scottish society of the future should be under the leadership of a new aristocracy of makars (48). In the case of MacDiarmid and others, particularly the author, Tom MacDonald or Fionn McColla, a strongly Scottish Jacobitism was used to promote anti-English feeling too. McColla, following Erskine of Marr, also took a firm stance against the life-denying Free Presbyterian Church, holding it and its predecessor to be responsible for the suppression of Gaelic culture (49). Now, there is little doubt that the Free Presbyterian Church was an extremely socially and religiously conservative force in the Highlands. However, it is wrong to project the effect of the Free Church and its successors on nineteenth and twentieth century society, back into the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries. Before the Covenanting tradition bifurcated into its progressive secular and its conservative religious components (see section 8.ii during this first International Revolutionary Wave (1789 - 1820), its earlier religious/political phase also contained a strong progressive element (50).

It is interesting that the native Gaelic speaker, Sorley Maclean, felt he had to chide Montrose-born, Gaelic learner, McColla. Speaking of his own experiences of Skye, MacLean wrote that, A renegade Seceder (51) makes quite a good Marxist and renegades are now very common (52). Similarly, Lewis Grassic Gibbon. just before he died in 1935, was writing a sympathetic novel on the Covenanters.

The problem of flirting with right-wing Jacobitism was highlighted when MacDiarmid helped to form the shadowy fascist organisation, Clann Albain, in 1930. This type of politics has its lineal descendent in today's Siol nan Gaidheal, which also inspired Scottish and Settler Watch (53). What took place in the 1930's as a cultural battle, takes place today as a political one, particularly in the context of a growing movement for Scottish self-determination.

But despite their seemingly opposing stances, there is once more a relationship between the SWP's still remaining left unionism and the SRSM's left nationalism. When it comes to examining Scottish history, the SWP and the SRSM downplay the significance of both phases of the Scottish Revolution (1638-1649 and 1680-1690). The SWP wants to deny any Scottish Revolution, the better to highlight their later British Revolution. The SRSM can not cope with any class division which can be seen to divide their independent Scottish state or nation. You have to take an internationalism from below approach before you can get a deeper understanding of what has really occurred in Scotland's history. Furthermore you can identify the revolutionary tradition which did indeed inform the infant working class in Scotland and Ireland, as we shall see later in section 8.i.

4. The Scottish Revolution And Revolutionaries In Scotland

i) The Scottish Revolution from below and the British revolution from above

Now the SRSM and the SWP will no doubt continue to flash their broadswords and bayonets, invoking their Killiecrankies and Cullodens, in the pages of the SSV and in the pubs of Glasgow. Yet both have adopted political frameworks which blind them to a full understanding of the period. The one thing they do agree on (give a couple of years) is the significance of the period between 1692 and 1746 (which the SRSM would backdate to 1689 and the first major Jacobite victory on the Braes o' Killiekrankie-o). For Donald the picture is uncomplicated - over this period the Jacobites were merely the latest in a long chain of patriotic torchbearers defending Scottish independence.

Neil, in contrast, gives critical support to the political force which developed as the British Whigs, in both Scotland and England. He explains very well, using other examples, why this period is one of revolution from above (54). However the part of the title on the book's cover which is highlighted - Scottish Revolution - is quite misleading. What Neil is really analysing is the British revolution from above over this period. Now this title would no doubt make Donald choke on his Glenmorangie, but I also suspect that the publishers knew that it would sell far fewer copies in its target market - Scotland!

The Scottish Revolution which did occur (not Neil's later British revolution from above) went down to defeat, not once but twice! The first phase of the Scottish Revolution began in 1638 and triggered off a wider revolution throughout the Three Kingdoms ruled over by the House of Stuart - Scotland, Ireland and England (55). The most radical force to emerge in Scotland in this phase was the Western Association or the Whiggamores. The Scottish Revolution, however, stalled and became part of a wider English/British Revolution and Republic led by Oliver Cromwell in 1649. It then shared in defeat and the return of the Stuart monarchy with the Restoration in 1660. This period will only be dealt with briefly, before dealing with the second phase of the Scottish Revolution where a more independent radical left wing Covenanter movement emerged.

The opening shots of the second phase of the Scottish Revolution took place in 1680. In The Killing Times that followed it looked like this would be very short-lived. Then, in 1685, came a failed attempt at revolution from above in the form of joint Scottish/English risings led by the aristocratic Covenanter, the Earl of Argyll and by Charles II's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. They were not supported by the new radical left wing of the Covenanters, organised in the United Societies or the Cameronians. This new force was the lineal descendent of the Whiggamores.

These Cameronians went on to organise a revolution from below which exploded into action in 1689. Then for two years the revolution from below (led by the Cameronians) clashed with a counter-revolution from within (its supporters entered history as the Whigs) as both faced the threat of White (56) counter-revolution (led by the Jacobites).

ii) Scotland's revolutionary Covenanting tradition - the Whiggamores in the first phase of the Scottish Revolution

The Covenanters got their name from the National Covenant signed in 1638 in Greyfriars Churchyard in Edinburgh in 1638. The leading signatories represented an aristocratic feudal opposition to the growing absolutist designs of King Charles I. Most of the Scottish nobles signed, including both Argyll and Montrose. They saw an opportunity to weaken the king's growing despotic powers and no doubt enhance their own. However, this cross-class alliance {for it was supported by many lairds, merchants and even tenant farmers} was not to last. As revolutionary situations developed in the mid and late seventeenth century, the most moderate wing would peel off. In the first revolutionary wave {from 1638-1649} they rejoined the Stuarts" (e.g. Montrose). During the Glorious Revolution, of 1688-90, the moderate wing emerged as the Scottish Whigs.

In the first phase of the Scottish Revolution after 1638,

the widening active support for the Covenant began to change what had begun as a noble dominated campaign. In the parishes of the south where radical ministers, with a tradition of independent organisation in open air meetings (conventicles) had much influence, the covenant was perceived as a crusade... It was at this level that the National Covenant was most dangerous, politicising the masses.

(57)

The successful actions of the Scottish Covenanters paved the way for the intervention of revolutionaries in England, extending the revolution throughout the three kingdoms. In the initial stages, English anti-Royalists took their lead from Scotland. The Scottish leadership of the developing Revolution was underscored by the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643. It formed the basis for a military, political and religious alliance against Charles II. It was during the misnamed English Revolution that the openly republican Independents led by Cromwell, and the even more revolutionary Levellers, came to the fore. When the Engagers (58), or the moderate wing of the Covenanting alliance, deserted to the King (59), the Remonstrants (60), who formed the radical, more lower orders wing of the Covenanters, were given their impetus by a new force - the Western Association. They formed an alliance with Cromwell's forces and they

advanced upon Edinburgh, urging their horses with the cry Whiggamore! and thus giving the name to themselves and to the political party that would inherit a dilution of their revolutionary zeal {the Whigs}

(61).

Now Neil and I do share one particular admiration and that is for Walter Makey's book (62). Therefore it is worth looking at his evaluation of the radical Covenanters at this time.

The Western Remonstrance rested on the proposition that the King was insincere {in his new opportunist declaration of support for the Covenant} and that he could not be granted the substance of power until he had given substantial proof of a real change in his principles and this was a process that could be prolonged to the point of creating a de facto republic

(63).

The actions of the Western Association were successful in establishing an anti-Engager government in Scotland.

The regime of 1649 was using a feudal Parliament to attack feudalism itself. It was a difficult relationship arising out of the peculiar circumstances of the day... The remonstrants wanted a King without power and a Parliament without magnates

(64).

The Whiggamores were the real red guards of the Scottish Revolution

(65).

You can't get much clearer than this assessment!

The Remonstrants, however, baulked at maintaining their alliance with Cromwell, faced with the prospect of rule by even lower orders. This is what the rise of the Levellers in England seemed to signify to them. To the commissars or ministers of the one-state/one Party Scottish Presbyterians, the Levellers were hated sectaries (66). Therefore, the majority of the Remonstrants took up arms against Cromwell, only to be defeated at Dunbar in 1650. However, two of their key military leaders, Ker and Strachan, favoured negotiated peace with Cromwell (67). English republicans did not set out to conquer Scotland... after Dunbar Cromwell wanted a negotiared settlement (68). Their views unfortunately did not prevail.

iii) 1649, the counter-revolution within the revolution and other historic possibilities

Cromwell's defeats of the majority of the anti-Engagers at Dunbar, and also of the Engagers and their English royalist allies at Worcester in 1651, blocked the path to an interesting historical might-have-been. The most economically, socially and politically advanced society of the day lay in the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic. Scottish Presbyterians and many English Independents looked to the Dutch as leaders of radical Protestantism. This Dutch state was organised as a confederal republic. Cromwell's reluctant occupation of Scotland (and not so reluctant occupation of Ireland) led instead to the formation of what became, in effect, a greater English British Republic. A confederal republic would certainly have been the most advanced possible political outcome at the time, especially compared with the other two options - the Stuarts' monarchist union and Cromwell's military union. Such a confederation existed in the Dutch Republic. Yet it was under a much more immediate political and military threat from absolutist France.

However, the most revolutionary force in the Revolution of the Three Kingdoms, the Levellers, went down to defeat at Cromwell's hands at Burford in 1649. This paved the way for the counter-revolution within the revolution - a phenomenon which was to reappear in future revolutions (69). The Levellers' political challenge represented a very different path of economic, social and political development to that which eventually triumphed in these islands. The Levellers wanted a small property owners' democracy. They were prepared to ally with remnant communal property holders, both in England and Ireland (70). Instead, Cromwell's victory opened the path to large-scale landlord agricultural and merchant commercial capitalism. This also paved the way for that very British compromise - the constitutional monarchy. It took a further 'adjustment' to achieve it through the "Glorious Revolution' of 1688-91. This replaced Charles II's and James II/VII's attempts to create an absolute monarchy after the Restoration of 1660.

It was Cromwell's military regime which prepared the ground for this reactionary Restoration.

Cromwell first emerged in history in the 1630's defending the commoners against the new capitalist fen drainers {in East Anglia}. However, by 1654 he was helping the Earl of Bedford and his company of Adventurers in their dirty work of evicting fen farmers of Huntingdon, accepting 200 acres for himself, ex gratia, for his services

(71).

After defeating the Levellers, the Cromwellian regime made an alliance with the more conservative defeated anti-Engager majority in Scotland, and then accomodated to traditional feudal pressure after the 1653 Glencairn Rising.

In Ireland, Cromwell seized the rebels' land and handed most of it over to merchants and others. They added to the ever-growing large-scale landowning class. They went on to form the most reactionary section of British politics, a bastion of unionism frequently seeking alliance with the most conservative section of the mainland parties. This is why these last ditch upholders of the British monarchy still revere republican Cromwell! Cromwell also promoted a war against Spain in which Jamaica was seized. This allowed the English and later British Slave Trade to develop on a really large scale. The slaveholders and traders became another reactionary force in British society.

With reaction growing everywhere it is not surprising then that it was Cromwell's friend, Lord Fairfax (72), along with his military governor in Scotland, General Monck, who arranged for the return of Charles II, at the Restoration in 1660 (73). The revolution had been undermined from within.

iv) Scotland's Covenanting tradition in a period of reaction after 1660

The decades following the Stuart Restoration in 1660 were dark indeed. To contemporaries, living over three hundred years ago, they must have appeared very like the spread of fascism in the {1920's} and1930's... {In Scotland a} veritable White Terror was launched by the Earl of Middleton and Lord Rothes... They acted directly in the interests of those aristocrats who had been petrified by their loss of control in the preceding revolutionary years and were determined to restore their law and order

(74).

However, a new Covenanting resistance emerged in this period. Politically it moved beyond its Western Association predecessor. It was much more firmly an organisation of the lower orders.

One effect of the desertion of the nobility to Episcopacy {King Charles II's church} and the relative weakness of the merchants (75), was to leave the organisation of the Covenanting cause to those of a lower order. This included the small merchants and artisans in the burghs, and the bonnet lairds, tenant farmers and artisans in the countryside - the men of small property. The dissident ministers came largely from these classes. They continued the old Covenanting tradition of holding (illegal) open air meetings (conventicles) The government tried a mixture of concession and repression. It issued Indulgences by which ministers, who swore their loyalty to the Crown, could continue to preach. In the south-west, where the Covenanters were strongest, many refused to recognise Charles II's indulged ministers (76). The whole area was dragooned in 1678 by the 'Highland Host' reinforced by Lowlands militia and regular foot... {They were} quartered with orders to disarm the country and live freely upon it...

(77).

The radical Covenanters fought back, assassinating Archbishop Sharp and defeating a Royalist force at Drumclog in Ayrshire in 1679. The King sent his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, to lead the Crown forces in crushing this rebellion. The two sides met at Bothwell Bridge. Before this battle an acrimonious dispute broke out between representatives of the wealthier cavalry and the poorer footsoldiers. The former left the field in advance of battle

leaving the footsoldiers... to put up a gallant defence in the face of overwhelming odds... {The class divide became clear and a new radical left wing emerged.} In response to these developments, the lower orders demonstrated their new-found class feeling in their language directed at the aristocratic Covenanters. After these defections and judgements are over, ye may see nettles grow out of old bedchambers, and their names, memorials, and posterity to perish from this earth

(78).

It was this hardcore remaining after Bothwell Bridge {who} formed the United Societies (79).

5. The Cameronians Organise The Revolution From Below

i) The emergence of the Cameronians signals the second phase of the Scottish Revolution

The new radical left wing Covenanters had secretly produced Scotland's first republican programme, the Queensferry Paper, in 1680. It stated that, We shall no more commit of the government of ourselves and the making of laws for us, to any one single person or lineal successor (80). This organisation had formed largely in response to the situation in the south-west. A new organisation was called the United Societies. The Queensferry Paper was its founding programme. The United Societies have become better known as the Cameronians after Richard Cameron. He rode with some followers into Sanquhar in Dumfriesshire in 1680 and publicly pinned up a challenge to the Stuarts on the town cross. A month later he was killed at the nearby battle of Airds Moss.

The state reaction to the Cameronians was to launch the period of Scottish history known as The Killing Times. The repression was severe and

the life expectancy of the leaders was very short... Yet the remarkable thing is that despite the level of repression, the United Societies grew. In 1683 there were 80 societies with 7000 members. In Hector Macpherson's excellent book, The Cameronians' Philosopher - Alexander Shields, we are told that the Societies represented virtually a state within a state. They cast out anyone who took bonds rendered by the government, who paid taxes to the civil authorities or stipends to the indulged clergy, made use of a government pass, voluntarily appeared before any court of law, supplied any commodities to the enemy or allowed any of these in their name...

Establishment historians, such as Rosalind Mitchison, denigrate the evidence of The Killing Times, saying it has been mightily exaggerated. Yet all over the south of Scotland, in particular, there are memorials to individuals slaughtered during this period. Copies of their documented evidence can still be found in many libraries, published as A Cloud of Witnesses. The ultra-conservative and anti-radical, Sir Walter Scott, wrote what today appears to be a surprisingly sympathetic account of these Covenanting times in his novel, Old Mortality (81). This was inspired by Robert Paterson, who had been given this particular nickname. He was an itinerant stonemason, who spent much of his time erecting and repairing gravestones and memorials to the Covenanters.

It was a major achievement of the United Societies that they kept a record of many of those killed and made sure their names were remembered

(82).

The Cameronians behaved exactly like {modern} national liberation movements which try to monitor and record the atrocities of government backed death squads... They also had to support prisoners in places like Bass Rock (83), the Stuart government's Robbens Island of its day, as well as other isolated spots like Dunnottar Castle (84).

The Cameronians refused, largely on anti-aristocratic grounds, to give their support to the joint Argyll/Monmouth Rising in 1685. They also remembered their recent defeat at the hands of Monmouth at Bothwell Bridge in 1679, when he was supporting the Crown. The yeomen and weavers carrying the old English Levellers colours, who backed Monmouth in England, had no such direct experience of him. His behaviour after defeat was pathetic. Those supporters not killed in battle at Sedgemoor in Somerset suffered grievously afterwards at the hands of Judge Jeffries' Bloody Assizes (85).

ii) Both wings of the Left downplay the Cameronians in their most revolutionary phase

Undefeated therefore, the Cameronians went on to play a key part in the revolution from below against William of Orange and his Whig magnates backers' revolution from above Both, of course, faced the threat of white Jacobite counter-revolution (86). One of the key things which unites Neil and the older CPGB historians covering this period, is their dismissal and marginalisation of the role of the Cameronians. Thus Victor Kiernan (87), backed by Willie Thomson (88), has written off the Cameronians as backwood looking, a historical deadend, with whatever influence they possessed having peaked before the crucial years of 1688-90. Neil also very much downplays the significance of the Cameronians. In one of the specific sections of Neil's book challenging my own views (89) he states that, I confer on them a significance they did not possess and that I abandon history for useful myth! (90) In response Neil quotes Jeffrey Vogel favourably.

Marx is on the side of the oppressed in the sense that he traces his lineage back to Spartacus, an inspiring example. But this does not mean that Marx would support the victory of Spartacus at the cost of future human development, for which large-scale exploitation is indispensible!

(91)

It is difficult to know where to begin with this. Immediately it reeks of Stalinism where millions of peasants and workers have to be sacrificed for progress. Here progress is usually measured in tons of coal and steel not greater human freedom! Obviously for Vogel (and for Neil?) the end of slavery wasn't necessarily part of future human development. However, worse still, the statement is dishonest. The only reason so many know of the name, Spartacus, is because his slave armies did defeat the mighty Roman legions on a number of occasions. If Vogel-progress was to happen, they should have buckled under for large-scale exploitation or have been defeated at the earliest possible opportunity. In which case we would not have heard of Spartacus; just as the names of thousands of other less successful resistance leaders are now lost to the historical record.

What we have here is a glaring example of what the great English socialist historian, Edward P. Thompson, called the enormous condescension of posterity, or in Vogel's case academic detachment with a leftist gloss. I much prefer Thompson's support for poor stockingers, Luddite croppers and 'obsolete' handweavers.

Their opposition to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience

(92).

However, it isn't necessary to go as far as Thompson, in devoting our time to unearthing the history of every declining artisan or working class trade. The Cameronians were not a particular trade group but an effective revolutionary fighting force which changed the course of history. They didn't win on their own terms but they mightily helped to prevent a White counter-revolutionary victory, and to push the 1690 Revolution Settlement in Scotland considerable further than King William's backers wanted. They left their historical mark on the Scottish constitution.

iii) Organising for the Revolution

In the crucial climax of the second phase of the Scottish Revolution, the parallels with future revolutions are striking. Although 'The Killing Times' had taken a heavy toll on the domestic leaders of the United Societies, their underground organisation had continued to grow (93). Several leaders lived in exile in the Dutch Republic. This was a major centre of revolutionary organisation at the time. Here English, Scottish and French Calvinists and Independents; aristocratic oppositionists, merchants and ministers all mingled and plotted. It was here the joint but abortive Argyll and Monmouth Risings were planned in 1685.

Leading Cameronian, Alexander Shields, wrote and published his key revolutionary text, A Hind Let Loose in the Dutch Republic. The Cameronians' strongest base certainly lay in Dumfries, Galloway and the Borders. These were the areas furthest from the royalist policed cities such as Edinburgh, where oppositionists had to live an even more clandestine existence. However, because of their leaders' wider connections, the United Societies had an internationalist view of the world. They saw themselves part of a much wider movement. Others fighting for the cause included "the Reformed Church in France {the Huguenots} howling under the paw of the devouring lion, the French Tyrant; or of Hungary under the tearing claws of that ravenous eagle, the tyrant of Austria; or those of Piedmont under the grassant tyranny of that little tiger of Savoy" (94). Here we have a roll-call of Europe's absolutist states and their opposition.

Therefore, despite attempts to write them off as a marginal, backwood looking, virtually parochial group, the leaders of the United Societies were acutely aware of international political developments around them... {In their Correspondences, they organised for the circulation of Declarations - manifestoes or programmes - which addressed contemporary events}. At their General Meetings, held in the open, in a secluded valley or on a sheltered hillside {protected by their own armed guards} the United Societies democratically debated the political situation and their strategy and tactics. In response to the government's employment of a number of particularly oppressive agents - Sir James Turner (Butcher Turner), John Graham of Claverhouse (later Jacobite hero, but Bluidy Clavers to the Cameronians), Lord Advocate, Sir George Mackenzie (Bluidy Mackenzie), Sir John Grierson of the Lag (Bluidy Lag) (95), Sir Thomas Dalyell (direct descendent of Labour MP, Tam Dalyell of the Binns) and the Covenanter turncoat, Archbishop Sharp - the United Societies discussed The Apologetical Declaration. This reluctantly conceded the necessity for selective assassination. In the case of Archbishop Sharp, this had already been carried out on Magus Moor, outside St. Andrews.

iv) The Cameronians debate a new revolutionary opportunity

After surviving and organising throughout The Killing Times a new opportunity arose.

When King James continued his slide to absolutism, with his open Catholicism and support for Louis XIV, even the larger merchants and commercial landowners in England became alarmed. However, it wasn't until the birth of James' son, which would almost guarantee a Catholic succession {and continued subordination towards absolutist France} that they invited William of Orange, the Dutch Stadtholder {like a President albeit with royalist pretensions}, to be king

(96).

In England, William's overthrow of James in 1688 was bloodless - hence the name Glorious Revolution. In Scotland and Ireland this proved to be far from the case. The news of William's arrival provoked a riot in Edinburgh, against James VII (97) and his recent Catholic appointees, the Chancellor, Earl of Perth and the Secretary of State, Earl of Melfort... This is exactly what the Scottish nobles feared and they had to manoeuvre smartly to contain events.

As a consequence the eventual Revolutionary Settlement of 1690 pushed further than William desired.. {There was a} more polarised position here. There was a more serious counter-revolutionary threat from the Jacobites... {partly} because of the unbroken strength of the United Societies, who reminded the Scottish nobles of the dreaded days of 1649.

The United Societies had to decide their attitude to the latest turn of events. At last there was a chance of the repression being lifted. A heated debate took place at a General Meeting near Wanlockhead... All present saw the limitations of a change backed by many of the treacherous magnates and larger merchants. {These Cameronians} weren't prepared to dissolve themselves into a new Covenanter Popular Front. A minority, which was later to emerge under the leadership of Robert Hamilton, opposed any critical support for William. However, they were defeated by the majority, led by Alexander Shields. He argued for the need for support, whilst maintaining the right to act independently... We can see an early from of the debate between Popular Front, sectarianism and the United Front.

v) The Cameronians push the magnates' Glorious Revolution forward

Quick action was required, however. James VII's main supporters planned a coup d'etat, at the Edinburgh Convention of the Estates... They hoped to force Scotland into the camp of counter-revolution. The United Societies armed their men and marched them into Edinburgh. First they rabbled the curates. This meant they turned out all James' supporters from their kirks. This was done without loss of life and was a very disciplined action

(98).

Neil dismisses the key independent role of the Cameronians. Yet the rabblings of 1688-89 could not have been carried out without the participation of people who had either remained within the Church of Scotland throughout the Restoration period, or who had rejoined it after the Revolution (99). There are two issues here. First Neil neglects to mention a significant group, particularly from or near Edinburgh. Many of these hadn't been members throughout the Restoration period, but would have been faced with the choice of imprisonment in the Tolbooth, if they hadn't gone for another option. Over the years, many reluctantly transferred their public allegiance to the indulged ministers. These were the ministers who had been won over to the state. The fact that a state, normally quite prepared to resort to imprisonment, torture and execution, also had to make concessions, shows the continuing strength of the radical Covenanting opposition.

However, another indication of the political sophistication of the United Societies is that they were able to take advantage of the precarious situation in Edinburgh in March 1689. They organised city dwellers, including Church of Scotland members from beyond their own immediate ranks - an excellent example of the united front in action!

It is the next phase of the revolution from below which Neil completely downplays, so keen is he to clear the decks for his revolution from above.

A Watching Committee was elected to supervise the Convention. The armed societies soon put an end to Claverhouse's planned coup d'eteat. He fled to the Highlands. With the Convention overawed, the Societies' General Meetings began to assume the function of a Provisional Government according to Macpherson. Although a better analogy would be that of Dual Power

(100).

There is substantial evidence that many of them would like to have had a republic, as many men had come to believe that all kings were oppressors

(101).

Neil ignores this period of Dual Power and focusses instead on the limits of the Convention Parliament. He quotes favourably the later Radical and Scottish Jacobin, James Callender. Does anybody compare the packed convention Parliaments of the two kingdoms, in 1689, with the democratical members of the first national assembly of France? (102). Well, my focus is primarily on the situation of dual power and the independent role of the United Societies in the revolution, not the Scottish Convention and later Parliament. So a more recent analogy, in this case, would be Neil highlighting all the shortcomings of the post-February Russian Provisional Government, but ignoring the role of workers' councils (soviets) and workers militia (red guards) in the same period. It is this latter development which should be of most interest to socialists today. The later noble-packed Scottish Parliament is more a product of the counter-revolution within the revolution. However, it is worth looking more closely at the Scottish Convention. Initially, it wasn't quite as packed as Neil makes out. After all, the armed actions of the Cameronians had forced the most Right wing element to flee to the Highlands. Furthermore, the Convention deliberated under the supervision of the Watching Committee. The Cameronians were also actively discussing moving beyond their red guards to creating a Red Army!

vi) The Cameronians - the Red Army of 1690

The new

King William wasn't happy with developments in Scotland. His support from large merchants and landed interests would evaporate, if there was a return to rule by the lower orders. {1649 was etched into the minds of every aristocrat.} However, for the moment he needed the Cameronians to fend off the Jacobite threat in the Highlands of Scotland. He tried to absorb the Cameronians into the regular army, under the king's officers. This they refused to accept. Already, at the Sanquhar General Meeting of January 24th 1689, they had decided to raise a Cameronian army, under their own officers. It was disbanded after the defeat of the coup d'etat. However, after further debate at the Douglas General Meeting on April 29th, it was agreed to form a Cameronian regiment, under the command of William Cleland and Lord Angus

(103).

Cleland was a brave young man who...had fought with the godly at Drumclog and Bothwell Brig (104). The youthful Angus was appointed by the Provisional Government in Edinburgh to try to coopt this development. {Despite being a committed Covenanter} the decision caused some dissension amongst the Cameronians {at the next General Meeting because of his aristocratic background.}

Meanwhile Claverhouse had raised a Jacobite force of 2,000 Highland clansmen. They smashed William's regular army of 4,000 at Killiekrankie, although Claverhouse himself was killed. All that now lay between these clansmen, now increased to 5,000 men, eager for booty and a gateway to the Lowlands and capital was a force of 1,200 Cameronians, under the command of William Cleland. The Cameronians manned the walls of Dunkeld cathedral

(105).

The two extremes of Scottish politics confronted one another at Dunkeld - they fought for hedges, ditches, walls, houses, roofs and rooms. It was a savage battle because it was an ideological battle, a classically bitter and vicious civil war in miniature {Cleland received bullets in the head and the liver during the Highlanders' first assault. But their second assault was turned by the Cameronian pikemen.} Cleland died, but his men held Dunkeld, and the Jacobite force retired, dispersed and ceased to exist

(106).

The Cameronians had stopped this immediate counter-revolutionary threat. That they were able to do this was largely due to democratic organisation combined with revolutionary fervour. The same combination allowed the Red Guards to be victorious over the forces of reaction in Russia in 1917. However there never was an October for the Cameronians. The class of bonnet lairds, tenant farmers and artisans wasn't cohesive enough to push forwards any further. They were increasingly pushed aside by another class of commercial landlords and larger merchants

(107).

I am sure that Neil would agree with this last sentence and indeed a well-researched section of Neil's book is devoted to examining the balance of class forces in the lead up to the Act of Union in 1707 (108).

vii) King William is forced to bow to the revolution from below

However, the Cameronians and their legacy didn't just fade away. They had made such an impact on Scotland through their revolution from below, that the Scottish and later post-Union British state, as well as the commercial landlords, had to develop a political strategy and take punitive measures to eliminate their impact - not least on the constitution of the post-Revolution Scottish state itself. Even a historian as unsympathetic to the Cameronians as Rosalind Mitchison recognises the very different position of the post-Revolution Scottish and English states.

The Scottish Revolution Settlements... the Claim of Rights and the Article of Grievances both go far beyond the cautious law defining the English Bill of Rights

(109).

For the first time since 1640-51, the Scottish Parliament had become a significant political arena. It was no longer controlled by the king, through his appointed administrative committee...The 1689 Revolution Convention, held under the watchful eye of the United Societies-controlled Watching Committee made sure that {this Crown committee} was abolished

(110).

This William would have preferred to retain...The simple truth is that William didn't want to have to give up any royal powers...He and his supporters argued that however bad past kings had been, William was good and trustworthy, and would not abuse his powers. The view of the Convention was that any king with the power to oppress was always likely to become an oppressor...Only after a year of political manoeuvring was William forced to admit defeat in May 1690...The result was that the Scottish parliament...was free to develop policies and to decide on issues. It was free to take initiatives in diplomacy and commerce

(111).

Of course, the principal weakness of the new Parliament was the incredibly narrow franchise (far more limited even than England). This meant that only a handful of people from newer social forces were represented, like Fletcher of Saltoun (112). The main revolutionary forces lay outside. Nevertheless, as a result of the changes brought about by the Scottish Revolution, a new, if very much a minority, voice was heard in the Scottish Parliament for the first time. This Parliament took a strong interest in the economic development and modernisation of Scotland.

6. The Ruling Class Organises Its Counter-Revolution Within The Revolution

i) The Whig counter-revolution within the revolution hits back

The history of William and Anne's administrations was partly directed at eliminating this radical difference between Scotland and England. The 1707 Act of Union became central to this legacy

(113).

Indeed it needed the Union before the final political act could be passed to abolish the last radical measure bequeathed by the Revolution Settlement in Scotland. The Patronage Act passed by the British Parliament in 1712 allowed the landowners to appoint local ministers in direct contravention of the Revolution Settlement.

Thus, before Neil's British revolution from above could really take off, the Scottish revolution from below had to be dealt with by the counter-revolution within the revolution. William's administration, far from taking desive action against the Jacobites, constantly tried to woo them over. Thus many historians misunderstand the significance of the Glencoe Massacre in 1692.

Ironically {this} took place within a generally conciliatory policy towards the Jacobite Highland leaders. After their defeat at Dunkeld, an attempt was first made to buy their loyalty (114). However, with the Williamite Succession still being fiercely contested on the continent, the Jacobite chieftains hedged their bets. William offered a pardon to all rebels if they took an oath of allegiance. This time it was accompanied by threatening those who do not with the utmost extremity of the law. There was no attempt to break the feudal privileges the {greater} chiefs still enjoyed. William could not contemplate revolutionary methods {even from above} against landowners {since he was in a military alliance with many}, but instead tried to coerce them indirectly, by staging a carefully managed event. Hence William's Secretary of State,... Lord Stair, was selective in his choice of victims

(115).

He made sure not to target the great Macdonald clans of Keppoch and Glengarry (116). He chose the Glencoe Macdonalds, who

had few, if any friends, but a long history of robbing, burning, murder and rebellion... {As a consequence} the Macdonalds were slaughtered not by a rival clan but by regular soldiers, servants of the state, in the king's uniform, on the instructions of the king's secretary, supported by the signature of the king himself

(117).

Amazingly, the new and invigorated Scottish Parliament, filled mainly with Lowland Presbyterian nobles and lairds, with normally minimal sympathy for Jacobite Highlanders (especially the minor clans) condemned this move. They could feel the threat of royal power once more.

Once the Union was established in 1707, a further attempt was made to decrease the political divisions amongst the large landowners. The Toleration Act was passed in 1712 (118). This was ostensibly an attempt to win over the Episcopalian clergy. In reality it was an attempt to further cement the class interests of the landed oligarchy, by healing the divide between Presbyterian and Episcopalian landlords (119). Quite clearly, what was happening here, was assimilation to the English model with its directly state-run Anglican Church. This gave landowning families considerable local power. Here we have reaction being imported from south of the border, certainly not revolution, even from above.

Moreover, as well as rolling back the constitutional impact of the 1689-91 revolution from below, direct attacks were made on the independence of the Cameronians.

The main body of the Cameronians... became involved in helping fight William's wars on the continent against Louis XIV. The independentally officered Cameronian regiment suffered heavily at the battles of Namur and Steinkirk in 1692, where the regiment was all but annihilated. Alexander Shield's, the regiment's minister, was one of the few survivors. Despite the military setbacks, William must have been secretly pleased at the weakening of this potential challenge

(120).

After its losses on the Continent the Cameronian regiment was reconstituted as a more regular section of the British Army. Here,

by a bitter twist of history, they were to act on behalf of state reaction, suppressing a Highland regiment's mutiny in Edinburgh in 1778, just as the Highland Host had suppressed the Covenanters... a century earlier. Both Cameronian and Highland regiments went on to serve British imperialism's needs faithfully

(121).

Neil deals very well with the Darien Scheme, an attempt by the now independentally-minded Scottish Parliament to set up a colonial trading base near present-day Panama (122). I agree with Neil that the spectacular collapse (123) of the Darien Scheme very much curtailed the possibilities for independent Scottish mercantile capitalist development, and played an important role in the passing of the Act of Union. Its failure also represented a further attack on the Cameronian legacy. Its minister, the first overseas Church of Scotland missionary, was none other than Alexander Shields. After Namur and Steinkirk his luck ran out. He died on the return voyage from Darien.

ii) The Cameronians begin to fragment in the face of the Whig offensive

Therefore even before 1707, the Cameronian forces were in retreat. The most far-sighted were practical men like William Cleland. They had military experience and prioritised the physical defence of the Revolution, setting aside any theological dogma which might compromise this. To this extent Cleland was the later equivalent of Ker or Strachan of the old Western Association (see section 4.ii). After the success of the red guards in overawing the Edinburgh Convention, Cleland and others argued for the formation of a Red Army - the first independent Cameronian regiment. This time they had support from a key United Societies minister, Alexander Shields. Their overall strategy was to join the ongoing Revolution as a fully organised, independent force. It was, however, difficult to get the balance right. Shields joined the Church of Scotland, but regretted that he had not made more fuss when accepted.

The remnant of the United Societies was led by Robert Hamilton, whose approach was more sectarian. After his death, the depleted United Societies eventually found a minister, John McMillan, and they became better known as the McMillanites. Their increasing inability to materially effect events, led this section of the Cameronians to adopt classic sect-like behaviour. They issued ever-more grand Declarations. These were pinned up at market crosses, particularly at Sanquhar, the Cameronians' Moscow. However, this was almost the sum of their public activity. Instead they focussed more and more on their own internal activities, trying to organise a Reformed Presbytery and falling out with others and between themselves. As a result of splits to left and right, the apparently less stern Harlites formed in 1692, whilst the even more dogmatic Howdenites fromed in 1712. The authorities realised that all these organisations' barks were worse than their bites and for most of the time they were now ignored.

Not all radical Covenanters had joined the official United Societies. The largest group, lying outside their ranks, were the Hebronites or followers of the minister, John Hepburn. The Hebronites took a half-way position between that of the McMillanites and that of the Church of Scotland. To begin with they were more prepared to become involved in public activity.

However, other defectors, from the pre-and post Revolution United Societies, as well as from the Hebronites, joined the Church of Scotland. They later contributed to its Popular Party and the new Secession Churches, who opposed the dominant Moderate Party, closely associated with the landlords and larger merchants. The Seceders were to further divide, in the eighteenth century into Old Licht and New Licht branches, with the former tending to remain religiously and socially conservative whilst the latter tried to engage with wider changes in the outside world. The different conditions existing in Ireland and the American colonies (with net immigration rather than emigration) meant that the Reformed Presbyterians there became more publicly engaged. Their obvious public impact was therefore greater (see section 8.i).

The Cameronian faithful remnant continued, but rather like revolutionary groups in the twentieth century, they kept splitting into bigger numbers of ever smaller sects. They sometimes deserted to really wild sects, leading dual lives or abandoning Calvinism altogether (124). They had difficulties keeping their followers in line.

If the activities of the Cameronians between 1680 and 1692 provide certain parallels with the Russian Revolution; a study of the Cameronian sects would provide some interesting parallels with the twentieth century world of the Trotskyist sects (125). Furthermore, for every loopy dogmatic position adhered to by an eighteenth century Covenanting sect, you could find an equally bizarre one from a twentieth century Trotskyist sect (126).

iii) Left and Right unite and fight! - a Cameronian-Jacobite alliance?

Neil deals much better than I did (127) with a strange episode in Scottish history. This was a proposed alliance between the Cameronians and the Jacobites! The Cameronians had been publicly active in their opposition to the Articles of Union, designed to unite Scotland and England. The McMillanites produced a political tract, Protestation and Testimony of the United Societies of the Witnessing Remnant of the Anti-Popish, Anti-Prelatic, Anti-Sectarian True Presbyterian Church of the Christ in Scotland Against the Sinful Incorporating Unity (128). A new breakaway sect, the Harlites, produced the equally snappily entitled paper, The Smoaking Flax Unquenchable; Where the Union Between the Two Kingdoms is Dissecated, Anatomised, Confuted and Annuled. Also, that Good Form and Fabrick of Civil Government, Intended and Espoused by the True Subjects of the Land, is Illustrated and Held Out! (129)

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Cameronian sects still had influence. The Hebronites organised a mass protest in Dumfries, burning a copy of the Articles of Union and a list of the Commissioners responsible for the Union negotiations. 300 of their armed men formed the core of a demonstration several thousand strong (130). The McMillanites, perhaps shamed by the Hebronites, later formed an armed group and rode into Sanquhar to pin up their Declaration on the market cross. Their local MP was in the pocket of the pro-Union Marquis of Queensferry.

Demonstrations in Edinburgh and Glasgow, alerted the authorities to the danger and led to the major concession - the maintenance of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, won under the Revolution Settlement in Scotland in 1690. This broke the ranks of the opposition, but of course, it didn't satisfy the Cameronians, who remained strongly anti-unionist.

This was the background to the shadowy proposals for a Cameronian-Jacobite alliance. How much substance it had, and to what degree state agents were acting as provocateurs, it is difficult to assess. What is more than likely is that any such dealings were confined to a handful of Cameronian leaders, rather than openly debated at United Society meetings. It would have been very hard to persuade the Cameronian rank and file to unite with the Popish and Prelatical Jacobites! Neil points out the inherent problems with establishing such an alliance. It would have been like the Bolsheviks siding with Kornilov against Kerensky in September 1917 (131).

However there are periods in the history of later revolutions, where difficult political situations have led to similar proposals. Neil's example of Bolshevik 'purity' in this regard blinds him to some of their more dubious machinations even as early as 1919. One example of this was the flirtation of the Russian Bolsheviks with the German Right and military officers. Karl Radek, in particular, was involved in some very shady dealings (132). However, these were also kept hidden from the Bolshevik rank and file.

The Left-Right, Cameronian-Jacobite, anti-Union alliance never materialised. Interestingly, the one group that retrospectively supports such an alliance today is the SRSM. Donald has written,

At one point the Jacobites and Covenanters almost united anent the so-called Union. That is worth striving for today

(133).

Well yes, maybe - but only if you ditch all the royalist Jacobite claptrap and, of course, the religious sectarianism of the Covenanters. Leave the Ultra-nationalist and militarist Siol nan Gaidheal to parade with its claymores, sgean dhus and targes and the Loyal Orange Order, to march with its lambeg drums, sashes and bowlers.

iv) The national and international dimensions of the Covenanters and Jacobites

However, there was little basis for such an alliance in 1707 precisely because the class, religious and political differences were irreconcilable on both sides. It must be remembered that for many there was no real distinction between the religious and the political. Political demands were often expressed in religious terms. It wouldn't be until the American Revolution from 1776 that the majority of revolutionaries would use mainly secular language. In 1707 both Cameronians and Jacobites might have been largely Scottish phenomena, but the visions they had for Scotland were very different.

Furthermore, the most influential leaders on both sides didn't put national considerations first. The Cameronians saw themselves as part of an international Calvinist order, in alliance with other Calvinists in Holland, England and Ireland, as well as France, Hungary, Piedmont and probably Switzerland. Their most consistent international political aim was to reform the Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant with England and Ireland. Likewise the Jacobite Pretenders' first aim was to regain the Crown of the United Kingdoms. To do this they were prepared to ally with absolutist France and other continental powers and the Papacy if necessary.

If you look at the Scottish political institutions which existed in 1707, then you can easily see why modern-style nationalism didn't exist. The only national institution at the Jacobites' disposal was the kingship itself, albeit shared amongst two other kingdoms. This is why national awareness had to be a very top-down affair for the Jacobites, with no popular democratic component. A divine right king called upon his grand feudal lords, who in turn called on a hierarchical chain of feudal subordinates for their support. Feudal power and obligation gave this substance, not popular national identification. At the base, especially where the smaller clans were concerned, this Scotland was a very nebulous concept. Inter-clan rivalries and even wider Gae