Emancipation & Liberation

With casualties continuing to rise in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rod MacGregor shows imperialism’s disdain for working class lives

He’s five feet tall and he’s six feet four,
He fights with missiles and with spears,
He’s all of thirty-one and he’s only seventeen,
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years.

Universal Soldier (Buffy St Marie)

In Dundee’s Eastern Necropolis there is a headstone-free area known as the Poor Ground. As the name would imply, this is where the poor of Dundee’s past lie in unmarked graves, in stark contrast to the imposing headstones and memorials of Dundee’s Victorian industrial barons and merchant class.

Even in death, it would seem, equality can be an elusive concept—the prosperous proclaiming their earthly greatness for all to see, while many of those whose sweat and toil created for them their fabulous riches lie unmarked, unknown, forgotten.

The Poor Ground is possessed of the solemn tranquillity common to graveyards, and on a pleasant day it is a calm and peaceful place to sit on one of the three benches that form a row on the northern edge of the area. Each of the benches has a plaque on it, and the inscriptions on the two westernmost make for an eye-catching and interesting read. They are as follows:

In memory of PRIVATE PETER GRANT VC Born 1824
He was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in India 16 November 1857.
He died 10 January 1868 and was buried near here.

And, on the other bench,

In memory of PRIVATE THOMAS BEACH VC Born 1824
He was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in The Crimea 5 November 1854.
He died 24 August 1864 and was buried near here.

Neither Beach nor Grant fared well after their brief flirtation with fame, and both were dead in their early 40’s, almost within a decade of receiving their VC’s. Thomas Beach left the army in 1863. He returned to Dundee, where he died in the Royal Infirmary on August 24, 1864, aged 40. The cause of death is believed to have been severe alcoholism.

According to a report in the Dundee Advertiser, dated January 11, 1868, Private Peter Grant (who at the time was still a serving soldier of the 93rd Regiment, stationed in Aberdeen) had been missing from where he lived since Friday, December 27, and had not been seen again till the previous morning. His body was removed from the river, near Craig Harbour, by a Constable Bremner.

Still pinned to his uniform coat was his Victoria Cross and his campaign medals. In the pockets of the coat were a fourpenny piece, a penny and a knife. He had been on a visit to friends in Dundee. The last sighting of Private Peter Grant had been in Wheatley’s Public House in the Overgate.

What the inscriptions on the benches at the Poor Ground tell us is instructive.

Despite being feted by the state, their country bestowing upon them its highest award for valour on the field of battle, that same state which honoured their courage so, in death abandoned them, not even caring enough to provide a simple headstone to mark the last resting places of those it had so recently proclaimed heroes, one of whom was, at the time, still a serving member of the army.

Indifference and callousness

Fast forward now from the mid-to-late nineteenth century to the first decade of the twenty-first century. On August 26, 2007, I am reading an article in the Independent on Sunday, the headline of which reads Our boys deserve better treatment than this.

I am habitually and instinctively wary of articles containing the words our boys. Usually, they are flag waving, shallow pieces of jingoism, designed to inculcate in the population the belief that all British foreign military adventures are benign, and to make us feel that there is something wrong with us if we do not support our troops.

Many thousands of us have, of course, been supporting our boys in the best way possible, urging prior to March 2003 that we should not attack Iraq, and calling for the withdrawal of the troops ever since the launching of that ill-thought-out foreign misadventure.

But the article in the Independent is highlighting the plight that our boys face when they are wounded, either mentally or physically. Two cases in particular are highlighted, each in its own way a shocking indictment of the indifference and callousness of the state which would send our young people into combat on a mixture of half-truths and downright lies.

On the Military Families Support Group website, one mother tells of her son, who is home on two weeks’ leave from Afghanistan. She discovered that he was suffering from a double fracture to the jaw, caused by a faulty rocket launcher, which recoiled into his face. Other than pain relief he had received no treatment at all for the injury.

It was not till his mother sent him to her dentist that the true extent of the injury was discovered. He was told at Selly Oak Hospital that as the fractures were, by that time, four weeks old, there was nothing they could do and he was sent back to Afghanistan after being told to eat only soft food.

The second case is, if anything, even more harrowing.

A mother tells how her 19-year-old son, an infantry soldier who served in Iraq, is haunted by witnessing a child sliced in two by a British bullet which was fired into a crowd in Basra. The memory of the boy’s father gathering up the pieces of his child, sitting on the curb and hugging them, torments him.

When the nightmares come he has to climb into bed with his mother and her husband. Before he can sleep she has to cuddle him and rub his nose as she did when he was a baby. Clearly, his mother says, he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but this young soldier has received no counselling.

Many who leave the armed forces fare no better. An article in The Scotsman on August 8, 2007, stated that as many as one in ten homeless people are ex-forces’ members. To put that figure into perspective, if it was proportionate to the size of the armed forces, Britain would have six million serving members in the army, navy and air force.

It is feared that the traumatised of Iraq and Afghanistan will begin to swell the number of homeless ex-service personnel in the not-too-distant future. Many will leave with alcohol related problems and find it hard to adjust to civilian life after traumatic experiences in the forces.

War crimes

At least, unlike during the First World War, we no longer execute those suffering from PTSD. In that most terrible of conflicts three hundred and six disturbed young men, many only boys really, were executed on the orders of military top brass and senior officers. Their sole crime was to have become mentally unwell due to the unspeakable horrors they had witnessed in the human slaughter house that was trench warfare.

Most of those who were executed were vulnerable, defenceless teenagers who had actually volunteered for duty, deliberately selected and found guilty as a lesson to others. Their heinous crimes included desertion (ambling around in a confused and dazed state, suffering from PTSD), cowardice (the same symptoms) and insubordination (some trivial incident that could be twisted into an excuse for trial, conviction and execution).

Regularly, these trials would take place one day (the accused would often have no defence), they would be convicted and found guilty on some specious charge, and they would then be shot at dawn the day after the trial.

The British commander-in-chief, General Haig, himself signed the death warrants of all those killed by their own side for the crime of being human, for the crime of being able only to take so much before becoming ill.

It is a war crime to execute the sick and the wounded.

Following allied victory, in 1919 Haig received the thanks of both houses of parliament, was given a grant of £100,000, and rewarded by a grateful state with an earldom.

Just over a decade after the end of the war, in 1929, the world’s stock markets crashed in capitalism’s great crisis.

For many who had escaped with their lives from Europe’s killing fields of 1914-18, who had endured the unendurable in places which were to become forever synonymous with savage slaughter on an industrial scale—The Somme, Paschendale, Ypres et al—a good day for them would be one when they and their families went to bed at night with full stomachs. Not for nothing were those times known as the Hungry Thirties.

From Victorian England, to the dark days of the First World War, to the present day, a pattern of neglect, and at times, sheer bloody-minded vindictiveness, emerges concerning the treatment and after-care of military personnel. Some might say, I believe harshly, that they knew what they were signing up for and take a hell mend them attitude towards them.

Economic conscription

Instead, it should be contended that, as in most things, prevention is better than cure, that these young men and women should never have been put in harm’s way in the first place.

Many of the troops now doing tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan will be young, working class, economic conscripts, lured into the armed forces with the promise of a trade and regular paid employment. They will see it as an escape from low paid, slave wage, short term employment, they will see it as a career.

But it is a career which, just as much now as it ever has been, can come with a lethal price. They are the young men and women denied a fair chancein civilian life by the market forces of capitalism, as well-paid jobs are shipped abroad, where labour is cheaper and health and safety not really much of an issue at all.

How ironic it is, then, that the youth of this country who take the queen’s shilling will, almost inevitably, end up shipped abroad themselves to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where, too, health and safety willbe perilous issues.

What, then, of the future? It does not bode well. Recently, to much rejoicing among the mainstream political parties and shipyard workers, the government announced that it was placing orders for two giant aircraft carriers, the largest warships ever to be built for the Royal Navy. The deal was touted as securing thousands of jobs.

But the implications of this alleged good news have a darker side. The building of these two giant warships tells us much about the government’s long-term perception of what Britain’s role in international affairs should be.

The military purpose of an aircraft carrier is not a defensive one. They are the long arm of imperialism, designed to facilitate the ability to strike anywhere on earth that their political masters deem necessary for the furtherance of imperial wars and ambitions, the chastisement of undemocratic dictators or any of the other familiar, oft-used excuses needed to unleash the dogs of war.

However powerful these ships are, the aircraft carrier is only one tool in the armed wing of imperialism. The chosen target’s population, having been suitably shocked and awed by aerial bombardment, and we from the comfort of our armchairs treated to video game TV news items showing surgical strikes by smart bombs, the dirty work still has to be done.

The task of enforcement and occupation, thinly disguised and euphemistically described as liberation, the bringing of democracy, etc., etc., will fall, as always, to the troops on the ground. It is they who will have to live with the day-to-day horrors of any occupation.

Some will be driven slowly mad by what they witness; others, tragically, will die amid those horrors.

In a letter home from Iraq a young nineteen-year old soldier wrote, I do not see why our lads have to die for something that will not make an iota of difference. Despite his tender years he had come to understand how rotten, how bankrupt his country’s policy in Iraq had become, had always been, how wasteful of young lives it was.

That young soldier was killed while on sentry duty in Basra.

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth,
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

Rudyard Kipling

Alistair Livingston

Local variations aside, what was the fate of those who were no longer required on the land that once fed them? More than Adam Smith, more than any of the other Enlightenment theorists, it was the ex-Jacobite, James Steaurt, who foresaw their fate. As Marx recognised, ‘He examined the process [of the genesis of capital] particularly in agriculture; and he rightly considers that manufacturing proper only came into being through this process of separation in agriculture. In Adam Smith’s writing’s the process of separation is assumed to be already complete’.

Steaurt predicted, in words that should have been written in fire and blood, ‘That revolution must then mark the purging of the lands of superfluous mouths, and forcing those to quit their mother earth, in order to retire to towns and villages, where they may usefully swell the number of free hands and apply to industry’

(1) Neil Davidson, The Scottish Path to Capitalist Agriculture-Part 2

Neil Davidson’s quote, that should have been written in fire and blood, comes from Sir James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1767. Nearly 80 years earlier, Queen Mary (married to the Stuart King, James VII and II), suggested that, Scotland will never be at peace until the southern parts are made a hunting park. Queen Mary’s remark was made in the context of the ‘Killing Times’ of 1685/6 when her husband believed he faced armed insurrection by the Cameronians in southern Scotland. After the 1603 Union of the Crowns, his great-grandfather James VI and I had pacified the Borders by transporting whole ‘clans’ like the Grahams and Armstrongs to Ireland. Had her husband been able to stay in power, this old Stuart policy of ‘pacification through clearance’ may well have been applied to the Cameronian insurgents.

Queen Mary’s remarks were repeated in an anonymous letter in support of the Galloway Levellers published in June 1724. This News from Galloway, or a poor man’s plea against his Landlord, in a letter to a friend, raised the fear that Jacobite landowners in Galloway were pursuing military and political objectives under the guise of economic agrarian rationalisation – the ‘purging of the lands of superfluous mouths’. What seems to have revived the spectre of politically motivated clearance were the actions of one Basil Hamilton. He actively supported the Jacobites in 1715.

Lately the said Mr Basil Hamilton hath cast out 13 families upon the 22nd of May instant who are lying by the dykesides. Neither will he suffer them to erect any shelter or covering at the dykesides to preserve their little ones from the injury of the cold, which cruelty is very like the accomplishment of that threatening of the Jacobites at the late rebellion [1715], that they would make Galloway a hunting field, because of our public appearance for his Majesty King George at Dumfries, and our opposition to them at that time in their wicked designs (2) .

So were the Galloway Levellers simply acting against local Jacobites? Perhaps to begin with, but soon they were levelling every dyke they found, regardless of the landowners’ political affiliations. Indeed, as I explain below, the Levellers actions forced Jacobite and Covenanter landlords to work together with the Hanoverian state to suppress their uprising.

But is there a link from the Galloway Levellers uprising to Sir James Steaurt and hence to Karl Marx? Discussing the Galloway Levellers, Davidson makes the following point.

Galloway was part of the south-western heartland of the later Covenanters and, in particular, was the area from which the post-Cameronian sects which succeeded them had drawn their highest levels of support. Some of these sects, like the Hebronites and the MacMillanites, who had been active in opposition to the Treaty of Union, were still functioning and provided the insurgents with an ideological and organisational framework within which to mobilise… (3).

Following up this reference to Hebronites and MacMillanites, I found an article on The Hebronites (4) (followers of John Hepburn, minister of Urr parish) and discovered that Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees knew both Hepburn and Macmillan – or so this comment by Sir James Steaurt indicates,

Mr. Hepburn I know to be a good man but weak, but as for Macmillan—! (5)

This James Steaurt was the father of Marx’s James Steaurt, and was solicitor general of Scotland in 1724, the Year of the Galloway Levellers. But who were these Levellers? Two years ago, when asked this question, on a BBC Radio Scotland series on the Lowland Clearances, I thought I knew.

Direct and militant action

The Galloway Levellers were a thousand strong group of small tenant farmers and cottars who took direct and militant action against local landowners who wanted to clear them from the land. These landowners were taking advantage of the Union of 1707 to breed cattle for export to England in exchange for hard cash. The cattle were bred and then fattened in large enclosures, some up to two square miles in size. Everyone living on the land so enclosed was evicted.

In response, through the summer of 1724, the Levellers ‘levelled’ these new enclosures. The landlords tried to stop them, but the Levellers had been drilled by ex-soldiers like Billy Marshall, ‘king’ of the Galloway gypsies, and were armed with muskets, swords, pitchforks and scythes. The only dyke left unlevelled by Marshall and his force belonged to Robert Johnstone of Kelton. This was only saved with the support of William Falconer, the minister of Kelton, bribes of beer and bread, an agreement by Johnstone not to evict any of his tenants and the claim that his dyke was a march dyke built along the public highway.

Unable to control the revolt themselves, the landlords called for back-up from the state. Troops of dragoons were despatched and, by November 1724, the Galloway Levellers uprising was over. The ringleaders were imprisoned, fined or sent to the Plantations. No other such uprising occurred, allowing the process of ‘agricultural improvement’ in Scotland to proceed unhindered through the 1760s into the 1830s. The Galloway Leveller’s uprising was therefore only a footnote to Scotland’s history, fascinating for a local historian like myself, but of little wider importance.

But then the makers of the series, Peter Aitchison and Andrew Cassell, went on to ask Professor Chris Whately of Dundee University his views on the significance of the Galloway Levellers. He suggested that the Leveller’s uprising had an important and long lasting impact beyond Galloway. The Galloway Levellers had so ‘frightened the authorities’ that the process of agricultural improvement/lowland clearance proceeded more cautiously and slowly (6).

Chris Whately’s comments prompted me to research, via the internet, the wider significance of the Galloway Levellers. This led me to Allan Armstrong’s article, Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets in Emancipation & Liberation 5/6 – which connected the Galloway Levellers to the Cameronians – and to Neil Davidson’s book, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, which also discusses the Galloway Levellers. Subsequently, when Allan provided me with back issues of Emancipation & Liberation, I found the following in Neil Davidson’s reply to criticisms of his article.

Unless comrades are prepared to engage with primary sources and to interrogate the historical meanings of concepts which they use…there cannot be any real debate (7).

Revolutionary traditions

These words jolted me. I realised that I had accepted rather than interrogated local historical sources of information about the Galloway Levellers. Nor, until I read Allan Armstrong’s Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets (8), had I thought of the Galloway Levellers as part of Scotland’s revolutionary traditions. Challenged by the debate in Emancipation and Liberation, I have gone back to my local history sources and interrogated them. As a result, my previous understanding of who the Galloway Levellers were has been revolutionised.

What began as a short article on the Galloway Levellers for Emancipation and Liberation has so far reached 7000 words and keeps growing. With no conclusion in sight, the following summary of research will have to suffice for the present. The key text from which all subsequent historical accounts of the Galloway Levellers are drawn, including Davidson’s, is a thirty page long article by A.S. Morton (9). Most of what follows comes from following up persons, events and places mentioned in Morton’s text and cross-referencing these with other local historical sources.

The absence of commercial agriculture in Scotland meant, however, that whatever other depredations were suffered by the peasantry, clearance had not yet been one of them… The Gallwegian economy was largely geared up towards cattle rearing and in that respect was closer to the economy of the Western Highlands than to that of Aberdeenshire (10).

Yet in 1721, when Sir John Clerk of Penicuik visited his brother-in-law, the 5th earl of Galloway, James Steuart (or Stewart), he described already existing enclosures dating from 1684 in Wigtownshire which had involved clearance (11).

Although called the ‘Galloway’ Levellers, dyke levelling activities (which took place between March and September 1724) were focused on 6 ‘lowland’ parishes in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright/ east Galloway. In autumn 1724, some levelling activity spread to Wigtownshire/west Galloway, but this was met with more forcible opposition, including the death of a leveller and the rapid deployment of sufficient troops (an additional 4 troops of dragoons) to quell the revolt in October / November 1724.

The military skills of the Levellers, although attributed to the involvement of ex-soldiers with experience in Europe, is more likely related to the raising of a local ‘militia’ in response to the threat posed by the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. According to a contemporary account [Rae, 1718] those drawn from the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright numbered 2000 (out of a population of 20 000) in October 1715. In the previous months (at around 100 per parish) this militia had been armed and drilled on a weekly basis by ‘captains’ appointed by the Marquis of Annandale, as Steward of Kirkcudbright and Sheriff of Dumfries.

The one dyke left unlevelled belonged to Robert Johnstone of Kelton , who was one of these ‘captains’. Johnstone was a former (post-1689) provost of Dumfries and his lands at Kelton in theory belonged to the Maxwell earls of Nithsdale – long time Stuart supporters and active Jacobites in 1715. (Legally, the Maxwell’s only finally lost ownership of their Kelton lands in 1747.) Robert Johnstone was also an investor in the Darien Scheme.

The initial focus of levelling activities were dykes built by the Maxwells of Munches and Basil Hamilton of Baldoon’s lands, near Kirkcudbright. All had been active Jacobite supporters in 1715. Basil Hamilton (related to Dukes of Hamilton) is a key figure. His mother was daughter of David Dunbar of Baldoon in Wigtownshire. Dunbar (died 1686) was first to enclose lands for the cattle trade, circa 1640. He had been a Stuart supporter during ‘Killing Times’ of 1680s. In the 1670s, Dunbar acquired land in Stewartry of Kirkcudbright forfeited after 1660 by Lord Maclellan of Kirkcudbright for his active support in the 1640s for the Covenant cause. The situation was reversed in 1716, when it was the Dunbar estates, inherited by Hamilton, which were forfeit. They were not regained until 1732. Hamilton only avoided execution as traitor in 1716 after intervention by his cousin, the Duke of Hamilton.

Many other named landlords, initially on the side of Levellers’ Revolt, figure in Rae’s account of 1715- e.g. Thomas Gordon of Earlston and Patrick Heron of Kirroughtrie. It was Heron who advised landowners not to fight Levellers after noting their military skills. Heron was also a ‘captain’ in 1715 and so had helped train local anti-Jacobite militia of whom ex-members (I strongly suspect) supplied Levellers with their military tactics. Gordon of Earlston was another ‘captain’ from 1715 with deep family Covenanting roots.

Although the Levellers’ Revolt may have begun as a limited attack on the property of known Jacobite landlords, the participants moved on to level all the dykes. The threat posed to their interests united both Jacobite and Covenanter, as can be seen from a letter dated 2 May 1724 by the Earl of Galloway to his brother-in-law, John Clerk of Penicuick in Edinburgh [Prevost: 1967: 197] Noe doubt you have heard of Mr Hamilton’s going to Edinburgh with Earlstoune to represent the grievances of our countrie on that score. [ i.e. the activities of the Levellers; the mission being to request that troops be sent].

The physical actions taken by the Levellers were supported by printed pamphlets spelling out their grievances. Dated June 7th 1724, one of these: News from Galloway, or the Poor Man’s plea against his Landlord must have reached Edinburgh, since a twenty page long response was published there by Philadelphus on 1st July. Entitled Opinion of Sir Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor of England, concerning enclosures, in answer to a letter from Galloway, the pamphlet also quotes from a book published by Robert Powell in 1636 (a lawyer belonging to the Society of the New Inn) De-population arraigned, convicted and condemned by the laws of God and Man. This pamphlet caused considerable alarm among the authorities in Edinburgh, and the Lord Advocate went personally to the bookseller to demand the name of the author. An attempt was made to stop the sale of it, but the result was a greater demand for it than before (12).

The Lord Advocate then called for a Public Enquiry, which was held in Kirkcudbright during the summer of 1724. Basil Hamilton was infuriated, claiming that Provost Kilpatrick of Kirkcudbright, who led the Enquiry, was a Leveller sympathiser. [I am trying to track down the findings of this Public Enquiry].

Although both Neil Davidson and Allan Armstrong both agree that the Galloway Levellers had the support of, and were encouraged by, radical Covenanting elements (the Macmillanites and Hebronites) local evidence does not fully support this. Hepburn, minister of Urr, in the Stewartry, died in May 1723. Macmillan, who had illegally occupied the parish church and manse of Balmaghie since 1703 with armed Cameronian support, spent little time in Galloway after 1723. This was the year Macmillan’s second wife, sister to Thomas Gordon of Earlston, died.

The strongest ‘religious’ support for the Levellers came from Monteith of Borgue who opposed Macmillan and was firmly within the Church of Scotland. Falconer of Kelton was likewise an opponent of Macmillan, but was also suspected of being a Leveller sympathiser. Additional support may have come from Hugh Clanny, a minister at Kirkbean who had been expelled for immorality in 1702.

And finally, Morton gives us the names of some of the Galloway Levellers.

On the 27th January 1725, at a court held in the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in Galloway, with the following justices being on the bench – Thomas Gordon of Earlston, David Lidderdale of Torrs, Colonel William Maxwell of Cardoness (presiding), John Gordon of Largmore, Robert Gordon of Garvarie, Nathaniel Gordon of Carleton, and John Maxwell, provost of Kirkcudbright – the Honourable Basil Hamilton brought a complaint at the instance of Lady Mary Hamilton of Baldoon (being his mother) and himself as her factor against,

• Thomas Moire of Beoch and Grisel Grierson his wife
• John Walker of Cotland
• Robert McMorran of Orroland
• John Shennan and William Shennan of Kirkcarswell
• John Cogan, John Bean, Thomas Millagane and Thomas Richardson of Gribty
• James Robeson of Merks
• John Donaldson and John Cultane the younger of Bombie
• John Cairns and John Martin of Lochfergus
• Alexander McClune and James Shennan of Nethermilns
• James Wilson of Greenlane croft
• Robert Herries of Auchleandmiln
• John, George and Robert Hyslop of Mullock
• John McKnaught of Meadowisles

that between the 12 and 16th days of May 1724, they did in a most riotous, tumultuous and illegal way assemble and convene themselves with some hundred other rioters, mostly all armed with guns, swords, pistols, clubs, batons, pitchforks and other offensive weapons on Bombie Muir, parish of Kirkcudbright on the Stewartry thereof and marched to the lands of Galtways, belonging to the complainer and then:

demolished 580 roods of dykes, equal to £19 6s 8d, in consequence of which the complainer was damnified of her stock of 400 black cattle kept at grassing within said inclosure, amounting to £50 by the loss of mercats; the fences being pulled down obliging the complainer to drive them to some remote place before sunset each night and watch them all night and keep them from straying which hindered them being fattened for which the sum of £50 is claimed, as also for the complainers cattle breaking away and destroying other people’s corn for which the complainer is chargeable, together with the sum of £500 sterling as damages sustained for rebuilding the said dykes (13).

My interrogation of the sources continues. However, it would appear that the actions of the Galloway Levellers began as an explicitly anti-Jacobite action, with the tacit support of some former Covenanting landlords. However, they developed in a more socially radical direction, levelling dykes without political discrimination. This is when they met the joint opposition of Covenanter and Jacobite landlords, who called in the Hanoverian state to help crush the rebellion. By this time, even the one-time, more radical, organised Covenanting factions, e.g. the Hebronites and Cameronians, had fallen into political passivity. The levellers had to fall back on their own independent Covenanting traditions and the support of various individuals, who looked with some trepidation to the consequences of the break-up of the old social order.

Alistair Livingston

References

• (1) Neil Davidson, in the Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 4, No.4, 2004, p. 444
• (2) An Account of the Reasons of Some People in Galloway, their Meetings anent Public Grievances through Inclosures in Morton, Transactions Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society: 1935, issue 244.
• (3) Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, p. 217.
• (4) H. Reid, The Hebronites in Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society,
  (TDGNHAS) 1920.
• (5) H. Reid TDGNHAS , op. cit., p.135, quoting Wodrow Analecta III p. 244.
• (6) Peter Aitchison and Andrew Cassell, The Lowland Clearances – Scotland’s Silent Revolution, 1760-1830, p. 49, ( Tuckwell, 2003).
• (7) Neil Davidson, ‘Unionism’, Progress and the socialist tradition in Scottish history, in Emancipation & Liberation 8, p. 30.
• (8) Allan Armstrong, Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets in Emancipation & Liberation, 5/6, p. 41.
• (9) A. S. Morton, The Levellers of Galloway, TDGNHAS, Third Series, 1936, volume 19.
• (10) Neil Davidson, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, p. 216.
• (11) W.A.J. Prevost:TDGNHAS, 1962/3.
• (12) A.S. Morton, TDGNHAS, Third Series, 1936, volume 19, p. 247.
• (13) A.S. Morton, TDGNHAS, Third Series, 1936, volume 19.

by Allan Armstrong

Commemorating William Wallace, yesterday and today

This year is the 700th anniversary of the death of William Wallace. He was brutally killed at what is now Smithfield Market in London, on the orders of Edward I, the Plantagenet King of England. How is this event viewed today? Whatever the real significance of Wallace in his own time, he has been seen, since the late eighteenth century, as an international icon representing the struggle for national freedom. Robert Burns invoked the memory of Wallace in Scots Wha Hae. This became a favourite song for national democrats everywhere, rather like Bandiera Rossa did for later communists. It has even been said that Napoleon carried a copy of Jane Porter’s romantic novel of Wallace’s life, The Scottish Chief, on his campaigns. Those heroes of the 1848 Revolutions, the Italian, Garibaldi and the Hungarian, Kossuth, both subscribed to the National Wallace Monument at Stirling in 1869 (1). Internationally, Wallace was up there with William Tell and Joan of Arc.

However, it was not only national democrats who subscribed to the National Wallace Monument; so too did the thoroughly unionist aristocrats, the Duke of Montrose and the Earl of Elgin. For this was the heyday of the British Empire (2). The Scottish patriotic, anti-democratic and conservative unionist, Sir Walter Scott, had already pioneered a new vision of Scotland’s past. Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather and his historical novels celebrated Scotland’s glorious history. But all this was merely a prologue to the nation’s wider role, promoting the Union and Empire, alongside its partner, England. So following in this tradition, even conservative Scottish lords could claim Wallace as part of Scotland’s historical contribution to a later, heroic unionist, imperial venture.

As recently as the Second World War, the eminent English liberal historian, G.M. Trevelyan, author of the History of England, could also echo Scottish patriotic sentiments. Wallace, this unknown knight, had lit a fire which nothing since has ever put out. Here, in Scotland, contemporaneously with very similar doings in Switzerland, a new ideal and tradition of wonderful potency was brought into the world; it had no name then, but now we should call it democratic patriotism (3).

Today, unionists are not so confident. The British Empire has almost gone and the future of the United Kingdom is far from certain. There were no official commemorations, either in England or Scotland, on the anniversary of Wallace’s death, earlier this year. First Minister, Jack McConnell, can don his post-modern kilt for America’s new Tartan Day. Such hokum is tolerated if it helps to promote Scottish business in the USA. But commemorating William Wallace today is a much more problematic matter in a Scotland where the latest unionist settlement – devolution – is far from being the settled will of the Scottish people.

Instead, it was left to Scottish nationalists to make their unofficial commemoration on August 23rd in St. Bartholomew, the Great Priory Church, next to Smithfield. The supporters of Wallace were attired like imagined 17th or 18th century Jacobite Highlanders. Such imagery was firmly established in the public’s mind in the opening sequences of the 1995 film, Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson. Here, Wallace was portrayed in the ‘mountains and glens’ of his Renfrewshire family home. Ironically, precisely because this year’s ‘Jacobite’ commemoration of Wallace appeared so folksy, with no wider resonance outside Scotland, it could be reported, with interested bemusement, by the BBC TV (4).

Socialists and William Wallace

So, what do socialists have to say about Wallace today? Well, of course, there are plenty of socialists in Scotland, who have very little new to say. They have adopted either a Scottish-British unionist or a Scottish nationalist version of history. In the past, the ILP’s Thomas Johnston, author of a History of the Scottish Working Classes and of Scotland’s Noble Families, could invoke the commoner, Wallace, against the aristocrat, Bruce (5). This was done to underscore the treacherous role of Scotland’s aristocracy throughout history. Scottish novelist and communist sympathiser, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, also supported Wallace over Bruce, for the same reason (6).

Today, however, the unionist Left today is largely silent when it comes to Wallace. This mirrors the attitude of New Labour. The SWP’s monthly Socialist Review let the anniversary pass without a mention. Perhaps, they feel that socialists have little reason to champion long-past, non-socialist heroes and their struggles. Such a stance ignores Engels’ sympathetic portrayal of the Anabaptists in The Peasant War in Germany, or Christopher Hill’s writings on the Levellers in England, particularly his, The World Turned Upside Down. Or perhaps, they ignore Wallace because he had no declared aim of uprooting feudalism. Meanwhile, hardly aware of their own inconsistency, many of today’s sceptics champion all sorts of current campaigns to bring reforms to capitalism.

A few on the Unionist Left, such as Jack Conrad of the Weekly Worker, retreat into pure apologetics, upholding Edward I as a revolutionary centraliser, who opposed reactionary feudal localists like Wallace (7). Such people are unable to see that there would be no real resistance to the depradations of capitalist imperialism today, if it were not for the inspiring traditions and legacies provided by past resistance to oppression and exploitation. Real human beings have not been designed to sleepwalk through a passive acceptance of slavery and serfdom, only to be awoken, under capitalism, to a real consciousness of their current plight and future role by the ‘revolutionary’ Party. Throughout the history of class society, people have always believed another world is possible. Whatever, the traumas and dislocations suffered by the infant working class, under the impact of rising capitalism, they still drew on earlier traditions of resistance for their new struggles.

There are some on the nationalist Left who see Wallace in much the same way as the image shown in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart – a kilt-wearing, saltire adorned, English-hating, man of action – ‘a real Scot’. Even in Wallace’s own time, the struggles in Scotland were already intimately linked with events on a much wider canvas. However, today the exclusive adoption of sub-Jacobite (kilt) and specifically Christian (saltire) imagery can hardly contribute to the development of a multi-national Scotland, welcoming the people of many nationalities and religions who live here.

Furthermore, the ‘official’ nationalists of the SNP are increasingly making their own accommodation to the British state and the global corporations. They defend today’s Scottish regiments serving British imperialism; just as their medieval, lordly ‘ancestors’ served in Edward’s imperial army, when it was in their interests. It is hard to claim Wallace as an advocate of a ‘devolutionary road’ to independence, so he can be represented as a hothead, whom the nobles unfortunately had to marginalise, before they could attain their own ‘independent’ Scotland. The aristocratic Robert the Bruce is an altogether safer model. We ‘peasants’ today, though, can expect as little from a future SNP-run capitalist Scotland, as those peasants, who lived in Robert I’s feudal kingdom after 1314.

Thirteenth century Scotland and the ‘international’ economy

If Wallace’s struggles are to have any meaning for socialists today, this means viewing them in a wider context than feudal Scotland. In the late thirteenth century Scotland was already part of a wider ‘international’ economy which centred on Flanders. Flanders had a number of manufacturing cities, such as Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, involved in the making of woollen products
(8). High quality wool was produced in the hill country of southern Scotland and exported through Berwick and Leith, particularly to Flanders (9) England, too, was a major exporter of wool to Flanders, but its major production centres and ports, lay far to the south. The English border area was poor, the Scottish border area beyond the Tweed and Esk was rich – it was breathlessly up-to-date in its religious institutions, feudal organisation and military architecture (10). The great Borders monasteries, particularly Jedburgh, Melrose, Kelso and Dryburgh, were to the forefront of wool production for the Flemish market. The Count of Flanders gave protection to the Cistercian Abbey at Melrose to safeguard supplies (11).

The woollen industry was the ‘oil industry’ of the thirteenth century in terms of its wider economic and political impact on society. Just as crude oil producers today, unlike most other primary producers, have considerable economic clout; so could the raw wool producers in the Middle Ages. Embargoes on woollen exports from England to Flanders, imposed by Edward I in the 1270’s and 1292, (and Edward III in 1336) made their impact felt (12).

The development of woollen manufacturing centres in Flanders was such a precocious development, that the first possible signs of a new capitalism were already evident. One consequence of this was that Flanders was wracked by class conflicts. As well as the more typical feudal conflicts of the time, between an aspiring royal centraliser – in this case, Philip IV of France – and the local feudal superior – the Count of Flanders; there were also ferocious class struggles between the city merchants and the artisan weavers.

Feudal centralisers build royal power not nation-states

The events which occurred in Scotland after 1296 lay on the interface between a new, rising merchant capitalism, which was contested by feudal centralising dynasties, traditional feudal lords and by minor landholders, peasants and artisans. The two main royal feudal centralisers in north west Europe of the time were Edward I and Philip IV, kings of England and France respectively. However, French was the court language in both kingdoms and Latin the language of administration. Under these kings, both realms had extended their effective control over surrounding territories. Their newly incorporated peoples were quite distinct from the majority in the original core areas of the English and French states. The Welsh and many Irish were brought under the more effective control of Edward of England, whilst Philip of France attempted to do the same with the Provencals and Flemish.

In England though, despite some elite intermixing between Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon families, the majority of the population did not form part of a shared English nation with the king and aristocracy. They were legally enserfed and had few rights. In France, the mixing between Frankish conquerors and the conquered Romano-Gauls had taken place over a far longer period of time. Nevertheless, France was seen as the very pinnacle of the feudal order, with its king and aristocracy holding the lower orders in almost total contempt – so once again, there was no shared nation here. The kings of feudal realms made few appeals to ‘national’ history, apart from constructing dodgy documents making spurious historical claims, mainly to enlist papal support. The most ambitious had wider designs than to be limited to particular ‘nations’, even in the very limited sense these were understood at the time.

Edward I was particularly keen to hold on to the Duchy of Gascony because of its wine and salt production. This could be taxed to augment royal revenues. Technically Gascony was part of the kingdom of France, so Edward owed homage to Philip IV for this territory – something he tried to renege upon.

Neither English nor French ‘national’ claims could help him here – just good, old-fashioned feudal force. When Edward refused to acknowledge his fealty to the king of France for Gascony, Philip declared these lands to be forfeit. This provoked war between the two realms in 1296. It also led to a sharp turn in Scotland’s fortunes.

Much has been made of how Edward had inveigled himself into the position of arbiter, over the respective claims of two Norman-Scottish families, the Balliols and Bruces, to the throne of Scotland, after the death of Alexander III in 1286. At the time, though, all the major aristocratic families in Scotland accepted Edward’s ruling, made in 1292. Many such families held land in England (and indeed elsewhere too) as well as in Scotland. They wanted to hold on to this. So, an acknowledgement of Edward’s power made sense to them.

This was particularly true of the Bruce family, who loyally served Edward, whenever it appeared to advance their interests. Once John Balliol was officially recognised as King of Scotland and had accepted his subordinate position, it made little sense, except to the most out-of-favour lord, to mount any challenge. This would lead to an automatic loss of their feudal rights and commit them to opposing not only Balliol, but Edward I.

Edward exerts his feudal power over Scotland

Faced with a war with France though, over Gascony, Edward stepped up his demands on Scotland’s king and nobles in 1295 (13). He wanted an armed levy to serve with him in France. This placed many, including Balliol, in a quandary, since they also had land in France, which they held in feudal obligation to Philip. Many English lords were placed in a similar position when called upon to fight in France. Edward’s war was not popular.

Balliol, urged on by some Scottish nobles, decided to defy Edward. Edward, now also facing mounting internal opposition in England, was not pleased. He decided to take much more direct control of affairs in Scotland. This brought him into conflict with a number of the more traditional upholders of the Scottish feudal order – the Norman-Scottish and Gaelic aristocratic families. Others however, including Robert the Bruce, with greater feudal pretensions, saw their chance to replace these families, by showing their adherence to Edward.

Edward invaded Scotland in 1296. He sacked Berwick in a three day rampage which led to a great loss of life (14). This was designed both to create panic and to break Scotland’s independent trade links, particularly with Flanders. Berwick, Scotland’s premier port, at the time, had to be brought under Edward’s direct control to enforce his taxes on the rich wool trade of the Tweed Valley. The population of Berwick was replaced by incomers from England. Berwick was to form the new royal administrative centre for Scotland.

The war was quickly finished after the ill-prepared feudal resistance of some Balliol-supporting, feudal lords at the Battle of Dunbar (15). Edward was now free to exert his own dominion over all of Scotland, including the Highland north. This way, he could commandeer military support for his continental wars and finance them by collecting more taxes. This meant imposing his own men, especially sheriffs, upon the main towns. Although Edward remained very much part of the wider French-speaking aristocratic feudal culture, he was prepared to promote non-aristocratic Englishmen as his royal servants, partly to undermine other over-ambitious French-speaking lords. In this manner, individuals, such as the notorious sheriff, William Heselrig, took office in conquered Scotland.

The hybrid Norman-Gaelic kings of Scotland had also long been pursuing their own feudal centralising policy. This was done to break the power of local Gaelic and Norse-Gaelic chieftains, and even some of the Norman-Gaelic lords (who ‘had gone native’), particularly in the Highlands, the Western Isles and in Galloway. The kings of Scotland had been even more ‘ecumenical’ in their choice of royal officials and servants – including Norman-French and loyal aristocratic Gaelic families, the ‘native English’ of the Lothians, their Northumbrian English kin and also the Flemish. What was different about the new English officials in Scotland (with their military backing), though, were their onerous demands and their overbearing and arrogant demeanour, as they acted on behalf of Edward I.

William Wallace and the arrival of new social forces in a feudal world

Whilst most of the aristocracy in Scotland now fell over themselves to prove their loyalty to Edward I, in order to reaffirm or regain their feudal privileges, new social forces were to transform the situation. Although a small number of out-of-favour lords were still prepared to fight on, such as Andrew Moray in the north and William Douglas in the south, completely new names appeared – Alexander Pilche, a burgher from Inverness (who was of Flemish origin) and William Wallace, a small landholder from Elderslie near Paisley (most likely descended from a Welsh family brought north by their feudal superiors, the Stewarts.)

Wallace, initially with only a small following, began to challenge Edward’s officials. He emerges on the pages of history, when he killed Sheriff Heselrig of Lanark in May 1297 (16). Lanark was a significant centre of the wool trade. Heselrig was holding a court session, imposing penalties on those who failed to meet the new demands. Farmers would also be coming to market where they would have to pay Edward’s detested wool tax – the prest (17). Wallace was an astute strategist. He knew how to win popular support.

Although there were other centres of opposition, it is significant that Wallace, a social inferior by feudal rules, emerged as co-leader of the resistance to Edward’s regime, alongside the aristocratic Moray. There had to be a very powerful reason why jealously-guarded, feudal protocol was set aside to award Wallace such a position. Wallace’s theatre of operations was mainly in the most economically advanced part of Scotland, particularly its wool-producing areas. Furthermore, by drawing on support from townspeople and peasants, he was able to move beyond the more traditional, non-feudal, guerrilla tactics of the kindreds and outlaws. Wallace was prepared to challenge the previously near-invincible, elite ‘Panzer divisions’ of the feudal order – the mounted, armoured knights. This was revolutionary warfare. To do this Wallace resorted to the schiltron formation, based on pikemen foot-soldiers, drawn from the lower orders.

Edward’s army, led by John Warenne, the Earl of Surrey, was smashed at Stirling Bridge in June 1297, by a combination of a wild Celtic charge and the disciplined use of pikemen, with only limited aristocratic support. The pikemen sealed off the bridge over the Forth to prevent the bulk of Edward’s army joining their separated and isolated brothers-in-arms, who had already crossed the river. Amongst their body was Hugh de Cressingham, another haughty royal official – the Treasurer of Scotland, responsible for all Edward’s hated taxes. Edward had already sacked Berwick, killing thousands of its inhabitants, to make his political point. Wallace, in turn, allegedly had Cressingham skinned, after locating his dead body on the battlefield (18). This was probably done to strike fear into Edward’s placemen in Scotland.

As a result of this stunning victory, Wallace became a knight (who performed this ceremony is not known, since Balliol was by now living in exile in France) (19). Wallace also became Guardian of Scotland, something previously reserved for earls, barons or prominent churchmen (20). He must have represented new forces asserting their power for the first time. Wallace’s declared aim was to restore John Balliol as King of Scotland. This has persuaded some that he offered no real challenge to the existing feudal order. However, the problem Wallace faced was that he still needed an armoured, mounted force, to supplement his pikemen footsoldiers. They were required to ride down enemy archers and crossbowmen. The only mounted force, existing at the time, lay amongst the nobility. The one hope he had of winning some of their numbers to his side, was by playing the legitimacy card. However, there was also another useful purpose served by this appeal. Balliol was absent and in no position to give out any orders. This left Wallace with a free hand to pursue his own strategy.

One of the few historical documents dating from this period, is a letter, in the names of Wallace and Moray, dating from October 1297, appealing to the merchants in the Hanseatic port cities of Lubeck and Hamburg, to reopen trade in wool with Scotland (21). This letter underlines the importance of the economic motivation behind the struggle with Edward. It also points to the continued role of the merchants of Scotland in this war. Another possible reason for the appeal to Lubeck and Hamburg, was the further disruption to trade caused by Edward I’s presence in Flanders, as an ally of its Count. This development, following on the sacking of Berwick, and the difficulty of making sea journeys to Flanders past the hostile English coastline, perhaps forced the new regime in Scotland to concentrate on more northerly trade links. Later, Flemish merchants, who opposed the Count, conducted trade with Scotland in defiance of Edward (22).

The dynasties fight back

The Count of Flanders was in a similar position to the feudal leaders in Scotland. They were defying their feudal overlord, Edward of England; he was defying his, Philip of France. And, just as Edward gave his support to the Count, Philip gave his support to those resisting Edward in Scotland. Although Edward provided more support to his ally, by leading an army into Flanders, it did not fare well against the French. This, and the major setback at Stirling Bridge, led Edward to a truce with France (23). Both Edward and Philip now wanted a free hand to deal with the problems on their respective northern borders, without other distractions.

Wallace knew full well that his victory at Stirling Bridge would bring down the wrath of Edward. Therefore, as well as attempting to restore trade, he made military preparations. The first thing was to overawe and intimidate Edward’s fifth column of Scottish noble supporters (24). This meant attacking their castles. Wallace tended to rely more on minor landholders, such as Alexander Scrymgeour, to hold such garrisons (25). However, the other major task was to lay waste to the north of England. Northumberland and Cumberland were already quite poor. Edward’s army could only operate in the summer season and provisioned itself on the march. Wallace’s aim was to create maximum area of devastation possible, between Edward’s southern-raised army and the richer Scottish borderlands. He launched ferocious attacks over the winter of 1297 to achieve this aim (26).

When Edward’s hungry troops did reach Scotland in the summer of 1298, Wallace pursued a scorched earth policy of retreat to further weaken Edward’s army. Some of Edward’s Welsh troops even mutinied (27). What changed the situation in Edward’s favour was that two of his Scottish allies, the earls, Patrick of Dunbar and Umfraville of Angus, had spies in Wallace’s camp. They betrayed the position of the Scottish army at Falkirk. A second blow was delivered on the battlefield itself, when the Scottish noble cavalry, needed to defend the schiltron formations of pikemen from archers, fled the field. Although Wallace was able to escape, Falkirk was a major defeat (28).

The collapse of the Scottish aristocratic resistance to Edward

Scottish historians are divided on the role of the Scottish nobles at Falkirk. Past Scottish chroniclers, such as Fordun and Blind Harry, have been scathing about the role of Bruce and Comyn, and put it down to aristocratic jealousy, directed against Wallace. More recently, historians of a conservative bent have tried to defend Bruce in particular (29). Yet they provide no positive evidence of his role at Falkirk. The strength of feeling, directed against the Scottish aristocracy, expressed in several chronicles and ballads, comes down the ages, despite all attempts at marginalisation and suppression.

What this suggests is that a powerful feudal reaction was building up against everything Wallace represented. Wallace was forced to resign from his position of Guardian of Scotland, to be replaced by the duo of Bruce and Comyn (28). What was the threat that forced these two implacable enemies to join forces? The claims of new social forces, whether merchants, minor landholders and possibly peasants too, would not be welcomed by these nobles. The forging of a new military force, the schiltron, which could break the power of the heavily-armoured, mounted cavalry, could also threaten the nobles’ power (29).

After the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, it was only five years before the even more remarkable victory of the Flemish weavers (with limited aristocratic support, as well) over Philip of France’s feudal cavalry at Courtrai, in July 1302. The weavers’ leader, Pieter de Coninck, also used closely-packed pikemen to break the French armoured charge (30). In response to this development, Philip sought the active aid of his old adversary, Edward (31). New challenges from below, led to previously undreamt of alliances, the better to defend dynastic and aristocratic power.

Reaction was now growing apace. Wallace, after resigning as Guardian, had been given a diplomatic role on the continent (32). This flies in the face of his portrayal both by Edward I – who saw him as a common criminal, and Mel Gibson – who played him as a couthy man of action. What appears fairly certain, though, is that Wallace found such a role unsatisfactory. Perhaps, his encounters with Philip of France in 1299, in pursuit of a renewed Franco-Scottish alliance, undermined any lingering belief in the reliability of high-born allies. When Wallace returned to Scotland, it was as a guerrilla leader, operating from his old base in Ettrick Forest (33).

Wallace’s legacy overcomes the attempted historical obliteration

The treaty between Philip and Edward, allowed both to pursue their aim of crushing all opposition. The new Count of Flanders capitulated to Philip in 1304 (34). In the same year, Comyn, as Guardian, submitted to Edward (35). Bruce had already signed up for Edward in 1302, and had his lands attacked by Wallace as a consequence (36). Wallace no longer had any noble support. He was actively hunted down by them, using Edward’s royal warrant. After a number of successful escapes from capture, Sir John Mentieth’s forces finally arrested Wallace at Robroyston, near Glasgow, and quickly handed him over to Edward, for his final trial and execution (37).

When Edward I’s successor proved to be weak, a new opposition arose to the King of England. This time it was noble-led from the start. The war fought by Robert the Bruce was a dynastic war. To increase his support he offered lands confiscated from his enemies and new feudal privileges to his noble allies. Certainly, none of the Scottish aristocratic leaders contemplated any extension of rights to classes beneath them. When John Barbour later penned his eulogy, The Bruce, Wallace was not even mentioned.

Barbour received a gift and a pension from King Robert II for his efforts (38). However, Wallace’s memory, now safely consigned to the past, was rehabilitated by other Stewart monarchs, in their continuous battles with the kings of England. This Wallace was romanticised and celebrated primarily for his zealous, ‘anti-English’ activities; rather than his struggle against Edward’s feudal imperial regime and its English servants. In this particular struggle many of the English living in the Lothians (conquered by the King of Scotland in the tenth century) would have been Wallace’s allies.

Nevertheless, despite the aristocratic attempt to write Wallace out of history, he was remembered, particularly by the commons of Scotland. The official ‘Wars of Scottish Independence’ can hardly be claimed as a battle between the English and Scottish nations. It was essentially an intra-feudal war between mainly French aristocratic families. It also drew in Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh, Irish and Gascon troops on one side; and Scots (mainly from the Gaelic heartland of Alba), English (mainly from Lothian) and Gallwegians on the other. Both sides faced desertions.

However, into this ‘official’ war, another war intruded itself for a brief period. This war brought new forces – small landholders and city burgesses, perhaps even peasants – on to the historical stage in Scotland. And, as in Flanders, these forces went down to defeat. Wallace was the most important figure in this other war in Scotland. As a result of his undoubted heroic role, Wallace later became an international symbol of resistance against oppression, like Spartacus before and Wat Tyler after. William Wallace, as part of Scotland’s anti-aristocratic, popular tradition, is somebody who can be claimed by socialists today.

References

• (1) William Wallace – Man and Myth, Graeme Morton, p.79 (Sutton, 2001)
• (2) op. cit., p. 78.
• (3) A Shortened History of England, G.M. Trevelyan, p. 177 (Penguin, 1976)
• (4) Service remembers William Wallace
• (5) Graeme Morton, op. cit., p. 98.
• (6) Graeme Morton, op. cit., p. 111.
• (7) Jack Conrad, Unenlightened Myth in Weekly Worker, no. 265.
• (8) see Medieval Flanders, David Nicholas, (Longman, 1992)
• (9) The North of England – A History from Roman Times to the Present, Frank Musgrove, p. 91(Basil Blackwell, 1990)
• (10) Frank Musgrove, op. cit., p.91.
• (11) Frank Musgrove, op. cit., p. 93.
• (12) David Nicholas, op. cit., pp. 178, 187 and 219.
• (13) William Wallace, Andrew Fisher, p. 24 (John Donald, 1986)
• (14) op. cit., pp. 25-6.
• (15) op. cit., p. 26.
• (16) op. cit., p. 32.
• (17) Ed Archer, letter to Sunday Herald, 28.8.05.
• (18) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., p. 55.
• (19) op. cit., p. 67.
• (20) op. cit., p. 19.
• (21) Graeme Morton, op. cit., pp. 29-30.
• (22) David Nicholas, op. cit., p. 205.
• (23) David Nicholas, op. cit., pp. 189-190.
• (24) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., p. 69.
• (25) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., p. 67.
• (26) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 64-66.
• (27) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 73-77.
• (28) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 77-83.
• (29) see Geoffrey Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, (Edinburgh University Press, 1976)
• (30) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 90-91.
• (31) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., p. 80.
• (32) David Nicholas, op. cit., pp. 192-194.
• (33) Dating A Hero, in Wallace, 700 Years of a Scottish Legend, p. 7 (Sunday Herald supplement, 21.8.05)
• (34) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 93-98.
• (35) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., p. 107.
• (36) David Nicholas, op. cit., p. 195.
• (37) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 108-110.
• (38) Andrew Fisher, op. cit., pp. 107-108.

Karl Marx
Favourite maxim – Nihil humanum a me alienum puto (Nothing human is alien to me)
Favourite motto – De omnibus dubitandum (Doubt everything)

Bob Goupillot examines Marx’s search for new paths to social transformation

Who will mend the hole in the ozone layer? Who will reverse global warming? It is quite clear that it will not be the capitalist class whose world view is dominated by short-termism and the profit motive. Thus to save the world we have to change the form of society in which we live and as part of this process remove the current dominant class and replace it with a democratic, inclusive way of organising ourselves.

How are we to achieve this awesome task of transformation? Where can we look for guidelines and inspiration? Many socialists would point immediately to Karl Marx and his theoretical legacy. However, even if we have managed to grasp the often subtle profundities of Marx’s thought, it seems that on the crucial issue of how capitalist society could be transformed, via socialism into communism, he may have changed his mind during his last 10 years.

Intellectual slow death?

After Capital Vol 1, which was published in 1867, no more major works of Marx were published in his lifetime. The last decade of his life, 1873-1883, was described by an early biographer, Franz Mehring, as an intellectual slow death. Most subsequent biographers have accepted this viewpoint. A recent biographer, Francis Wheen, following in this tradition, wrote,

It was as if he had tacitly accepted defeat and settled down to benign anecdotage, content to observe and reminisce. The years of passionate engagement – pamphlets and petitions, meetings and manoeuvres – were over.
Karl Marx, F. Wheen, 2000 p359

In fact, he was dealing with and trying to intellectually digest a number of important recent events.

First, the Paris Commune had arisen and fallen in 1871. This was the only example of living workers in power that Marx had experienced.

The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule
Civil war in France, Karl Marx

Petr Lavrov, the First Internationalist, prominent Russian Populist and long-term friend of Marx, in his book on the Commune wrote,

At the moment when the historical conjuncture permits the workers of any country, albeit temporarily, to overcome their enemies and control the course of events, the workers must carry through the economic overturn with whatever means may be expedient, and do everything that they can to ensure that it is consolidated.

Secondly, Marx had wound up the First International in 1872 as the revolutionary tide ebbed.

Thirdly, there had been paradigm – shifting theoretical and practical gains in the field of palaeontology. New finds had extended the prehistory of humanity by tens of thousands of years. Archaeology, anthropology and ethnography had brought ancient human societies into the range of historical study. There was much to chew over. Karl Marx spent his last decade or so in intense study. The fruits of this led him to revise and even totally contradict his earlier writings, including some aspects of Das Kapital. In this period Marx delved deeply into anthropology and ethnography, particularly the anthropologist Henry Morgan’s scholarly work Ancient Society

It was only after reading Morgan that anthropology, previously peripheral to Marx’s thought, became its vital centre. His entire conception of historical development, and particularly of pre-capitalist societies, now gained immeasurably in depth and precision. Above all, his introduction to the Iroquois and other tribal societies sharpened his sense of the living presence of indigenous peoples in the world, and their possible role in future revolutions….it added a whole new dimension (italics in the original)
Karl Marx & the Iroquois, F. Rosemont, p. 210.

Marx copied out long passages of Morgan and others with his own substantial commentaries alongside. These were notes for a substantial work left unwritten and although their existence was known at his death in 1883, they were not published as one volume until 1972, 89 years later, and then only in a high priced specialist edition. These Ethnological Notebooks, as they became known were much less than a rough draft, Rather it is a raw substance of a work, a private jumble of jottings intended for no other eyes than Marx’s own Rosemont, p.201, italics in original

Engels summarised these in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, but missed out many of Marx’s most important insights. It was simply a popular digest of the work of Morgan and others. Sadly, Engels’ work has been taken for orthodoxy particularly in the traditional Stalinized version of Marxism. This is not to blame Engels, who himself describes it as but a meagre substitute, for the much larger work that Marx left unwritten.

Marx saw aspects of these ancient societies as progressive and worthy of preservation during the socialist transition to Communism. He felt that they were in some ways superior to societies based on alienated labour and commodity production. Iroquois society, in particular, impressed him. Marx admired not just their democratic culture but also their whole way of life: egalitarianism, independence, reverence for life and personal dignity.

Marx praised Iroquois participatory democracy as expressed in their councils as a democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it.

He quotes a letter from a missionary sent to Morgan,

The women were the great power among the clans as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to knock off the horns, as it was technically called from the head of a chief, and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also always rested with them…………. women were free to to express their opinions, through an orator of their own choosing
Rosemont, p.205, italics in original

However, an all male council made decisions. Nevertheless, Iroquois women experienced freedom and social power beyond that experienced by women and men in so called advanced civilizations.

The Iroquois red skin hunter was, in some ways, more essentially human and liberated than a clerk in the City and in that sense closer to the man of the socialist future.
Late Marx and the Russian Road, T. Shanin, p.15

From Marx’s perspective to be in Iroquois society was a higher level of humanity than to exist in capitalist society no matter how awash with commodities. This does not mean that Marx was, or that we should be, backward looking. Rather comparison with the Iroquois illustrates how our humanity is degraded by capitalism. It also points towards the higher social relations that humanity might achieve in a socialist society, resting on the technological achievements inherited from capitalism, rather than bows and arrows. Through Morgan, Marx became vividly aware of the reality of an actually existing non-capitalist human society. This wasn’t just interesting anthropology, but part of Marx’s search for new paths to social transformation. Reading about the Iroquois,

….gave him a vivid awareness of the actuality of indigenous peoples and perhaps even a glimpse of the then – undreamed – of possibility that such peoples could make their own contributions to the global struggle for human emancipation.
Rosemont, p.207

Whither Russia?

Around this time, the Russian revolutionaries were much vexed by the question as to whether their country must pass through the stages that Marx had outlined for Western Europe i.e.

Primitive Communism, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism

or whether it was possible to skip stages in certain circumstances. A group of Russian Marxists the Emancipation of Labour Group, which included Plekhanov and Vera Zasulich (later on the editorial board of Iskra) believed that the success of socialism in Russia necessitated a capitalist stage before it could move towards communism. They looked forward to the destruction of the peasant commune and the proletarianisation of the peasantry. This had been the orthodoxy. In 1868, in a letter to Engels, Marx had celebrated all that trash (i.e. the peasant commune) coming now to its end.

Vera Zasulich wrote to Marx asking for his opinion. In her letter of 16th February 1881, she stresses the importance of the agrarian question in Russia,

For there are only two possibilities. Either the rural commune, freed of exorbitant tax demands, payment to the nobility and arbitrary administration, is capable of developing in a socialist direction, that is gradually organising its production and distribution on a collective basis. In that case, the revolutionary socialist must devote all his strength to the liberation and development of the commune.

If, however, the commune is destined to perish, all that remains for the socialist, as such, is more or less ill-founded calculations as to how many decades it will take for the Russian peasants land to pass into the hands of the bourgeoisie, and how many centuries it will take for capitalism in Russia to reach something like the level of development already attained in western Europe. Their task will then be to conduct propaganda solely among the urban workers, while these workers will be continually drowned in the peasant mass which, following the dissolution of the commune, will be thrown on to the streets of the large towns in search of a wage.

She goes on to say,

So you will understand, Citizen, how interested we are in Your opinion. You would be doing us a very great favour if you were to set forth Your ideas on the possible fate of our rural commune, and on the theory that it is historically necessary for every country in the world to pass through all the phases of capitalist production.

Underlying this debate was the serious question of a revolutionary political strategy, what constituted progress from a socialist perspective, who were the allies and who were the enemies of the revolutionary movement. It was a debate about different roads to freedom and more importantly if there existed more than one way forward – a multi linear perspective.

Marx’s answer

Marx produced four drafts of his reply, totalling 25 book pages in all. In his final version, Marx stressed that the analysis contained in Capital applied only to the countries of Western Europe who had already undergone or were in the process of undergoing the transformation to capitalism. He added that he was now convinced,

that the commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. But in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development.

Around the same time, Marx wrote to the editorial board of Otechestvennye Zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) a journal of the Emancipation of Labour Group. In his letter he mentions a great Russian scholar and critic (the Populist theorist, Nikolai Chernyshevskii) who,

In an outstanding series of articles, he discussed whether Russia, as its liberal economists would have it, must begin by destroying the rural commune in order to pass on to the capitalist regime, or whether on the contrary, it may develop its own historical foundations and thus, without experiencing all the of this regime, nevertheless appropriate all its fruits. He, himself, pronounces for the second solution. And my respected critic would have had at least as much reason to infer from my regard for this great Russian scholar and critic that I shared his views on this matter.

Marx goes on to say,

Finally, as I do not like to leave anything to guesswork, I shall be direct and to the point…I have come to the conclusion that if Russia continues along the path it has followed since 1861, it will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a people and undergo all the fateful vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.

This is not the response that Zasulich and co expected. The letter to Otechestvennye Zapiski remained unpublished until 1887 and the letter to Zasulich until 1924.

Marx (and Engels) confirmed their revised views in the preface to the second Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto (1882), where they wrote,

If the Russian revolution becomes the signal for proletarian revolution in the West, so that the two complement each other, then Russia’s peasant communal landownership may serve as the point of departure for a communist development.

Marx’s suggestion that revolution in backward underdeveloped Russia with its peasant based economy might provide the spark for revolution in industrialised Western Europe was an anti- Marxist heresy. It was recognised as such by the Russian Marxists around Zasulich and Plekhanov. They thought themselves better Marxists than Marx himself.

Russian Populism

It was clear from his correspondence and the new preface to the Communist Manifesto that Marx had changed his mind. Marx who had been hostile to Russian populism in the 1860’s was by 1880 a supporter of the revolutionary Populist Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will). During 1870-71, Marx taught himself Russian by reading their revolutionary literature. He even defended the tactic of revolutionary terror and the assassination of representatives of the Russian state (they assassinated the czar in 1881). He particularly admired Nikolai Chernyshevskii, their main theorist.

There was a growing interdependence between Marx’s analysis, the realities of Russia, and the Russian revolutionary movement – an uncanny forerunner of what was to come in 1917

Shanin, p.4

Lenin’s use of the term populist can mislead. When using it he meant a small group on the extreme right wing of the populists. It is the equivalent to using the term Marxist to refer to the legal Marxists of Russia whilst ignoring more revolutionary trends. This has damaged the reputation of the Populists in the eyes of Lenin’s readers for over a century.

Populism was Russia’s main indigenous revolutionary tradition. The peak of its activity was during the period 1879-83. It was broken by arrests executions and exile, finally being smashed by 1887. The Populists did not accept that capitalism offered a rosy future for Russia. They theorised that because capitalism already existed in Western Europe, along with potential allies in the European proletariat, that Russia could avoid the capitalist stage and proceed straight to socialism based upon an emancipated peasant commune. This was similar to Trotsky’s concept of combined and uneven development.

The populists of the People’s Will further saw the Russian state as an oppressive and parasitic growth on the people. The state itself promoted capitalist development and was therefore the main enemy. Their conclusion was that the state must be overthrown by armed force. The revolutionary subject was the labouring classes of Russia, peasants, part-time workers and wage workers. Marx agreed. A revolution was necessary and there was in fact no economic answer to Zasulich’s question. In addition, he had become more aware of the negative aspects of capitalist development and its relationship with the role of the state in Russia. He criticised the orthodox Russian Marxists as defenders of capitalism.

Revolutionary Transition and Marx’s conclusions

In opposition to his earlier view, that in the capitalist development of England lay the inevitable future of all nations, Marx concluded that there were different roads to the socialist transition of particular societies, depending on their starting points. He seemed to be saying that capitalism is progressive only to the extent that it:

• develops the productive forces especially human labour.
• brings the proletariat together, increases our ability to organise and unifies the class.
• engenders progressive revolts against itself.

Thus once capitalism has become the dominant form of society its further spread is not necessarily progressive but resistance to it usually has progressive aspects. He was also clear that peasants were not inherently reactionary, but could, in the right circumstances, as in Russia, prove vital allies of the proletariat.

Late Marx emphasized as never before the subjective factor as the decisive force in revolution. The socialist transition can only come through the organised, conscious intervention of a revolutionary subject (workers, peasants).

Our Theory and Practice Today

The insights of Marx’s final years and his acceptance that there was more than one road to socialism can help guide us in our struggles today. Looking at those, still existing, societies that have a large peasant section and/or native peoples not fully integrated into capitalism allows us, quite excitingly, to see them as potential allies rather than enemies or remnants of a bygone age that should be done away with through capitalist progress.

Indeed, history shows that resistance to capitalism is often fiercest in the transition from feudalism to capitalist society, peasant to proletariat eg. Russia 1917, Spain 1936, Vietnam, and the Zapatistas today. Following Marx I would argue that struggles against the imposition of capitalism, by non-proletarian forces linked to socialist struggles in the capitalist ‘West’ can create a path to socialism.

Incidentally this does not require romanticising pre-capitalist or peasant life, but what I am urging is that we do not dismiss all such societies as lost to rural idiocy and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Socialism will grow out of the best of native traditions. All societies have positive elements that revolutionary forces can use as a basis for forward movement and might wish to preserve in a future socialist/communist form of society. Not all socialisms emerging from capitalism will look the same.

Finding our way

A multiplicity of roads means that we have no need to assume that all societies must follow the 1917 Russian road to revolution. The Bolsheviks made this error when they interpreted events through the lens of the French revolution and so tended to underplay the uniqueness of their own situation and experience. However, that does not mean that we can’t learn from the Bolsheviks’ struggle.

We need to work out our own way forward. This requires a concrete analysis of the society and culture in which we live, looking at its strengths and weaknesses from a socialist perspective. We need the confidence and clarity to go beyond dogmatic formulations. Each one of us has a responsibility to participate to the best of our ability in the democratic decision making of our working class parties, trade unions and other organisations. This means overcoming the narrow anti – intellectualism which has been a constant feature of the British Left. We all have the potential to become organic intellectuals, that is thinking activists.

What is progress?

An important part of this process will be redefining, as Marx did, what constitutes progress. What is progressive is determined by our vision of a post – capitalist, Communist society. Such a society will certainly be one of abundance. However it should be as much about an abundance of free time to spend in unalienated activity as much as an abundance of life’s material necessities. We need bread – and time to smell the roses too. What should we seek to preserve as progressive of our contemporary world? The guidelines are few but we could start with that which is ecologically sustainable, collective and democratically controlled by those it affects.

Marx’s Marxism was an open philosophy in two senses. Open to the impact of new political developments like the Paris Commune, open to theoretical advances outside the political sphere in the social and natural sciences. His philosophical method excluded dogmatic political recipes that had to be rigidly applied to every situation. He was a subtle thinker and materialist recognising that each new situation required a new analysis of its specific features. Along with Lenin he recognised that the truth is concrete. Like Marx, we too aspire to an open socialist philosophy that can take on board and integrate new insights from other fields such psychoanalysis, feminism, ecology and even rival philosophies such as Anarchism.

For Marx studying and engaging with other viewpoints was not about defending his own sacred texts but was about clarifying, deepening and correcting his world view, to the point of abandoning or reversing, if necessary, long held opinions. As the man said, doubt everything!

Bob Goupillot

Bibliography

Rosemont F. Karl Marx and the Iroquois in Arsenal – Surrealist Subversion, page 201, Black Swan Press.

Shanin, T. Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and The Peripheries of Capitalism London:Routledge and Kegan Paul (1984)

Wheen, F. Karl Marx, Fourth Estate, London, paperback (2000)