{"id":15907,"date":"2005-06-01T19:36:34","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T19:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=15907"},"modified":"2021-03-01T19:35:18","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T19:35:18","slug":"caught-between-the-covenant-and-the-clans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2005\/06\/01\/caught-between-the-covenant-and-the-clans\/","title":{"rendered":"Caught Between the Covenant and the Clans"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>A Reply to Allan Armstrong<\/h2>\n<p>The full, illustrated pamphlet is available from the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement<\/p>\n<p>Allan Armstrong is to be commended for his excellent contribution to Scottish radical\/revolutionary history, <cite>Between Broadsword and Bayonets<\/cite>, <cite>Emancipation &amp; Liberation, Issue<\/cite> 5\/6. In this piece Allan seeks to expose the left nationalist and left unionist traditions within the <acronym title=\"Scottish Socialist Party\">SSP<\/acronym> and argues eloquently for an <q>internationalism from below<\/q> analysis of Scottish history. The period in question is the period of the Scottish revolution in the seventeenth century.<\/p>\n<p>Allan and I go back a long way in this debate. We got fraternally stuck in at many a meeting as well as in the pamphlet, <cite>Jacobite or Covenanter?<\/cite><span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[1]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">Jacobites or Covenanters? Which tradition &#8211; A Scottish Republican debate, Scottish Republican Forum, 1992<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script> Though I hope that Allan would at least believe me, left Jacobite, nationalist that I am alleged to be, when I say that Charlie is not my darling and I don\u2019t hope he comes back again! It is unfashionable and hard for some on the left to understand but I maintain that there is a place for clan democracy in the Scottish radical tradition and that clan democracy, more than any Stuart, represented the real Jacobite threat.<\/p>\n<p>I do confess that Allan has influenced me over the years. Initially, the Covenanters were merely mad, rampaging seventeenth century Orangemen! I now realise that there were progressive, republican mad rampaging Orangemen in their midst &#8211; just kidding. While I believe that the Covenanting\/Cameronian tradition is important, I cannot buy into Allan\u2019s Reds against the Whites analogy. There are many planks of Allan\u2019s argument, which I would like to come back to.<\/p>\n<h3>Jacobitism<\/h3>\n<p>For Allan, the question of Jacobitism is straightforward. Its emphasis was on divine right monarchy and the attempt of the Stuarts to re-claim the Crowns of Scotland and England. As such its politics were reactionary and <q>high Tory<\/q><span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_2');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_2');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_2\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[2]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_2\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">A. Armstrong, <cite>Emancipation &amp; Liberation Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets<\/cite> (Issue 5\/6), p25-6<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. This one sided analysis is useful for Allan as it allows him to pose a left \/right dichotomy between the men and women of the Covenant and the Stuarts with their almost sheepish feudal army standing in the way of revolution and progress.<\/p>\n<p>Jacobitism was more complex than that. Allan describes Stuart Jacobitism well. What is revealing in Allan\u2019s article, a point which he concedes for the first time in print, is the existence of a, <q>sub-Jacobite oral culture<\/q> of song, ballad, poetry. As Allan puts it: <q>The oppositional, sub-Jacobite oral culture, with its songs and ballads, also contributed to a new artisan and working class culture. It certainly wasn\u2019t the politics of Jacobitism, with its mystical emphasis on monarchy, legitimate succession and hierarchical deference to kings and lords<\/q>.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_3');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_3');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_3\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[3]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_3\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">A. Armstrong, Ibid. p.25<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>To talk of a sub-culture is to talk either of an undercurrent or after an event. I assume that Allan is referring to the tradition that arose after the \u201945 rising. Read Allan\u2019s article for the difference in song and writer. Lady Nairne, Tory and anti-French revolution, wants you to have a wee greet for poor Chairlie and his loyal clans. Rabbie Burns denounces the Stuarts\u2019 cynicism while supporting those clans who fought for Scotland and against the new Whiggish, British State. (I hate to disappoint Allan, though I should mention that the \u2018boak inducing\u2019 Charlie is my darlin\u2019 is accredited to Burns!)<\/p>\n<p>This difference of emphasis is exactly my point. The Jacobitism of the clans was different. They were defending their society (which was neither Celtic communism nor feudalism) and their Gaelic traditions and way of life. Allan is absolutely right to say that Charlie had no interest in this. The clansmen who fought for him did. We have to ask: why? After all, the attack on clan society was begun by a Stuart, James <abbr title=\"Sixth\">VI<\/abbr> and <abbr title=\"First\">I<\/abbr>, in 1609 with the infamous Statutes of Iona. This was none other than a racist attack on the \u2018barbarous\u2019 Irish (sic) language and way of life.<\/p>\n<p>The attack on clan society continued after the signing of the Covenant in 1638. Argyll, chief of clan Campbell, was also a leading Covenanter. The new regime in Edinburgh allowed him to extend the power of his clan in the Highlands. Campbell\/Covenanting armies marauded their way through the Highlands in the years before the outbreak of Civil War in 1644. Montrose was pushing at an open door in the Highlands and found many clans sympathetic &#8211; especially clan Donald under the brilliant commander, Alasdair MacColla. Many Gaelic bards spoke of the <q>men of Alba<\/q> as if they were a foreign people.<\/p>\n<p>What is significant is that the Scottish covenanting revolution &#8211; which at no time challenged the king\u2019s right to rule &#8211; waged war on the majority of the population of the country, their way of life and culture with the self-interested connivance of one of the main clans. This was the civil war within the civil war. This links in with my later discussion, which Allan grapples with, on progress.<\/p>\n<p>This question of the alienation of the Gaeltacht within Scottish and, post 1707, British society did not go away. Graham of Claverhouse &#8211; Bluidy Clavers himself &#8211; left the Estates in 1690 and headed for the Highlands. Both Stuart pretenders tried to rally the clans in the eighteenth century. That door was still open. It is true that the clans backed a loser but where did they have to go? The writing was on the wall for their way of life. The military roads, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and the suppression of the language would have happened without the various rebellions. In essence, what the Stuarts began in 1609, the Covenanters continued in the 1640\u2019s and the forces of the British State and the clan chiefs finished the job in the years after 1745.<\/p>\n<p>In truth, this was more than an oppositional sub-culture. This was more than an undercurrent or a tradition that arose out of defeat. Firstly, there is the difficult question of Scottish nationalism. Allan poses his argument in contradistinction to any \u2018left nationalism\u2019. I do not embrace nationalism by recognising that ideology as a significant factor in the Scottish Jacobite critique of British Whiggism. This is primarily a post &#8211; Union factor and there is no doubting the Stuarts\u2019 opportunism. This does not detract from the fact that the Union was still unpopular among large sections of Scottish society. An unaccountable, Whiggish majority sold out Scotland\u2019s independence in 1707.<\/p>\n<p>There were Jacobite risings in 1708, 1715, 1719 and 1745. In 1715 James <abbr title=\"Seventh\">VII<\/abbr>, the Old Pretender, annulled the Act of Union in his manifesto. His young, pretending son also repeated that Act on 10th October 1745. The famous broadsword recovered from Culloden, on display in the Museum of Scotland, bears the inscription, <q>For Scotland and No Union<\/q>. Compare this political, nationalist slogan with the a-political, reactionary slogan of Claverhouse before the battle of Killiecrankie, <q>For King James and the Church of Scotland<\/q><span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_4');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_4');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_4\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[4]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_4\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">M. Linklater &amp; C. Hesketh, <cite>Bonnie Dundee<\/cite>, 1992, p.214<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. This articulated nationalism was also representative of all the Jacobite risings and those rank &amp; file who supported them. Was this political nationalism progressive? That is a key question to which I shall return.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, this was not just about the clans. Post 1707 &#8211; Jacobitism was upheld in Lowland towns such as Perth and Dundee. Indeed, one writer, Murray Pittock, has written of the \u2018Myth of the Jacobite Clans\u2019<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_5');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_5');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_5\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[5]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_5\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">M. Pittock, <cite>The Myth of the Jacobite Clans<\/cite>.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_5').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_5', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. He shows that more Lowlanders fought for the Stuarts than Highland clansmen. I believe Scottish nationalism to be the main reason.<\/p>\n<p>Thirdly, it is true that the Stuarts had a degree of popularity in Scotland. The \u2018King over the water\u2019 was toasted in Lowland &amp; Highland towns. The Stuarts were opportunists and they were populists. They told disaffected Scots what they wanted to hear. Just like today\u2019s slimming industry which boasts a million easy ways to lose weight (while we all get fatter), the Stuarts would free Scotland, protect the clans and restore the \u2018rightful King\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>All these factors combined in a real Jacobite threat. It was no accident that the Stuarts kept coming back to Scotland. The threat to the British State in 1745 was not the threat of dynastic change. It was the threat of \u2018rebellious Scots\u2019 to an ascendant empire. As Frank McLynn has noted, Jacobite forces could have potentially reached 30,000<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_6');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_6');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_6\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[6]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_6\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">F. McLynn, <cite>The Jacobites<\/cite>, 1985<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_6').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_6', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. It was not a rising doomed to failure. Yet this is how the rising is often portrayed. The \u2018Bonnie Prince\u2019 on shortbread tins. A failed attempt to restore a failed, reactionary dynasty. The political dynamic that led the majority of the Jacobite army to fight is relegated to a historical footnote. As Ray Burnett has written:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Indeed, creating and embracing a de-historicised Jacobitism was an essential element in enabling the consequences and implications of Williamite and Hanoverian victories in Ireland and Scotland to pass unchallenged and uncontested into a received Anglo-Brit political and cultural orthodoxy. The defeat of the \u201945 was conversely the victory of the Protestant succession underpinning an aggressive, intolerant and Anglo-Brit State unyielding in its determination to retain a subjugated Scotland within the Union and a colonial Ireland within the Empire.\u201d<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_7');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_7');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_7\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[7]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_7\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">R. Burnett, <cite>Past imperfect but better than nothing, Scotland on Sunday<\/cite>, 23\/7\/95<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_7').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_7', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ray has hit the nail on the head. I believe that a political challenge to the British State and its attack on Highland society was waged under the umbrella term \u2018Jacobitism\u2019. That Jacobitism has been neutered; the history re-written to the point that it was the Highlanders fault for backing a loser. The brutal repression by the British State that followed Culloden is \u2018progress\u2019. The victors have written the history. Allan accepts part of their version.<\/p>\n<p>The clans, in particular, did not sheepishly follow<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_8');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_8');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_8\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[8]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_8\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">Although I do accept Allan\u2019s point, made in conversation, that there was no wing of the Jacobites who acted independently (as he has argued the Cameronians did.) My point remains that we cannot dismiss those forces or what they fought for from our radical tradition.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_8').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_8', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. I have argued that there was an underlying motivation that drove Jacobitism. The ideology of divine right and hereditary kingship was the Jacobitism of the Stuarts and high Tories. This did not fan the flames of Jacobite rebellion in Scotland.<\/p>\n<p>Nor did Allan\u2019s sub-Jacobite oral \u2018culture\u2019 develop in a vacuum. Those songs and poems of resistance, communality and national struggle summarise the ideals and intentions of the vast majority who fought. Allan alludes to the resistance that continued for a good few years after the \u201945 was defeated<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_9');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_9');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_9\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[9]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_9\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">In the 19th century the English artist, Sir Edwin Landseer, painted Rent day in the Wilderness which shows rent being willingly collected in the Highlands for the Jacobite cause (the occupying red coats in the distance).<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_9').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_9', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. Reactionaries such as Lady Nairne also neutered this \u2018sub-Jacobite\u2019 culture. McLynn mentions that the threat posed, \u2018was only finally destroyed with Hawke\u2019s victory at Quiberon Bay\u2019<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_10');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_10');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_10\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[10]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_10\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">F. McLynn, <cite>The Jacobite Army in England 1745<\/cite>, 1998, p.198<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_10').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_10', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. The destruction of Highland troops lessened the threat. \u201cLittle mischief if they fall\u201d as Wolfe remarked.<\/p>\n<p>Allan paints a picture of sections of the Scottish left embracing this \u2018sub-Jacobite culture\u2019. He has a point. Many Leftie folk-singers like to belt out Jacobite songs. Even the Salford born, Ewen McColl, was partial to these songs. However there has been no real debate, excluding the Jacobite or Covenanter pamphlet within the left as to the crucial significance of Jacobitism from below\/the other Jacobitism. The left has accepted the image of de-historicised Jacobitism and ran away from it. The Scottish left cringe at images of Chairlie, the kitsch, tartanalia and the monarchical pretensions and, in so doing, have written off an important part of our history. Many of us have bought into the Anglo-Brit state history of Scotland. Others have just shut Scottish history out completely. They do not see that the \u2018Bonnie Prince\u2019 is a smokescreen behind which the real history is hidden. Allan has embraced the men and women of the National Covenant to get to that true history.<\/p>\n<h3>The thing about the Covenanters&#8230;<\/h3>\n<p>In the Covenanters, Allan sees the Scottish revolution. His article is a coherent, impassioned case for the Covenanting contribution to Scotland\u2019s revolutionary tradition. The contradictions and tensions within that movement are laid bare. Allan\u2019s is also a seductive argument. Scottish socialists, looking to discover their country\u2019s radical past, could do worse than embrace a movement which challenged the crown, was inherently democratic and was capable of independent, united action.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Scottish left has not embraced the Covenanters. They pose more questions than answers<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_11');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_11');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_11\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[11]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_11\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">The following discussion draws on an earlier article of mine. See G. Cairns, <cite>The Victors and the Vanquished, Scottish Workers Republic<\/cite>, vol. 2, no. 7.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_11').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_11', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. There are 3 main problems associated with the Covenanters. The first, Allan would accept: namely, their religious fanaticism, Presbyterianism was the glue, which held all wings of the movement together. A fear of Popery was the motivation. This manifested itself in a zealous bigotry. After Montrose\u2019s defeat at Philiphaugh in 1650, Kirk ministers literally screamed for the murder of Irish women and children who had been following the battle. Similarly, the later conventicles were hotbeds of anti-Catholic bigotry, even though it was really Episcopalianism that was the religious enemy.<\/p>\n<p>Now, you may think that this is applying 21st Century standards to the 17th Century. Is it really? Fanaticism and hatred are still with us. The fanaticism that I refer to was whipped up to frenzy by intelligent, articulate Covenanters.<\/p>\n<p>The second problem is the problem of Ireland. Allan does not mention in his piece the Scots Covenanters intervention in the Irish civil war in 1642. There had always been historic links between Scotland and Ulster. Gallowglass was a term used to describe those clans who flitted between both. Indeed, the MacDonalds of the western Highlands were related to the MacDonnells of Antrim. It was James <abbr title=\"Sixth\">VI<\/abbr> who planted Ulster with Scottish and English settlers. The Covenanting regime in Edinburgh sent a Scots army to protect the settlers from the native uprising.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the place to go into the detail of the Irish uprising. Suffice to say that while the royalists opportunistically exploited Irish national sentiment, the Covenanting army did not exactly cover itself in glory with its brutal intervention. Ireland was equally the Achilles heel of both revolutions north and south of the border. Allan is silent on this intervention.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the Covenanters\u2019 attack on the Gaeltacht cannot be ignored. I was very disappointed to read Allan\u2019s comments directed toward the<br \/>\n<acronym title=\"Scottish Republican Socialist Movement\">SRSM<\/acronym>. I am a republican socialist not a left nationalist. There have been positive, progressive aspects of Scottish history but I do not adopt a nationalist analysis of Scottish history. (I shall return to this.)<\/p>\n<p>Nor do I hold to a glib view of Scottish national identity. Indeed I have argued that the Covenanters were guilty of a Lowland racism toward Highland society and waged war on that society <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_12');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_12');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_12\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[12]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_12\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">Cairns, Ibid.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_12').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_12', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. In this the Covenanting regime in Edinburgh had a loyal clan &#8211; clan Campbell. It was a Campbell, the Duke of Argyll, who headed that regime. Power, influence and the desire to defeat clan Donald went hand in hand with a Lowland, Presbyterian desire to extinguish the \u2018Irish tongue\u2019 and clan culture.<\/p>\n<p>There was real cultural \/racial\/ religious tension in 17th Century Scotland. Clan bards referred to Lowlanders as <q>the men of Alba<\/q>, as though they were foreign. Ian Grimble is one of the few writers to pick up on Covenanting brutality in the Gaeltacht during the revolution<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_13');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_13');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_13\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[13]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_13\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">See I. Grimble, <cite>Scottish Clans &amp; Tartans<\/cite>, 1973, p. 98<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_13').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_13', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>.<\/p>\n<p>The irony, as David Stevenson points out, is that the clans backed the King of Scotland against the \u2018men of Scotland\u2019.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_14');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_14');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_14\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[14]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_14\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">See D. Stevenson, <cite>Highland Warrior: Alasdair MacColla and the Civil War<\/cite>, 1984 for a superb analysis of the \u2018Highland problem\u2019.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_14').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_14', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>There is a later example of this intolerance. After the defeat of the \u201945 rebellion, Lord Chesterfield decreed that the loyal should be punished with the disloyal. Loyalist, covenanting clans such as the Munros and the Ross\u2019 faced the same fate in terms of dispossession and proscription and clearance.<\/p>\n<p>The reason was simple. Allan\u2019s class warriors were also waging war on the clans and their culture. Charles <abbr title=\"First\">I<\/abbr> and Montrose were pushing at that open door. MacColla and the clans (from Scotland &amp; Ireland) had their own agenda: defence of their society and way of life from Edinburgh and clan Campbell.<\/p>\n<p>This Lowland prejudice was (is?) endemic in Scottish society. The covenanters did not invent this. However their anti-Irish, anti-Gaeltacht, anti-Catholic racism was endemic in their revolution and this makes their revolution all the more problematic. Allan has never squared this circle!<\/p>\n<p>One of the most powerful images, for me, is the portrait of the Lowland Montrose being taken, captured, through the streets of Edinburgh by Covenanting soldiers. The look of a Highland warrior &#8211; long hair, beard, tartan kilt\/plaid &#8211; attributed by James Drummond to a Lowland aristocrat who cynically used the clans to further his own royalist cause. The populace and soldiers look at this strange, \u2018Highland\u2019 creature. Let us not forget that Montrose signed the National Covenant in Greyfriars cemetery.<\/p>\n<p>The romantic imagery conjures up the problem of today\u2019s \u2018Highlandism\u2019 &#8211; a culture caricatured by the victor\u2019s culture. We wear our kilts to weddings, sing Highland songs in Glesga keelie accents when we\u2019re drunk (well, I do!) with little knowledge of why Highland society\/culture went into decline.<\/p>\n<p>We are not alone in this. White, liberal, middle class America now loves all things \u2018red Indian\u2019 and Muhammad Ali<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_15');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_15');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_15\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[15]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_15\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">See Thomas Hauser, <cite>Ali: The Legacy in Observer Sport Monthly<\/cite>, no. 45 Nov. 2003, p. 58: <q>Ali\u2019s legacy today is in danger of being protected in the same manner as the estate of Elvis Presley is protecting Elvis\u2019 image. New generations are born; and to them Ali is more legend than reality, part of America\u2019s distant past<\/q>.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_15').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_15', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. The Irish Free State built a statue to James Connolly and the Catholic Church would have you believe they were right behind the 1916 rising!<\/p>\n<p>Allan has helped to disentangle the Covenanters from orthodox interpretations of 17th Century Scottish history. Scots have been fed a diet of Campbell-MacDonald feuds and royalist sentimentality for too long. However Allan is guilty of his own romanticism. His red guards were guilty of trying to impose \u2018progress\u2019 on the Gaeltacht, a progress which Allan, in his article, would seem to reject. These two areas &#8211; revolution and progress &#8211; are key to an understanding of how Scotland travelled from the 1640\u2019s to the 1740\u2019s. They are also instrumental in undermining Allan\u2019s eloquent argument.<\/p>\n<h3>Revolution<\/h3>\n<p>Allan sees two main revolutionary phases: 1649 and 1689-90. While I shall give Allan\u2019s position some consideration I do believe that he has done Scottish radical history a great service in his writing and research. For example his account of independent Cameronian meetings in the south-west gives a real feel of revolutionary popular resistance to the Restoration regime in Scotland. It cannot be denied that these Covenanting\/Cameronian traditions infused later radicals in the west and south-west.<\/p>\n<h3>The first phase<\/h3>\n<p>That said, the two revolutionary phases cited above pose many questions and answers. Allan argues that the period after the signing of the Covenant was the \u2018first phase\u2019 of the Scottish revolution<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_16');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_16');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_16\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[16]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_16\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">See A. Armstrong, ibid. p.29<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_16').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_16', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. I have just painted a very different picture to Allan, above. I must also take issue with his account of the anti-Engager regime that took power in 1649. While Allan sees those who refused to engage with Charles\u2019 son as the left &#8211; the red guard &#8211; of the revolution, the reality was different.<\/p>\n<p>As Ted Cowan put it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The parliament of 1649 set about the creation of the new Zion during Scotland\u2019s brief and unhappy experiment in theocracy. Royalists were excluded from office; lay patronage was abolished; death was decreed for blasphemy, idolatry, parent cursing, incest and witchcraft; the codification of Scots Law was discussed.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_17');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_17');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_17\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[17]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_17\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">E.J. Cowan, <cite>Montrose and Argyle in G. Menzies (ed.) The Scottish Nation<\/cite>, 1972, p.128<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_17').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_17', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The rub is this: Neil Davidson (author of Discovering the Scottish Revolution 1692\u20131746) looks for English\/European revolutionary references. Davidson has no Scottish revolution to write about. Part of the reason lies in Cowan\u2019s quote. There\u2019s simply no Scottish equivalent to the Levellers political challenge to the Cromwellian regime. Instead despite Allan\u2019s best efforts, the reality in Scotland was a brutal Protestant theocracy, which followed divisions within the movement and was ended by Cromwell\u2019s invasion in 1651.<\/p>\n<p>Allan is right to argue that there was a Scottish revolution in 1638. His revolutionaries, though, were flawed. Allan sees the \u2018red guards\u2019 of the Whiggamores romantically taking Edinburgh. I see a different kind of counter-revolution. Political\/social tyranny and a theocracy resulted, as was the Whiggamores\u2019 intention.<\/p>\n<p>Allan is hammering orange squares into red holes.<\/p>\n<h3>The later phase<\/h3>\n<p>Allan provides an excellent, highly readable account of the events of 1689-90. His treatment of this period had me pondering, constantly, two questions: was a Stuart restoration, as sought by Claverhouse and the Jacobites, reactionary in 1690? Was King Billy\u2019s revolution progressive? These are two key questions.<\/p>\n<p>There is no doubt that \u2018Bonnie Dundee\u2019s\u2019 fight for James <abbr title=\"Seventh\">VII<\/abbr>\u2019s restoration was wholly reactionary. Allan presents a compelling argument of the popular democratic debates that took place in the United Societies from the Convention of the Estates in the capital to Wanlochead and Sanquhar. The majority of the Scottish people did not want an absolutist monarch.<\/p>\n<p>In principle, though, William\u2019s revolution in England in 1688 was not all that progressive either. True, he was a more progressive option than James was but the mantra of \u2018liberty and the protestant religion\u2019 did not initiate any immediate social and political revolution in England.<\/p>\n<p>I am reminded of Christopher Hill\u2019s assessment of the first phase of England\u2019s revolution: <q>&#8230; it is true that in ecclesiastical matters as in everything else, the English revolution got stuck half way<\/q><span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_18');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_18');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_18\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[18]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_18\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">C. Hill, <cite>Economic Problems of the Church<\/cite>, 1968 edition, p.350<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_18').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_18', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. Like the restoration of 1660, the glorious revolution of 1688 south of the border was a compromise between different sections of the ruling class.<\/p>\n<p>Why did the Scots throw their lot in behind Billy? It is true that there were Cameronians who wanted a republic. The Scots Claim of Right was more far reaching than the Bill of Rights in England. The parliament that convened in 1690 over a period of time would be more independent of monarchical power, would introduce more checks and balances on that power. In this, Allan argues, Billy had to <q>bow to the revolution from below<\/q>.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_19');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_19');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_19\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[19]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_19\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p.36<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_19').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_19', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>In short, the Scottish revolution was not the compromise that was patched together in England. Yet, as Allan concedes, the Cameronians never had their October 1917! Commercial landlords and merchants pushed aside the popular forces. This was not 1917 and analogies of \u2018Red\u2019 and \u2018White\u2019 armies don\u2019t hold up. I have already dealt with the alienation of Highland society. While \u2018Dundee\u2019 was a counter &#8211; revolutionary there were reasons why he could command such a big support. Similarly, when Allan writes of an armed stand off between Jacobite and Covenanter in Dumfries in 1715: <q>Nevertheless, the radical Covenanters, unable any more to initiate \u2018revolution from below\u2019 were still able to play a big part in preventing \u2018White counter revolution\u2019<\/q>.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_20');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_20');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_20\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[20]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_20\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p.41<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_20').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_20', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>Really? In 1715? What was the revolution to defend? The Hanoverian succession? Whiggism? Union? Just as the Cameronians were a different force in 1715 who were unable to initiate \u2018revolution from below\u2019, so too were the Jacobites a different force. I shall return to this impact the 1707 Union had on both sides.<\/p>\n<p>Suffice to say Allan uses such Russian revolutionary terms too loosely in a more problematic Scottish historical environment.<\/p>\n<p>Yet again there is no escaping the Cameronian Achilles\u2019 heel. The Cameronians fought at Dunkeld under Billy\u2019s Orange banner. That banner may have different connotations today but there is no doubting that Presbyterianism was still the exclusivist glue that held the \u2018Red Army\u2019 together. James Connolly was, rightly, no fan of \u2018Seamus a chaca\u2019. Likewise as an Appendix to The Re-conquest of Ireland he quotes the historian W.E.H. Lecky. Connolly is pouring scorn upon the claim that, <q>the Williamite forces of the Battle of the Boyne fought for civil and religious liberty<\/q><span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_21');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_21');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_21\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[21]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_21\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">J. Connolly, <cite>The Re-conquest of Ireland<\/cite>, 1983 edition, p.74<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_21').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_21', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. His quote from Lecky summarizes the other side, the non-progressive side, of the victory at Dunkeld:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>While England was breaking loose from her ancient superstitions. Scotland still cowered with a willing submission before her clergy. Never was a mental servitude more complete, and never was a tyranny maintained with more inexorable barbarity.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_22');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_22');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_22\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[22]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_22\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">J. Connolly, ibid. p.75<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_22').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_22', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>For all the gains in 1690, not much had changed in the Covenanting journey from the theocracy of 1649! While there were revolutionary gains, I feel that Allan confuses by-products for substance. He is right to pay tribute to the influence that these by-products of the Scottish revolution &#8211; the Queensferry paper, the united fronts and revolutionary democratic debates &#8211; have on today\u2019s struggle. He ignores the substance. It may just be that the reason that the Covenanters and Cameronians did not take the struggle forward was because they got what they wanted &#8211; a radical, protestant Scotland.<\/p>\n<h3>Progress<\/h3>\n<p>The question of progress in history has long perplexed the left. Allan has an understanding of the problem and seeks to provide clear water between his \u2018revolution from below\u2019 and Neil Davidson\u2019s \u2018revolution from above\u2019 in 17th Century Scotland. Allan and Neil debated this question at the <acronym title=\"Scottish Socialist Party\">SSP<\/acronym>\u2019s Socialism 2003 conference. There is a real difference between these two historians. Allan grapples with the problem of progress and its \u2018collateral damage\u2019 (as militarists might call it!) &#8211; the people swept aside by so-called progressive change. For Neil Davidson this is not an issue. Socialist revolution cannot happen without capitalism. Therefore, <q>capitalism has to exist<\/q>. It represented, <q>a necessary change<\/q><span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_23');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_23');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_23\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[23]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_23\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">Quotes from Neil Davidson\u2019s contribution to a debate on Revolution in Seventeenth-century Scotland, at Socialism 2003, Glasgow Caledonian University, 18 October 2003<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_23').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_23', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>. If this meant destruction of the clan system, no doubt, so be it. Indeed, Neil totally ignored my question, on the day, on where the brutal repression of the clans fitted into his view of progress.<\/p>\n<p>Neil argued that pre-working class movements are by nature contradictory: his exceptions being the Sans Culottes of France and England\u2019s Levellers and Diggers. No surprise that this very British socialist should adopt non-Scottish reference points!<\/p>\n<p>I must say that Neil made some cogent points in critique of the Covenanters as a truly revolutionary force. His point that the same class were in power in 1690 as in 1637 was a point that Allan cannot, and did not, answer. Yet Neil did not come out with any Scottish revolution of his own. He argued that a better starting point would be the periods from the 1790\u2019s down to the \u2018general strike\u2019 of 1820, which is a slight drawback when you\u2019ve written a book on Discovering the Scottish Revolution, 1692 &#8211; 1746! Neil did not talk about any such revolution. In fact, it is my opinion that Neil is not interested in any such revolution. His talk was an anti-Scottish diatribe, full of the old cultural references of the British left while being totally dismissive of our indigenous traditions of protest and revolt. The clans were backward, the Covenanters were fanatics limited to the base of the south-west while salvation lay ahead with those north Brits of Enlightenment Edinburgh &amp; the rise of the \u2018British\u2019 working class.<\/p>\n<p>If Neil is a \u2018superb, socialist historian\u2019 then I must seriously question Allan\u2019s judgement.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Davidson represents, for me, that mechanical, deterministic strand of Marxism which Marx and Engels spent their later years disassociating themselves from. It is lazy, Anglo-centric and wrong to see the Jacobites as some feudal force that the ascendant bourgeois revolution had to sweep away. That bourgeois revolution never happened anyway. Who\u2019s to say that the patched up compromise (discussed above) could not have endured with King James instead of Geordie. Don\u2019t just take my word for it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Are we seriously being told that, had Charlie handled things differently and actually succeeded in toppling George from the throne, that capitalism in Britain could have been un-invented? That the extensive, mining, engineering, shipping, manufacturing revolution already well in spin would have halted and reversed?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sorry, mate &#8211; expert or no, that is nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>Dave Douglass, in his superb reply to Neil Davidson, shows history in all its complexity. Sometime we may have to go back to A before we go from B to C &#8211; we still get to C nonetheless.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_24');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_24');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_24\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[24]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_24\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">D. Douglass, <cite>Provocative and Insulting, Emancipation &amp; Liberation<\/cite>, vol.7, p.43<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_24').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_24', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>Allan understands this. He is dismissive of Neil Davidson\u2019s view of progress. He sees this as a symbol of \u2018revolution from above.\u2019 It is the clans who pose the most problems for Allan. While he cannot countenance or justify the brutality heaped on them (to loyal and rebel clan alike), he still feels that they backed a loser. Jacobitism was a one-way street &#8211; feudal, aristocratic, and backward with the clans as their cannon fodder.<\/p>\n<p>And yet Allan cannot dismiss them. In a quite brilliant passage, Allan writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Cameronians and the Highland clans had to struggle, just as we have to struggle. Their fight was not some misguided, backward &#8211; looking affair, holding back future progress. It was the cry of humanity, in a world where \u2018salvation,\u2019 \u2018improvement\u2019 or progress was nearly always promoted separately from the needs of the people. Resistance to this inhumanity should be part of our socialist tradition.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_25');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_25');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_25\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[25]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_25\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p44<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_25').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_25', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Alleluia! What, then, of clan resistance, under the umbrella of \u2018Jacobitism \u2018? What of a nationalist resistance &#8211; under that same umbrella &#8211; to the ascendant Brit state?<\/p>\n<p>Allan is sincere. He must see that the clans\u2019 fight was as much against the men of the Covenant as it was against the Whig, unionist ruling class. The Covenant and progress went hand in hand and the Covenanting victors wrote the history.<\/p>\n<h3>Jacobites, Cameronians &amp; 1707 Union<\/h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The <acronym title=\"Scottish Republican Socialist Movement\">SRSM<\/acronym> cannot cope with any class division which can be seen to divide their \u2018independent\u2019 Scottish state or nation.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_26');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_26');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_26\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[26]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_26\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p.28<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_26').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_26', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This gem of a quote summarises Allan\u2019s hostility to the <acronym title=\"Scottish Republican Socialist Movement\">SRSM<\/acronym>\u2019s \u2018nationalism\u2019! In fact this quote is tosh! It is unfounded and unfair. Republican socialists have argued that there has been a progressive, nationalist critique of the British State and Britishness? This does not make us nationalists &#8211; left or otherwise. Nor does it make us uncritical of any Scottish state (past, present or future). Indeed, my analysis above of the \u2018new Zion\u2019 Scots state of 1649 should prove this (for that matter James <abbr title=\"Sixth\">VI<\/abbr>\u2019s statutes of Iona). Allan\u2019s critique of the <acronym title=\"Scottish Republican Socialist Movement\">SRSM<\/acronym> is pretty desperate. Just as his historical analysis sees him caught between the Covenant and the clans, so his platform inside the <acronym title=\"Scottish Socialist Party\">SSP<\/acronym> (the Republican Communist Network) sees him caught today between Brit federation and Scottish republicanism. Instead of making common cause with fellow republicans to forge a common \u2018history from below\u2019 he distances himself from a supposed left nationalism.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, after the Union of 1707, nationalism was a factor. Popular nationalist unrest affected both Cameronians and Jacobites. The old Cameronian democracy was stirred into debating the Act. In an act of popular resistance the Articles of Union were burnt in the market square in Dumfries. Likewise the Jacobite threat was no longer solely dynastic. Clan chiefs mobilised against the Union. Support for James became dependent upon his renunciation of the parliamentary union. An old pro-Jacobite soldier led the Edinburgh riots. Previous animosities between the 2 factions were lessened as moves began to unite against the Union and English domination of Scotland.<\/p>\n<p>In many Lowland, Presbyterian towns many wore tartan sashes as a symbol of their anti-Unionism. One of the most fascinating \u2018what if\u2019s\u2019 of Scottish history was the plot to unite the 2 factions in a national uprising in 1708.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_27');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_27');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_27\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[27]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_27\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">Interestingly, at Donald Anderson\u2019s instigation, Allan concedes that this may have been a positive development.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_27').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_27', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>In response to the Cameronians\u2019 nationalist response to the Union the Scottish<br \/>\n<acronym title=\"Member of Parliament\">MP<\/acronym>, Lockhart of Carnwath, wrote that in this crisis the Cameronians were,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>so far reconciled to the northern parts whom formerly they hated heartily upon account of their differing principles of religion and Episcopal party, that they were willing to join and connect measures for the defence of their native country.<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_28');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_28');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_28\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[28]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_28\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">J.S. Gibson, <cite>Playing the Scottish Card &#8211; the Franco Jacobite invasion of 1708<\/cite>, 1988, p.77<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_28').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_28', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Meanwhile the Jacobite Duke of Atholl was raising a force of 7000 men. The leaders of both camps were making overtures. The impetus was a popular nationalism from below that united Jacobite and Cameronian. The English spy, Daniel Defoe, summed up the mood in the capital when the Equivalent (or bribe money to pro-Union supporters) arrived in carts, <q>[they] call it the price of their country.. [they] are incensed by the subtill Jacobites and too much by some of the Presbyterian ministers, and they go along the streets cursing the very English nation<\/q>. <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_29');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_15907_1('footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_29');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_29\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[29]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_29\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">J.S. Gibson, ibid. p.101<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_29').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_15907_1_29', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p>Defoe believed that Scotland was ripe for rebellion. Significantly, the evidence seems to suggest that the Cameronians were willing to support James on condition that he abolished the Union and embraced Presbyterianism. No such united rising took place. The duplicity of leaders such as the Duke of Hamilton and Ker of Kersland ensured that no mobilisation took place. An attempted French landing on the East Neuk of Fife came to nothing.<\/p>\n<p>This failure in 1708 was a missed revolutionary opportunity. For Cameronians of the south-west, the urban proto-working class of the 4 main cities and the clans of the north to unite on class &amp; national grounds to overturn the Union would have altered the course of Scottish history. Later fragmentation would have been avoided. The best sections of both traditions could have united. Instead, the reactionary wings triumphed ensuring that the Presbyterian democrats of the south-west and the clans were marginalised. \u2018Poor Chairlie\u2019 and the dour \u2018meenister\u2019 would be representative of two valid radical traditions in this country\u2019s history. Put very crudely, Walter Scott\u2019s interpretation won over Burns.<\/p>\n<h3>Towards a republican history from below<\/h3>\n<p>The Jacobite &#8211; Covenanter debate has brought, whether Allan admits it or not, Scottish republicans closer together on this key historical question. A radical revolutionary history from below of Scotland cannot write off the clans fighting for their way of life nor sit on the fence in its attitude toward the anti-Unionism of post-1707 Jacobitism. Our positions have more in common than we have with the mechanistic \u2018Marxism\u2019 from above of Neil Davidson. It is undeniable that Jacobitism poses real problems for the Scottish Left. The juxtaposition of Jacobitism, nationalism and Scottish independence provokes embrace (in song and discussion) and retreat (in debate) in equal measure. Jacobitism is a contradiction that sums up the Left\u2019s attitude to Scottish history. The problem lies in the fact that too many socialists have unwittingly bought Scott\u2019s version and have abandoned Scottish radical history. John MacLean and Red Clydeside is safe terrain. Jacobites and Covenanters represent a historical minefield.<\/p>\n<p>That is why it is essential to push a united Scottish republican history from below for the same reasons that 19th century weavers in the west of Scotland could remember Drumclog or Culloden (or Drogheda!) yet make common cause on class issues. Jacobitism is dead. So too is the National Covenant. The Cameronian soldier at Dunkeld was no more a Red Guard than Clan Chattan were social revolutionaries on Culloden Moor. Yet out of the struggles of both, distantly, will the Scottish republic of the future have its historical basis.<\/p>\n<p>Gerry Cairns<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><h3><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_15907_1();\">References<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_15907_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_15907_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/h3><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_15907_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">Jacobites or Covenanters? Which tradition &#8211; A Scottish Republican debate, Scottish Republican Forum, 1992<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_2');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_2\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>2<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">A. Armstrong, <cite>Emancipation &amp; Liberation Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets<\/cite> (Issue 5\/6), p25-6<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_3');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_3\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>3<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">A. Armstrong, Ibid. p.25<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_4');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_4\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>4<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">M. Linklater &amp; C. Hesketh, <cite>Bonnie Dundee<\/cite>, 1992, p.214<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_5');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_5\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>5<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">M. Pittock, <cite>The Myth of the Jacobite Clans<\/cite>.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_6');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_6\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>6<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">F. McLynn, <cite>The Jacobites<\/cite>, 1985<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_7');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_7\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>7<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">R. Burnett, <cite>Past imperfect but better than nothing, Scotland on Sunday<\/cite>, 23\/7\/95<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_8');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_8\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>8<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">Although I do accept Allan\u2019s point, made in conversation, that there was no wing of the Jacobites who acted independently (as he has argued the Cameronians did.) My point remains that we cannot dismiss those forces or what they fought for from our radical tradition.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_9');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_9\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>9<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">In the 19th century the English artist, Sir Edwin Landseer, painted Rent day in the Wilderness which shows rent being willingly collected in the Highlands for the Jacobite cause (the occupying red coats in the distance).<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_10');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_10\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>10<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">F. McLynn, <cite>The Jacobite Army in England 1745<\/cite>, 1998, p.198<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_11');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_11\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>11<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">The following discussion draws on an earlier article of mine. See G. Cairns, <cite>The Victors and the Vanquished, Scottish Workers Republic<\/cite>, vol. 2, no. 7.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_12');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_12\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>12<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">Cairns, Ibid.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_13');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_13\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>13<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">See I. Grimble, <cite>Scottish Clans &amp; Tartans<\/cite>, 1973, p. 98<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_14');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_14\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>14<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">See D. Stevenson, <cite>Highland Warrior: Alasdair MacColla and the Civil War<\/cite>, 1984 for a superb analysis of the \u2018Highland problem\u2019.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_15');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_15\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>15<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">See Thomas Hauser, <cite>Ali: The Legacy in Observer Sport Monthly<\/cite>, no. 45 Nov. 2003, p. 58: <q>Ali\u2019s legacy today is in danger of being protected in the same manner as the estate of Elvis Presley is protecting Elvis\u2019 image. New generations are born; and to them Ali is more legend than reality, part of America\u2019s distant past<\/q>.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_16');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_16\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>16<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">See A. Armstrong, ibid. p.29<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_17');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_17\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>17<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">E.J. Cowan, <cite>Montrose and Argyle in G. Menzies (ed.) The Scottish Nation<\/cite>, 1972, p.128<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_18');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_18\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>18<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">C. Hill, <cite>Economic Problems of the Church<\/cite>, 1968 edition, p.350<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_19');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_19\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>19<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p.36<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_20');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_20\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>20<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p.41<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_21');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_21\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>21<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">J. Connolly, <cite>The Re-conquest of Ireland<\/cite>, 1983 edition, p.74<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_22');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_22\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>22<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">J. Connolly, ibid. p.75<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_23');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_23\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>23<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">Quotes from Neil Davidson\u2019s contribution to a debate on Revolution in Seventeenth-century Scotland, at Socialism 2003, Glasgow Caledonian University, 18 October 2003<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_24');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_24\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>24<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">D. Douglass, <cite>Provocative and Insulting, Emancipation &amp; Liberation<\/cite>, vol.7, p.43<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_25');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_25\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>25<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p44<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_26');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_26\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>26<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">A. Armstrong, ibid. p.28<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_27');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_27\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>27<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">Interestingly, at Donald Anderson\u2019s instigation, Allan concedes that this may have been a positive development.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_28');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_28\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>28<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">J.S. Gibson, <cite>Playing the Scottish Card &#8211; the Franco Jacobite invasion of 1708<\/cite>, 1988, p.77<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_15907_1_29');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_15907_1_29\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>29<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">J.S. Gibson, ibid. p.101<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_15907_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_15907_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_15907_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_15907_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_15907_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_15907_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_15907_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_15907_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_15907_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_15907_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_15907_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_15907_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_15907_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_15907_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Reply to Allan Armstrong The full, illustrated pamphlet is available from the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement Allan Armstrong is to be commended for his excellent contribution to Scottish radical\/revolutionary history, Between Broadsword and Bayonets, Emancipation &amp; Liberation, Issue 5\/6. In this piece Allan seeks to expose the left nationalist and left unionist traditions within&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,8785],"tags":[6051],"class_list":["post-15907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-history","category-issue-10","tag-author-gerry-cairns"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":2455,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15907"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17988,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15907\/revisions\/17988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}