George Archives - Aberdeen Voice

Shock Over Tenfold Increase To Parking Charge

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Feb 102012

By Fred Wilkinson.

An Aberdeen resident is “bloody furious” on account of a letter she received from Aberdeen City Council Housing and Environment Committee regarding an increase to parking fees. Joan Macpherson of Kingsland Place, Aberdeen was shocked to discover that the weekly charge for her parking space had risen from £3.40 to £35.

Kingsland Place is located directly across George Street from Gerrard Street and has to date been included in the Gerard Street letting area.

Joan told Aberdeen Voice.

“I have lived here for over 20 years and have had a parking space at 68 Gerrard Street for about 15 years. I find this increase unbelievable”

Joan wrote to the council on 3rd of February requesting an explanation for the increased charge to which she received the following reply from Jane Hogg:

“As my letter states, a review of all the parking spaces within the city was carried out and put to the committee and the outcome of this was to increase the weekly charge to £35pw. Unfortunately, I was not present at the committee therefore cannot comment further on this.

“If you do not want to pay this charge, I would ask that you submit your intention to terminate in writing to myself and this should be received by 4 March 2012. Once the letter is received, an acknowledgement letter will then be sent to you advising the termination date. You can use your parking space up until the termination date.”

Joan added:

“My car park space is paid till the end of March and I for one will not be renewing it. I wonder if this is the only change they have made to their parking charges policy or will increases be applied to all homeowners in the letting area?”

In response to a telephone query from Aberdeen Voice, Jane Hogg was unable to shed more light on the issue other than to suggest the possibilty of a ‘fault in the system’, but has invited Joan to contact her in person by telephone.

When The Clyde Ran Red – Book Review

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Nov 242011

Deliberately resisting the attraction of the undoubtedly arcane and twisted plots of this year’s Broons annual, David Innes evaluates Maggie Craig’s take on exciting revolutionary times on Clydeside a century ago.

When Lenin appointed John MacLean, perhaps Red Clydeside’s most-revered socialist son, Soviet Consul for Scotland in 1918, the reputation of Glasgow and its industrial satellite towns as the most likely crucible of any UK workers’ revolution was sealed.

In the aftermath of Bloody Friday in January 1919, the militia, backed up by tanks was in George Square, the Riot Act had been read to an assembly of tens of thousands of working people and Scotland’s own socialist revolution seemed inevitable.

When The Clyde Ran Red faithfully documents these tumultuous events which took place in what must have been life-enhancing times, but Maggie Craig achieves much more than re-documenting tales and phenomena well-known to historians and socialists.

In what might be regarded as a primer for the more in-depth and heavy duty histories and biographies listed in her book’s bibliography, she chronicles forty years of the people’s history through the experiences of those closely involved and those affected by events which showed that change was possible if the determination of the people was present and stout, resolute leadership given.

Not only are the iconic heroes of the struggle – Maxton, Muirhead, Kirkwood, Shinwell, Johnston and others – celebrated for their unstinting efforts as leaders in the battle for liberty, equality and fraternity, the lesser-known local heroes of rent strikes and trade disputes are also lauded. The little victories against oppression and exploitation, the author illustrates, are just as vital in changing lives as headline-grabbing larger scale changes.

There is obvious pride in her own Clydeside roots as Craig relates the day-to-day realities of struggles, defeats and wins for working people, describing the Singer dispute, the building, moth-balling and eventual launch of Cunard’s Queen Mary and the Nazis’ terrifying and murderous Clydebank Blitz in 1941.

Whilst these histories are well-known, the author brings new life to their re-telling from the perspective of residents, citizens and workers directly involved and affected.

Craig’s previous form as a novelist, with seven previous publications in this genre, is obvious and welcome as When The Clyde Ran Red is an immensely-readable social history of headily-exciting times and fiery, determined human spirit.

When The Clyde Ran Red
Maggie Craig
Mainstream Publishing
http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=1845967356

Blood Feud – Part 3

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Aug 042011

Continuing on from Part Two of Blood Feud, Voice’s Alex Mitchell offers the final tranche of his account of Scotland’s troubled and violent history. Last week Alex looked at how the fortunes of Clan Gordon changed in the turbulent times of Mary, Queen of Scots. In the concluding part religious and political tensions erupt, James succeeds Mary, and the ancient clan feuds continue.

Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray, became the first of four Reformation Regents. He later became known as the “Good Regent Moray”, not least in contrast with his successors. He was much better equipped for the responsibilities of kingship than was Mary Stuart, but, being of illegitimate birth, was ruled out of the succession.

He could attain kingly power only by becoming Regent for the infant James VI, which meant that Mary had to be removed, one way or another; and Mary, now widely denounced as an adulteress, a French/Papist whore and a husband-killer, had already self-destructed.

But Moray himself was assassinated in Linlithgow in January 1570, aged 39, having been Regent for less than three years.

Normal hostilities were resumed. An attempt had been made to end the ancient feud between the Gordons and the Forbeses by means of a marriage between the Master of Forbes and Lady Margaret Gordon, sister to the 5th Earl Huntly. But the union was a failure, ending in divorce, and relations were more embittered than ever. Following a running fight at Tillyangus near Alford in 1571, the Master of Forbes went south to look for allies.

Whilst he was away, the troops of Sir Adam Gordon, the victor of Tillyangus, attacked Corgarff Castle with the intention of claiming it for the deposed Queen of Scots. Meeting with firm resistance, Gordon set the castle ablaze, and Margaret Forbes, being the wife of Forbes of Towie, and her children and servants, amounting to 24 persons, all perished in the flames. This was a conspicuously dreadful deed, even by the standards of those times.

Infuriated to the point of madness by the cruelty of this act, the Master of Forbes lost no time in pursuit of his enemy. He now had the support of the new Regent, the Earl of Mar.

Forbes advanced northwards to Aberdeen.

The Burgh was occupied by the Gordons, who received intelligence of Forbes’ approach and positioned themselves near what is now the top of the Hardgate, where it crosses Bon-Accord Terrace, whilst a party of musketeers were hidden in the hollow a little further west, now called Union Glen. These last were instructed to wait until battle commenced, then to attack the Forbeses from the rear.

The conflict, since known as the Battle of the Crabstane, on 20 November 1571, lasted about an hour. Finding themselves under attack from both front and rear, the Forbeses were thrown into confusion and were forced to withdraw, defeated, leaving some 60 persons dead and the Master of Forbes a prisoner of the Gordons of Huntly.

For the next 18 months,Aberdeenwas the base of Sir Adam Gordon’s operations in support of the captive Mary Stuart, held prisoner by her cousin Elizabeth Tudor for some twenty years until her (Mary’s) execution in 1587.

the last of the four Reformation Regents, the Earl of Morton, took a hostile attitude to the citizens of Aberdeen

Sir Adam Gordon subsequently fled toFrance, but only narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Forbeses whilst in Paris. Gordon had been given 600 merks to leave Aberdeen, which was by now shifting away from its traditional reliance on the (Catholic) Earls of Huntly in favour of the (Protestant) Earls Marischal, to whose stronghold at Dunnottar Castle the Burgh’s title-deeds were sent for safe keeping in 1572.

But the last of the four Reformation Regents, the Earl of Morton, took a hostile attitude to the citizens of Aberdeen, whom he regarded as “art and part” of both the Gordon Rising and the Battle of the Crabstane. In 1574, he imposed a fine of 4,000 merks on the Burgh and demanded assurances that, henceforward, the Burgh would be ruled by sincere adherents of the Reformed faith, which, in principle, would have ruled out both the Gordons and their long-standing associates, the Menzies family of Pitfodels.

The Battle of the Crabstane was so-called because there lay nearby a large stone, irregularly square in shape, known as the Crab Stane, which relates to an Aberdeen mercantile family descended from John Crab, a 14th Century baillie of Flemish origin. Not far off was a longer, more slender stone, appropriately named the Lang Stane. The two stones may have been march-stones (or boundary stones) from their Crabstone Croft. It may be that the stones were once part of a stone circle.

They provided the names for two streets now in the neighbourhood, Langstane Place and Craibstone Street. The Lang Stane may be seen at the east end of Langstane Place, i.e., at the south-east corner of the first house in Dee Street. The Crab Stone abuts upon the pavement on the south side of the Hardgate near where it crosses Bon-Accord Terrace, close to where the battle between the Gordons and Forbeses took place in 1571.

the-6th-earl-of-huntly-presumed-murderer-of-moray

The ongoing feud between the Gordons and the Stewarts flared up again in 1592 with the sensationally brutal murder at his mother’s house at Donnibristle near Culross of James Stewart, the 2nd Earl of Moray, son-in-law of the late Regent Moray, by George Gordon (1562-1636), the 6th Earl of Huntly.

Moray’s mother had a portrait painted of her son’s mutilated body, the famous ‘Death Portrait’, which depicts the ‘Bonny Earl o’ Moray’ as having been shot several times, hacked about the body and slashed twice across the face by sword. The situation was that King James VI had asked Huntly to arrest the troublesome 5th Earl of Bothwell (nephew of Mary Stuart’s Bothwell) and his associates, of whom Moray was one.

There was some evidence of a ‘hit-list’ of the King’s enemies. Certainly the King took no action against Huntly, who was never brought to trial, and in fact received a Royal Pardon a week after the murder.

However, after Huntly and his ally Francis Hay, the 9th Earl of Erroll, attempted a Catholic rebellion in 1594, King James felt obliged, for the sake of appearances, to have their castles at Strathbogie and (Old) Slains blown up; and Huntly and Erroll were forced to depart Scotland for France. But they were soon pardoned and back home, and in 1599 King James promoted George Gordon to the rank of 1st Marquess of Huntly and the major responsibility of Lieutenant of the North.

Unlike his mother, Mary Stuart, King James knew who his real friends were, and kept them close, to the occasional extent of letting them get away with murder. The Gordons had come through ‘interesting times’ and had survived, but they were never again to be as ‘gey’ as in the glory days of George Gordon, the 4th Earl of Huntly.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

Blood Feud – Part 2

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Jul 292011

Continuing on from Part One of Blood Feud, Voice’s Alex Mitchell offers up yet another slice of Scotland’s troubled and violent history. Last week Alex looked at The Gordon, Forbes and Stewart Families in the Time of Mary Queen of Scots and King James VI This week we see how the fortunes of Clan Gordon changes in the turbulent times of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The Gordons, for their part, held back until the Earl of Huntly was ‘put to the horn’ or outlawed and rendered fugitive on a trumped-up charge of refusing to answer a summons from the Protestant-dominated Privy Council, of which he was still a member.

Huntly marched towards Aberdeenwith a force of about 1,000 men, almost all of them Gordon kinsfolk and dependents; no other gentry families joined his campaign to ‘rescue’ the Queen.

He mistakenly believed that many of the Queen’s troops would join his side.

He took up a commanding position on the Hill of Fare, near Banchory, but his men melted away. His troops, now reduced to about 500, were assailed by some 2,000 men under the command of the Earls of Moray, Morton and Athole, and were forced down on to the swampy field next to the Corrichie Burn.
The Earl of Huntly, aged 50, corpulent and in poor health, and suffocated by his heavy armour, suffered a heart attack or stroke, and dropped down off his horse, dead.

Huntly’s body was thrown over a pony and taken to Aberdeen, where it was put in the Tolbooth and gutted, salted and pickled. The body was then taken by sea to Edinburgh, where it was given a more comprehensive embalming. After lying unburied in the Abbey of Holyrood for some six months, the mummified corpse of the one-time Cock o’ the North was brought in its coffin before the Scottish Parliament on29 May 1563 on a charge of High Treason.

The coffin was opened and propped up on end so that the deceased Earl could stand trial and ‘hear’ the charges against him.

Those present included the Queen and Huntly’s eldest son George, himself under sentence of death, later repealed. A sentence of forfeiture was passed, stripping the Gordons of all their lands and possessions, which reverted to the Crown and were redistributed amongst favourites, not least the Earl of Moray.

The Gordon armorial bearings were struck from the Herald’s Roll and the once-great dynasty was reduced to “insignificance and beggary”. Huntly’s body lay unburied in Holyrood for another three years until21 April 1566, when it was finally returned to Strathbogie and interred at Elgin Cathedral.

It has to be said that Mary’s behaviour at this time makes little sense.

Two days after the Battle of Corrichie, Huntly’s son, young Sir John Gordon, aged 24, was ineptly beheaded in front of the Tolbooth inAberdeen, to the visible distress of Queen Mary, who was in residence just across the Castlegate and was seen to observe the proceedings from an upstairs window.

It had been rumoured that the Queen and Sir John Gordon were lovers, although this is unlikely given that Mary was constantly under the guard of the Protestant Lords. They had achieved their twin purposes of destroying the Gordons of Huntly, the leading Catholic family inScotland, and of reassuring those Protestant Reformers suspicious of the Queen’s own Catholic leanings.

It has to be said that Mary’s behaviour at this time makes little sense. She was a devout and observing Catholic herself, yet she acquiesced in the legalised persecution of fellow-Catholics and the forfeiture and redistribution of their land and property.

The assumption has to be that she was not in control of events, partly because she was young and inexperienced and was disorientated by her return to Scotland, a country she had departed for France at the age of five; but also because she was fatally uninterested in the processes and responsibilities of government, seldom attending meetings of her own Privy Council at Holyrood. The judicial destruction of the Gordons of Huntly meant that Mary Stuart had lost her most substantial and dependable base of support, and put her thereafter in the grip of her political and religious enemies.

414px-james_i_of_england_by_daniel_mytens

Mary Queen of Scots was made, probably unlawfully, to abdicate her throne on 24 July 1567, in favour of her infant son James, born 19 June 1566, by her second husband (and cousin) Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, from whom she was already irretrievably estranged. Mary’s effective reign had lasted just six years, and was over before she reached the age of 25.

The birth of a male heir to the throne meant that she had served her purpose, was now surplus to requirements and was in any case by this time dangerously out of control, having fallen under the destructive influence of James Hepburn (1535-78), the widely-detested 4th Earl of Bothwell, a Protestant, but intensely hostile to England.

The Queen’s remaining authority was destroyed by the sensational murder of her husband Darnley, not yet 22 years of age, at Kirk o’ Field on10 February 1567. Bothwell was instantly identified as prime suspect and the Queen as obviously complicit, an accessory, having gone to great lengths to seduce Darnley away from the protection of his Lennox Stewart relations in Glasgow and back to Edinburgh.

But how much did Mary really know? She would not have stayed overnight in the house at Kirk o’ Field, just inside the Edinburgh city walls, only two miles from Holyrood, if she had known that its foundations were being stuffed with gunpowder. To the end of her life, Mary Stuart was convinced that the plot had been to blow up her and Darnley together. This is unlikely, given that the explosion, which literally blew the house sky-high, took place after Mary had left Kirk o’ Field for Holyrood, which most people took to mean that Mary must have been party to the plot to murder Darnley.

But was she? And which plot? Or whose plot?

No-one as unpopular as Darnley was going to survive very long in 16th centuryScotland; but why murder him in such a sensational, attention-grabbing manner, when he could have been quietly dispatched back at Holyrood? Whatever the case, the ensuing scandal was hugely compounded by Mary’s subsequent marriage to Bothwell (in a Protestant church) on 15 May 1567.

Prior to all this, on 8 October 1565, Mary had restored George Gordon, the eldest surviving son of the 4th Earl of Huntly, to most of his father’s titles, including that of Lord High Chancellor, and some part of his former lands and property. This was little more than two years after the deceased 4th Earl had been found guilty of High Treason, his son George imprisoned and put under sentence of death, and his entire family reduced to “insignificance and beggary”.

Mary was presumably trying to rebuild her support in the North-East, but it was too little, too late. On top of everything else, the 5th Earl’s sister, Lady Jean Gordon, had made the mistake of marrying the Earl of Bothwell at Holyrood on24 February 1566. She was cruelly thrown aside and divorced within the year in order that Bothwell could marry his Queen.

Coming in Part 3: Alex Mitchell analyzes the changes sweeping through all aspects of Scottish life – dynasties rise and fall, clans battle for power and dominance, and religious conflicts dominate.

Blood Feud – Part 1

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Jul 222011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell offers up yet another slice of Scotland’s troubled and violent history in the first part of Blood Feud: The Gordon, Forbes and Stewart Families in the Time of Mary Queen of Scots and King James VI

Following the death of her first husband, King Francis II of France in December 1560, the young Mary Queen of Scots, born 8 December 1542, resolved to return to Scotland.

Whilst still in France, she was visited by a deputation of Scottish Catholics, headed by her cousin, George Gordon, the 4th Earl of Huntly (1514-62). They entreated her to land at Aberdeen, where she was promised an army of 20,000 men under the leadership of Huntly himself, ready to protect her and convey her in triumph to Edinburgh. This would almost certainly have led to civil war between Catholic and Protestant factions in Scotland.

Instead, Mary chose to take the advice of her post-Reformation Parliament. She landed at Leith on 19 August 1561, and thereafter depended on the support and advice of her half-brother Lord James Stewart (1531-70), the illegitimate son of King James V and Margaret Erskine.

His two fixed principles were his support of, firstly, the Protestant Reformation of 1560, which sought to displace and abolish the Catholic religion, and secondly, closer relations with England rather than with England’s enemies France and Spain.

To these ends, Lord James insisted that Mary, herself a devout Catholic, should respect the Reformation and defer to ‘moderate’ Protestant opinion rather than that of Catholic Earls, such as Huntly and Erroll. In return, Lord James would use his contacts in England to secure from Queen Elizabeth recognition of Mary’s claim to be her legitimate successor. Mary was a grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor, elder sister to King Henry VIII, whose six wives between them produced only three surviving children, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward, none of whom had any children of their own.

Lord James Stewart favoured a middle way in religious matters, acceptable to mainstream opinion in England.

He tried to fend off the more radical Presbyterian reformers like John Knox, who intimidated the Episcopal Church of England. Similarly, he set out to crush unrepentant Catholics like the powerful George Gordon, 4th Earl Huntly, The Cock o’ the North, whose opposition was substantially based on his justified resentment of Lord James himself.

Mary’s elevation of Lord James to the vacant earldom of Mar in 1562, which he then resigned in favour of the earldom of Moray in 1563, both of which had been effectively under the control of the Gordons of Huntly, obviously threatened that family’s long-standing domination of North East Scotland. Moray then, of course, was a much larger territory than it is now. Lord James, for his part, was fearful of the stated intention of Sir John Gordon, Huntly’s violent and unstable third son, to marry the 19 year-old Queen Mary. That he was already married seemed not to concern him.

Aberdeen regularly paid the more powerful and aggressive of the local gentry families large sums of money

The Gordons had ruled the North East like provincial kings for about 250 years, having been granted the lands of Strathbogie by Robert the Bruce in 1307. They were an enormous kindred, with cadet branches throughout the North East, and prolific; George, the 4th Earl, had nine sons and three daughters.

The original expression the Gey Gordons (note spelling) is a reference to this sense of the House of Gordon as being literally overwhelming, unforgiving and dangerous. They were also rich, and lived like princes; the 4th Earl rebuilt Huntly Castle as a splendid Renaissance palace. He had been created Lord High Chancellor in 1546, being a trusted supporter of Mary’s redoubtable French mother, Mary of Guise, who ruled Scotland as Queen-Regent from sometime after the death of her husband King James V in 1542, until her own death in 1560.

At a time when Aberdeen regularly paid the more powerful and aggressive of the local gentry families large sums of money in the hope that they might then leave the Burgh alone, the Gordons were undoubtedly the family to have on your side – rich, numerous, widespread, possessed of great political influence and close to the Throne. Hence the close relationship between the (burgess) Menzies family of Aberdeen and the (gentry) Gordons of Huntly, to the occasional extent of inter-marriage. In fact, in 1545, Thomas Menzies resigned as Provost to allow George Gordon, 4th Earl Huntly, to succeed him, albeit for a period of only two years. George Gordon was the only Peer of the Realm ever to be Provost of Aberdeen.

There was intense hostility between the Gordon and Forbes families and their respective allies, the feud extending over some 200 years.

The Forbeses, as one of the few authentically Celtic of the twelve main land-owning families in Aberdeenshire, resented Norman-French incomers such as the Gordons, Hays, Burnets, Bissets, Frasers and Keiths.

They were now Protestant, and allied to the Ogilvies, with whom the Gordons were in a separate dispute. These were violent times.

In 1527, Alexander Seton of Meldrum, an ally of the Gordons, was murdered by the Master of Forbes in Provost Menzies’ house in the Castlegate. A Commission was appointed, but it reached no conclusion.

As described, Huntly and his allies had expected the young Queen’s support for their proposed Catholic uprising against the Reformation, to commence in Aberdeen. He and Mary were cousins, both being grandchildren of King James IV. But the Queen withheld her support.

In August 1562, Mary toured the North East in the safe keeping of the Protestant Lords of Moray, Morton and Maitland. They went out of their way to insult and provoke the Gordons, snubbing their invitation to visit Huntly Castle. The Royal party feared, with some reason, that the Gordons planned to capture the Queen, murder her Protestant minders and forcibly marry Mary to young Sir John Gordon.

On 27 August, the Queen’s party, returning from Inverness, reached the Kirktoun of Aberdon, lodging at the Bishop’s Palace in the Chanonry – the Bishop of Aberdeen remained in post for a good twenty years after the Reformation. In Aberdeen itself, the Queen was warmly received by Provost Thomas Menzies but, perhaps significantly, was accommodated in Earl Marischal’s Hall on the south side of the Castlegate, and not in the adjacent Pitfodel’s Lodging. Around this time, Lord James Stewart married Agnes Keith, daughter of the Protestant 1st Earl Marischal.

Alex’s insight to those turbulent times and bitter familial relationships will continue in future editions of Aberdeen Voice.

The Treaty of Union of 1707 – Part 3

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Apr 152011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell presents the third and final part of an account of the key events which informed and influenced the Union Of Parliament between Scotland and England in 1707, and in doing so, impartially debunks some commonly held and perpetuated views on the issue.

The English certainly believed that the advantages of union would be “much greater for Scotland”, mainly in terms of an “Increase of Trade and Money”, and that England would gain from it only “the Security of its Northern Borders” and a “Source of Men for our Common Wars”.

Again, Seton of Pitmedden remarks that “England secures an old and dangerous Enemy to be their Friend”, and that, in military terms, England would also gain by “a considerable addition of brave and courageous Men to their Fleet, Armies and Plantations”, and that for Scotland: “We send our Commodities and Manufactures to them, and have Money or other Necessities remitted to us”.

The military aspect was certainly significant. The population of Scotland was then about one million compared with five million in England and Wales; Scotland thus had about one-fifth the population of England, compared with less than one-tenth nowadays.

Demographically, and in terms of its labour force and military manpower, Scotland was twice as important as a component of the British Union in 1707 than in 2007. In addition, a huge proportion of Scots had extensive campaigning experience in European theatres of war. The familiar image of “the Scottish soldier” rests on the historical fact that a great many Scots were soldiers, albeit in other nations’ wars. Thus, from an English military perspective, Scotland could be a useful ally, or a very troublesome enemy.

The 25 Articles agreed by the joint Commissioners were to be presented first to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in October 1706, then to the English Parliament in London. Of the 25 Articles, which were debated and approved one by one, no fewer than fifteen were concerned with economic issues, of trade, taxation and industry, and it was these which generated the most heated debate.

The Court made major concessions on Scottish access to the English market, and later put through a separate Act protecting the Church of Scotland. The indications are, therefore, that the Scottish side fought long and hard for the best possible deal for Scotland, and for one which preserved distinctively Scottish institutions – the separate and distinct church, and legal and education systems – such that Scotland was never to become a mere province of England, a kind of “Scotland-shire”.

The entire Treaty was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 16 January 1707, by 110 votes to 69. There was a clear majority in each of the three estates, being the church, the nobility and the burgesses, that amongst the nobility being greatest. The mass of the common people were violently opposed to union with England, but their views counted for little in 18th century politicking. The Scottish Parliament had voted itself out of existence, and was formally dissolved on 28April. The new Parliament of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707.

This doubtless contributed to the patronising attitude of the English majority towards the Scots in London

In retrospect, the least acceptable part of the Treaty was that the Scottish representation in the new Parliament of Great Britain was reckoned according to the ratio, not of populations – about 5:1 in favour of England – but of tax revenues, being about 40:1 in favour of England.

This suggests that tax revenues per capita in Scotland were only about one-eighth of those in England, which may be an indication of how much poorer a country Scotland was relative to England in the years before Union. Taxation, however, did not need to be as high in Scotland as in England, for the simple reason that Scotland consistently avoided getting into military conflict with other nations. At any rate, Scotland sent only 16 peers to join the 190 English peers in London, and 45 commoners to join the 513 from England & Wales.

This doubtless contributed to the patronising attitude of the English majority towards the Scots in London, and the widespread belief, in London as in Scotland, that the Scottish nobility had not merely “sold out”, but that they had sold out for a derisory price.

In the end, the Union was achieved largely because the wiser men on both sides dreaded the consequences of failure, and there were the basic elements of a bargain. England, at war with France, could not risk a hostile Scotland under a Jacobite king, and demanded a complete, incorporating Union and acceptance of the Hanoverian succession.

The Scots wanted free trade at home and abroad. They would have preferred a federal arrangement to the complete, incorporating Union, but could not insist on it because the English were adamant, and they knew that failure of the Treaty might result in renewed economic sanctions, civil war within Scotland and the possibility of military invasion by England to suppress a Jacobite uprising in support of the “Pretender”, the self-styled King James VIII, or his son, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, later known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

by this time the Union was largely accepted as a done deal. The centre of economic activity had shifted from east to west.

The economic benefits expected for Scotland took some decades to become manifest. This and other early disappointments contributed to the widespread support for the Jacobite Rising of 1715. But free trade and full participation in rampant English colonialism were of immense advantage to the Scots.

This became plainly apparent by the mid-point of the century – hence the comparative lack of support, especially in the Lowlands, for the last Jacobite Rising of 1745. And by this time the Union was largely accepted as a done deal. The centre of economic activity had shifted from east to west.

Glasgow was geographically nearer than any other British port to the English colony of Virginia and opportunities opened up in the trade in Virginian tobacco, Caribbean sugar and in the service of the London-based East India Company. Hence the spectacular expansion of Glasgow from the “pretty little town” described by Daniel Defoe of around 1700 to its (self-styled) eminence as Second City of Empire by around 1900.

Edinburgh, always a city of lawyers rather than merchants, had lost its Royal Court in 1603 and its Parliament by the Act of 1707 and was, to an extent, eclipsed by Glasgow; but its financial and legal expertise sustained it in the longer term.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

The Treaty of Union of 1707 – Part 2

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Apr 072011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell presents part 2 of an account of the key events which informed and influenced the Union Of Parliament between Scotland and England in 1707, and in doing so, impartially debunks some commonly held and perpetuated views on the issue.

In September 1705, the Scottish Parliament agreed to authorise Queen Anne to nominate Commissioners who were to ‘treat’ or negotiate for Union. She naturally nominated persons sympathetic to that objective, thirty-one from each country.

The English Commissioners were almost all Whigs; the Scots mostly so, such as John Campbell, the Duke of Argyll; but including some critics of the proposed incorporating union, notably the Jacobite George Lockhart of Carnwath, who favoured a federal union such as would have retained the Scottish Parliament as a political institution.

However, the English negotiators insisted that an incorporating union was the only acceptable solution, that nothing less would secure England’s northern borders against foreign aggression; to them, a federal union was simply out of the question and was directly vetoed by Queen Anne herself.

Queen Anne was a Tory whereas King William III’s advisers, if not William himself, had been Whigs; the Union was essentially a Whig project. Queen Anne was herself popular and untainted by Glencoe and the Darien failure. She had, obviously, a familial affection for the Stuarts, being herself, as it turned out, the last of the Stuart monarchs; but she was strongly committed to the Church of England and could not for that reason support her much younger Catholic half-brother James’ claim to the succession. She could not form an alliance with the (Tory) Jacobites without effectively uncrowning herself. She therefore had to press ahead with Williamite (Whig) policies such as the Union. The clauses of the Alien Act which were more offensive to the Scots were thus repealed before Christmas 1705.

The Union of 1707 may be described as an exchange, or surrender, of Scottish parliamentary sovereignty in return for the benefits of free trade with England and her colonies; specifically, of access to English markets. The population of England was four to five times that of Scotland, and richer, with greater per capita spending power. The Union has thus been described as a political necessity for England and a commercial necessity for Scotland. The arguments presented for and against Scotland’s membership of the British Union were strikingly similar to the more recent debate concerning Britain’s membership of the European Union.

Over the 17th century, Scotland’s economy had become increasingly dependent on the English market. Half of Scotland’s exports, mainly of black cattle, linen, wool, coal and sheep, went to England; of this total, cattle accounted for 40% by 1703. The war with France disrupted trade with that country. There were severe grain harvest failures in the “Lean Years” of the 1690s which led to increased mortality, massive emigration to Ulster and an overall loss of about one-fifth of the population.

Although Scotland’s cost-base, mainly in terms of wages, was lower than England’s, it was feared that wealth would be drawn from Scotland to England

The failure of the Darien scheme in 1700 had consumed about a quarter of Scotland’s liquid capital. Scotland had no standing army and her navy consisted of two frigates. Scotland was poor, relatively backward and divided between Highlands and Lowlands, and suffered the many disadvantages of a semi-autonomous commercial and trading position within the context of the 1603 Union of Crowns in which the more powerful partner, England, was vigorously protective of its own trading and colonial interests.

The brutal fact was that, in an age of rampant mercantilism backed by military and naval power, the Scots could trade overseas only with English acquiescence and with access to English markets and colonies. William Seton of Pitmedden, who represented Aberdeenshire in the last Scottish Parliament of 1703-07, argued that:

“This Nation being Poor and without Force to protect its Commerce, it cannot survive, let alone become richer, ‘till it partake of the Trade and Protection of some powerful Neighbour Nation”

– and the only realistic partner for Scotland was England.

Free trade, of course, cuts both ways. Although Scotland’s cost-base, mainly in terms of wages, was lower than England’s, it was feared that wealth would be drawn from Scotland to England and that Scottish manufactures, which were often of poor quality would be unable to withstand competition from superior English merchandise – superior mainly in the sense that it was improving faster.

In general, the Scottish market accepted poorer, shabbier products than would the English or Continentals. The problem was one of low incomes, a stagnant population and a limited demand for luxury goods which Scots artisans could not produce or not to a competitive standard. Of the twenty five Articles comprising the Treaty of Union, fifteen related to trade and economic issues such as industry and taxation. Scottish interests were protected through reductions in taxes, e.g., on Scottish coal and salt, and various concessions were applied to Scottish exports of herring, beef, pork and grain.

It is often alleged that many of the Scottish parliamentarians who supported the Union did so for a variety of self-interested motives, were bribed and coerced, arms were twisted and so on.

Robert Burns famously wrote:

“Bought and sold for English gold … such a parcel of rogues in a nation”.

This may not have been Rabbie’s most insightful observation and it appeals more to a paranoid mindset than to historical fact. There is little evidence of outright bribery. More significant was a lack of unity amongst the opposition to Union.

The Tomb Of Adam Smith, Canongate, Edinburgh

In England, the final thrust towards the Union of 1707 came from Whig politicians who realised that, in a united British Parliament, their party would stand to gain from the arrival in London of Scottish MPs, most of whom would be Whigs, thus shifting the (narrow) majority in the House of Commons from Tory to Whig.

The evidence is, in both England and Scotland, of highly sophisticated arguments deployed by mostly conscientious people who voted according to what they perceived to be their best long-term interests.

Having said this, we do not have to go all the way with Adam Smith to argue, as he did, that persons motivated by self-interest may nonetheless serve or further a wider, national interest.

– Next week, Alex Mitchell presents the third and final part of this informative and fascinating story.

The Treaty of Union of 1707 – Part 1

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Apr 032011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell recounts the key events which informed and influenced the Union Of Parliament between Scotland and England in 1707, and in doing so, impartially debunks some commonly held and perpetuated views on the issue.

Recently, in 2007, we saw the tercentenary of the Act of Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England.

The Treaty of 1707 was not the first attempt to unite England and Scotland. King Edward I of England tried to colonise Scotland in the 1290s. King Henry VIII embarked on another such venture, with his “rough wooing” of 1544-50.

Since the Union of Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland had succeeded to the throne of England, a single monarch had ruled the two nations, but this was not a sustainable situation, comparable with trying to ride two unruly horses at once.

The Union of Crowns made the Union of Parliaments almost inevitable. In 1650-51, Oliver Cromwell invaded and conquered Scotland, imposing a short-lived unified Commonwealth, with a single British Parliament. Scotland had benefited from the trading privileges this entailed, but the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the person of King Charles II in 1660 had swept all these aside, specifically by the Navigation Act of 1670.

The geographical proximity of England and Scotland made some sort of accommodation essential.

But English ministers showed little interest in a closer constitutional relationship with Scotland during most of the seventeenth century. Their position changed for dynastic reasons. Under the 1689 Bill of Rights, the line of succession to the English throne was limited to the descendants of Queen Mary II and her younger sister Anne, the (Protestant) daughters of the deposed (Catholic) King James II/VII.

Mary died childless, aged 32, in 1694, and her husband (and first cousin) William III, William of Orange, did not remarry. On his death in 1702, the throne passed to his sister-in-law Anne, whose last surviving child out of some nineteen pregnancies, William, Duke of Gloucester, had died aged eleven in 1700, leaving no direct heir.

The English Parliament favoured the (Protestant) Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover and granddaughter to King James I/VI, and an Act of Settlement was passed to that effect in 1701. It laid down that, in the likely event of Queen Anne dying without surviving issue, the English throne would pass to the Electress Sophia and her (Protestant) descendants.

The 1701 Act of Settlement was extended to Scotland as part of the 1707 Treaty of Union. To this day, only Protestant heirs of Princess Sophia can succeed to the British throne. Neither Catholics, nor those who marry a Catholic, nor those born out of wedlock, may remain in the line of succession.

In the event, Sophia died just before Queen Anne, in 1714, and thus Sophia’s eldest son George succeeded as Elector of Hanover and as King George I of Great Britain, commencing the long “Georgian” era, which extended until the death of King George IV in 1830.

But the English feared that the Scots would prefer Anne’s half-brother, James Edward Stuart (1688-1766), the Roman Catholic son of King James II, in exile since the “Glorious Revolution” of 1689.

A major factor pushing England in the direction of Union was her heavy military involvement in Europe, specifically in the War of the Spanish Succession, from 1702 until 1713. England and the Habsburg Empire were allied against Louis XIV’s France, which at this time had a population of about 19 million compared with less than 5 million in England & Wales, and the military struggle between England and France continued, on-and-off, until Waterloo in 1815.

The English feared that the French could open a second front by inciting Jacobite rebellion, threatening England’s security on her northern frontier. Thus in 1702, Queen Anne assented to an Act of the English Parliament empowering her to appoint Commissioners to “treat” or negotiate for Union.

Otherwise, Scotland had little to offer England. The Scottish state was effectively bankrupt.

English ministers suspected that Scotland would be a financial liability; that the country would cost more to administer, police and defend than could be raised from it in tax revenues. And although England and Scotland were both Protestant countries, opposed in terms of religion to Catholic France, it was feared by English Tories that the more radical elements within Scottish Presbyterianism would have a destabilising effect on the (Episcopalian) Church of England, with its hierarchical structure of bishops and archbishops, appointed by the Monarch.

From a Scottish perspective, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun favoured “nearer union with our neighbours of England”, but in terms of a federal union in which Scotland and England would retain their own Parliaments. He feared the loss of sovereignty an incorporating union would involve.

The Scottish Parliament passed a succession of Acts deemed contrary to English interests, notably the Act anent (concerning) Peace and War

Scottish opinion turned against union in the period after 1689, mainly because of the Glencoe massacre in 1692 and the failure of the Darien scheme, for both of which King William III was held partly responsible. The abolition of the Lords of Articles in 1690 – formerly a means of royal influence in Scotland – transferred substantial powers to the Scottish Parliament, newly elected in 1703, which began to act with new-found vigour and confidence, adopting a position of aggressive constitutional nationalism.

The Scottish Parliament passed a succession of Acts deemed contrary to English interests, notably the Act anent (concerning) Peace and War, which laid down that no successor to Queen Anne should declare a war involving Scotland without first consulting the Scottish Parliament; also the Act of Security, which asserted that the Scottish Parliament, twenty days after Anne’s death, should name as her successor a Protestant member of the House of Stuart.

To England, it seemed that the prospects of Union were slipping away.

With her forces now locked into the War of the Spanish Succession, and unable to risk the withdrawal of Scottish regiments from the north European theatre of war, plus rumours that arms from France were on their way to Scotland, London took the view that the unruly Scots had to be brought to heel and made to discuss the twin issues of the Hanoverian succession and the Union of Parliaments.

This resulted in the formidable economic bludgeon of the Alien Act of March 1705, which proposed that, unless progress had been made on the twin issues by Christmas – specifically that unless Scotland had accepted the Hanoverian succession by Christmas Day 1705 – all of Scotland’s exports to England, being linen, wool, coal, cattle & sheep, would be embargoed or banned, and all Scots would be declared and treated as aliens.

– Next week, Alex Mitchell presents Part 2 of this 3 part account.

Fairtrade Fortnight In Aberdeen

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Mar 012011

By Sue Good.

Monday 28th February marked the start of Fairtrade Fortnight and supporters all over the UK will be asked to show off their label, the Fairtrade Mark that is now carried by over 4000 products.
The label guarantees that farmers and growers in developing countries have received a fair price for their goods and for many of them, this makes a vital difference between living and simply existing.

The UK leads the way in Fairtrade and awareness about it is particularly high in Aberdeen. This is due in no small measure to the activities of the local organisation known as the Third World Centre, which has been in existence since 1983.

At the end of Fairtrade Fortnight, the retail part of this organisation, the Fair Trade Aberdeen shop in George Street, will close its doors. Since there are so many Fairtrade products being stocked by supermarkets and given the current recession and rise in rental prices, the shop is no longer commercially viable.

However, there may very well be other ways of continuing the Fair Trade business in the future and there is no suggestion that the organisation will disband. The education department, known as the Montgomery Centre, does an increasing amount of work within the whole of the education sector locally and nationally and the campaigning and administration that maintains Aberdeen’s status as a Fairtrade city is also co-ordinated by the organisation.

Local support for this work is increasingly vital. Fairtrade events have always been held during Fairtrade Fortnight and this year is no exception.

On Friday 4th and Tuesday 8th at the shop we will be inviting people to decorate a flag to add to the Fairtrade Foundation attempt at creating the world record length of Fairtrade cotton bunting. The finished product, with flags from all over the UK, will be presented to the World Trade Organisation’s next meeting in Geneva, encouraging them to consider more urgently the plight of cotton farmers in West Africa.

Please do come along and join us between 10am and 4pm on Friday 4th and Tuesday 8th March at Aberdeen’s Fair Trade Shop, 101 George Street.

For more information about Aberdeen Fairtrade, Click here.