The Amazing Life Of Bob Cooney Part 3: War, Work And Words

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Jun 242011
 

In this third and final part of Bob Cooney’s amazing biography, written by his nephew – Aberdeen City Councillor Neil Cooney – we learn that Bob having come home from fighting Fascism in Spain, returns to continental Europe to fight Fascism again as a gunner in the Second World War. We learn of his experiences in the war, changing attitudes towards Communism and his career as a folksinger.

Bob Cooney, George Fletcher and Peter Kerrigan
On his return from Spain, his mother wept at the sight of him.

He was so thin and emaciated. For more than a year after his return he still bore sores in his arms and legs.
He had served his apprenticeship as an amateur soldier. Now the professionals conscripted him.

Conscription to W.W.2

In September 1939, the Second World War began. Bob was there as a gunner from the beginning to the end. He was sickened by the poverty he encountered in conquered europe. His eyes filled as he told of young German mothers giving their bodies for an egg to feed their bairns.

We are all losers in war. Bob was to campaign vigorously within the peace movement, but he was never a pacifist. There are times when we have to stand up and fight for a just cause.

1945 brought victory and the heady triumph for Labour in the election. Churchill with his cold-war rhetoric was dumped by the pro-Beveridge stance of Atlee. Socialism was at the front of the agenda. Gunner Cooney was deprived of his chance to help in the shaping of it by party HQ. That chance never came again although he flew the flag in the safe Labour seat of North Aberdeen in 1950 and picked up a creditable 1,300 votes.

By now he had championed a new group of friends, the squatters.

Housing was a key issue in the 1945-50 era. There had been an already acute housing shortage by 1939; wartime bombing had aggravated that problem by 1945. Nye Bevan was given the Housing portfolio as well as the Health one. Although he brilliantly negotiated a minefield of problems to set up the National Health Service, he failed to reach his housing target of 200,000 new units per year.

Shortages of men and materials made the task very difficult. The Tory jibe was that Labour had only “half a Nye” on the problem.

The Communist tag was no longer an asset after the outbreak of the Korean War

The houses that did get built, including the very popular prefabs, were constructed to a good standard, but there simply were not enough of them for all the newlyweds and their post-war baby boom.  Ever-lengthening waiting lists rendered the future bleak for thousands of Aberdeen families.

A short-term practical answer lay in organising squats in empty properties such as the old camps at the Torry Battery and Tillydrone. Bob was once again organising.

He was now a family man himself, with a wife, Nan, and twin girls, Pat and Pam. He had to be earning; he joined the building trade and was soon involved in unionising the men. These activities eventually got him blacklisted from his beloved Aberdeen.  There were no vacancies when Bob came to call. He was elbowed out of the dignity of work.

It was a particularly difficult time for him. The Communist tag was no longer an asset after the outbreak of the Korean War.

Under American influence, Commies were everywhere depicted as enemies, fifth columnists undermining the democratic process. Even the comic books had replaced the square-headed Nazi enemy with the square-headed Commie enemy. Stalin’s death in 1953 was accompanied by a torrent of horror stories about purges and gulags.

Bob’s messianic message was no longer marketable.

Folk Celebrity

He spent twenty years in exile in Birmingham where he found work as an industrial crane operator. He lodged with Dave and Betty Campbell and their close-knit family. The Campbells were old comrades from Aberdeen days. He was adopted into their family and he shared their love of folk music.

Second generation Ian and Lorna became leading lights in the folk scene.  Ian’s sons, the third generation, went on to take the pop scene by storm by founding UB40, just as the third generation of the Socialist Lennox family of Aberdeen produced the great Annie Lennox of Eurhythmics and, later, solo fame. Music had been a popular Socialist activity in the Hungry Thirties.

The definitive Spanish Anthem, however, was written by Bob himself for the 27th anniversary reunion of the International Brigade

Then ambitious shows were presented. The rehearsals kept the young unemployed busy. Little Alfie Howie, an unemployed comb-maker, recalled dozens of rehearsals for a star turn choral enactment of the Volga Boatmen. On the night, the rope was long, the line descending in order of size and the song was over and the curtains closed before Alfie had even reached the narrow little stage.

Bob even wrote a complete musical for Unity Theatre, but it was never performed: Fascists and Spain got in the way.

Bob himself became a minor folk celebrity, performing traditional Northeast tunes such as the “Wee Toon Clerk” and “McGinty’s Meal And Ale”. He was also frequently requested to perform his own compositions such as “Foul Friday” and “Torry Belle” or Chartist or Wobbly songs of American labour or the Spanish anthems such as Alex McDade’s “Song of Jarama” sung to the tune of Red River Valley:

There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama
It’s a place that we all know so well
It is there that we gave of our manhood
And most of our brave comrades fell.

Alex himself died for the cause at Brunete in July 1938.

The definitive Spanish Anthem, however, was written by Bob himself for the 27th anniversary reunion of the International Brigade. He called it “Hasta La Vista, Madrid”.  It is a prose poem that he would deliver with gusto. He reckoned, with good reason, that it was the best thing he ever wrote.

Our century had to be cleansed
So we went to Spain
Where the defeat of Hitler started……

No freedom fight is ever lost
While folk can learn
Each human mind’s an outpost
And the frontiers of freedom expand

Conquering minds and hearts
Prelude to the conquest of cities and states
Till the world will be wholly free
Then Folk will strive for higher freedoms still.

Bob even appeared on vinyl as a singer with the “Singing Campbells”. He also worked with Hamish Henderson in the epic folk collection.

When he retired back home to Aberdeen in 1973 at the age of 65, he was “adopted” by the Aberdeen Folk Club. They honoured him by publishing in 1983 a selection of his songs and poems, “When of Heroes we sing”.

Bob Cooney
That little booklet sums up his philosophy of life and the causes he so fervently supported. He was now 75 and his health was rapidly failing. His active mind kept him awake; insomnia wore him down.

He spent his last months in Kingseat Hospital, still humming his tunes and composing poems in his head.

He died in August 1984 aged 78.

He gave so much and seemed to get so little in return, yet he was happy in comradeship and lived a full life. Bob could be very shy in company until he got to know you, and then he could be quite gregarious. He could tell you jokes you had heard many times before, but he added his own little bits to milk the story for a few more hilarious minutes.

He wanted a world full of laughter; he challenged a life full of injustice. He won his fair share of battles and never shirked a challenge. The cause was always more important than personal comfort. It was a life of sacrifice in a huge effort to improve conditions for his fellow men. He didn’t always win but he did inspire others to take up the cause.

He had a rich life worth celebrating, and it duly was celebrated in the Lemon Tree with a folk night featuring Dick Gaughan. The Trades Council also organised a celebration of the International Brigadiers in November 1989. His name lives on in the Housing Association development at Berryden: not bad for a squatter and a born rebel.

Footnote:

Aberdeen Voice wishes to thank Cllr Neil Cooney once again for permission to publish this inspiring story of a fellow Aberdonian to whom we owe an infinitely greater measure of gratitude.

 

The Amazing Life Of Bob Cooney Part 2 – Fighting Fascism

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Jun 182011
 

In a time before widespread international travel, Bob Cooney would journey across continents to realise the depths of his beliefs. He would find himself at the sharp end of unfolding events that would prove to be of considerable historical significance. In the second part of the trilogy written by Bob’s nephew – Aberdeen City Councillor Neil Cooney – we learn how Bob would selflessly bring his talents and convictions to bear to oppose fascism, both at home and in Spain, and with increasing vigour, passion and heroism – to say nothing of intense mortal danger.

'Anti Fascist Greetings' - Bob Cooney.
Bob missed most of the 1931 crisis because his life had entered a new phase. In 1930, he packed in his job as a pawnbroker’s clerk in order to devote himself full time to politics.

It was a brave decision, his new job carried no wages but it did give him an opportunity for further education.

He spent thirteen months during 1931-32 in Russia, studying by day in the Lenin Institute, working by night in a rubber factory.

There he picked up an industrial throat infection and spent some time in a sanatorium. It left him with huskiness in his voice that became part of his oratory. Times were tough in Russia but good in comparative terms with the destitution of the Tsarist era.

Bob found a thirst for knowledge that was infectious throughout Russian society. Even grannies were going back to classes to learn the skills to make their country prosperous. There was even time for a glorious holiday down the Volga. It charged up his batteries for the tasks ahead. He was not short of work when he returned in 1932.

There was a lot of heavy campaigning to do, to mobilise the unemployed and to organise the hunger marches. He travelled from Aberdeen to Glasgow and Edinburgh speaking at open-air meetings to campaign against unemployment, to rally public opinion against the iniquitous Means Test, which robbed the poorest of their Dole as well as their dignity.

Fascists in Aberdeen

Out of the turmoil of the Depression came the strange phenomenon of the British Union of Fascists. Oswald Mosely, its creator, had served in both the Tory and Labour camps before forming his Blackshirts. He was copying the style of Mussolini and was both influenced and funded by Hitler. His area Gauleiter for the North was William Chambers Hunter, a minor laird by inheritance.

He had started off life as plain Willie Jopp but now he had pretensions of power. Aberdeen was targeted as his power base and he recruited and hired thugs from afar afield as London to help him take over the city.

Bob and the others decided to stop him.

There were pitched battles, arrests, fines and imprisonment, but they succeeded. Fascism was not allowed to take root in Aberdeen. Those who deny the free speech of others did not deserve free speech themselves.

Aberdeen has a tradition of fairness. No trumped up laird was going to destroy it. Bob emerged out of these pitched battles as a working class hero. He displayed his undoubted courage as well as his often under-rated organisational skills. It wasn’t enough to stand up to the Fascists, you had to out-think them and outnumber them and run them out of town.

The first Fascist rally organised for the Music Hall, to be addressed by Raven Thomson, Mosely’s Deputy, had to be cancelled half an hour before it was due to start.

The Fascists eyed the Market stance as a key venue. It had become a working class stronghold. The key battle was to take place there.

Chambers Hunter pencilled in the evening of Sunday 16 July 1937 for his big rally. The workers would be caught out on a Sunday in the height of the holiday season. He miscalculated. The grapevine was finely tuned; and Bob addressed a crowd of 2,000 at the Links at 11a.m. They vowed to gather at the Castlegate in the evening. The Fascists duly arrived with their armour-plated van and their police escort, their amplifiers and their heavies.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy gave immense aid to the Spanish Fascists

As Chambers Hunter clambered to the roof of the van, the workers surged forward, cut the cables and chased the Fascists for their lives. The Castlegate was cleared by 8 p.m. Bob was one of many arrested, and served four days for his efforts.

A young Ian Campbell, later of folk music fame, remembers sitting on his father’s shoulders watching Bob being carried shoulder high on his release from prison. He also remembers how the crowd went silent as Bob addressed them. It was Bob’s last speech in Aberdeen for a long time because within hours he was on his way to Spain.

In Spain in 1936, the army revolt triggered the Nationalist Right-wing attack on the democratically elected Republican government. Despite the terms of its Covenant, the League of Nations opted for a policy of  “Non-Intervention”. Eden and Chamberlain were quick to agree, even though such a policy guaranteed a Franco victory.

It provided a precedent for our later inaction in Austria in the spring of 1938 and Czechoslovakia both in the autumn of 1938 and in the spring of 1939. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy gave immense aid to the Spanish Fascists. Stalin’s Russia gave much more limited aid to the Republicans. International Brigades of volunteers were also formed to aid the Republic.

The Go-Ahead for Spain

‘And if we live to be a hundred
We’ll have this to be glad about
We went to Spain!
Became the great yesterday
We are part of the great tomorrow
HASTA LA VISTA – MADRID!’

– Bob Cooney

 

Bob had pleaded for months to go to Spain but the Communist Party kept stalling him, saying he was too valuable at home in the struggle against the Blackshirts.

In the spring of 1937, he set off from Aberdeen but was again stopped by party HQ. It wasn’t until the Castlegate victory that he eventually got the go-ahead from Harry Pollitt, the party’s General Secretary. Bob had argued that he felt hypocritical rallying support for the Spanish people and urging young men and women to go off to Spain to help the cause, and yet do nothing himself. Thoughts of Spain filled every moment of every day – the desire to fight for Spain burned within him. He later reflected that participation in Spain justified his existence on this earth. Spain was the front line again Fascism. It was his duty as a fighter to be there.

Bob was 28 when he left for Spain, getting there via a tortuous route; a tourist ticket to Paris, followed by a bus to Perpignan and then a long trek across the Pyrenees to Barcelona and beyond. He got five weeks basic training at Tarragona, a small town close to the modern resort of Salou.

Bob Cooney, George Fletcher and Peter Kerrigan
There he was given his ill-fitting khaki uniform, strong boots, a Soviet rifle and a food bowl. He was appointed Commissar (motivator) of the training group. He was offered officer’s training but refused. He had promised Harry Pollitt that he was there to fight, not to pick up stripes.
Bob eventually was promoted to the position of Commissar of the XV (British) Brigade. The Brigades were integrated with local Spaniards. Bob, to lead them, had to learn their language. They soon caught on to his wry sense of humour.

His first action was at Belchite, south of the Ebro. He always said he was afraid to be afraid. He told his men never to show fear, they weren’t conscripts, they were comrades and they would look after each other. He had to prevent their bravery descending into bravado. There were some who vowed never to hide from the Fascists and to fight in open country. This would have been suicidal and such romantic notions had to be curbed.

Bob served in two major campaigns. The first was at Teruel, between Valencia and Madrid. The Brigade was drafted in to hold the line there in January 1938. Paul Robeson, the great singer, dropped in to greet them there: Robeson was heavily involved in fund-raising for the Spanish cause. The XV Brigade held their line for seven weeks before Franco’s forces complete with massive aerial power and a huge artillery bombardment forced them back.

Conditions were hard, supply lines were tenuous and the food supply was awful. Half a slice of bread a day was a common ration. His next great battle was along the Ebro from July to October 1938.

On a return sortie to Belchite, organising a controlled retreat through enemy lines, he was captured along with Jim Harkins of Clydebank. Another group on the retreat distracted their captors and Bob and Jim fled for cover. Sadly, Jim later died at the Ebro.

Just over 2,400 joined the Brigades from Britain, 526 were killed, and almost 1,000 were wounded. Of the 476 Scots who took part, 19 came from Aberdeen. The Spanish Civil War claimed the lives of five Aberdonians, Tom Davidson died at Gandesa in April 1937 and the other four at the Ebro. Archie Dewar died in March 1938, Ken Morrice in July 1938, Charles MacLeod in August 1938 and finally Ernie Sim in the last great battle in September 1938.

The final parade of the Brigade was through Barcelona on October 29th. They were addressed by the charismatic Dolores Ibarruri who had been elected Communist MP for the northern mining region of the Asturias: she was affectionately known as La Pasionara. She told them:

“you can go proudly. You are legend. We shall not forget you”.

It had taken the combined cream of the professional forces of Germany, Italy and Spain almost three years to beat them. They had every right to be proud. Barcelona fell to Franco late in January 1939, Madrid falling two months later.

Dont miss the third and final part of Neil Cooney’s account of his Uncle Bob Cooney’s amazing story – when we learn that  Bob Cooney has barely time to reflect on the events relating to the Spanish Civil War before joining the fight against Hitler and the Nazis.

The Amazing Life Of Bob Cooney – Part 1

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Jun 112011
 

Neil Cooney, Aberdeen City Councillor for Kincorth/Loirston, shares his Uncle’s life story with Voice readers.  Bob Cooney grew up all too familiar with loss and hardship during that period when the concept of Socialism was also growing up.  The saying goes, ‘Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.’  In the present day, Bob’s situation in the late 1920s has a powerful echo today:

“The traditional Treasury answer was that the problems would eventually sort themselves out; we simply had to weather the storm. In the meantime budgets had to balance and we had to save our way out of the crisis. This meant cuts in spending, cuts in benefits and cuts in public sector salaries”.

And so the story – in three parts – begins.

Bob Cooney

Bob Cooney was born in Sunderland in 1908, the seventh child of an ambitious Aberdeen family. His father, a cooper, had moved around the country chasing promotion. Less than two years previously the sixth child, George (Dod) had been born in Edinburgh.

Father was a fit man, an athlete, a champion swimmer, winner of the exhausting Dee to Don Swim, a water-polo player of some note, and good enough on the bowling green to win the Ushers Vaux Trophy in 1903.

It therefore came as a total shock when months later he died suddenly of pneumonia contracted on the way home from a funeral in Aberdeen.

His widow Jane had just turned 37; she was left with seven children, none of whom were of an age to earn. It was at a time when welfare was only beginning to be debated: it was still a case of all words and no action. The right of the governing Liberal Party and the Tory dominated House of Lords both shared the view that welfare would destroy the moral fibre.

She had little hope but take her brood back to Aberdeen where at least the support of relatives could tide her over the next few difficult weeks. They came by boat from Newcastle. Rooms had been found for them in Links Place: there they were soon to be burgled of what little they possessed. The children were enrolled at St Andrews Episcopal School. Jane got a job cleaning HM Theatre, with extra evening work as a dresser for the big shows. She was fiercely independent and ruled her brood with a rod of iron. Times were tough and she had to be tough to survive. Bob and Dod, in particular, often tasted the back end of the hairbrush.

In time, the family moved first to Northfield Place, then to Rosemount Viaduct where Jane, although very frail but would not admit it, was employed as a caretaker of the five blocks of flats. This entailed a lot of scrubbing and polishing, helped by the children as they grew up. The family stayed in Rosemount Viaduct until the 1950s when medical needs provided them with a move to Manor Drive; by then her daughter Minnie was virtually immobile.

Schooling at St Andrews Episcopal was fairly basic, but the children gained the necessary skills of literacy and numeracy to fit them for future life. Bob and Dod were both clever enough to reach the top of the class at eleven: there they remained until they left school at 14. The boys cleaned the school before and after classes. Each of them also served in the choir, as reluctant volunteers.

Bob took over Dod’s Watt and Milne job at the age of twelve, fitting it in before and after school

They were not alone in their poverty. One fellow pupil was tempted to steal a sausage from a Justice Street butcher’s display. Unfortunately, for him, it was but the end of a huge link of sausages: he was quickly caught and brought to justice – some six lusty strokes of the birch: he bore the scars for the rest of his life.

A young girl classmate remained barefoot even in the height of winter. A teacher bought her sturdy boots, which were later thrown at her by an angry father who declared that if his daughter needed boots, then he would provide them. Schooling was never boring. Bob, being younger, was let out of school before Dod, but had to wait for him to escort him home. Bob even in his youngest days was adventurous enough to prove his own capacity to see himself home: his early homecoming was enough to get them both a hiding.

The children were all given a trade. Matthew never qualified: he died in his teens. Young Jean went into service before training as a nurse: she provided the younger children with the tender loving care that her mother was unable to do. She never married, neither did Minnie who became a seamstress and spent much of her life cruelly crippled.

Tom was a carpenter; he was to die very young, leaving a young family. Sandy was a French polisher in the shipyards, he remained a bachelor, he spent his weekends cycling and hostelling, and he loved books and music and was an expert in Esperanto.

Dod spent a few months as an errand boy for Watt and Milne before becoming an apprentice watchmaker with Gill’s of Bridge Street before moving on to the Northern Coop, where he worked until he retired.

Bob took over Dod’s Watt and Milne job at the age of twelve, fitting it in before and after school. His early morning job consisted of cleaning the plush carpets, usually on his hands and knees; after school he was the delivery boy carrying hatboxes to the West End. On leaving school, Bob was apprenticed to a pawnbroker.

He never believed that the ruling class would give in to mere arguments

The pawnshop was an alternative to debt. It provided the coppers required to see you through the week. Men’s suits would go in on a Monday morning and be redeemed on Saturday morning, still in the neat brown paper parcel.

If the suit was needed through the week for a funeral, then the neat parcel was filled with old newspapers. Bob allowed himself to be easily deceived. He had many a laugh with the customers but he hated the pawnshop system.

Poverty was beginning to anger him. He was listening to the debates at the Castlegate; it was his finishing school. He became a Socialist, and then he took the next step by becoming a Communist. He never believed that the ruling class would give in to mere arguments. It needed a revolution and that required the active participation of the people.

Stubborn, Strong and Single Minded

Bob became a speaker out of necessity – there was no one else around to do the job. He became a speaker in his teens, honing his technique over the years. His mother didn’t like his political involvement, and firmly drew the line at his ambitions as a speaker. He had to stop or get out of her home – he got out for a while to escape the unbearable tension. His antics, as she saw them, were taking away from her the respectability that she had earned the hard way. She had already followed his route through the streets, scrubbing the slogans he had chalked on the pavements. How could he let her down like this?

In many ways, Bob took after his mother. Both could be stubborn, strong and single-minded. Both set themselves very high standards. Jane was perplexed that Bob had gone down the route that Sandy and Dod had already chosen. Dod was receiving letters from the House of Commons, and although she managed to intercept some by following the postie, much to her horror she discovered his dark secret.

She worried that if her employers found out, she could lose her job and become homeless.

The TUC leadership lost touch with the rank and file. It was a huge disappointment to the Aberdeen Socialists

Why, after the hard years of struggle to bring them up, did they disgrace her in this way?

The girls were good church-going Christians, but the boys were meddling in Left-wing politics. She was black affronted.

She was also scared: political tempers were running high in 1926, the year of the General Strike and Churchill’s “British Gazette” was deliberately playing the Red Menace card. “Reds under the beds?” she seemed to have a house full of them.

The General Strike was a let-down to the idealists of the Left. They felt that they had the potential for power — until the TUC chickened out and called off the strike. It drove a wedge between the Far Left and the Left; it was a defining moment that the broad kirk split apart.

Old comrades now put up candidates against each other. The TUC leadership lost touch with the rank and file. It was a huge disappointment to the Aberdeen Socialists who had completely controlled the city. Nothing moved without a permit or without the strikebreaking students being stopped. Aberdeen even produced its own strike newspaper. The Tory government controlled the national media with Churchill thundering about the ‘red menace’ in the “British Gazette”, and a procession of Cabinet ministers hogging the microphones of the BBC.

After the Strike collapsed, the jubilant Tories extracted every ounce of revenge. New anti-Trade Union legislation was rushed through. The Unions were to be further weakened by the Depression.

Unemployment had been high since the Great War; our heavy industries suffered badly from foreign competition. We couldn’t compete with the price of Polish coal, our factories were screaming for re-investment.  Even British companies chasing bargains abroad bypassed our shipyards. Chancellor Churchill’s 1925 decision to go back to the Gold Standard was a mistake of the highest order, making our exports far too expensive.

This meant cuts in spending, cuts in benefits and cuts in public sector salaries

The killer blow came with the shockwaves of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Unemployment soared and the Insurance Scheme could no longer self-finance. The traditional Treasury answer was that the problems would eventually sort themselves out; we simply had to weather the storm.

In the meantime budgets had to balance and we had to save our way out of the crisis. This meant cuts in spending, cuts in benefits and cuts in public sector salaries.

In 1931, the Labour Cabinet split over a proposed cuts package and resigned, leaving the renegade Ramsay MacDonald (“Ramshackle Mac”) to hold on to power by forging an alliance with Baldwin’s Tories in the National Government. Bob slated Labour for abandoning the poor. The Communist candidate in Aberdeen North in 1931, Helen Crawford, gave Wedgewood Benn a torrid time in the ensuing election campaign that saw the largely anonymous Conservative Councillor Burnett of Powis romp home in Aberdeen North, a seat that had been a Labour stronghold for the last five elections.

The National Government produced a vicious cuts package that provoked a wave of anger that culminated in a rather polite naval mutiny at the Invergordon base. Among the 12,000 mutiny participants were Sam Wilde and Bill Johnstone, who later served with valour in Spain. The mutiny triggered a run on the banks and forced the Government, in panic, to come off the Gold Standard and devalue. It was the best piece of economic management that they ever produced.

Next week in Aberdeen Voice, Cllr. Neil Cooney  continues his account of Bob Cooney’s amazing and inspirational life. In part 2 we learn of Bob’s political education, encounters with Mosely’s Blackshirts, and the Spanish Civil War.

 

The Bruce’s And The Comyns – Part 3

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, History, Information  No Responses »
May 262011
 

Voice presents the final part of Alex Mitchell’s worthy and informative account of Robert the Bruce’s life and legacy, outlining how Scotland’s noble families gained or lost as a result of King Robert’s rule.

brucepicBefore the Wars of Independence, there were thirteen earldoms in Scotland. This number remained unchanged at the time of King Robert’s death in 1329.

He recreated the earldom of Moray in 1312, but he destroyed the earldom of Buchan. John Comyn, the last Earl of Buchan and Constable of Scotland, died childless in 1308; his only heirs were his brother’s two daughters.

He had been an irreconcilable enemy of the Bruce.

The ancient earldom of Buchan was chopped to pieces. Half of it went to Margaret Comyn, one of Earl John’s nieces, and therefore to her husband John, the Earl of Ross. The other half escheated to the Crown because Earl John’s other niece, Alice, had married Sir Henry Beaumont and had become irretrievably English. Many of the leading Comyns had been killed at Bannockburn; others fled to England. Those Comyns remaining in Scotland became merely one clan amongst many, often engaged in ferocious and destructive conflict with their neighbours.

The forfeiture to the Crown of this latter half of the former earldom of Buchan, of lands hitherto belonging to John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and John Comyn, Earl of Badenoch, enabled King Robert to give away large tracts of land in reward to faithful followers, mainly Anglo-Norman and Saxon families from the Borders and Lothians – the Gordons, Keiths, Hays, Leslies, Frasers, Burnetts, Johnstons and Irvines.

The largest share went to the Keiths, Sir Robert Keith the Marischal and his brother (and heir) Edward, in the form of Aden and many other estates in the heart of Buchan, and at Methlick, Monquhitter, New Deer, Ellon, Longside and Foveran.

This had the effect of moving the main centre of that family’s interests from East Lothian to the north-east of Scotland. Sir Gilbert Hay of Erroll was granted the lands and castle of Slains, and was made the Hereditary Great Constable of Scotland. The office of Constable has been held by the Hays of Erroll ever since.

Sir Robert Boyd of Noddsdale in Cunningham received grants of land enabling the Boyds to become major landowners in Kilmarnock and the south-west of Scotland. Archibald Douglas got Crimond and Rattray. None of these men were mere upstarts or adventurers, but they all gained from the Comyns’ losses.

King Robert did not pursue any kind of murderous vendetta against the kinsfolk of the Red Comyn and the Earl of Buchan. Families of this name occupied a respectable, but never again dominant place in the north of Scotland of the later Middle Ages. A considerable body of those Comyns who remained in Scotland changed their name to Farquharson; elsewhere, the name became Cumming, or Buchan.

King Robert rewarded only a few men with really large grants of land and power, and they were almost all his own close relatives

In the same manner, the Strathbogie estates of Earl David of Atholl were granted to the prominent Berwickshire magnate Sir Adam Gordon, commencing the dynasty of the Gordons of Huntly. In 1449, Sir Alexander Gordon was created 1st Earl of Huntly by King James II. In 1452, King James similarly elevated Sir William Hay to the rank of 1st Earl of Erroll; then, in 1457, King James raised Sir William Keith to the rank of 1st Earl Marischal.

These three families – the Gordons, the Hays and the Keiths, with their respective strongholds at Huntly, Slains and Dunnottar – dominated the subsequent history of Buchan and Aberdeenshire, the Garioch and the Mearns. In 1599, George Gordon, the 6th Earl of Huntly, was created Marquis of Huntly by King James VI. The 4th Marquis was made Duke of Gordon in 1684, but the 5th Duke died without issue in 1836, and the title of Duke of Gordon became extinct.

King Robert I’s sole innovation in terms of earldoms was his creation, in 1312, of an earldom of Moray in favour of Thomas Randolph. The earldom of Moray consisted of lands the Crown had held in Moray since the time of King David I (1084-1153), including the Red Comyn’s lordships of Badenoch and Lochaber.

This was more or less equivalent to the lands and rights of the old mormaers – the Celtic earls – of Moray, the last of whom was MacBeth, born 1005 and who, in 1040, killed and succeeded King Duncan I. MacBeth was a powerful and effective king, the last Celtic king of Scotland, until his defeat by Malcolm III (Canmore) at Dunsinane in 1054, and his subsequent death at Lumphanan in 1057.

King Robert rewarded only a few men with really large grants of land and power, and they were almost all his own close relatives. The most favoured were the Stewarts, to whose heir, Walter, King Robert gave in marriage his daughter Marjorie, his only legitimate child, in 1315.

The royal house of Stewart (or Stuart) was thus the creation of Robert Bruce. The Stewarts, long-standing close friends and supporters of the Bruces, became the greatest landowners in Scotland in the 14th century, much as the Comyns had been in the 13th century.

Robert Bruce’s first marriage, to Isabel, the daughter of Donald, the Earl of Mar, is thought to have lasted about six years. Marjorie was their only child, and was 21 or 22 when she died in childbirth in 1317, following a fall from her horse.

Edward Balliol was crowned at Scone in 1333 before being chased back to England.

The infant survived and was named Robert Stewart. Bruce’s second marriage, to Elizabeth de Burgh in 1302, was marred by eight years of enforced separation when she was a prisoner of the English, but they had four children, of whom David, born 5 March 1324, became Bruce’s sole surviving male heir.

Robert Bruce died at his house in Cardross, just across the Firth of Clyde from Dumbarton, on 5 June 1329. He was still only 55, but had been seriously ill for at least two years, almost certainly a victim of leprosy.

King Robert was succeeded by his young son David. The effect of this was that, by the 1330s, the giant figures of Robert Bruce, James Douglas and Thomas Randolph had all departed the scene, and the Throne of Scotland was now occupied by a child of five. This was of obvious advantage to King Edward III of England, and to enemies of the Bruce dynasty – those disinherited of offices and lands by King Robert I, among them Edward Balliol, son of King John.

Edward Balliol regarded himself, with some reason, as the rightful King of Scotland, and was a more assertive individual than his father. An invasion was staged in 1332 and a puppet regime was set up under the support of Edward III of England. Edward Balliol was crowned at Scone in 1333 before being chased back to England.

Bruce’s son, David, returned to claim his kingdom in 1341, aged seventeen. As King David II, he staged a series of raids into England, and was captured at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, near Durham. He remained a prisoner until 1357, when the Scots agreed to pay an enormous ransom for him.

David II has traditionally been regarded as a worthless and incompetent ruler. He died suddenly in 1371, leaving no direct heir.

The Scottish throne passed to David II’s nephew Robert, the son of Robert Bruce’s daughter Marjorie, who became the first Stewart king of Scotland, as King Robert II. He was already aged 56 and in poor health, and showed little flair for kingship. He had fathered 21 children of varying legitimacy, including Alexander Stewart, the infamous “Wolf of Badenoch”.

On his death in 1390 the throne passed to his eldest son, John, who adopted the name King Robert III. Despite being the great-grandson of Robert Bruce, he was neither intellectually nor physically equipped to rule an increasingly lawless and disordered country like Scotland.

By 1399, most of his authority had  transferred to his younger brother, the Duke of Albany, and his eldest son, the Duke of Rothesay – the former an ambitious schemer, the latter a licentious profligate. In 1402, Rothesay starved to death whilst held prisoner in Falkland Palace by his uncle Albany.

Early in 1406, King Robert III sent his younger son James, aged twelve, to safety in France. Prince James was captured by pirates and handed over to King Henry IV of England, who kept him prisoner in the Tower of London for 18 years. King Robert III, describing himself as “the worst of kings and the most miserable of men”, died, possibly of a broken heart, in April 1406.

The Duke of Albany became Regent until his death, aged 83, in 1420. He had been effectively in charge of Scotland for some fifty years, on and off. Albany was succeeded as Regent by his incompetent son, Murdoch, until 1424, when, by popular demand – and on payment of a huge ransom of £40,000 – the now thirty year-old Prince James was allowed by King Henry V of England to return to Scotland to be crowned as King James I.

He was the first of the Stewart kings, descendants of the legendary Robert Bruce, really to amount to anything.

 

The Bruces And The Comyns – Part 2

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May 202011
 

To coincide with the unveiling of the Robert The Bruce statue at Marischal College, Voice’s Alex Mitchell presents the second of a three part account of King Robert’s life, his impact on historical events, and the role of powerful rival family the Comyns.

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Given that England was a larger, richer, more technologically-advanced and much more populous nation than Scotland, it was inevitable that continued warfare between England and Scotland would, in the long term, result in victory for England, if only by a process of attrition – loss of fighting men.

The Scots might win the occasional battle, as at Stirling Bridge, but the English – even under a king less ruthless and determined than Edward I – would eventually win the war. Scotland could survive as an independent nation-state only by arriving at a modus vivendi with England.

Wallace’s famous victory at Stirling Bridge was followed, less than a year later, by utter defeat at the Battle of Falkirk on 22 July 1298. After a further period of unsuccessful guerrilla warfare, Wallace resigned the Guardianship. He was never again in command of a large body of troops.

John (the Red) Comyn of Badenoch and Robert Bruce were made joint Guardians. They were also the leading Competitors for the Scottish throne. John Comyn’s mother was Marjory, sister of King John Balliol; the Comyn had an immediate claim to the Scottish throne should anything happen to Balliol’s sons, Edward and Henry, who were both minors and captives of the English. John Comyn’s claim to the throne was, in fact, slightly stronger than that of Bruce. There was a violent altercation between Comyn and Bruce in Selkirk Forest in 1299, during which Comyn came close to killing Bruce.

King Edward invaded Scotland again in 1300, 1301 and 1303; he entered Aberdeen in late August 1303. He captured Stirling Castle, the last fortress to hold out against him, in the summer of 1304. But Edward was by political and economic necessity a compromiser, preoccupied by his campaigns in France. He could not afford the huge expense in terms of manpower, money and materials required to subjugate Scotland as he had crushed Wales. So Edward had little choice but to enter into bonds and alliances with his former enemies in Scotland, the Bruces and the Comyns.

Robert Bruce had resigned the post of joint Guardian, and made his peace with King Edward.   In 1302, he married Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster, one of Edward’s closest allies. Other Scottish nobles, including allies of the Comyns, and eventually, by 1304, the Comyns themselves, decided to accept the reality of the situation and similarly elected to make their peace with King Edward.

William Wallace was captured by the English, and was hung, drawn and quartered at Smithfield in London in 1305. The same traitor’s death had been inflicted a few years earlier on the Welsh leader, Dafydd ap Gruffudd. Neither he nor Wallace were traitors in any meaningful sense, never having sworn allegiance to King Edward.

Bruce was now an outlaw. He and his supporters seized as many English-held castles as they could.

The issue as to who should be King of Scotland remained unresolved. Robert Bruce offered the Comyns all the Bruce estates if they would support his claim to the throne. Bruce and the Red Comyn met at the Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries on 10 February 1306.

In the course of an argument – Comyn seems to have neither approved nor supported Bruce’s plan – Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed Comyn in the throat. Bruce’s two brothers attacked Comyn with their swords and then killed his elderly uncle, Sir Robert Comyn. Bruce had not merely murdered the head of the Comyn family, but had done so in a consecrated place – an act of sacrilege, which might, at least, suggest that the crime was not pre-meditated.

Bruce was now an outlaw. He and his supporters seized as many English-held castles as they could. John Balliol’s kinsmen and supporters fled south. King Edward persuaded the Pope to excommunicate Bruce from the Church.

Bruce was enthroned at Scone the following month, on 25 March 1306 – the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of war between King Edward I and the Scots. The new King Robert I was crowned by Isabel, the young Countess of Buchan, who stood in for her 16-year old nephew Duncan, Earl of Fife, who held the hereditary right to crown the Kings of Scotland, but who was completely in the power of King Edward of England.

Isabel’s participation in this makeshift ceremony contradicted the interests of her husband, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan.   She was captured by the English not long afterwards, and was imprisoned in a wooden cage fixed high up on Berwick Castle. She was moved to a less harsh confinement after four years, but there is no evidence that she was ever set free.

With their enemy Robert Bruce now crowned King, the Comyns and their allies – men whose patriotic credentials and record of public service were far more impressive than those of Bruce himself – took the view that they had little choice but to side with King Edward of England. This was to be the downfall of the Comyns.

Atrocities were committed, not by the English, but by Scots against their fellow Scots

Even leaving aside Bruce’s obvious skills as a soldier and political strategist, most ordinary folk were bound to identify themselves with a new and successful King of Scots rather than a discredited Balliol/Comyn faction, inevitably tainted by the perceived failures of the exiled King John and, moreover, aligned with the hated Edward of England.

Scotland was plunged into a civil war between the Balliol/Comyn faction and the Bruces and their supporters. Robert Bruce himself was a hunted man, on the run for over a year, during which two of his brothers were killed. But the once-terrifying Edward I was now 68 years old and mortally ill; he died on his way to Scotland on 7 July 1307. His son and heir, Edward II, was not, to put it mildly, the man his father had been.

Bruce came out of hiding. Aided by his chief lieutenant, Sir James (the Black) Douglas, Bruce won a series of victories against the Balliol/Comyn elements of the Scottish nobility. The clans rallied to his side. He defeated the Comyns, under the leadership of John Comyn, the Earl of Buchan, at Old Meldrum (Inverurie) in May 1308. John Comyn fled to England, whilst Bruce, who was seriously ill, holed up in Aberdeen.

His brother, Sir Edward Bruce, chased the remnant of Comyn’s men into deepest Buchan, where they were again defeated at Aikey Brae, near Old Deer. There followed the Herschip (Harrying) of Buchan, undertaken with the sole objective of the destruction of the Comyn power base in the north-east of Scotland.   Atrocities were committed, not by the English, but by Scots against their fellow Scots. Bruce had his men burn the Comyn earldom of Buchan from end to end, until the whole of the north-east swore allegiance to him.

In 1310, Bruce commenced a series of devastating raids into northern England. In 1311,  his troops drove the English garrisons out of all their remaining Scottish strongholds and castles, except Stirling, and he invaded northern England.

King Robert certainly showed considerable gratitude and affection towards Aberdeen and its people

King Edward II finally led a huge army into Scotland in 1314.

Bruce achieved a decisive defeat of the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, near Stirling, on 23-24 June 1314, during which the murdered Red Comyn’s only son and heir was himself killed whilst fighting on the English side.

In 1315, Bruce’s brother Edward invaded the English colony in Ireland and threatened Wales. But it was not until 1328, after the horrific murder of Edward II, that the regents of the young King Edward III finally offered the terms of peace resulting in the Treaty of Northampton-Edinburgh, which recognised Scotland as an independent kingdom and Robert Bruce as its king. By this time, Bruce himself was worn-out and ill. He died in 1329, aged 55 years.

History tends to be written by the victors. John Balliol’s “weakness” was exaggerated by the Bruces and their supporters, so as to justify their own actions. The Comyns were reviled as traitors, for having fought with the English at Bannockburn, but both the Comyns and the Bruces fought on different sides at different times. Both families put their own interests first, and acted accordingly.

Legend has it that the citizens of Aberdeen, who seem to have supported Bruce from the start, attacked the English garrison in the Castle in 1309, and put them to the sword. There is no particular evidence of this – in particular, the historian John Barbour (1320-95) makes no mention of it in his epic poem de Brus of 1375 – but King Robert certainly showed considerable gratitude and affection towards Aberdeen and its people, and spent a disproportionate amount of his time in Aberdeen.

In this he was following the example of previous Kings of Scotland, pre-occupied by the threat from the Vikings in the north. Their power was broken by King Alexander III at the Battle of Largs in 1263 but, even after that, the lowland towns remained under constant threat of incursion and pillage by the Celtic Highlanders. In response, the Scottish kings had built up a defensive framework of castles centred on the great fortress of Kildrummy Castle.

For the first time since the 11th century, the nobility had to decide whether they were to be Scottish or English – they could no longer be both

King Robert lavished gifts and privileges on Aberdeen. The Aberdonians had been amongst the first to rise in defence of the freedom of Scotland; they had been almost his only friends in time of dire trouble.

The Burgh had offered him a refuge when he was ill. He and his son David and their whole family regarded Aberdeen as their own town.

King Robert’s grants and favours to Aberdeen far exceeded in both number and value those he made to other, notionally more important towns, like Edinburgh and Perth. He granted Aberdeen the first of six Royal Charters in 1314, which established the city as a Royal Burgh.

The Burgh was granted the office of Keeper of the Royal Forest of Stocket, which became the basis of the Common Good Fund. In 1319, King Robert amplified his grant into a Great Charter. He bestowed on the burgesses and community of Aberdeen the ownership of the Burgh itself and of the Stocket Forest, in return for an annual payment of £213 6s 8d (Scots).

The lands, mills, river fishings, small customs, tolls, courts and weights and measures were theirs. They could build and develop within the boundaries of the forest – the Freedom Lands, as they came to be known; only the game, the growing of timber and the right of hunting were reserved for the King.

The revenues arising from this bequest gave the Burgh an assured annual income, the basis for real progress and improvement. In 1320, the Brig o’ Balgownie was built across the River Don, funded either at the King’s instigation, or by the King himself.   The Brig may have been built to ease the movement of armies northwards, but it greatly facilitated trade with the country north of the River Don, with Buchan, Formartine and the Garioch.

Throughout his reign, King Robert I adhered to the principle that there should be no disinheritance of men (and women) claiming property by hereditary right, provided they were prepared to swear allegiance to him. They could no longer own land in England as well as in Scotland. For the first time since the 11th century, the nobility had to decide whether they were to be Scottish or English – they could no longer be both.

The “disinherited” whom King Robert chose to exclude from the peace terms in 1328 were those who wanted to have it both ways – to enjoy their Scottish lands and yet be subjects of the English king, or vice-versa. To generalise, King Robert imposed forfeiture of Scottish land and estates only on non-Scots who declined to become his subjects, and on those Scotsmen, like the Comyns, who remained to be his irreconcilable enemies.

Alex’s account will conclude in next week’s Voice

 

Book Launch – Scottish Novels Of The Second World War

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May 192011
 

Scottish Novels of the Second World War – by Isobel Murray

For individuals (OK, OK, generally men) of a certain age, the Second World War holds an enduring fascination. For the Voice’s David Innes, this certainly rings true and when there’s a book written and launched on the effect of the War on one of his other passions, Scottish literature, he’s among the first in the ticket queue.

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Aberdeen University’s WORD festival has previously offered strong attractions, but I’ve either been too busy or too slothful to organise attendance at its impressively-wide range of events in the past. Not so for the launch of Isobel Murray’s latest book, Scottish Novels of the Second World War. Scottish fiction AND that conflict? My attendance was guaranteed, even at 11am on a Sunday.

The University’s Multimedia Room was sold out as historians and fiction aficionados mixed to hear what insights the author had to offer in this hitherto little-explored area.

Familiar names – Naomi Mitchison, Robin Jenkins, Eric Linklater, Jessie Kesson and Compton MacKenzie – were discussed alongside lesser literary lights who had written about the War. Fred Urquhart and Stuart Hood, for example, were new literary names to almost all audience members. For some authors their writing was autobiographical, for others almost wholly fictional, several written in real time during the conflict but others more modern, with experience and emotion allowed to mature and distil before crafting and publication.

The one criterion Isobel Murray applied in writing Scottish Novels of the Second World War was that the authors had to have been adults during the 1939-45 period, thus able to articulate the hopes, fears, discomfort and hardship they experienced and by those with whom they shared time and place, whether or not in uniform. For some featured authors, the war was to be the second global conflict in their lives.

Backgrounds to the authors revealed that they viewed the War through different prisms, some fearing the threat of communism from the menacing east as much as they abhorred the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini.

Jenkins was a conscientious objector, as was Urquhart. Background affected their writing to differing degrees, and in Compton MacKenzie’s case, his Hebridean Home Guard tales set on the island of Todday, are affectionately comic despite the potential severe consequences of the voluntary local defence’s ill-preparedness. Of course, as some sort of governmental writer-in-residence, MacKenzie’s fiction was obliged to end happily to maintain civilian and military morale.

Not only did the author give an overview of her research and read illustrative and illuminating passages from the original texts, she went to some length to help those who will now seek rare and out-of-print texts to enhance their historical perspective of a series of ever-fascinating political and military turning points of the last century.

This is all a far cry from the jingoistic playground games of British and Jerries or Japs, and the Commando comics’ “Banzai, I die for my Emperor!” , “Achtung Schpitfeur!” and “Cripes Skip, bandits at 12 o’clock!” we Sixties kids devoured as war fiction, which in all probability turned many of us into obsessives seeking new perspectives and truths.

Scottish Novels of the Second World War itself looks fascinating and insightful. It is published by Word Power Books, whose ethos chimes sympathetically with that of Aberdeen Voice, making it all the more worthwhile.

To purchase, or for more info, see: http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/scottish-novels-of-the-second-world-war-I9780956628312/

The Bruces And The Comyns – Part 1

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May 122011
 

To coincide with the installation and unveiling of  The Robert The Bruce statue in Aberdeen, Voice’s Alex Mitchell presents a three part account of King Robert’s life, his impact on historical events, and the role of powerful rival family the Comyns.

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Scotland in the 13th and 14th centuries was an intensely feudal and conservative kingdom.

When Robert Bruce, born 1274 in Ayrshire, made his bid for kingship in 1306, he was supported by a few earls, a fair number of barons and a considerable following of lairds and the lesser gentry.

On his father’s death in 1304, Bruce at the age of thirty was Earl of Carrick, lord of Annandale, …lord of a great estate in Huntingdonshire in England.

He owned a house in London and was lord of the suburban Manor of Tottenham; he was, in fact, the richest man in England.   In the north of Scotland he held part of the Garioch and was the keeper of the fortress of Kildrummy and of at least three royal forests – Kintore, Darnaway and Longmorn.

The Scottish nobility was rent asunder by feuds and factions, in an age of horrors, brutality, intrigue and squalor.   For Bruce’s bid for power to succeed, he had to achieve either the support or the elimination of John Comyn, Earl of Badenoch.

Like the Bruces, the Comyns were of Norman-French, i.e., Viking, origin.   After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, many of the Norman-French nobility were granted lands in Scotland by King Malcolm (Canmore) III.   In 1212, William Comyn married Marjorie, the only child of Fergus, the mormaer or earl of Buchan.

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There were now three branches of the Comyn family: the Kilbride Comyns, the Badenoch Comyns and the Buchan Comyns.  They were tied together by blood and marriage, and their territories extended all the way across Scotland from the Aberdeenshire coast westwards through Badenoch and Lochaber to Loch Linnhe.

Of the thirteen earldoms in Scotland, the Comyns controlled three.

In 1242, Alexander Comyn was Earl of Buchan, Walter Comyn was Earl of Menteith and John Comyn was Earl of Angus; all as the result of (further) marriages to Celtic dynastic heiresses, with the result that the Comyns had come to have as much Celtic as Norman blood, or genes.

They had also a high degree of influence over the earldoms of Ross, Mar and Atholl.   The acknowledged Chief of the Comyns was the feudal Lord of Badenoch and Lochaber.   Upwards of sixty belted knights were bound to follow his banner with all their vassals, and he made treaties with princes as a prince himself.   The Comyns were the most powerful extended family in Scotland throughout the 13th century, but the tragic events of 18 March 1286 marked the beginning of their end.

After an evening of drinking and carousing, King Alexander III, born 1241 and therefore aged 45, decided to make the difficult journey from Edinburgh Castle to the then residence, on the other side of the Firth of Forth, of his young French wife, Yolande.   It was a dark and stormy night.   Others tried to persuade him to wait until morning.   He refused.   His horse lost its footing and the King fell down a cliff to his death.   This was an absolute and unmitigated disaster for Scotland.

Alexander had been an effective and well-regarded king, as was his father, Alexander II.   Their combined reigns, from 1214-86, are regarded as the “Golden Age” of medieval Scotland.   Alexander III had been crowned King of Scotland at the age of eight, and was married to Princess Margaret, daughter of King Henry III of England in 1251, when he was ten.   But Margaret and all their children pre-deceased him, and Alexander had no living brother, nephew or cousin.   His only direct heir was his grand-daughter, Princess Margaret, the Maid of Norway.

King Edward I of England was the Maid’s great-uncle.   Soon after she was born, Alexander III and Edward, who were friends as well as brothers-in-law, discussed the possibility of a royal marriage between little Margaret and Edward’s young son, the future Edward II.   This would have meant an effective Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland.   It was widely felt in Scotland that such a marriage would be preferable to the problems a marriage to any of the Scottish nobility would inevitably create.

King Edward’s troops proceeded to occupy nearly all the major Scottish strongholds, including the Castle of Aberdeen.

In 1290, the eight-year old Margaret was brought by ship from Norway for Scotland; but she became violently sea-sick during the voyage, and died shortly after landing.   Scotland now had no clear heir to the throne.   The intended Union of the Crowns had to wait, in the event, for over three centuries, until the death of Queen Elizabeth of England in 1603.

King Edward took full advantage of the confused situation.   By a combination of promises and threats he became accepted as the Lord Paramount, or Overlord, of the Scottish Kingdom, and was invited to adjudicate in the competition for the Succession. There were thirteen “Competitors” for the Throne of Scotland.   King Edward’s troops proceeded to occupy nearly all the major Scottish strongholds, including the Castle of Aberdeen.

Three principal “Competitors” for the throne emerged; John Balliol, Robert Bruce and John “the Black” Comyn, the Earl of Badenoch   This last threw his support behind John Balliol, mainly because Balliol was his brother-in-law, but Balliol did have a slightly stronger claim, in terms of descent from King David I, than did Bruce.   King Edward favoured Balliol, whom he regarded as weaker and more compliant than Bruce.   John Balliol was duly crowned on 17 Nov 1292 and swore fealty to Edward at the latter’s insistence.   Balliol rewarded the Comyns with additional lands and titles, and John Comyn became his chief advisor.   The Bruces refused to acknowledge or serve the new King.

King Edward had a high degree of influence in Scotland.   King John paid homage to Edward, in recognition that Edward was his Overlord.   In fact, most of the Scottish nobility had land and interests in England, and therefore had feudal obligations towards the kings of both Scotland and England.   This created a potential conflict of interest, especially in the event of any dispute or armed conflict between Scotland and England.

King Edward sought to improve relations with the Comyns.   In 1292, he gave John Comyn of Buchan the forests of Durris, Cowie and the Stocket forest at Aberdeen.   He also gave permission for the marriage of his cousin’s daughter, Joan de Vallance, to John Comyn of Badenoch.

John Balliol has come to be seen as a weak king, although his perceived weakness was exacerbated by the extraordinary ruthlessness and aggression of King Edward, whose behaviour is difficult to explain in rational terms.

The Bruces had withdrawn from public affairs.   They chose not to take part in the defence of Scotland, but instead paid homage to King Edward

It was obviously in the best interests of England to retain and support the relatively compliant John Balliol on the Scottish throne, but instead, Edward set out to destroy him.   Balliol retaliated by negotiating a defensive agreement with France – the beginning of the Auld Alliance.   In revenge, Edward besieged Berwick – then the largest Scottish town and principal seaport – and massacred all its inhabitants, including women and children.

The Scottish army was defeated at Dunbar in 1296 and the castles of Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling surrendered to the English.

The Comyns were amongst those of the nobility who fought against King Edward.   The Bruces had withdrawn from public affairs.   They chose not to take part in the defence of Scotland, but instead paid homage to King Edward.   They lived mostly in England, and retained possession of their English estates.   The Balliols and the Comyns fought hard for the independence of Scotland, and they suffered for it in terms of both lands and freedom.

In anger at Bruce’s inaction, King John (Balliol) confiscated his estate at Annandale and granted it to John Comyn, Earl of Buchan.   The Bruces never forgave this insult.

King John (Balliol) submitted to his English overlord at Stracathro on 7 July 1296, abdicated his throne and was taken prisoner with his family to the Tower of London.   King Edward embarked on a triumphal progress through Scotland; he spent five days in the Castle of Aberdeen in mid-July, 1296.   He returned to England in October, leaving Scotland under an English military administration, a harsh form of direct rule.

This led to a major revolt in 1297, involving both the Comyns and the Bruces, but under the joint leadership of William Wallace in the south and Andrew de Moray in the north.   They scored a major victory against a much larger English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge on 10 September 1297.

In March 1298, Wallace was made Guardian Of The Realm in the name of the deposed King John Balliol, and was knighted; but Wallace never sought to be King himself.   Andrew de Moray, possibly the real military genius of the two, had been mortally wounded at Stirling Bridge, and died shortly afterwards.

William Wallace, the younger son of a minor landowner in Ayrshire and not, therefore, a member of the Anglo-Norman or Scoto-Norman aristocracy, seems to have been motivated by a combination of genuine patriotism and intense hatred of the English and of anyone he identified as their allies.   He led a large and unruly army into Northumberland and Cumbria, which behaved with extraordinary savagery, even by the standards of the time.   The English were killed wherever they were found – old men, women and children.   King Edward was bound to retaliate.

Dont miss part 2 of this account in Aberdeen Voice  next week.

 

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”.

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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 28 April. 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

 Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
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.

queen-anne-of-great-britain
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.

Darker Reflections II – Castlehill, Castlegate and Mounthooly

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information  No Responses »
Feb 042011
 

reflectiipic1
By Alex Mitchell.

In 2007 Aberdeen City Council decided to relocate the International Market to Union Terrace during its visit of 10-12th August.   Prior to this, the Market has generally been placed in the Castlegate on Fridays and in the mid-section of Union Street on Saturdays and Sundays.

The relocation to Union Terrace was prompted by Police concerns about serious traffic management problems arising from the blocking-off of Union Street.
We had consistently argued that the Market should occupy the Castlegate throughout its 3-day visits.   The Castlegate is Aberdeen’s historic market place; it had adjacent parking in the Timmer Market and East North Street car parks; it needed the visitors and their custom and it involved no disruption to traffic and bus-routes at all.   Beyond all this, the Market had, at least on Fridays, given us a reason and incentive to visit the historic Castlegate, which affords the most spectacular views of Aberdeen’s best buildings and the mile-length of Union Street – views which can be seen from the Castlegate and nowhere else.

However: in the Press & Journal of 31 July ’07, Mr Tom Moore, ACC’s City Centre Manager, was quoted as follows: “None of the events at the Castlegate has been an absolute success … we’ve tried everything to encourage people to come, but they just won’t … some of the stalls do quite well, but others are just dead”.

This correspondent would have to admit, from personal observation, that neither the International Market on Fridays nor the German Market held in the Castlegate during the weeks preceding Christmas ’06 ever seemed to be doing much business; there was little of the buzz and vibrancy of the Market when located on Union Street, on Saturdays and Sundays.   Part of the reason is that the Castlegate is perishing cold much of the year, because of the wind-chill factor blowing up Marischal Street from the Harbour.   Even the stallholders, who were used to standing about in the cold, could not take it.

All this has serious implications as regards plans to regenerate the Castlegate.

castlegate-1940s
The International Market is a genuinely popular event.   If not even the Market can attract people into the Castlegate, then it is difficult to see what can or will.

To the extent that ‘regeneration’ is about planting the seeds of enterprise, investment and employment, the Castlegate seems almost like blighted or toxic land in which nothing thrives or succeeds, as it should.

The main problems are (a) that the Castlegate is a backwater, some way removed from the main centre of activity and not an obvious route way of choice to anywhere much; and (b) that for all its historic significance, people do not find the Castlegate an attractive or congenial place.   Visitors are repelled by, from recent observation, blatant and overt drug-dealing; by deathly-pale junkies collapsing in the street in front of one; and by Aberdeen’s ever-shifting population of out-of-control drunks, winos and aggressive and obstructive beggars.

In point of fact, the Castlegate has been a concentration of social ills for a long time back, certainly from the mid-19th Century.   The real centre of activity in Aberdeen was always at the junction of Broadgate and Castlegate and around the Mercat Cross (of 1686, but not the first), which was originally located in front of the Tolbooth.   The Mercat Cross was relocated to its present position in 1842 and for a time served as the city’s Post Office.   The gentry used to have their town houses in the Castlegate, mainly on the south (harbour) side, but the advent of Union Street from 1805 encouraged the better off to move westwards of Union Bridge.

castlehill-barracks-01
A huge military Barracks was built on the Castle Hill in 1794 and was occupied by the Gordon Highlanders until the 1930s, after which it became a form of slum housing.   The Castlegate’s proximity to both the Barracks and the seaport made it a concentration of drunkenness and prostitution.
It was for this reason that the Salvation Army located their Citadel there in 1896.

The Citadel has done much good work in its time, but it has in certain obvious respects served to reinforce the Castlegate’s magnetic attraction for down-and-outs of various kinds.   The drugs rehab & treatment centre under construction in the Timmer Market car park may well have similar effects and will quite possibly kill the Castlegate stone dead.

A neighbourhood or locality, or indeed a town or city, has to be much more than just a cluster or agglomeration of buildings and streets.   There has to be a base of economic activity, of business, trade and employment, otherwise it becomes merely a ghost town or, at best a heritage museum like Venice or, prospectively New Orleans.   One might think also of the great medieval Flemish seaport of Bruges, through which all Scotland’s exports to Europe were channelled, until its river Zwin silted up around 1500, and the trade shifted over to Antwerp.   Bruges remained trapped in a 15th Century time warp for the next 500 years, nicknamed Bruges-la-Morte.

few of us ever go there now; it has become another of Aberdeen’s shunned places

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, President Bush promised to rebuild New Orleans, presumably in the belief that city equals buildings, but the economic base of New Orleans faded away long ago, not least because of corrupt and incompetent civic administration, poor public services and rampant criminality.

Once legitimate business activity withdraws, everything else goes too, including the economically active part of the population – most of us have to live where we can earn a living.   There are obvious lessons here as regards Aberdeen’s city centre.   Policy needs to be more consciously directed towards economic regeneration, to creating a more favourable and attractive environment for business enterprise and investment, job-creation, the local resident population, visitors and shoppers, before it is all too late.   Unfortunately our local power elite seems to have completely the wrong idea as to what this involves and requires.

On Tartan Day, your correspondent decided to go for a wander around Castlehill, mainly with a view to taking some photographs of the remnant of the wall that surrounded the Georgian military Barracks, which were demolished in the 1960s and replaced by the present tower blocks of council flats, Marischal Court and Virginia Court.

cgate-muckle-friday
Castlehill is an immensely historic part of Aberdeen and affords spectacular views across the harbour and beach area, but few of us ever go there now; it has become another of Aberdeen’s shunned places.   Castlehill is dominated by the giant tower blocks to the extent that non-residents feel we have no business being there, and are effectively excluded.

A great many people must live in the tower blocks, but on a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon, and with Tartan-related activities going on nearby in the Castlegate, there was hardly another soul to be seen anywhere on Castlehill.   The effect is isolating and intimidating.   A vicious circle is engendered, whereby mainstream citizens stay away, the locality is increasingly monopolised by anti-social elements and becomes even more of a no-go area, and so on.

It has been a real achievement, in a negative kind of way, to transform so many hitherto vibrant parts of Aberdeen into dead zones, apparently devoid of population or legitimate business activity and employment.   Photographs of the Mounthooly area, taken as recently as the 1960s, show streets, granite-built tenements, shops, businesses and large numbers of people walking the streets and pavements.

thousands of Aberdonians must have worked there, but somehow it already seems to have been airbrushed from the collective memory

As with Castlehill, there are still lots of people living in the Mounthooly area, in huge tower blocks such as Seamount Court and Porthill Court, but there are hardly any local shops and businesses such as might provide local people with employment or a reason to go out and about.

In consequence, even on a bright, sunny weekday afternoon, there is hardly anyone to be seen anywhere.

The name ‘Porthill Court’ is the one official acknowledgement that the Port Hill, opposite Aberdeen College on the Gallowgate, was and remains the highest of the seven hills on or around which Aberdeen stands, so-named after the Gallowgate Port, which guarded the northern entrance to the Burgh.   The huge Porthill Factory (linen, textiles) stood on this site for about 200 years, from about 1750 until its demolition in 1960, and thousands of Aberdonians must have worked there, but somehow it already seems to have been airbrushed from the collective memory.

Similarly Ogston & Tennant’s soap and candle factory; the former front office remains at No. 111 Gallowgate.   These were local firms, employing local people, most of whom would have walked to work, going in past their local shops for their morning paper, fags and rowies on the way.

There is no point in romanticising what must have been fairly bleak and grim workplaces; but it must have been easier then for a young person to find their way into paid employment when the workplaces were just up the road, when you already knew people – friends, relations and neighbours – who worked there, equally when you and yours were weel-kent locally, than can be the case nowadays if you live halfway up a tower block in Castlehill or Mounthooly and the only jobs available are with firms nobody has ever heard of, located on industrial estates miles away in Altens or Westhill.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

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