Hiya, my name is Bruce Fummey. Today I'm in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh.
Now as we come out of Covid this August, it's much more hustle and bustling noise than it has been.
It's part of Edinburgh's historic Old Town that's normally hustling and bustling in August
with Edinburgh Fringe visitors. Throughout the year it hosts delighted tourists during the day,
and raucous stag and hen parties at night, but today I want to tell you about events even more
raucous than today's pre-nuptial celebrations. I'm going to tell you about the Porteous Riots, and how
it gave us a football team. If you're interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history,
then click the subscribe button at the bottom right. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
Here in Edinburgh's Grassmarket, you can see the gallows etched out in the paving
slabs. You can see the pub there called 'The Last Drop', which employs the cruel pun
of squeezing the last nectar from a whisky bottle, or the last breath from a condemned life.
Down the street on the first floor of the pub called 'The Beehive', you can still see the door of
the condemned cell to this day, because the Grassmarket was a key location for public executions.
It's the 14th of April 1736, almost 300 years ago, and on that day a man was brought here to
the Grassmarket in Edinburgh to be hung or hanged. He was a smuggler, a criminal, a popular hero maybe,
because nobody likes paying taxes. In those times, poor folk would see smugglers a bit like
the guy who brought cheap fags (cigarettes) and booze (alcohol) from the continent when we were in the EU.
He's not really a criminal. That was the attitude both north and south of the border with England.
Of course the situation here in Scotland was special. Isn't it always? Remember the Poll Tax?
Poll Tax! Two words that create an emotional response, like a dog salivating over a clanging
bell. The thing is that Pavlov fed the dogs. He didn't take away the free school milk.
That's a reference to (Margaret) Thatcher, 'The Milk Snatcher'.
As my son grew up, he often used to ask me about society, politics and many of the problems that
we face in life today, and my answers would often start with ... well in the (19)80s, one day we were driving
along the road, and when some idiot cut me up I started shouting and screaming and beeping my horn,
and my wee boy next to me turned to me and he said, 'I suppose that was Thatcher's fault as well'.
It probably was, and I'm guessing that there'll be people in Liverpool, Newcastle, Wigan and London,
who'll agree with me on that. Anyway back in 1736, the Union with England was less than 30 years old.
Now, six years after the Union, the plea by Scottish MPs in Westminster, was to undo
it, but they'd been outvoted by English MPs. At least one of the gripes in Scotland was taxation.
Poll Tax! Going into this Union, England had been continually at war, building its empire, and so it
was burdened with debt. As such, taxes were higher in England, but they didn't get the Poll Tax, so
those taxes to pay for English wars, were now being imposed in Scotland. The most infamous was the Malt
Tax, that had been imposed in direct contravention of The Act of Union. Now I've made a video about
the Malt Tax Riots, and I'll leave a link to that at the end of this one. The point is that
Scots were seeking to avoid taxes. In the process, one of those nice smuggler chaps had been caught
with two of his pals, stealing from an excise man. A bit like Robin Hood. Tommy Sheridan? Nah.
One of the three smugglers has his death sentence commuted to transportation,
but as the day of execution approached, the other two were taken for their final church service.
One of them, Andrew Wilson, threw his mate over the pew,
grabbed one guard with one hand, grabbed a second with another, and caught a third one in his teeth.
A gay man would have been able to skewer a fourth. Come on the gays! Anyway, because of
Wilson's selfless act, his mate managed to escape and make of for the safety of the Netherlands.
Wilson was now even more of a hero, so needless to say, on the day of his hanging, the crowd were
restive. Now the accounts that I've read vary. I get the impression it depends on the writer's politics.
Not like today, eh, but Allan Ramsay, a poet of the day, and an inspiration to Robert Burns
incidentally, was an eyewitness and he said that a small boy threw a stone at the hangman. Now
that was a common event on occasions like this, but this time things got out of hand. The Provost had
been caking his pants about the whole affair in the first place, and he called out the Town Guard.
They were led by a guy called John Porteous, (boo) definitely the panto (pantomime) villain. Porteous had a
reputation for being harsh, brutal and tyrannical. Accounts say that he ordered the guard to fire
above the heads of the crowd. The only thing was, when they did that, what they were doing
was they were shooting the people watching the hanging from their windows above. You plonker. The
crowd went wild at this. Now there's debate here, but most accounts say that Porteous ordered his
men to fire into the mob. Some say that he himself fired the first shot. Either way people were killed,
people were injured, and the mob weren't satisfied until the Provost had Porteous put in jail. Many
witnesses spoke against Porteous at his trial, and having been convicted of murder,
he found that he was now the star attraction at the next Grassmarket hanging. Now the London
Government sought to overrule Porteous's conviction made here in Edinburgh, and they delayed the
hanging. The London Government were attempting a power grab of devolved powers, and people weren't
having it! Ooh politics, politics. Time to stop listening and shout slogans! Both of you, stop it!
This is the busy Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Back then the Toll Booth would have stood here,
and Walter Scott's book, set in and around the Porteous Riots, it was called 'The Heart
of Midlothian'. The book was called 'The Heart of Midlothian, later it inspired the name of the local
football club Heart of Midlothian. Now this spot is now marked with a heart-shaped paving stone,
this is the Heart of Midlothian. Local people spit on it to this day as a mark of disrespect
to authorities, although I think Hibs supporters (rival football club) have got other reasons, but anyway the point is
that the people of Edinburgh could see that London interference was a deliberate tactic to delay, or
even deny justice. A mob of thousands gathered, came to the tollbooth at night
and they overpowered the guards, dragged Porteous back down the Grassmarket and hung him in the
most brutal fashion imaginable. I'll spare you the gory details. The Government put up a reward
of 200 pounds, for information leading to the capture of the perpetrators. 200 pounds in 1736
and yet nobody talked. The London Government proposed to downgrade Edinburgh from a city to
a burgh and disband the Town Guard. Eventually London just fined Edinburgh two thousand pounds.
There's no doubt that Porteous was a pantomime villain, but everyone's entitled to due process.
It's difficult to see who the real baddies are in this story. What it does show is that
if it suits their immediate agenda, people will set aside proper procedure, morality
and principle. Sometimes it's the Edinburgh mob, sometimes it's London politicians, sometimes it's
both, but it's always Margaret Thatcher. To find out more about the Malt Tax Riots, click the link
coming up on screen now. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.