Do you want to know about social injustice in Scottish history?
Let me tell you a story. Now as I do, if you're interested in the people, places
and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe button in the
bottom right hand side of the screen at any time.
In the meantime let me tell you my story. Now civil strife and social injustice
happen in lots of places, but it's the 29th of
August and, from one of the two main locations of the events in our story, I
want to take you back to Tranent, East Lothian in 1797.
The Union between Scotland and England happened 90 years ago.
After hundreds of years of fighting with our southern neighbors, the good thing
about the Union was that finally wars had stopped. I mean there were the
Jacobite wars of the first half of the Century,
and of course we've been dragged into England's wars:
The War of the Spanish Succession, The war of the Austrian Succession,
there have been some wars in India, The Seven Years War, The Mysore War in India,
The Anglo-Maratha War in India, oh there was that rebellion in the
Americas (they'll come a sticky end) and of course now we're at war with
France, but apart from that it's been pretty peaceful.
Now the thing about all these English wars is that now they've become
our wars too. We've been incorporated in the English army,
well almost, you see in 1757 they introduced The Militia Act,
that meant the creation of military reserves locally in each county.
Now these reserves would provide backup on the home front
so that regular army could be sent abroad,
but the requirement only applied in England and Wales.
Here in Scotland we just continued as we were with volunteer units here and there,
normally organized by nobility or Clan Chiefs, you know
up in the Highlands where they talk Irish an' that?
Then three years ago a Royal Warrant created Lord Lieutenants in each county.
Here it's the Marquis of Tweedale, but he had deputies
and one of them, David Anderson, lived in this house
St Germain. I know it sounds French, and I get the irony. The house is split
into seven now and I've been welcomed here by the owners of the St Germain
Bed and Breakfast. So the Lieutenants had to organize
volunteer forces to protect the counties in case of invasion by the French.
The French, who up until this Union thing had protected
us against the English, or did we protect them? I'm not sure, anyway.
Now this year they've passed The Militia Act for Scotland and these Lord
Lieutenants are required to raise militias in every
county. Not volunteers... They draw lots and a
ballot to decide who will be forced to join the militia.
So the country is in uproar, not just here in Tranent, but everywhere,
and it's not just that folk are sick of their sons going off to war,
being forced into militia means that you can be sent anywhere in the country as
part of the home defence. Now what if you've got a harvest to get
in, what have you got business to run, what if they do send you off to some
foreign land? Now I know they say that you won't serve abroad, but they said
that to the Black Watch and look what happened to them! That's
another story for another video. The point is
that you can't trust the London Government not to send you off to some
foreign war for which you didn't sign up, and to
which they promised not to send you. There's one more reason
that folks are furious about The Militia Act,
but I'm going to save that until later, aye your eyes will pop oot yer heid when
you hear it and I don't want you to miss the story. So it's August 1797,
there's civil unrest all over because of The Militia Act and these Lord Lieutenants
with a list of names and their roulette wheels.
On the 29th of August the Deputy Lieutenants,
tasked with raising the militia in this area, were to meet in the Glens Inn in
Tranent to draw the lottery, and of course to
consider any exemptions. You see, you could be exempted for
service if you had a justifiable excuse. Let's say you had bone spurs for example.
I'll be honest, I don't know what bone spurs are I just know that it gets you
out of enlistment, but if you were a boxer, a fit,
healthy black boxer, you might even be the greatest boxer, you
couldn't get out of it then. Anyway they're ludicrous examples and
it's all fantasy, and imagining, the point is that there was a big
meeting to take place in Tranent on the 29th
of August, so let's go there for a bit.
This is town centre and this is Jackie Crookston.
She's banging her drum and she's got a wee bairn.
You see the night before the meet she went up and down the streets of Tranent
leading hordes of women and their bairns and shouting, "we'll have no militia here",
to anyone that would listen. These women also went around the surrounding towns
and villages banging that drum and telling folks to come to Tranent
tomorrow to air their grievances and let the
authorities know there'll be no militia here,
and whilst this mobile woman was going around surrounding villages, back here in
Tranent, somebody threw stones at a dragoon.
In different towns in villages teachers faced varying levels of harassment.
You see teachers had the lists of the able-bodied men that had been through
the school system as boys, and it was these lists that were used
for ballot in the militia. Some teachers were accosted and had their lists stolen
so they couldn't be used the next day, others
had no problems.
By the morning, the teachers' complaints had arrived back here at St Germain,
the house of the Deputy Lieutenant, David Anderson.
Realizing that folk were upset, the gentleman Lieutenants headed to Tranent
accompanied by yeomanry and cavalry and they sent
to Musselburgh for further reinforcements. When they got to Tranent, Jackie was still
banging on about no militia. See what I did? The officials arrived at
the Glens Inn around midday Now after a bit of shouting and Jackie
Crookston's drum banging, the business of the day was announced to the crowd
and the Lieutenants and teachers, etc went in to get started with weeding out
the exemptions and drawing lots. One by one, district by district,
individuals came in to offer up their evidence of why they should be exempted.
Now obviously the crowd outside is still restive,
but in spite of their complaints the process goes on. Then
in comes a potter called Neil Couterside. What he places on the table isn't a
justification for his own exclusion from the list, but a document signed by
the townspeople opposing The Militia Act. Obviously the chairman rejects this
document out of hand and Couterside is sent away with a flea in his ear.
Is that just a Scottish expression to be sent away with flea in
your ear? I don't know. Anyway, when Couterside related the events
indoors, to the crowd outside, then the women retreat to the
back and the men move forward, "Whoa!", says Captain Finley of
the Cinque Ports Cavalry and he sends his troopers forward. A
woman throws a stone and knocks a trooper's
hat off. Now that must have felt brilliant, but as
a trooper gets down from his horse to get his hat the trooper somehow falls.
Captain Finley orders his men to unsheathe their swords and Oh my God!
they charge: trampling and slashing the populace.
The mob start throwing more stones and all hell breaks loose.
Inside one of the officials tries to read the riot act.
Now I don't know if you know what I mean by "reading the riot act"?
Can you let me know in the comments section below, and if people don't know
about this particular part of British history then I'll cover it
in a different video. Anyway, outside the cavalry troops who are apparently
a bit soused, they're going up and down the street charging and slashing.
This sends people up the alleyways, and on the roof of one building a guy called
William Hunter starts throwing down stones and bricks at the troops
One soldier is sent round the back of the house to shoot him
from behind, and as he tumbles from the roof, several other soldiers wait for his
fallen body with outstretched weapons, so that as he topples from the roof he's
impaled on their swords. Now this is the first,
but not the last gruesome act of the day. Pembrokeshire's
cavalry turn up, now if there was any doubt about the
previous troops these guys are definitely pissed,
so much so that one Sergeant slumped sozzled from his saddle. An
officer thinking he's been knocked off his horse calls,
"Why don't you fire?" They do. George Elder was shot dead with the
first volley of bullets. The events are known as The Tranent
Massacre. Now I don't know how many you need in
dead and injured to call it a massacre, what I do know is that the
troops, who let's remember, were essentially in a
recruitment drive, didn't limit themselves to those who'd
been involved in the rioting. The drunken troops were given the order
to clear the county for two miles around.
The 29th of August is after the glorious 12th and the troops acted like they were
shooting game. It started in the town. Nineteen-year-old
Isabel Rodger who'd been sewing cloth in the doorway of her house was shot dead.
William Lawson was a carpenter taking wood in his cart from Ormiston to Tranent.
When he was accosted by troops he explained that he'd never been near the
riot but they shot him anyway. Stephen
Brothersone, along with his wife and an old man were out for a walk about a mile
from Tranent as the troops arrived, the walkers stepped
off the road to let them pass. It wasn't enough to shoot the innocent
Brotherstone, as he lay dying in his wife's arms the
dragoon then got down from his horse, drew his sword, and slashed six times as
head and body cutting through to the bones.
The same troops continued on and shot dead William Laidlaw, a peasant, labouring
in the field. A thirteen-year-old boy called Kemp, who
carried letters between Tranent and Ormiston was chased down like an animal
and stabbed and hacked to death in a field.
Peter Ness, a sawmill worker, hadn't been in Tranent but in a field outside the
town he was shot multiple times, then robbed of his pocket watch.
After he was killed, he was found dead with his pockets turned inside out,
but there was more pillage than that: John Adam,
a collier who lived in a village a couple of miles from Tranent was walking
to the shops to do a few errands. Dragoons approached him, shot him in the
head, and as he lay dying took from his
pocket the two shillings that he'd carried to buy messages for his pregnant
wife.
At the start of this, I was going to name each victim to remember them,
but to be honest it's too harrowing even now.
The soldiers also burst into a farmhouse and shot up a family that didn't even
know there was a riot going on. Deputy Lieutenants in charge on the day
sued The Scots Chronicle for libel because they published a letter relating
to one of the deaths. The even greater sadness is that without
the evidence accumulated for that civil suit
we may never have known the names of these victims.
Remember that the whole exercise was to recruit people into the very
organization that was currently slaughtering innocents and protesters
alike in the streets of Tranent and
surrounding countryside. As recruiting drives go this wasn't the
most successful. They were finding bodies in cornfields
for weeks, and it was another 11 years before a
militia was finally established for that county.
Now I said that I'd one big point I was going to leave to the end and I'm coming to
that, but just before I do, let me tell you
about the court case. On the day 36 townspeople were taken as
prisoners to Haddington and then later to Edinburgh for trial,
but the only witnesses against them were the soldiers who all gave contradictory
evidence, and all the accused were released.
Maybe I should have said all the survivors because of course Jackie
Crookston with a big drum had been shot dead in the street. This
isn't the only time there's been injustice and civil unrest in Scotland,
in fact at the end I've got a playlist that you can click for some other
examples of unrest in Scottish society, but the thing is that none of this
needed to happen. You see The Militia Act stated that if
you were selected by ballot from the list you didn't
have to join the militia, all you needed was to have enough money to pay somebody
else to join a militia in your place, and that's the information
I left till now. It was only the poor who had to join a
militia. That's what the miners, potters, weavers
and farm folk at Tranent were up in arms about.
That's what the innocent dead of the 29th of August 1797
signify, and that's the searing social injustice that this video highlights.
How much have things changed? You'll have to decide that for yourself,
but share this story. Tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh
Tiorridh an drasda