Something happened recently that made me stop and think
about the way I think about Scottish history.
Then planning this video I had to reassess my views again.
Are you prepared to reconsider yours? If you re interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe
button at the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
Not long ago I met up with historian Neil McGuigan from St Andrews University.
He recently wrote a book on Malcolm Canmore. Now this is the most intriguing
period of Scottish history, and if Malcolm s not THE most pivotal
in history, surely his family is. He killed Macbeth, married Saxon
Margaret... the queen Canonised as a Saint. Hs son David brought the Normans. Malcolm s,
life and death were central to Scottish history. And when you think that his Celtic/Saxon
daughter married the Norman Henry I, son of William The Conqueror to help
secure HIS English throne... Do I need to keep going?
Now I make extra videos for my Patreon members, and an interview with Neil about his book,
the first in depth study of this key character was perfect.
You can see this and other extra videos by clicking the link top
right to become a Patreon member... but to give you a sneak preview,
the period after Malcolm died intrigues me, and I ve covered it in a couple of videos:
Who Was the Last Celtic King of Scotland and The Forgotten kings of Scotland.
You see this unifying of Celtic, Saxon and Norman through Malcolm s daughter in England,
and the Normanising of Scotland through his son in David didn t happen automatically.
When Malcolm died his children fled to England and Malcolm s Brother Donald III became king.
Now this was perfectly normal royal succession in the Celtic system of Tannistry under which
his predecessor Macbeth was chosen... It was as if the community of Scotland
took a step back saying: Hold on Malcolm, this eldest
son inheriting and bringing in Saxons and all that is going a bit quick.
Then Malcolm s sons came back one by one, some cooperating with Uncle Donald
and others with Norman knights to overthrow him.
One son, Duncan was grudgingly accepted by the Scots on condition that he sent his Norman knights
back to England. When he did
It all feels like a tussle between traditional Celtic and the Norman period that followed...
and That s the point of this video.
Neil pulled me up on this. He pointed out the trap that I d fallen into.
The trap he said so many of us fall into. A trap set in Victorian London
as Jack the Ripper raged. I may have over egged that a little.
He pointed to our hangover from the historians of the days of Empire
painting Scottish history with the narrative that I had...
The tension of Celtic to Norman Scotland was moving from petty kingdom to medieval state
from chaos to order from Barbarian to civilised, Gaelic to English...
the project still being worked on in the wake of Culloden,
clearance and improvement.
But Neil pointed to the normality of the dynastic events and family squabbles that I d described,
within the context of Celtic tradition the Canmore family
and Scotland s status in the wider world. In my questions to Neil I had
unconsciously framed that transition in the terms we ve been programmed to think
on these islands. ME!
The rabid, raging, ranting, nationalist decried by unionists in past and future comments sections?
Surely I couldn t fall for this anglicising, unionising narrative.
You might think I m being controversial. You may think even more so in the next bit...,
Let s see. Are you an immigrant? Let me know in the comment section.
I knew I was coming here to Western Australia, ....I ve been touring my stand
up show Stories of Scotland. When this video uploads I ll have just finished
my show in Christchurch, but there ll still be shows in Dunedin Brisbane, Cairns and Melbourne,
so check the link in the description to get tickets for these shows
AND my shows back home in Scotland during autumn of 2023.....
....anyway I thought this was the perfect place to make a video about cultural assimilation,
a civilising force taking over and the natural order of things.
Australia, formed when the
nations and regions of Britain, freed from parochial rivalries of home, mixed as one.
At times more British than the British. This was the perfect microscope slide on
which to examine my specimen. The ideal projector to display
on the wall the rightful, inevitable and predestined acquisition of Terra Nullis
by the fully formed and perfected British Empire.
Where better than Perth? As a guy from the real
Perth.... coming to this Perth. How much more Scottish can you get.
It has street names that are the same as ours. I met up with school mates who d been in my
class back in Perth High School and had now made their lives here;
I met school kids I d taught at that very same school...,
And old workmates. I even went to a Proclaimers gig
and didn t have to walk 500 miles to get there. 1.7 kilometres to be exact....
That s right, kilometres. Not everything is like home.
I brought my son. His Australian citizenship is
by dint of his grandparents emigrating as ten-pound poms in the sixties
and returning after his mum s birth in South Australia.
He s thinking about joining a new wave of Scots coming here.
Will my own son be another nail in the coffin of Aboriginal lifestyles?
Indigenous peoples who,
like Gaels before them were expected to give up language, culture and values
and conform to the inevitable civilising Anglo Saxon force.
It was this context of indigenous peoples devalued and side-lined...
that I d thought would provide an appropriate setting, even if briefly,
to examine and magnify the question that Neil had raised.
For indigenous Australians, is the rapid change to
skyscrapers of the Central Business District and the sprawling suburbs of Perth an accelerated
version of the longer cultural constriction and dispossession of the Gael.
Hay St, Murray St, Aberdeen St..., Perth itself. These names may have meant something to the
Gael... or a visiting Scot.... but to the people who belonged?
Now very quickly I realised that these were much bigger
questions than I could deal with in a short oversimplified video.
As it was, I was saved from the rights and wrongs and complexities of conflict
between aboriginal and European culture by the discovery of an Australian historical
paper by TIMOTHY S. FOREST called Whiteness on the frontiers of Empire:
Hebridean Scots and Group Settlement in Western Australia 1923-1928.
You can imagine my excitement. It told the story of 85 crofters
and fishers from the Outer Hebrides, who arrived on the SS Bendigo in October 1923
to start new lives on the Peel Estate, 35 miles to the south.
This was part of the 1922 Empire Settlement Act. British, Canadian and Australian authorities
shared the costs of resettling people in various schemes across the empire.
Western Australia was sparsely populated, remote and geographically vulnerable
to Asian migration in general and imperial expansion of an
industrialising Japan in particular.
To London officials AND Western Australian high heid yins,
Hebridean Islanders were the perfect settlers. Since the suppression of the 1745 uprising,
Highland Gaels had been the shock troops of the British Empire.
Many of those being resettled were recently returned from military service in the great war,
and as crofters surely the perfect folks to re-make and tame the land
in a way that city migrants could never do. These were the perfect people to
cultivate and defend British territory against migrants and invaders from overseas.
Of course, through a local prism these WERE migrants and invaders form overseas.
I should really say two local prisms, because I don t just mean aboriginal locals.
I mean the Anglo Saxon Australian British locals who had made this place their home.
The, more British than the British Australians, didn t quite see these Hebridean incomers
as British British, Anglo Saxon British,
like English... or Lowland Scots. Not the strong fetlocked salt of the earth
improvers that would enhance the community, no, but feckless... practically Irish, Gaels
that the sons of Malcolm Canmore had overcome all those years before
and who were supposed to have disappeared with Bonnie Prince Charlie.
For some incomprehensible reason they spoke that barbaric tongue,
when it was obvious God meant folks to speak English.
They were no better than the Japanese, God they were little better than the blacks.
There was conflict with their children at school.
There was strife with the parents in the community.
The land allocated to this group of Islanders was called Group 80....
Within two years the project was the subject of a Royal Commission
The government had offered a school to train the immigrants in clearing land,
establishing settlements, and dairy farming. The school never materialised .
A surveyor stated: The land set aside for the settlers,
was abysmal, with no access to water suitable for irrigation and personal consumption .
Every winter Group 80 flooded, because of substandard soil, lack of runoff,
high water table, and the state s failure
to build the drainage system it promised The Hebrideans, were supposed to just make do
The state government had promised each family. four-room wooden cottages...,
but on arrival no shelter had been built. There were corrugated iron sheets,
which they were to use to build something makeshift for themselves.
In less than five years Group 80 was abandoned by the state...
but most of the islanders had abandoned it long before.... moving up here to Perth.
Some of them taking the long road back to Scotland.
Only 2,442 farms of the proposed 6,000 were developed...
and the scheme s losses cost the state over 6,500,000.
Now all Groupies, as they were called were expected to show Victorian notions
of self-help..., but somehow more
was expected from the Hebrideans. Of course, the local Anglo Saxon Australians
felt that all that was needed was more backbone. Just work harder and make
unworkable land workable. The indigenous Australians wondered why the
land had to be transformed in the first place. Shouldn t we work with the land that was there?
To Anglo Saxon Australians failure was due to the natural laziness
inherent in the Celtic or indigenous character.
It s a dilemma... being a self-reliant warrior race AND a vanquished people.
Three very different lenses that I m guessing folk still look down today.
But there are more prisms still through which we view the world.
One of my Perth to Perth immigrant friends told of the jolt when accosted by a local aboriginal
black dude in the street calling him a white...
and he should fuck off back to where he came from.
I pointed out that in our Perth the exact reverse had been a regular experience of my youth.
I m not giving my mate a hard time, he s astute, sensitive,
empathetic with skills of self-examination,
but our life experience does give us slightly different prisms.
He told me another story of an English mate who d moved out here 38 years ago.
Now this yeoman of Anglo Saxon stock lives near a stadium where concerts are held
and is constantly bothered by tanked up gig goers peeing in his garden on their way home.
When remonstrating with a young Aussie lad in his twenties, the young lad,
who wasn t even born when the long-settled Englishman arrived,
told him to sod off back to his own country.
Imagine the irony if that young lad was descended from one of those Hebridean settlers.
Different lenses, different truths. The young Aussie, the long-time English
settler, the Aboriginal... all living in and around Perth,
yet none of them understand my mate when he pronounces Perth the way it s meant to sound.
Many folks here don t even know that there is a real Perth...
where William Wallace sneaked through the gates, where Robert the Bruce attacked across the moat.
Times far distant that need a telescope to see even dimly.
Maybe it s not a telescope. Our American, or Canadian cousins who,
along with their first nation hosts, have their own stories,
seem to view Scottish history through a kaleidoscope of colours with tartans and clans
that bears little resemblance to our reality. Only we at home see history with clarity.
No kaleidoscope of colours for us... No distortion,
just unionist red, white and blue, lion rampant nationalist red and yellow or saltire cross.
There are so many ways to look at our history.
It s not a lens or a prism we view through. It s a precious diamond.
Many faceted, multi-layered in its beauty..., and anyone that sees only one truth
has truly never looked You ll have watched this
through your own diffracting stone, that tints it ruby red, or sapphire blue...,
maybe amber. I ll leave a link to Neil
McGuigan s book in the description below... and there s a link to another video posing
questions on Scotland s history coming up on screen now Support the channel by becoming a
Patreon member, or buying a coffee in the description below