James D. Young, The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class (London: Croom Helm, 1979)

[This is a complex book. It provides a history of the working class movement in Scotland from the 1750s up to the 1930s. It can be seen as paralleling E.P. Thompson's book on the English working class. Young views Scotland as an "internal colony." He views the Scottish working class movement as developing in complex relationship with Scottish nationalism. One underlying theme is the backwardness and "difference" of Scotland from England. Poverty, poor housing, alcoholism, illegitimacy, etc. are more prominent in Scotland than in England or other European countries. Young sees this as a complex product of Scotland's position on the periphery of capitalism and of the role played by the Scottish enlightenment and the Scottish elite. Young is particularly hard on the Scottish enlightenment. He sees it as the thought of intellectuals with a Scottish inferiority complex who see Anglicization as the only hope for Scotland and who harbor deep fear and contempt with respect to the Scottish lower orders. On Young's view, in the late 1700s, Jacobite feeling for Scotland combined with the resentment of the lower orders against landlords, England, the Scottish gentry, and the Scottish elite. This produced a rebellious Scottish working class movement, a movement that sympathized with the French revolution and carried over its nationalism and radicalism into the Chartist movement. With the defeat of the Chartists, the Scottish labor movement came to be dominated between 1848-1880 by classical liberalism and by an ideology of self help that blamed the working class for its poverty and poor conditions. By the 1880s a radical revival began with the incorporation of the international socialist movement into the Scottish labor movement, resulting in tensions between "nationalists" and "internationalists" and between "lib lab" labor leaders who bought into the self-help ideology of classical liberalism and revolutionary socialists. Young is most supportive of those on the left, like John Maclean, who managed to integrate the anti-authoritarian aspects of Scottish nationalism (and the demand for Home Rule) with a Marxist internationalism that did not fall prey to scapegoating the Irish for the poverty and poor conditions experienced by the working class in Scotland.]

"A poor and polyglot society that was taken over by a wealthier and more powerful metropolitan capitalism, the Athens of the North was really a type of gulag society which could not, in the view of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, afford the luxury of a democratic outlook, the rule of law or democratic institutions." p. 12

"This conflict between the civilizing mission of English metropolitan capitalism and the attempts of the Highland Society of Scotland to preserve the language, poetry and music of the Highlands led the Edinburgh Review to advocate the destruction of `those prejudices' which retarded the imposition of the English language and the Highlanders' assimilation into the Empire." p. 17

When Parliament abolished the burning and hanging of witches (1784) the General Assembly of the Calvinist Church of Scotland pronounced this abolition "a great national sin." p. 18

"Incredibly backward as the Highlands were, the philosophes exaggerated the barbarity of the Highlands and the Highland/Lowland split in order to rationalize their support for the cultural genocide they were engaging in." p. 26

Popularity of Tom Paine among "grieves, farm labourers, peasants, weavers and artisans (p. 27)

"Yet though the conscious socialist movement be but a century old, the labouring folk all down the ages have clung to communist practices and customs, partly the inheritance and instinct from the group and clan life of our forefathers and partly because these customs were their only barrier to poverty; and because without them social life was impossible." (p. 28 quoting W.F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (1888))

Settlement Act of 1690 excluded Jacobites and Episcopalians from teaching in the Scottish universities. p. 30

"The whole ethos of Scottish society was much more authoritarian than the ethos of American or English society; and the Scottish working class made itself in conditions where there was a total absence of Parliamentary democracy in the English sense." p. 35

Friends of the People – a radical egalitarian movement in the Lowlands and Highlands in the early 1790s. p. 44

Scottish trade unions were made illegal under common law as early as 1776. p. 48

"Moreover, the Scottish philosophes were all advocates of authoritarian methods of social control; and they would have agreed with Voltaire's comment that the Enlightenment was not for `our tailors and bootmakers.' In the `golden age' of the Scottish Enlightenment the colliers were still serfs; and the philosophers were indifferent to the inhuman conditions in the coal mines in the Athens of the North." p. 48 [but cf. p. 50 where Young talks about the suppression of academic freedom preventing Adam Ferguson from protesting against the sedition trials of Scottish Jacobins.]

United Scotsmen – organization that received significant working class support in the 1790s, combining nationalism and class issues. p. 54

Sedition trials in 1793-94

"The underground United Scotsmen were clearly involved in the widespread anti-Militia riots from which not even the Highlands were immune; and in 1797 the indigenous elite in Edinburgh asked the authorities in Whitehall to withdraw all the Scottish troops and replace them with English regiments. In September 1797 the Scots Magazine reported that: `In consequence of the late riots for opposing the Militia Act, several regiments have been marched from England. The Shropshire militia, commanded by Lord Clive, have arrived at Dalkeith and Musselburgh. This is the first English regiment that has served in Scotland.'" p. 55

Reference to the anti-union and anti-democratic values of Walter Scott in 1812 p. 57

In 1816 40,000 of the "lower classes" demonstrate in Glascow for Parliamentary reform.

p. 59 [I think this is the year of the Peterloo Massacre.]

[Having mentioned an incident where (in 1820) 800 colliers in Airdre tried to seize ammunition from local authorities, Young says this:] "The revolutionary situation that existed was later describe by the Edinburgh Annual Register with unromantic accuracy: `It was in Scotland, after all, that rebellion stalked with the most open front.'" p. 62

Robert Burns poem (pp. 65-66):

Proud Priests and Bishops we'll translate

And Cannonise as Martyrs;

The guillotine on Peers shall wait;

And Knights shall hang in garters.

These despots long have trode us down,

And judges as their engines;

Such wretched minions of a Crown

Demand the people's vengeance!

Today 'tis theirs. To-morrow we

Shall don the cap of Libertie.

The Golden Age we'll then revive;

Each man will be a brother;

In harmony we all shall live,

And share the earth together;

In virtue train'd, enlighten'd Youth

Will love each fellow-creature;

And future years shall prove the truth

That man is good by nature;

Then let us toast with three times three

The reign of Peace and Libertie!

[In 1831] "Far from the peaceful, law-abiding, docile working class portrayed by most historians, the Scottish working class was already the most militant, class conscious and politically aware working class in Europe." p. 81

"In a total situation of near-dictatorship, where the escalation of crime and drunkenness, the on-going Highland clearances, conflict within the Presbyterian church and the legal repression of trade unionism and radicalism were well-known to contemporaries, Scottish society was certainly not sleeping." p. 83 [Referring to the Chartist movement of the 1830s.]

"Ethnic conflict between Gaels, Lowlanders and Irish immigrants, together with the language problem, presented the Scottish Chartists with unique opportunities." p. 88

"Moreover, just as `crowds of [English] travellers' were pouring into the Highlands in search of holiday homes, so did the Chartists expose the hypocrisy of the possessing classes who were simultaneously encouraging orations about `the preservation of the dress and language of the Gael' and ignoring the brutal actions of those who were clearing parts of Sutherlandshire by burning peasants out of their cottages." p. 89

Advocacy of temperance by Chartist leaders cut them off from much of their working class base. p. 92

"But if it is clear that the Scottish working class was not cowed by a ruthless, dictatorial, provincial elite, Scottish working people certainly took on cultural peculiarities that were unique among the working classes of western Europe. As the intellectual members of the provincial elite were insecure, schizophrenic and authoritarian, they reinforced the inarticulacy, drunkenness, aggressiveness and militancy of the `lower orders.' For stultifying to the human personality as capitalism usually is everywhere, its cultural impact on the Scottish working class was particularly vicious and de-humanizing. This was why Henry Buckle was correct to identify `the peculiarity of Scotland' down to 1850 as the dominance of superstition and `the authority of the priesthood.'" p. 98

"Scottish wage rates remained on the whole much below the English level throughout the nineteenth century. The mid-Victorian growth industries had a tradition of harshness and compulsion (until 1799 Scots miners were actually serfs), and recruited their labour from the unorganized and helpless, and especially from the Irish and Highland immigrants used neither to a decent income nor to urban and industrial life. Scots housing was and remains not only scandalously bad, but notably worse than English housing . . . But in the years from the 1830s to the 1880s there was little to fill the lives of Scotsmen except work and drink. Even labour organizations remained feebler and less stable than in England. If the mid-Victorian years were a gloomy age in the social life of the English poor, they were a black one in Scotland." p. 104 (quoting E.J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (London, 1968) p. 264

"Faced with the evidence of higher levels [in Scotland] of crime, disease, ill-health, consumption of alcohol, illegitimacy, migration, immigration and inarticulacy than existed elsewhere in the United Kingdom, it is clear that poverty alone did not deepen and intensify these problems." p. 104

Tendency to blame the Irish for Scotland's poor conditions pp. 106-107

"By 1865 self-help and thrift were the hallmarks of the ideology embraced by the urban labour movement . . . ." p. 109

"The greatest political demonstration [for manhood suffrage] that Scotland had seen till then was witnessed in Glasgow on 16 October 1866. A vast congregation of people stretched along the streets of Glasgow for five miles; and an estimated 200,000 people marched to Glasgow Green to hear speeches by John Bright, Edmund Beales, George Potter, Ernest Jones, George Newton, John Proudfoot and Alexander MacDonald." p. 111

Repressive authoritarianism of the Scottish elite p. 105 & p. 115

"A heterogeneous working class, existing in a capitalist internal colony dominated by laissez-faire ideology, lacked the liberal traditions and liberal institutions of the English. The miners represented an implicit threat to social and political stability; but since most of them had not been enfranchised by the second Reform Act of 1868, their almost innate militancy and opposition-mindedness were not sufficient to transform the political situation." p. 117

Sabitarianism and temperance commitments of Scottish labour leaders in the mid-nineteenth century worked to keep the labor movement isolated from many of its potential supporters. p. 124

"Indeed, the struggle for democracy and a Scottish Parliament became, if we may borrow a phrase from Eugen D. Genovese, `indissolubly linked to the economic struggle.'" p. 135

Imprisoned in the mythology of the Scottish Enlightenment and proud of the native Presbyterian cultural `nationalism' which cut them off from the Irish immigrants and the Highland peasants, they [artisan urban labor leaders] were actually inhibiting the emergence of a sense of nationality—of `identity' –among working men and women of diverse ethnic origins." p. 136

Drunkenness, inarticulacy, rape, traditional sexual practices, and use of Gaelic as class markers pp. pp. 138-145

Influence of socialist ideas on the Scottish labour movement in the 1880s as part of the broader world-wide movement, including mention of influence of Americans like Daniel DeLeon , Lawrence Gronland and (non-socialist) Henry George and Knights of Labor pp. 145-155 Andrew Carnegie had given some support to some reform organizations, probably without knowing fully what they were up to. "After the Homestead strike had broken out, the Glasgow Trades Council denounced Carnegie as `a new Judas Iscariot." p. 154

"As the Scottish labour movement under the leadership of men like Keir Hardie, William Small and R.B. Cunningham Graham was already to the left of the English one, they demanded a Scottish Parliament from a British Government which was refusing to implement their very radical programme of reform." p. 155

Kailyard literature: Popular novels that presented a picture of traditional Scotland as a idyllic rural world free of conflict. p. 168 [Part of the popularity of the novels involved their use of Gaelic and their flattering portrait of a democratic, sober, upright people.] In general, Scottish literature from Walter Scot to the Kailyard novelists "refused to acknowledge the reality of the class struggle." p. 169

"Indeed, social conditions in Scotland were the worst in western Europe and two German students of the social question who visited Scottish cities argued that they had come face to face with `masses of ragged, barefooted, unwashed and uncombed people, evidently injured by the misuse of alcohol—women as well as men—such as we have never met with before in our lives.'" p. 170

Quoting James Leatham who was reporting on life in early 20th century Glasgow: "A friend who was for a time in low water had to live in a working-class tenement, and his wife assure me that her husband was the only man in the building who did not give his wife the occasional thrashing." p. 172

"extreme authoritarianism of Scottish society" and "excessive flogging of juveniles" p. 173

"But when it came to judging the role of British imperialism in the Scottish Highlands, John Carstairs Matheson and the SLP [Scottish Labour Party] argued that the Highlanders `were no more part of the Scottish nation than the Sioux are part of the American nation.' As the Young Scots [nationalist group] replied to these arguments in the pages of The Socialist, Matheson asserted that `our Scottish nationality had its beginning and its end with the schemes of the ruling class.'" p. 175

[In contrast to Matheson] "John Maclean [admired by Young] thought the Highlanders' plight was central to the struggle for a socialist Scotland." p. 176

Socialist campaign against celebration of the battle of Bannockburn, a battle "by serfs for the benefit of a few barons" under the "murderer" Robert Bruce p. 176-177

A "majority of working people `looked upon socialism as anti-God' and regarded trade unionism as hostile to their conception of what constituted working-class respectability." p. 179

"In Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee strikes were accompanied by unprecedented violence and sustained discontent. The dockers' strike in Leith in 1912 was bloody and bitter . . ." p. 182

Rent strike in Glasgow in November of 1915 involves 15,000 women. p. 190

"In September [1916] the Highland Land League launched a bitter and blistering attack on the Duke of Sutherland for withholding fishing rights from returned soldiers who had been wounded in the war." p. 191

Scottish radicals support peace, Russian Revolution, and Home Rule. pp. 192-205