History documentary charting the birth and growth of the Scottish nation.
At the start of the 19th century, everything familiar was swept away. People fled from the countryside into the industrial towns of Scotland's central belt. Rural workers became factory workers - in some of the worst conditions in Europe. This new Scotland became a seedbed of revolution. But it wasn't just force that kept the Scottish people in their place, it was fantasy. Neil Oliver reveals how Sir Walter Scott created so powerful a myth, it haunts the Scots collective imagination to this day.
At the start of the 19th century, everything familiar was swept away. People fled from the countryside into the industrial towns of Scotland's central belt. Rural workers became factory workers - in some of the worst conditions in Europe. This new Scotland became a seedbed of revolution. But it wasn't just force that kept the Scottish people in their place, it was fantasy. Neil Oliver reveals how Sir Walter Scott created so powerful a myth, it haunts the Scots collective imagination to this day.
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00:00In 1792, the Highlands of Scotland were being invaded.
00:15Men, women and children were being driven off their land.
00:21The invaders were sheep.
00:23New breeds developed for survival on these mountains.
00:26Eventually, the Lairds could make serious money out of this wild country.
00:30They started clearing the people out and bringing the sheep in.
00:36The men of Ross had had enough, so they decided on a radical and astonishing course of direct
00:41action.
00:42They planned to drive the sheep right out of the Highlands.
00:46Four hundred men began herding sheep from Ross, from Sutherland, and pushing them south.
00:52The local sheriff was terrified.
00:54He believed the sheep rustlers were armed, and he'd heard rumours that they'd brought
00:58twenty-six pounds of gunpowder with them.
01:03He wrote to the Lord Advocate and asked for three companies of soldiers to restore order.
01:09You can be no stranger to the seditious acts that are going on in this county.
01:14The flame is spreading.
01:15What is our case today, if matters are permitted to proceed, will be yours tomorrow.
01:24This is the story of the violent, unequal struggle between the people who owned the
01:28land and the people who lived on it.
01:31But it wasn't just force that kept the Scottish people in their place.
01:35It was fantasy, a myth so powerfully told that it still shapes how we think about Scotland.
01:541792 was a terrifying year for the landed gentry.
02:20Just across the Channel, the revolution was in full swing.
02:23The French had deposed their king.
02:26No French aristocrat's property or life was safe.
02:32Dangerous ideas of freedom were spreading like sparks in the wind.
02:39In Ross, the sheriff thought he was facing the start of Scotland's own revolution.
02:45The rustlers crossed the Kyle of Sutherland.
02:47Here they set up camp for the night.
02:51Over 6,000 stolen sheep filled the glen.
02:57The sheriff's reinforcements arrived at around 8 o'clock in the evening.
03:01Three companies of soldiers from Fort William.
03:04The sheriff marched them straight on through the night to confront the sheep rustlers.
03:08But when they arrived in the valley, though the fires were still burning and the sheep
03:12were still there, the Highlanders were gone.
03:21For centuries, the Highlands had been a feudal society.
03:37Tenants scraped a living from the land, their housing and grazing provided by the Laird,
03:42the clan chief.
03:43In return, they gave him their unquestioning loyalty.
03:50Not anymore.
03:52In the lowlands, estates had been cleared and landowners had made a great deal of money.
03:57This was a modern commercial age and the Highland Lairds refused to be left behind.
04:02The way they viewed their land was different now.
04:05The clan chiefs had become landlords.
04:09As far as they were concerned, the Highlanders lived in great poverty and squalor.
04:14Why on earth would you want to preserve that?
04:16Go, move them to the coast, make them live on the land that's no good for sheep.
04:21They can't stand in the way of progress.
04:25But for the Highlanders, nothing had changed.
04:28They still believed they had an unwritten right to live on the land of their forefathers
04:32based on centuries of tradition.
04:35The people of the Highlands felt a devastating sense of betrayal.
04:44People fled from the countryside into the swelling industrial towns of Scotland's central belt.
04:51It was the start of the new century and everything familiar was swept away in the rush to modernity
04:57and profit.
05:03This was a new Scotland.
05:06Many found it absolutely terrifying.
05:15Walter Scott was determined that such radical change should not lead to chaos and anarchy.
05:22Scott was a local sheriff in Melrose.
05:25He'd taken part in suppressing a riot among the weavers of Galashiels and been stoned for his trouble.
05:31He believed what had happened in France could easily happen in Scotland.
05:35The country, he said, is mined below our feet.
05:39So what did he do?
05:42He picked up his pen and wrote.
05:45Scott's novels gave the British people exactly what they needed,
05:49an escape from the uncertain modern world into history.
05:53Waverley was the best-selling book of the summer of 1814
05:56and Rob Roy was a publishing sensation,
05:59being read everywhere from the Prince of Wales Castle to the Weaver's Cottage.
06:03Scott told stories of brave Scottish bandits, fiery Highland maidens,
06:08stag hunts, great feasts and doomed battles.
06:11Just as the clearances were emptying the Highlands,
06:14Scott recreated them and celebrated their past.
06:29By 1814, Scott wasn't just writing about history.
06:34By 1814, Scott wasn't just writing about history.
06:38He was building it.
06:41He had bought a run-down old farmhouse near Melrose called Clarty Hole,
06:45which means Dirty Puddle.
06:49He used the money from his writing to knock it down and build himself this.
06:55And he didn't call it Clarty Hole.
06:58He called it Abbotsford and he called himself the Laird of Abbotsford.
07:18Power comes from ownership of the land.
07:21Now Scott had that.
07:23Over the next 20 years, he'd buy up more and more of it.
07:26A field here, a wood there, until he owned 14,000 acres.
07:42In a time when you didn't have to worry about border raids or attacking armies,
07:46Scott's house harks back to the fortified buildings of the 16th century.
07:51But this wasn't for defence.
07:53This was for show.
07:58This is his riff on the romantic past.
08:01A Scotsman's home is his castle.
08:04And Scott was ahead of a trend.
08:07Abbotsford was just one of a rash of fake medieval castles across the country.
08:12The landed gentry started building a dream of Scotland's past in stone
08:17and then living the dream.
08:24BELL RINGS
08:26Scott filled his imitation castle with a magpie collection of relics
08:30from the romantic past.
08:35From the minute you walk through the front door,
08:37you don't know where to look first.
08:39No, you don't. There's so much to look at.
08:41How long was Scott at this, collecting?
08:45Years. I think, actually, all his life.
08:48I think he was a collector, a born collector,
08:51particularly of things Scottish.
08:53And this, for example, what is this? Whose is this?
08:57This is Rob Roy's skinned...
08:59This was tucked into Rob Roy's sock? It was. It was.
09:03That is the real, genuine article.
09:05Does it open? It does open, but I'm not going to let you.
09:09And what about the cross? Whose cross is it?
09:11That was carried by Mary, Queen of Scots, to her execution.
09:14So that would have been in her hand on her last walk.
09:17And it's a beautiful object in its own right.
09:21Well, that's got power, hasn't it? That's magic.
09:24That's got real magic, yes.
09:26I mean, this is a strange thing. Yes.
09:28What's the musket ball and what?
09:30It's a piece of oat cake taken from the pocket of a Highlander
09:34after the Battle of Culloden. Oh, no.
09:36A fallen Highlander, obviously.
09:38So that's a last morsel that he didn't even have time to eat.
09:41That's right. That's right.
09:43And do you think... Do you think that's true?
09:45I mean, would Scott have been able to have it proven to him
09:48that that had really come from Culloden?
09:51Scott was quite keen on getting things that were actually real things
09:56with good provenance.
09:58So, my feeling is, if Scott said it's an oat cake
10:02from a Highlander at the Battle of Culloden, it probably is.
10:10In 1815, Walter Scott grabbed his chance to see history in the making.
10:19In France, the revolutionary terror had been followed
10:22by a military dictatorship.
10:24Napoleon had dominated all Europe.
10:27The British had finally beaten him
10:29after 22 years of near-continual fighting.
10:33Scott travelled to Waterloo to see the reality of war for himself.
10:40He was one of the first British tourists to get there.
10:43The battlefield was still littered with the corpses of the slain.
10:47Scott was horrified.
10:49This was what you got when the social order broke down.
10:52This was what the French Revolution had led to.
10:55Anarchy, and then tyranny, and then death.
11:08He still picked up a few trophies for his collection, though.
11:18Now, the Napoleonic Wars were over.
11:20The continent opened up again to trade.
11:24Weavers and factory workers had to compete with cheap goods from abroad.
11:30The economy slumped, and the whole of Britain went into recession.
11:35Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs,
11:38and millions of people lost their homes.
11:42The economy slumped, and the whole of Britain went into recession.
11:46Tens of thousands of ex-soldiers joined the unemployed.
11:53The ideas generated by the French Revolution hadn't disappeared.
11:57They'd just been shouted down while the country was at war.
12:00Now they were back.
12:04Andrew Hardy was a weaver.
12:06Like many weavers, he was an educated man
12:09with a fierce interest in radical ideas.
12:12He saw a great deal wrong with the world around him.
12:15He knew the terrible conditions of the workers in Scotland's factories
12:19and the desperate poverty of the unemployed.
12:22He believed in votes for all
12:24and an end to the powerlessness of the working man.
12:28And he wasn't alone.
12:30A huge demonstration in Paisley demanded
12:33no king, no lords, no gentry, no taxes.
12:37They wanted nothing less than a workers' revolution.
12:40It was exactly what Andrew Hardy wanted
12:43and what terrified Walter Scott.
12:45So what did Scott do?
12:47In the midst of all this unrest,
12:49he set out on a quest
12:51to find the lost crown and sceptre of the Scottish kings.
12:54Odd.
13:00But Scott could see a use for them.
13:03For hundreds of years, the crown, the sceptre and sword
13:06had made Scotland's kings.
13:08They were potent symbols of Scottish nationhood.
13:14Then the Union of 1707
13:16made the Scottish crown jewels redundant.
13:19For over a century, they'd been locked away in Edinburgh Castle.
13:23There were even rumours they'd been smuggled to England.
13:30Over a rather good dinner,
13:32Scott persuaded George, the Prince Regent,
13:35that the Scottish crown jewels still had symbolic power
13:40and that finding them would make the people feel patriotic
13:44and loyal to their king.
13:55Walter Scott broke into the sealed room in Edinburgh Castle.
14:05HE SIGHS
14:35Apparently, someone in the little gathering picked up the crown
14:39and began to play about with it
14:41and then moved as though to place it on someone else's head.
14:45Scott stopped him short.
14:47To him, at least, this was a serious business
14:50and these items were not to be taken lightly.
14:53They were not to be taken lightly.
14:55They were not to be taken lightly.
14:57They were not to be taken lightly.
14:59They were not to be taken lightly.
15:01They were not to be taken lightly.
15:03This was a serious business
15:05and these items belonged to the ancient line of Scotland's monarchs.
15:09After all, these were the very tools of king-making.
15:12This was Scotland's history.
15:17Hundreds gathered outside the castle.
15:19The royal standard was raised on the battlements
15:22to tell them the crown had been found.
15:26The crowd cheered.
15:28Scott's mission had been successful.
15:34In a time of unrest,
15:36Scott pushed a version of Scotland ruled by kings
15:40where everyone else knew their place.
15:53But the radicals weren't listening.
15:57The Scottish crown jewels and all they stood for
16:00The Scottish crown jewels and all they stood for
16:02had nothing to offer them.
16:05Andrew Hardy was 26 now
16:07but he hadn't married his sweetheart Margaret
16:10probably because he couldn't afford to.
16:13Margaret hated Hardy's politics.
16:15She thought they'd get him into serious trouble.
16:18She was right.
16:23The unrest spread across Scotland.
16:25In Dundee, a protest meeting 10,000 strong
16:29called for electoral reform, general elections every year
16:32and votes for everyone.
16:34The government listened and responded.
16:37The government banned public meetings.
16:39This was class war.
16:42The radicals were angry because they had no voice.
16:47There were over 2 million people in Scotland
16:49but only 4,000 got to vote.
16:57The radicals were angry because they had no voice.
17:00There were over 2 million people in Scotland
17:03but only 4,000 got to vote.
17:12A Paisley band were locked up
17:14for playing Scots wahey at a demonstration.
17:17Burns had written this 25 years before
17:20at least partly as a protest song.
17:22Now it was printed as a broadside
17:25and passed from hand to hand.
17:34This is an anthem for the Scots
17:36who bled and died with Wallace on the battlefield.
17:39Listen to these words.
17:41Lay the proud usurpers low.
17:44Tyrants fall in every foe.
17:47Liberties in every blow.
17:49Let us do or die.
17:52The song was taken up by protesters in England
17:55as well as in Scotland.
17:57Wallace had been reinvented as a hero of the revolution.
18:00When Andrew Hardy spoke about another fellow radical, John Baird
18:03he paid him the ultimate compliment by saying
18:06he is worthy of being classed with Sir William Wallace.
18:21Scott decided to act
18:23and again he looked to the Highlands for an answer.
18:26He called upon the chieftains to raise the Highland host
18:29to crush the radicals.
18:31But Sir Walter's rallying cry was met with a deafening silence.
18:35The Highland chieftains had better things to do.
18:38They were busy turning sheep into gold.
18:43So Scott decided to set up his own army.
18:48He recruited 300 men.
18:50He called them the Gala Marksmen.
18:53Scott was spoiling for a fight.
18:56He offered to bring his volunteers anywhere in Scotland they were needed.
19:01One day's good fighting would cure the most radically of the radical malady
19:06and if I had anything to say on the matter
19:08they should remember the day for half a century to come.
19:13But the authorities didn't take Scott up on his offer
19:16and both he and his private army stayed at home.
19:24On the night of Sunday, April 1st, 1820
19:27walls in Glasgow, Paisley, Dumbarton and Kilsyth
19:30were plastered with a poster
19:32demanding a general strike to overthrow the government.
19:38Andrew Hardy was in the crowd
19:40when a justice of the peace came up
19:42and ordered one of the posters to be torn down.
19:45Hardy pushed him out of the way.
19:47Before I permit you to take down your notice, he said,
19:51I will part with the last drop of my blood.
19:57This was the start of the Radical War.
20:03On the Monday, 60,000 workers went on strike
20:06all across Scotland's industrial heartlands.
20:09In Glasgow, the provost wrote,
20:11almost the whole population of the working classes
20:14have obeyed the order in the treasonable proclamation by striking work.
20:18The authorities marshalled the troops
20:20and mounted cannon here on Jamaica Bridge.
20:23They were expecting serious trouble.
20:28Hardy was told that the whole city would be in arms
20:31in the course of an hour
20:33and that England had risen in rebellion already.
20:36He wanted to fight in the uprising.
20:39What do you need to overthrow the state?
20:42What do you need for a radical war?
20:45For any war, for that matter?
20:47Guns.
20:52Hardy joined forces with an ex-soldier, John Baird,
20:55and together they led a raiding party of about 50 men.
20:59Their destination was the Carran Ironworks,
21:02where the guns that had beaten Napoleon were made.
21:05Hardy's plan was to march to Falkirk and seize control of the guns.
21:13They stopped at a tavern at midday.
21:17They were so sure of the rebellion's success
21:20that they got a receipt
21:22so they could claim their expenses back later from the new radical government.
21:28When they got to Bonnymuir,
21:30they were confronted by a troop of government cavalry.
21:33Hardy's men took up position beside a five-foot wall here.
21:36The cavalry charged.
21:38The radicals opened fire,
21:40stabbing at the horses with their pikes when they drew close enough.
21:43The cavalry withdrew, regrouped and charged again
21:46before the radicals had time to reload.
21:48They were finished.
21:5018 were wounded and 18 taken prisoner.
21:55But the battle for workers' rights wasn't over.
21:59While Baird and Hardy were defeated at Bonnymuir,
22:02another radical, James Wilson,
22:04marched 100 men into Straven and took over the town.
22:07Wilson was 63 years old.
22:09He'd been politicised by the French Revolution
22:12and involved in radical politics for nearly 30 years.
22:15Now his moment had come.
22:21Wilson formed a raiding party and went around the Lanarkshire town
22:25requisitioning all the weapons he could find,
22:28at gunpoint where necessary.
22:31The local gentry were taken by surprise.
22:35By the end of the night, Wilson had control of Straven.
22:44Welcome to this annual commemoration of James Wilson
22:49in the events of 1820 and specifically in the 1820 Rising.
22:54I am glad to hear my countrymen are resolved to act like men.
22:59We are seeking nothing but the rights of our forefathers.
23:03Liberty is not worth having if it is not worth fighting for.
23:08And we'll have one minute's silence.
23:14The next morning, Wilson and 24 others set off towards Glasgow.
23:18They hoped to meet up with the rumoured huge radical army of workers
23:22who would have joined to overthrow the state.
23:25They carried with them a banner reading,
23:27Scotland, free or a desert.
23:40But the masses hadn't risen.
23:42When they got to the rendezvous at Cathkin Braes,
23:44there was no-one else there.
23:46So they hid their weapons in the bracken, turned around and fled for home.
23:50By the end of the week, the status quo had been restored.
23:53The uprising, such as it was, had been suppressed
23:56and the radical war was over.
24:04However angry and unhappy the Scottish people were without a vote,
24:08they would never again go the way of France and join in open revolution.
24:16In 1988, people were found guilty of high treason.
24:19James Wilson, John Baird and Andrew Hardy were sentenced to death.
24:34My dear and loving Margaret,
24:36before this arrives to your hand, I will be made immortal.
24:40I shall die firm to the cause which I took up arms to defend
24:44Although we were outwitted and betrayed,
24:46yet I protest as a dying man that it was done with a good intention on my part.
24:51Could you have thought that I was sufficient to stand such a stroke,
24:55which at once burst upon me like an earthquake
24:58and buried all my vain earthly hopes beneath its ruins
25:02and left me a poor shipwrecked mariner on this bleak shore,
25:06separated from the world and thee in whom all my hopes were centred.
25:12My dear Margaret, I will be under the necessity of laying down my pen
25:17as this will have to go out immediately.
25:20Again, farewell, my dear Margaret.
25:29John Baird and Andrew Hardy were executed in Stirling.
25:32They were only allowed to speak from the scaffold
25:35on the condition they didn't talk about politics.
25:38But Hardy shouted to the crowd,
25:40I die a martyr to the cause of truth and justice.
26:00Hardy's letter to Margaret was published in a broadside
26:03and sold on the streets of Edinburgh for a penny.
26:06Scott bought a copy and wrote on it
26:09curious particulars regarding Baird, who suffered for high treason, 1820.
26:14The letters from Hardy, of course, not Baird.
26:17Scott's got them muddled up.
26:19But as far as Scott was concerned, the letter was a relic for his collection.
26:24After all, the Radical War was history.
26:36But Scotland's workers were still unhappy.
26:39Government, by the elite, under the King,
26:42had been defended with the bayonet.
26:44But in order to rule effectively, governments need popular consent.
26:49It was a problem.
26:51Scott thought he could solve it.
26:55In 1820, Roly-Poly George finally became king.
26:59He made Scott a baronet.
27:02Now George IV decided to visit Scotland
27:06to see for himself the country he had only read about in Scott's novels.
27:13Naturally, George was not the first to visit Scotland.
27:17He was not the first to visit Scotland.
27:20And Scott took the ball and ran with it.
27:23He set up his headquarters here, at 39 Castle Street.
27:26Scott understood the opportunity.
27:28As one of the greatest communicators of his age,
27:33he knew that he had to make the visit tell a story.
27:37He realised that what was needed was a simple, dramatic, romantic,
27:41visually striking image,
27:44to inspire people to read a publication.
27:46A simple, dramatic, romantic, visually striking image.
27:50Complexity wouldn't work.
27:52He painted with bright colours and a broad brush.
28:03He turned Scotland tartan.
28:05We were all Highlanders now.
28:17But the tartan image of Scotland
28:19wasn't just attractive and appealing.
28:21It was also backward-looking.
28:23The Traditional Feudal Society of the Highlands
28:26appealed to Scott because it was a world
28:29where the working classes knew their proper place.
28:37Scott wrote this, an advice pamphlet.
28:40Hints addressed to the inhabitants of Edinburgh
28:43and others in prospect of His Majesty's visit.
28:46In it, he said that George was the descendant
28:49of a long line of Scottish kings
28:51and therefore the kinsman of many Scots.
28:54Let us on this happy occasion remember that it is so
28:58and behave towards him as a father.
29:01This was a brilliant lie.
29:03George was mostly German, of the House of Hanover,
29:07and yet Scott was telling his fellow Scots
29:11that we had to be loyal because we are the clan
29:15and our king is the chief.
29:21Because King George was already a huge fan
29:24of Scott's Highland romances,
29:26he adored the idea of being the Highland chief of chiefs.
29:31And he'd always loved dressing up.
29:35He went to his tailor and ordered the complete Highland dress.
29:40It cost £1,354.18.
29:45In today's money, George spent around £100,000 on his outfit.
29:54Say what you like about Scott, but he wasn't afraid of hard work.
29:58King George gave just two weeks' notice of his visit,
30:01for in 14 days, Sir Walter was able to organise
30:04three royal processions, a great gathering of the clans,
30:07two balls, several grand dinners,
30:09a royal review of the troops on Portobello Beach
30:12and, finally, a royal visit to the theatre
30:14to see a performance of Scott's own play, Rob Roy.
30:20The king's advisers were horrified.
30:23George was always in debt and this sounded very expensive.
30:27Scott was running away with himself.
30:29Couldn't he keep it simple?
30:32When His Majesty comes amongst us,
30:34he comes to his ancient kingdom of Scotland
30:36and must be received according to ancient usages.
30:39If you persist in bringing in English customs,
30:42we turn about one and all and leave you.
30:45You take the responsibility on yourself.
30:49That shut them up.
30:51You've got to admire Scott's brass neck here.
30:53He was making up most of these ancient usages as he went along.
30:59And now there was no stopping him.
31:01In a bravura piece of myth-making,
31:03Scott took the Company of Archers, a gentleman's sporting club,
31:07and reinvented them as the ceremonial bodyguard
31:10to the king in Scotland, a role they still have today.
31:18So, which one of your ancestors
31:20was in the Company of Archers in Walter Scott's day?
31:24There were a number of my family, me included,
31:27who'd been in the Royal Company of Archers,
31:29but in Scott's day, it was the fourth Earl of Hopeton,
31:32who was my five greats' grandfather.
31:35And he was the Captain General,
31:37who's the commander of the Royal Company.
31:40And what then was the role of the Company
31:43during the course of George IV's visit?
31:46They paraded when the king arrived.
31:48They were there to receive him.
31:50They acted as his retinue, his bodyguards,
31:54and to be on display and on parade
31:57wherever he went.
31:59And this is actually what Scott thought
32:02a royal archer should look like.
32:04This was exactly that.
32:06This is the fourth Earl's uniform,
32:08as designed by Sir Walter Scott for the visit.
32:11And this painting, is this a faithful rendition
32:14of the king's visit to this house?
32:16Yes, it is.
32:18This is a painting by a man called Dennis Dyton,
32:21who was here on the day,
32:23and then he worked up this fantastic painting afterwards.
32:26So you've got the house itself in the background,
32:29you've got the Royal Company formed up there
32:31on the steps of the house to receive the king,
32:34looking, I have to say, slightly thinner
32:36than we believe he was in real life.
32:38He's been photoshopped there, hasn't he?
32:40He's been touched up, he has indeed.
32:42And he looks very splendid.
32:44And then round across the roofs of the pavilion for the house,
32:48you've got members of the local public,
32:50you've got tenants, you've got employees and the like,
32:53all of whom had turned out to greet
32:55the visit of King George IV to Scotland.
33:06Scott knew that what George really wanted to see
33:10was the romantic Highlander.
33:12He persuaded the Scottish chiefs
33:14to put on all their finery and fill the city.
33:17They absolutely loved the idea.
33:21Scott's gathering of the clans was his masterstroke.
33:27The clan chiefs and their tale of Highlanders in fancy dress
33:30knew exactly how bogus this all was.
33:33No Highlander out on the Scottish hills wore a short kilt.
33:36Even the idea of each clan having its own tartan
33:39was a fairly recent invention.
33:42But they didn't care.
33:44They were enjoying the party.
33:51As they looked out across the cheering crowds,
33:54the landed gentry of Scotland
33:56must have thought their position was secure.
33:59It was less than two years since the Radical War
34:02and the people still didn't have a vote.
34:05But they seemed to have forgotten their hardships
34:08in this glorious spectacle.
34:10King George's visit to Scotland was a popular success
34:13and a triumph for Scott.
34:15But had it worked?
34:17Well, no.
34:19Despite all the tugging at the patriotic heartstrings,
34:22Scott's reinvention of Scotland
34:24had failed to prevent the one thing he had set out to thwart.
34:28Electoral reform.
34:30The cause of which was the election.
34:32And it was not just the election.
34:34It was also the death of George.
34:38The cause for change hadn't gone away.
34:41Scott's triumph was a triumph of spin, not of substance.
34:46Unemployment, poverty, powerlessness, all remained.
34:50The protests continued.
34:56It took another 10 years,
34:58but in 1832, the government finally gave way
35:01to the pressure for electoral reform across Britain.
35:04Britain. It is impossible to exaggerate the ecstasy of Scotland, where to be sure it's
35:11like liberty given to slaves, we are to be brought out of the house of bondage, out of
35:17the land of Egypt.
35:27By now, Scott was very ill, months from death. But as the bill passed through Parliament,
35:33he pushed himself to the limit, speaking out against it at public meetings. When the crowds
35:38booed and hissed at him, he told them, I regard your gabble no more than geese upon the green.
35:47Sir Walter Scott died a disappointed man, terrified that electoral reform would bring
35:52anarchy to his beloved Scotland, and with the huge debts he'd run up buying the estate
35:57at Abbotsford, still unpaid.
36:04The Scottish Reform Act extended the franchise, but not to everyone. As long as you had a
36:09property worth ten pounds, you got a vote. So that's not the working man, or women of
36:14any class of course. The reforms gave 16 times more people than before a vote, but that's
36:21only 65,000 out of 2 million. Still, it's a start.
36:52In 1846, Thomas Cook started packaged tours to Scotland, using all the latest technology,
37:05the newly built railway and paddle steamers. Well-heeled, middle-class Victorian tourists
37:11from London, Manchester and Glasgow started travelling north for their summer holidays.
37:16Now, you could visit this heroic wilderness without the bother of trudging through it.
37:28Sir Walter Scott had taught the Victorians to love this landscape. Visitors looked in
37:36awe upon scenery they believed had been left as nature created it. However, the reality
37:42is the people who once lived here had been cleared.
37:50This is as true of the lowlands and Loch Catrin here in the Trossachs as it is of the Great
37:54Glen and the mountains of Sutherland. The Highlanders were an endangered species, every
38:03bit as hard to spot as the rest of the wildlife the tourists had come to see.
38:12They had been moved to the coast. The Highlanders had become crofters.
38:24Crofts are small holdings with a little land, but not enough for a family to survive on.
38:31Crofters had to grow their own food and then top up their income catching fish, gathering
38:36seaweed or going down to the lowlands to help with the harvest.
38:44The crofters were barely getting by and what they mostly survived on was potatoes. The
38:50potato grows in thin soil and it takes up very little space so every croft grew them.
38:56By 1846 the potato provided the average crofter with four fifths of his staple diet.
39:07A Highland minister of the time told a story about asking a small boy what he ate for breakfast.
39:12Mashed potatoes was the answer and at noon, mashed potatoes and for dinner, mashed potatoes.
39:19Did you have anything else? the minister asked. Of course I do, said the boy, I have a spoon.
39:27In the 19th century, huge expanses of the Highlands and Islands had absentee landlords.
39:42A third of the islands of Skye and Uist were owned by Lord William Wentworth MacDonald,
39:47but he spent little time here. Like many Highland chiefs in the 19th century, he was born in
39:53London, educated at Eton and married to an English woman. Lord MacDonald saw his Highland
40:01properties first and foremost as a way of making money.
40:08In July 1846, potato blight spread on the wind across the sea from Ireland to Scotland.
40:27It was devastating. Field after field was blasted, full of black, rotting plants.
40:39Then as now, it's people living on the margins who are vulnerable to famine. If you're barely
40:47making enough to exist when the times are good, when times are bad, you starve.
40:52On Skye, barely a fifth of the potato crop survived. One minister wrote, we frequently
41:00had bad springs, but this is a winter of starvation.
41:09The government felt no duty of care towards the starving. It was hard to grasp the scale
41:14of the crisis from Westminster, and anyway, they believed you shouldn't interfere with
41:20the free market.
41:25Grain and oats grown here were actually shipped south throughout the famine. In the spring
41:30of 1847, after a winter of hunger, the sight of ships full of food leaving the Highlands
41:36was too much to bear.
41:46Food riots erupted across the northeast, and in Wick, the starving people broke into the
41:51grain stores. The sheriff called for backup, and two companies of soldiers marched to the
41:56docks to stop the looting. The crowd pelted them with stones, and in response, the troopers
42:02fixed bayonets and attacked. The mob fled. Under armed guard, the ships were safely loaded
42:11and set sail.
42:19But bad though the famine was in Scotland, it was infinitely worse in Ireland. Something
42:24like one million people are estimated to have died in the Irish potato famine. In Scotland,
42:30the dead numbered in the hundreds. Why? In Ireland, the better off felt no moral responsibility
42:37to help the starving. In Scotland though, they did.
42:51This is at least partly Sir Walter Scott's legacy. He had celebrated the Highlander,
42:56and made people across Scotland identify with their romantic history. Now the city
43:02dwellers of Edinburgh and Glasgow were determined not to let their brothers starve. Scotland's
43:08Free Church helped collect money and organise relief. £250,000 was raised to help the starving.
43:16That's over £15 million in today's money. But Lord Macdonald, along with many of his
43:24fellow landlords, felt there was no future for the crofters.
43:40The Macdonald family seat was this mock medieval castle here on Skye. Sir Walter Scott would
43:46have loved it. Now though, Lord Macdonald was in debt to the tune of £218,000. He felt
43:52he had no choice. He decided to turn more of his estates over to sheep farming. The
43:57crofters would have to go. Emigration was the answer. The Highland landowners began
44:06to clear the land. Crofters were forced to leave Scotland and travel across the ocean
44:15to Canada, America and Australia. Most would never return.
44:35The clearances on Skye were particularly brutal. Over 1,700 writs of removal were issued to
44:42evict nearly 40,000 people from their homes. Lord Macdonald's factors evicted thousands
44:54of crofters, pulled down the roofs so they couldn't move back and forced them to emigrate.
45:02In 1853, he emptied the township of Shushnish.
45:13I could see a long and motley procession winding along the road that led north from Shushnish.
45:20There were old men and women too feeble to walk who were placed in carts, while the children
45:27with looks of alarm walked alongside. Everyone was in tears. It seemed as if they could not
45:34tear themselves away. When they set forth once more, a cry of grief went up to the heaven,
45:40a long plaintive wail, and after the last of the emigrants had disappeared behind the
45:46hill, the sounds seemed to re-echo through the whole wide valley in one prolonged note
45:53of desolation. Most of the people of Shushnish boarded the boats to Canada, but some hid
46:04out here in the hills. After the police and the sheriffs had gone, they crept back to
46:09try and repair their ruined homes. But Lord Macdonald's factor was a thorough man. Five
46:15days after Christmas, he returned. Among those driven out into the freezing winter weather
46:20were an 81-year-old woman and a mother and her three-week-old baby.
46:42John Murdoch was a retired civil servant in Inverness who was horrified by the way the
46:47Lairds were treating the crofters. Murdoch always wore the kilt. By the 1850s, the reinvented
46:54kilt had become a symbol of national identity. Murdoch realised how powerful such symbols
47:00could be.
47:03If Canada and Australia really are gardens of pleasure, as the Lairds argue, they should
47:09emigrate themselves. The country can spare them better than it can spare any other class.
47:17In Ireland, the land reform movement had pushed for a fairer deal for tenants. The struggle
47:22was bitter and bloody. John Murdoch had worked in Ireland and had seen it for himself. He
47:28hated the violence, but he liked the results. Now, he decided to lead a non-violent campaign
47:34to overthrow the power of the landlords.
47:38Fifty-six minutes! Fifty-eight! Fifty-six minutes!
47:43The first thing that John Murdoch had to do was to get the crofters on side, so he travelled
47:48all over the Highlands and Islands. He went to the markets, he went to the shearings,
47:52he walked over 20 miles a day just to get to wherever he thought that crofters would
47:57gather, and he talked to them. But more important than that, he also listened.
48:04Murdoch was canny enough to realise that the way you win people around to your way of thinking
48:09is by listening to their way of thinking first. What he found, he said, were people who lived
48:16in such a state of slavish fear that they dare not complain about their grievances in
48:21case they were forced from their homes.
48:24John Murdoch had hearts and minds to change, so he set to work.
48:31He set up a crusading newspaper called The Highlander. The Highlander wasn't just about
48:36land reform. Murdoch was printing his version of history.
48:45In Highland tradition, the land in the Highlands was the property of the Highlanders.
48:50In Highland tradition, the land in the Highlands belonged to the clans as such, and not to
48:55the chiefs. A chieftain is the head of the clan or family, and not owner of the great
49:01tract of land which that clan occupied.
49:05The landlords, in other words, were in the wrong.
49:10Murdoch wasn't just talking to the crofters. His campaign had another audience just as
49:15important. It was still the case that only property-owning men got to vote.
49:22Obviously the Lairds were never going to vote for land reform, so Murdoch needed to sell
49:27his version of Scottish history to the middle classes.
49:31And there was one man who helped him do it. A man he'd never met. A man who would have
49:37hated everything he stood for. A man who'd been dead over 40 years. Sir Walter Scott.
49:44Brought up on Waverley and Rob Roy, middle class Victorians saw the Highlanders as a
49:49noble people with a proud tradition. So Murdoch was pushing at a half-open door.
49:5550 years earlier, Scott had taken the idea of the Highlander and made it represent all
50:00of Scotland. So when Murdoch told the story of the Highlanders thrown off their land,
50:05it wasn't just happening to people far up north. It was happening to everyone.
50:10It was happening to Scotland.
50:13In 1881, the Irish Land Act gave the Irish fair rents and security of tenure.
50:25Skye fishermen working in Ireland for the summer brought the news home with them.
50:29One group of Skye crofters said they might turn rebel ourselves in order to obtain the
50:34same benefits.
50:37By now, the generation who'd witnessed the clearances, whose brothers and friends had
50:43been forced to emigrate, were mostly gone. The next generation were less scared and more
50:49angry. Finally, the crofters had had enough. And it all started on Skye.
50:57By 1882, Ronald Archibald was the new Lord Macdonald. He received a petition from his
51:04crofters in Balmenach, demanding their traditional grazing rights on the sides of Benlea.
51:10Lord Macdonald said no.
51:14The crofters refused to pay him any rent for their houses until he changed his mind.
51:19So Lord Macdonald told his factor to evict them from Skye.
51:22But when the crofters received the eviction notices, they burned them.
51:28Fifty policemen were sent north from Glasgow to Skye, and they arrived here at Balmenach
51:33around six in the morning, when most of the villagers were still asleep or just having
51:37their breakfast. Boys whistled and shouted warnings, but it was too late.
51:42My grandmother was preparing the breakfast when the shout came that the police were here.
51:49And my grandfather, he was sitting at the fireside holding a baby.
51:56He just threw the baby across the fire to my grandmother.
52:01My grandfather, he was sitting at the fireside holding a baby.
52:06He just threw the baby across the fire to my granny.
52:11And then he took out up the hill to the road.
52:14And so your grandfather and great-grandfather were among those arrested?
52:18Yes, yes. But folk, they could take so much, stand so much, but they just couldn't go on.
52:29They had to make a stand.
52:32What exactly did the crofters have in mind for this spot on the road?
52:36Well, that was to release the prisoners and cause all the damage they could to the police.
52:44They had this cairn of stones and clods and whatever else could come to hand,
52:50just to pitch over the top.
52:53So just going to rain it down on them?
52:55Just raining it down on them to cause as much damage as they could.
52:59But the police formed a cordon around half a dozen prisoners.
53:06And in order not to injure or maybe kill our own folk, the cry went up, stop, stop.
53:15And then the police broke through and they headed towards Portree with their prisoners.
53:26And then they got to Portree with their prisoners.
53:3490 years before, when the men of Ross had tried to drive the sheep out of the highlands,
53:39they'd been regarded as dangerous revolutionaries.
53:4235 years before, when the people of Skye had attempted to resist the clearances,
53:47they'd met little public sympathy and the full force of the law.
53:51But now things were different.
53:55Less than a week after the Battle of the Braes,
53:5711 journalists came to Skye to follow the story,
54:00including one from the London Standard.
54:03The Crofters were seen as plucky underdogs.
54:07And the message spread.
54:15Thousands of Crofters stopped paying rent.
54:19The Sheriff of Skye persuaded the government to send troops
54:23to enforce the rule of law.
54:25On the 21st of November, a gunboat and 450 troops
54:28arrived here in Loch Dunvegan.
54:33But the government wanted to keep on the right side of public opinion.
54:38They gave the Sheriff strict instructions
54:40the troops were not to inflame the situation,
54:43so the Sheriff was not allowed to use them to evict people.
54:47After six months of stalemate, the troops were withdrawn.
54:54Now the Crofters knew they could do what they liked.
54:57The Factors, the Lairds, even the government were powerless to stop them.
55:01Lord Lovett of Skye wrote,
55:03the Queen's Writ does not now run in the island.
55:06The lands seized are still mostly in the hands of the lawbreakers.
55:10Rents and taxes are unpaid and many defaulters are still at large.
55:18And come rent day, when Lord Lovett of Skye
55:21and come rent day, when Lord Macdonald put out the demands to his tenants,
55:26not a single farthing was paid and not a single tenant appeared.
55:37So what did the government do?
55:39They set up a commission.
55:42The Napier Commission held its first meeting here, in the church in Braes,
55:46close to the spot where the Crofters and the 50 police had their pitched battle.
55:54A royal commission was the traditional way, then as now,
55:58to kick a difficult issue into the long grass.
56:01But John Murdoch realised this could be a real opportunity.
56:05He was the first of his kind to set up a commission
56:08and he realised this could be a real opportunity.
56:11He went around the Highlands organising and preparing people for it.
56:18Crofter after Crofter gave testimony.
56:21They told stories of betrayal, of persecution and of hardship.
56:25Public pressure steadily grew to give the Crofters more rights.
56:31In the 1885 general election,
56:34four Crofters Party MPs won seats in Westminster.
56:38This was an astonishing achievement.
56:41Now the reformers had political power.
56:44The government had to act.
56:49The Crofters Land Act of 1886 gave them security of tenure and set fair rents.
56:55Never again would the Lairds be able to turn Crofters out of their homes.
56:59The clearances were over.
57:04For centuries, the control of the landowners had been absolute.
57:08Now, at last, the balance of power was beginning to shift.
57:19Walter Scott had created the myth of the Highlands.
57:22Walter Scott had created the myth of the Highlander
57:25in an attempt to secure the loyalty of the Scots to their king.
57:29Ironically, that myth was subverted to give the Highlander rights over the land.
57:35For good or ill, Scott rebranded Scotland.
57:39Nearly two centuries later, his tartan is woven into our national identity.
57:48The stories we tell ourselves about our history
57:51don't just shape our past, they shape our future as well.