Disappointing Crowd for Open Air Gilbert and Sullivan
1,600 people attended British Armed Forces Day in Stirling. 20,000 attended Bannockburn Live, 1 mile away. Guess which the BBC covered?
The unionists have long been obsessed by the fear that the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn would remind Scots that their ancestors were prepared to die for their national freedom. I have never seen any Yes campaigner even mention it, as the case for independence is nothing to do with the early medieval period. But the British state was so concerned, that it waited until the dates for the Battle of Bannockburn event had been set and all the permissions given by Stirling Council , and then announced they were holding National Armed Forces Day at the same place and same time.
As a result, due to police fears about the overcrowding, Bannockburn Live was forced to slash capacity from 40,000 to 20,000.
Stirling Council should never have agreed to hold both events on the same day. In fact, it is a secret how they did agree. Stirling Council officials, called before a Scottish Parliament inquiry to explain, stated they could not say who at Stirling Council had given the permission, as because the process was irregular it was subject to an independent inquiry.
Only the Labour Party in Scotland could come up with that one – “because we have done something extremely dodgy, it is therefore secret.” Stirling Council is in fact run by a right wing Labour-Tory-Lib Dem coalition aimed to keep the largest party – the SNP – out of power. Stirling Labour Party is therefore the absolute epitome of just how disgusting Labour are.
So today the BBC News lead item was the Stirling Armed Forces Day commemoration, with David Cameron parading about with his soldiers in front of every Tory in Scotland (1,800 people). The BBBC had three crews at the Armed Forces Day plus two radio crews. Not one of them managed even a mention of the ten times larger Bannockburn commemoration just down the road.
On top of which the BBC coverage was as appalling a bit of state propaganda as you could ever wish to see. A fine old retired soldier, they reported, told David Cameron that he did not wish to see the country he fought for broken up. It really was, straight out, as crass propaganda as that. Evidently the BBC were unable to find a single ex-soldier who supports independence.
But for me the piece de resistance was the BBC’s conclusion. It showed that when the BBC really puts its mind to it, the BBC can try to be completely biased in a more subtle way – by use of body language, inflection and expression. In September, the female presenter opined, Scotland would have to choose between what it has to [spoken lightly, trippingly, frivolously high pitched voice] gain, and what it has to [stentorian, serious, loud, low pitch, serious expression] lose.
To explain Bannockburn, I feel the Declaration of Arbroath coming on. This is an astonishing document which predates Locke and Hobbes by well over three hundred years. It is the first declaration in history that puts forward the idea of the sovereignty of the people. It praised Robert the Bruce for defending Scots from the dreadful atrocities of English armies, but then goes on to say:
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
The document is signed by named nobles but is in the name of the “freeholders and whole community of the realm of Scotland”. There is no document anywhere near it temporally that describes the idea of a nation state like this. Unionist historians have done everything possible to denigrate this very plain sentiment, making the obvious point that the signatories were nobles and clerics. Well, neither Locke nor Hobbes were refuse collectors. The appeal to the Pope was of course to be expected in the early XIV century. It cannot be denied, except by those who hate the Scots, that these sentiments encapsulate the “social contract” and an idea of the nation that was a major advance in European civilisation.
Anthony Dymoke Powell is a ‘Po-ell’ too. Are all bloody Powells Po-ells?
There is even an appreciation society FFS. Pretentious? Nous?
http://www.anthonypowell.org/home.php
Craig
Are you still sticking to your prediction that the Yes campaign would surge into the lead once UKIP won the Euro elections in England?
Craig –
They still saw their King as appointed by God acting through them. God didn’t come down and write the name on a stone tablet. The Pope is appointed in the same way – with God acting through men.
We could argue back and forwards about that – but there’s something you’ve got a whole lot more wrong.
Reinterpreting an old document to see today’s values in them is one thing. When you go onto say that anyone who doesn’t share your interpretation must “hate the Scots”, assume they are a “Right wing unionist” (when I’m neither of those things), and say they must
have their head a very long way up your own arse. When you do that – you just show yourself up. And you’ll undermine whatever your argument is. With the unreasonable and (and unlike you I’m not trying to be insulting here) bigotted view that anyone who disagrees with YOU must be blah blah blah…
Craig
About 20% of the population participated in the Athenian democracy – I have my doubts that the “commonwealth and freeholders of Scotland” got anywhere near as being that inclusive – particularly given that the clan system probably meant that most people were tenants.
Je
There is nothing in the Declaration of Arbroath that indicates that the King is appointed by God. Nothing that can in any way be interpreted to mean that.
There is the plainest claim that the nation can choose their King and depose him at will. No reference in that process to God or divine guidance.
As I stated in my article, Unionists have been trying to wish away what the document actually says for generations. Look at the text.
O/T Just hearing of this on Marr.
Phone hacking exclusive: The News of the World, the army’s IRA mole and more questions for Rupert Murdoch
phone-hacking-exclusive-the-news-of-the-world-the-armys-ira-mole-and-more-questions-for-rupert-murdoch-9570579
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Incidentally Marr has just pointed out to Starmer that the defence in the hacking trial had the top lawyers in the business. Almost gloating.
‘This disparity of resource was glaring in the hacking trial. Rebekah Brooks’s bills alone topped £5m, affordable only because of Rupert Murdoch and News UK. One of the most expensive and lethal QCs in the country, Jonathan Laidlaw, could muster a team of two supporting barristers, four junior solicitors, four paralegals and a team monitoring the news and social media. Against that, the CPS had Andrew Edis QC, one full-time solicitor and an administrative assistant. Understanding every detail of every dimension of the evidence and delivering rock-solid witness statements are central to courtroom success. In trials such as last week’s, the CPS has simply not got the resources to do what is necessary.’
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/29/as-phone-hacking-trial-proves-we-have-lost-moral-purpose
There are of course far more eminent Scots whose political virtues that Craig could extol (and has done so in at different times in the past) – but that would of course lead him to the main figures of the Scottish enlightenment, who Craig knows all too well were to a man strong supporters of the Union
Resident Dissident
Of course XIV Century Scotland was not a democracy. Its governmental insitutions were quite different. But it had a notion of Nation and Commonwealth, and of the nation’s right to appoint or depose its King whose job was to serve the ends the Nation wanted. I think you will find that the Angevins – who were the alternative – had a rather different view. Can you imagine explaining that theory to Edward I or his near successors?
Whoever they made King – it would still be done by birthright. Or murdering someone to clear the way like Bruce did. They’re not going to elect a serf or something. No news there at all. You’re looking for something and finding what you want to be there.
Craig –
“nothing in the Declaration of Arbroath that indicates that the King is appointed by God” Who are they writing to!
“Is that Powell any relation to the Powell creeps Charles and Jonathan who surrounded Thatcher and BLiar?”
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No relation.
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“There is even an appreciation society FFS. Pretentious? Nous?
http://www.anthonypowell.org/home.php”
________________
FFS, indeed – there are appreciation societies for lots of major (and even minor) writers. How ignorant (or dishonest) can you get, Mary?
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“Antony Powell – Right Wing old Etonian scribbler, wrote for the Spectator and Telegraph, married daughter of a hereditary peer, never did a day’s honest work in his life. Yes please do write publish as much as you want of his bile against better people than himself”
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Calm down, Craig. You’re playing the man and not the ball and being a lottle silly with it (but yo don’t really mean it, you’re just being polemical).
If having gone to Eton, written for the Spectator and married the daughter of a peer count as sins in your book, then I’d advise a re)reading of Orwell’s essay “Benefit of Clergy”.
Re “Caledonia”, I don’t see that as an exercise in bile: it is probably based on a certain irritation at the pretensions of segments of Scottish society but it should be seen primarily as an technical tour de force. I din’t think you could read the whole of it and disagree.
Je/Craig
Ulpian talked about the “imperium” of the Roman emperor having taken its legitimacy from the “imperium populi romani” which is really the same thing as Bernard of Kilwinning was saying in the declaration – I don’t thing he or the others who signed the declaration had any intention of giving power back to the general population. Such ideas came to Scotland much much later.
Je
It is a logical impossibility to equate “we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy..and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King” with the idea that the King is divinely appointed. The Declaration makes no reference to divine appointment.
I have never understood the strange psychological need of Unionists to claim that the Declaration of Arbroath is meaningless and does not say what it does say.
They are writing to the Pope. They are seeking the Pope’s support in a war against a far larger power. They are not asking the Pope to indicate who God has appointed as King. They are declaring that
“we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King”.
No, it does not invent constitutional democracy. No, it does not found the NHS. What it does is state that the Scots as a Commonwealth are not English, have suffered atrocities at the hands of the English, and will choose a king who can resist the English. If they don’t like him they will kick him out and choose another King. That last bit was a sentiment well in advance of medieval European thought.
Craig
I think history shows that the Scottish kings were just as dedicated to the principle of passing the title around the family as were Edward I and his successor – I don’t think either bunch were keen on handing back the “imperium” to the “populi” once they had justified their taking of it in the first place.
” Guess which the BBC covered?”
Actually here in the real world the BBC covered both.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b046v46s/reporting-scotland-28062014
Craig –
“we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy..and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King”
Its saying. We should get rid of this one and put the next in line in his place. By some other man they don’t mean any other man. They mean the next person with the most title to be King. Whoever that someone would turn out to be, as there would be competing claims. Approval of the Papacy, God’s approval, for their King was absolutely what they all wanted.
How dare tiny, backwards Scotland advance a civic notion comparable to those offered by the mighty ancient Greeks! Surely human aspiration can’t be similar across space and time; we all know those Greeks were superior.
Resident Dissident, The Clan system, which was mostly in the Highlands and the Isles at the time of Bruce, did not have tenants. The Clan held the land under the King, they elected their own Chiefs and worked as a community. The Chiefs would travel to Edinburgh to pay the King and the clans were expected to raise men to defend the realm if required.
Landlords did not exist north of the Highland line before the union.
“What it does is state that the Scots as a Commonwealth are not English, have suffered atrocities at the hands of the English, and will choose a king who can resist the English. If they don’t like him they will kick him out and choose another King. That last bit was a sentiment well in advance of medieval European thought.”
So to what shall we attribute the greater durability of feudalism in Scotland compared with south of the border? Something must have gone pretty badly wrong during the next 400 years of Scottish independence.
Je
Basically, yes. Four hundred years later the English had managed to reach the same stage of political development. Hence the Act of Succession. Another generation on and George I was appointed despite being 69th in line to the throne. (He really was, that isn’t a polemical figure).
The Greeks must have been superior, or the upper classes wouldn’t dedicate so much of their children’s education to them.
I am going to Bannockburn today and my Saltire is going with me.
This is going to backfire on the BBC badly in the months and years to come.
” Kempe – no offence but you can see from the photo that it’s not a large crowd at all…10k tops. ”
In all fairness I would agree but it’s clearly more than 1,600.
Clan chiefs elected? On what planet?
Rob Royston
I think you will find that you are rewriting your own history – I am afraid Scottish clans were rather far from being the forerunners of modern day worker co-operatives.
Kempe
It’s a small crowd. The resolution is too low to be easy to estimate, but there are some vehicles, marquees etc which help and I really don’t think it is much over 1600, though I agree it might be a little. But given a big military show and presence of a Princess and Cameron, Miliband etc, it really is a dud.
“How dare tiny, backwards Scotland advance a civic notion comparable to those offered by the mighty ancient Greeks! Surely human aspiration can’t be similar across space and time; we all know those Greeks were superior.”
I think you will find that it was Craig suggesting that the Scots got there first – I’ll leave notions of superiority/inferiority to the nationalists.
Unionist historians have done everything possible to denigrate this very plain sentiment, making the obvious point that the signatories were nobles and clerics.
A point almost never made, though much more applicable, when Unionists start gushing over the Magna Carta.
Also worth recalling they had followed Wallace, who had no Royal pretensions and whose position of “Guardian” in many ways prefigured Cromwell.
“George III was appointed despite being 69th in line to the throne. (He really was, that isn’t a polemical figure).”
I think you will need not a little polemics to get at that 69th figure – I suspect different polemical views as to what primogentiture means and when in the past the monarchy diverged from that path could give you all sorts of answers from 1st in line to figures considerably larger than 69th.
Resident Dissident
Apologies, of course I meant George I. Now corrected.
No. No trickery, no polemics. Accepting the official versions of legitimacy etc. In going back to Sophie Electress of Hanover and working down again, 68 people with better claims to the throne under the established rules of primogeniture were excluded because of Catholicism. Knowingly and quite openly.
It’s not that huge a number when you consider Royal families at that period frequently had twelve or more children, of whom a majority commonly survived.