Back in the Day: The Radical War that lasted a matter of days

First, however, I would like to remind you that the 200th anniversary of the Radical War will take place in April, and on Thursday night the new Paisley Book Festival will launch with an evening that stars Maggie Craig, a real expert on Scottish radicalism which will be the theme of the festival. The organisers state: “Drawing on the Paisley Radicals of 1820 as inspiration, the Paisley Book Festival will explore how we can honour their challenging ideas and vibrant energy 200 years later.” Please check their website for more details.

As we saw last week, the Radical War or Scottish Insurrection of 1820 had been long in the making. The economy of Scotland in the latter part of the 18th century had been very much based on manual labour – agriculture and mining to the fore – while the industrial revolution at places like Carron Ironworks and the building of roads, canals, bridges and highways were among the main drivers of that economy. But it was weaving which was an important source of employment for many people across the country and it was the transition to factory processes often based on imported goods which was causing the most unrest – “King” Cotton made a huge impact on Glasgow, but it was not always appreciated by the working classes.

It had been the time of the Scottish Enlightenment, but precious few workers received its benefits at first, and any inclination to freedom of speech and assembly was ruthlessly crushed by the Government who feared a French-style revolution.

Throw in the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the return to peacetime of tens of thousands of military personnel, many with no jobs to go to, and you have the perfect storm which erupted in Scotland in 1820.

Yet it was not a purely Scottish creation. Indeed, in a very real sense, the Scottish Insurrection started in England where the sense of injustice at the failure of successive governments to reform was growing apace.

Reformists such as William Cobbett, Francis Place, Sir Francis Burdett and John Cartwright all campaigned for reform, and Cartwright’s ideas in particular were widely discussed through the Hampden Clubs he founded and which were debating societies, mainly in the north of England, that openly discussed reform. In Scotland such openness was suppressed, so the formation of secret societies agitating for reform sprang up, so much so that the Government passed laws against them and sent in spies. In 1817 alone, the magistrates of Glasgow jailed 26 people for membership of such societies.

From 1816 onwards, the economies of England and Scotland were in the doldrums. Edinburgh-born Henry, Lord Brougham, would later write of the late 1810s that “the national misery had reached a height wholly without precedent in our history since the Norman Conquest.”

He was not far wrong. Conditions in all the major cities and towns of England were worsening and hunger and disease were rife. Reform became the clamour as people realised there would be no improvement without changes to a system where so few people had the vote.

Scotland was no different. In Glasgow in particular, riots by the unemployed broke out in December, 1817, brutally put down by specially recruited “constables” – mostly former soldiers. The fast-growing population could not be supported by the work available, and at one time the town council carried out “work creation” employment schemes such as improving Glasgow Green and the banks of the Clyde, but to no avail.

On the morning of August 16, 1819, a massive crowd began to gather in what was then St Peter’s Field, but is now St Peter’s Square, in Manchester to hear the reformer Henry Hunt speak. Though it was a Monday, the majority of the crowd were dressed in their Sunday best, though some men wore or carried the Red Cap of Liberty.

What followed has gone down in history as the Peterloo Massacre. Local magistrates read the Riot Act and when the huge crowd refused to disperse, hundreds of armed troops and cavalrymen charged them, pistols and sabres at the ready. By mid-afternoon, as many as 500 people had been injured and at least 15 people – including four women and a two-year-old child – were already dead or dying. No one knows exactly how many were killed and injured, but the massacre horrified working people and also right-minded politicians everywhere.

A memorial service for the victims was held in Paisley a month after the massacre, and the authorities called in the cavalry after riots broke out. Protest meetings were held across the country and not even members of the gentry were safe – George Kinloch, the radical laird, had to flee to France after addressing a mass meeting on Magdalen Green in Dundee on December 13, 1819.

It seems incredible now, but knowing that the British state would brutally suppress any protests, the working people of Glasgow and the west of Scotland decided to carry on campaigning for reform and workers’ rights even after the hated Six Acts were passed in December 1819, which banned any meetings for the purpose of radical reform.

Throughout that year of 1819, Glasgow became the focus of the radicals, as they became known. The town council installed a troop of cavalry and a corps of “special constables” to clear the streets at night. An outbreak of typhus briefly stilled things, but by March it was clear that agitation among the weavers in particular was growing fast. Not even the death of King George III on January 29, 1820, stopped the campaigns for reform and the Cato Street Conspiracy of the following month – basically it was a radicals’ plan to kill the Cabinet – made the Government extremely jumpy.

In March, a 28-strong committee of radicals set itself up as a a provisional government of Scotland, but it was already infiltrated by spies. One of them was a weaver, John King.

When the committee met in secret in Glasgow on March 21, King left the meeting early, conveniently for him just a before a police raid in which all the committee members were arrested.

Mitchell reported to the authorities that those arrested had “confessed their audacious plot to sever the Kingdom of Scotland from that of England and restore the ancient Scottish Parliament ... If some plan were conceived by which the disaffected could be lured out of their lairs – being made to think that the day of ‘liberty’ had come – we could catch them abroad and undefended ... few know of the apprehension of the leaders ... so no suspicion would attach itself to the plan at all.

“Our informants have infiltrated the disaffected’s committees and organisation, and in a few days you shall judge the results.”

As can be seen, the radicals intended to end the Union, and they weren’t going to bother with a referendum.

Last minute preparations were carried out in secret by the radicals, but little did they know that the forces arraigned against them were fully informed of their actions and indeed, some still argue that agents provocateurs were used to force the radicals into open rebellion.

On the morning on Sunday, April 2, the concept of insurrection became a reality. A call to arms and a general strike was made.

Posters appeared all over Glasgow and beyond. It read: “Friends and Countrymen, Roused from that state in which we have been sunk for so many years, we are at length compelled ... to assert our rights at the hazard of our lives.

“Liberty or Death is our motto, and we have sworn to return home in triumph – or return no more ... we earnestly request all to desist from their labour from and after this day, the first of April [until] in possession of those rights ...”

It called for a rising “to show the world that we are not that lawless, sanguinary rabble which our oppressors would persuade the higher circles we are but a brave and generous people determined to be free”.

The document was signed “by order of the Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional Government”.

It got immediate support; 60,000 workers went on strike. Two former soldiers, John Baird and Andrew Hardie, took command of a small force of mainly weavers that gathered on Glasgow Green. Rudimentary weapons were issued to the 40 or so men present.

They decided to march on Carron Ironworks, and hoped to meet other radials on the way. They would have been joined by a force from Strathaven in Lanarkshire, but its leader James Wilson turned back to the village when he couldn’t find the others. Carrying a banner that said “Scotland free or a desart (sic)”, he was the first of the leaders to be arrested as the authorities began their brutal campaign of suppression.

I make no apologies for printing again the following contemporary account of the end of the Radical War with the so-called Battle of Bonnymuir: “Kilsyth, 5th April 1820. This morning a gentleman residing in this parish belonging to the Falkirk troop of Yeomanry Cavalry left home to join his troop at Falkirk, and had proceeded a short way from his own house, when he came up with between 25 to 30 Radicals, all armed with pikes, muskets, and pistols, who stopped him and requested him to give up his arms, which he refused to do, and showed them a disposition to resist. They told him (at the same time presenting at him several pistols) that resistance would be vain, as they would kill him on the spot. He, however, got off retaining his arms and meeting with an Orderly from Kilsyth going with dispatches to Stirling, informed him it would be improper to proceed.

“They accordingly both returned to Kilsyth and reported, when the Commanding-Officer there ordered ten men and a serjeant from the 10th Hussars and as many of the Yeomanry Cavalry, to escort the Orderly and the other Gentleman on their several roads and to endeavour to fall in with these armed Radicals if possible.

“The Radicals, in the interval, had been joined by a number more, who proceeded along the Canal Bank towards Bonnymuir, having taken several fowling-pieces and a pitch-fork from farmhouses in the neighbourhood of Bonnybridge.

“The Cavalry, on their arrival at Loanhead, immediately went to Bonnymuir in search of the Radicals, and, on coming up with them, they showed a disposition to fight rather than fly; having taken their position behind an old dyke, they allowed the Cavalry to come within thirty yards of them, when they fired a volley; the Cavalry instantly charged, firing a few shots when going over the dyke; the Radicals received the charge with their pikes, and made all the resistance in their power, but they soon found themselves in a bad situation, and throwing away their arms, endeavoured to escape, when the Cavalry secured nineteen prisoners; three of whom are wounded, two remained on the field so badly wounded as not to be able to be carried to Stirling Castle, where the prisoners are lodged.

“Eight or ten of those who escaped are said to be wounded, and have not been able to go from the place where the affair happened. The whole number of the Radicals did not exceed forty or fifty.”

“It is reported that the whole of the prisoners belong to Glasgow, except one of the name of Baird, said to be their leader, who lately resided at Condorrat.”

Next came the authorities’ revenge, and it was dreadful. Find out what happened next week.