The Fight for Scottish Democracy
by Murray Armstrong
(Pluto Press, £14.99)

FOR the last year, those who approach the Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh are met by a sign that bluntly declares: “Radical Road Closed.”

[[{"fid":"23872","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Given the recent electoral defeats of the left, it is difficult not to read this as a damning statement on our current political impasse. The story goes that this thoroughfare was laid at the suggestion of Walter Scott by unemployed weavers who had been part of the insurrection of 1820, a thwarted attempt to overthrow the government.

It is certainly a neat allegory — the author of Scotland’s romantic self-image reducing workers’ history to an almost literal footnote. To coincide with the 200th anniversary, Murray Armstrong expands this footnote into his book The Fight for Scottish Democracy, an exhaustively researched account of the events leading to the 1820 uprising, hitherto a lacuna in the Scottish popular imagination largely filled by myth.

They began in the 1810s, with the costs of the Napoleonic Wars, protectionist trade policies and poor harvests borne by the working classes, the Luddites waging their machine-wrecking campaign and a resurgent reform movement.

While some of the distinctively Scottish dynamics like the Ross-shire clearances, are highlighted, the book often refrains from going into detail about particular Scottish strains of the reform movement such as the Society of United Scotsmen.

As the petition movement, with its calls for universal enfranchisement and annual parliaments gathered momentum, the home secretary Lord Sidmouth — increasingly concerned about a possible insurrection — responded with a suspension of habeas corpus and the curbing of public assembly. Workers were employed as government spies and the pall of paranoia fell upon the movement.  

Armstrong dedicates a chapter to the Peterloo Massacre, displaying his gift of adroitly shifting from the human stories to the wider historical sweep. Often Peterloo is seen as the high watermark of this reformist wave but, in Armstrong’s telling, this is where it gathers pace.

After the arrest and trials of radicals across Britain, the political societies started chasing the elusive beast of the general strike to bring down the government.

On April 2 1820 an “Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland” appeared on walls across the West of Scotland, asking people to stop working and seize their “equality of rights.” Strikers eagerly awaited to hear if the rest of the country was rising — political power grew out of the bottom of a mail bag.

Despite no message forthcoming, small bands marched to the Carron Iron Works to gather weapons. Many were taken prisoner by government troops and the rebellion petered out with no risings elsewhere.

Armstrong movingly narrates the executions of John Baird and James Wilson. Found guilty of treason, their legends are rendered in a compassionate portrait.

It is always tempting to draw parallels with the present and in this case they are bountiful — devastating austerity, a poorly managed typhus outbreak and widespread agitations for political representation and reform.

Armstrong’s book certainly offers valuable inspiration for the journey along the Radical Road, whenever it opens again.