Recovery (2)
A Very Victorian Revolution: Indigenous People Rise Up in the early 1880s to Reclaim Their Land, and it's Theatrical
Hold it RIGHT THERE.
LAND BACK! Indigenous people rise up to reclaim their land from the greedy, cruel, and exploitative, including their own former chiefs. In the 1880s. With soundtrack by the two smash-hit composers of the century. Annette’s favorite story ever. Today is free, but next time, for paying subs only, Bonus Part 3 where she takes you on a personal tour.
Spoilers from now on. So, if you didn’t read Part 1, here’s the link. Off you go. See you later.
The Book
Today, I complete my riff on Roger Hutchinson’s Martyrs, which I urge you to purchase (it’s especially affordable in Kindle). This book needs to be a movie. And once you have read my on-ramp, you will find Martyrs unfolding its treasures:
Again, If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of Recovery, hold it right there.
Click on the link above, and read Part 1 first. Super-important to avoid spoilers. Then meet us back here. Worth it, promise.
And don’t pretend not to see this. You’re better than that:
Supporting Non-Boring History with a paying annual or monthly subscription matters. We’re NOT building another wing onto Non-Boring House (or moving to a mansion) on your dime, and we won’t be, either. Non-Boring History is written by Dr. Annette Laing, a professional historian who has refused to give up on her profession as it comes under attack from grifting politicians, pseudo-scholars, and a misled public.
Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate
Oh, men of dark and dismal fate, Forgo your cruel employ --W.S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance (1879) (music by Arthur Sullivan)
Braes is a village made up of a line of hamlets strung along the east-central coast of Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye, to the south of the Island’s capital, the small town of Portree. Braes people had always, always, grazed their animals on a range of hills named Ben Lee.
Always, that is, until 1865, around the time the Civil War was ending in faraway America (not that the people of Braes knew or cared about that). That was the year Lord Macdonald of Sleat did something really underhand.
The Lords Macdonald were formerly clan chieftains, warrior leaders, of the people of Braes. But after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, war in the Highlands of Scotland was over, soldiers were no longer needed to battle the people of Clan MacLeod, and the relationship between the people of Clan MacDonald and their leader was severed (except between Their Lordships’ later descendants and gullible people of Scottish descent who think a clan is still a thing, but that’s another story).
Now the current Lord Macdonald was just the Braes people’s landlord, their laird, based in London. He was culturally English—a nice way of saying he was English, no matter how he identified— just as was the MacLeod of MacLeod, former chief of Clan MacLeod, also based in London. Neither of them any longer gave a rats ass for his former clansmen, now tenants.
Tenants’ rents weren’t profitable enough to keep the two men and their families in the very, very wealthy style to which they had grown accustomed. Many former clansmen had been deported to Canada, Australia, and the US, in the recent decades, to make room for profitable sheep farms, which paid high rents. But deportation was no longer happening by 1865, so it just made more sense to keep taking away the land (easy) for sheep farms and, soon, hunting resorts for rich people to shoot deer and grouse. That way, the remaining people, small farmers called crofters, so miserable, they would pack their bags and deport themselves, if not across the oceans, then to work as cheap labor in factories in Glasgow or other industrial cities.
London’s delights are expensive, as are grand townhouses with servants, and school fees at Eton. So, in 1865, Lord Macdonald decided he needed to make more money. It was easy: He simply rented out his tenants’ grazing land in Braes, land they had held since time immemorial, to an ambitious sheep farmer, for a very profitable rent. No action was needed to get the land ready. No action needed at all on Lord Macdonald’s part, except signing the lease—if he even did that. Ooh, the tough life of making hard decisions that are only hard on other people!
So, in 1865, the crofter tenants, having lost most of their grazing land, had to reduce their livestock, their own sheep and cattle, on which they depended for any kind of decent living.
By 1881, however, the lease of that big sheep farm was coming to an end. The villagers wanted their stolen land back. They were even prepared to pay rent for it, although, well, it was and always had been theirs.
His Lordship’s Station’s Mighty
Though his lordship's station's mighty, Though stupendous be his brain, --W.S. Gilbert, HMS Pinafore, 1878
The Lords Macdonald, chiefs of Clan Macdonald (or Clan Donald, either is fine), had long, long battled the MacLeods of MacLeod, chiefs of Clan MacLeod (or Leod, ditto) with swords and shields and bagpipes, when not hunkered down in their respective castles at opposite ends of the Isle of Skye.
Now, in the modern age of the early 1880s, with telephones and electricity and all manner of gadgets getting a foothold in London, you were more likely to find the two former enemies in dinner jackets and bow ties at posh parties in London, perhaps hanging out together. You might find them at the theatre, perhaps, enjoying the latest West End smash hits, like “that infernal nonsense Pinafore”, to quote W.S. Gilbert of the renowned operetta musical-writing duo Gilbert and Sullivan, endearingly taking a good laugh at himself.
But Lord Macdonald and the MacLeod of MacLeod still had a vested interest in Skye because, after all, the rents and land sales of the crofters’ lands were what paid for the high life in London, the posh houses, the paintings and furniture, the servants, the school fees to Eton and Harrow.
So when controversy broke out over Ben Lee, the MacLeod of MacLeod took the time to write from London to the Highland newspapers in his dear friend Macdonald’s defense. He claimed that crofters didn't need Ben Lee, that it was poor grazing land. Hmm . . . I wonder if he had taken the train up to have a look? And I wonder why land suitable for a big sheep farm rented for profit was not considered suitable for Indigenous people’s sheep?
No matter the truth of MacLeod's claim, though, that land could feed a thousand sheep, Martyr author Roger Hutchinson notes. That could have made all the difference to the crofters who had lost their common land. Plus their croft rents had gone up and up since Ben Lee was taken from them, for no good reason, so, pretty much, they saw no reason they should have to pay more to get back their land.
Alexander “No Nickname” MacDonald was now not only the factor (agent/manager) for meanspirited landlord William “Corpses in the Garden” Fraser in Kilmuir (the north of Skye, near Glendale), but also the factor for Lord Macdonald, having taken over from Donald “Tormore” Macdonald in 1879. My word, that’s more Macdonalds than you see on the average Los Angeles freeway, but I digress.
The crofters in Braes now appealed to “No Nickname” MacDonald for lower rent and the return of Ben Lee to them. He said no. So they went on rent strike, and started grazing their animals on Ben Lee anyway.
Lord Macdonald (age 29) and “No Nickname” now sent out eviction notices to seven male crofters, and three widows, all of whom they had identified as the leaders of the rent strike and trespassing trouble. The notices were to be delivered April 7, 1882, by the local Sheriff Officer, his assistant, and a representative of the estate. The three men set out from Skye’s capital, the tiny town of Portree. Hmmm….
Remember, this is the year before Donald MacTavish and the hapless Sheriff Officer Black Angus MacLeod traveled to Glendale on their disastrous attempt to serve court summonses to five crofters, including John MacPherson, in Lower Milovaig. So the outcome is not obvious.
In 1882, the arrival of a law officer, his assistant, and the estate representative, to deliver eviction notices, was expected in the village of Braes. Lookouts on the edge of Braes sounded alarms. Between half and two-thirds of the Braes population, which was about 300 people, rushed to stop the three officials from entering the village. The angry crowd met the men on the road, and demanded the eviction notices, which, of course, were swiftly handed over out of sheer terror.
But the incident didn’t stop there. The crowd ordered the Sheriff Officer to light a fire—which he did, not his first choice, but he had no choice—and then told him to throw the papers to the flames. Hey, what else was he going to do?
The Sheriff Officer was told that everyone understood that he was doing his official duty, so he would not suffer further consequences. But his assistant was only in Braes to make money, and such a grifter would be punished. A full chamberpot was now chucked all over the hapless assistant. He then set off running, chased by yelling boys.
This attack by the Braes men was clearly against the law. It was now a police matter.
A Policeman’s Lot (is not a happy one)
When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done, A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.
—W.S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance (1879)
Sheriff William Ivory had to do something about what was happening on Skye. I mean, it was his job. And his job rarely required any actual work.
Ivory was from a posh family of politicians and lawyers in Edinburgh. Now he was Sheriff of Inverness-shire. He mostly did his job (such as it was) remotely, from Edinburgh, but he kept a second home in the Highlands in Auchindoun, between Inverness and Aberdeen. Remote though Auchindoun was, it was still a long, long way from Skye, so I guess it’s fair to say he did whatever Ivory did, he did remotely almost all the time. Given the typical crime rate in the Highlands, i.e. practically none, he might as well have puttered about at home. And I'm sure he did.
Now, in spring, 1882, however, Sheriff Ivory’s action was clearly required. He would have to go and exercise a bit of authority. Now, a posh guy like Sheriff William Ivory wasn’t about to support land reform in Skye, giving the land back to the people who had always lived on it, used it, improved it, and fought for it, that sort of nonsense. He saw that now, in this spring of 1882, was the time to nip the Braes rebellion in the bud, before land reform nonsense, riot, and revolt spread through Skye, or, horrors, to the Scottish mainland.
The problem? Putting down the rebellion might be tricky. In all of Inverness-shire, Ivory had only 44 policemen under his command. The Highlands is a big spread-out place. That’s not many cops. And especially when the idea is to send loads of them to put down a rebellion. So Ivory asked the City of Glasgow Police for help: They had a thousand officers on staff, after all. However, Skye was far from Glasgow, and not the Glasgow police’s responsibility. As a courtesy, however, the Glasgow force offered to send forty men in uniform.
On the big day, April 19, 1882, then, forty cops from Glasgow set out on foot from the Skye capital, Portree, accompanied by ten mainland Inverness-shire officers, a few Skye police constables, the Sheriff-Officer from Portree, and both procurators fiscal from Inverness and Skye.* Oh, and Sheriff William Ivory was there, too, having come all the way from Edinburgh, since it was a special occasion and all that. So did Peter Speirs, Skye’s Sheriff-Substitute (the local guy who acts on behalf on the Sheriff, like the Sheriff’s factor, you know, the one who does the actual work, although Speirs was also normally a wee bit underemployed.)
*Procurator Fiscal: A uniquely Scottish title and office, equivalent to the public prosecutor elsewhere.
The media came along too. Yes, several journalists were embedded in this assault force. Among the journos? Alexander Gow of the Dundee Advertiser. Gow reported that as soon as the official party reached a high point on the edges of the Braes hamlet of Balmeanach, they saw about twenty houses below them. About a hundred men, women, and kids awaited them.
Worryingly, the crowd cheered the arrival of these combined police forces. Women started asking, sarcastically, how was your journey from Glasgow? Have a pleasant trip, did you?
A representative from the crowd now met with a local official, but reporter Gow couldn’t hear what was said, probably because it was all in Gaelic, not typically a Dundee language—Dundee people had their own dialect of Scots that was unintelligible enough. Jk. (Wheest! Eh’m fae Dundee ma’sel, ye ken, which is not unintelligible at all.)
Watching the scene in Balmeanach, though, Gow, the Dundee newspaper reporter, saw what was coming without any need for language, whether Gaelic, Scots, or English. More people were now running from the houses: men, women with their hair loose (it was early, they’d not had time to put it up), even kids, and everyone had a weapon (not a gun, folks, this is Skye, rolling pins and other kitchen implements are a good guess, though). As they got closer, however, most of them put down their weapons to show they meant peace—if possible.
As crowds from across Braes continued to arrive, Sheriff Ivory’s cop army was surrounded and increasingly bedraggled: Rain was pouring down, because this was Skye. Angry women were yelling at the intruders. Amazingly, amidst all this, cops managed to arrest the five men they planned to, all elders, within 20 minutes.
But don’t mistake that for a police victory. Braes women now called on everyone to attack the police.
The battle had begun, and what a very British Victorian battle it was. I mean, nobody wanted the death counts that happened to Brits and foreigners in the overseas Empire. Which is not to say that this battle in Braes wasn’t dangerous, because it was: The crowd began throwing rocks and dirt at the cops. The police charged with their truncheons. The Braes men fought back with sticks.
A brief ceasefire offered hope of peace. But then the crofters, men and women, gave a battlecry, and, with even bigger rocks, renewed their attack. The women were especially dangerous, Mr. Hutchinson tells us: Understanding that the cops would be reluctant to fight them, Braes women moved in closer than Braes men to chuck their rocks and small boulders at the policemen.
As the battle continued, hundreds more crofters continued to arrive, and took positions at the cliff-top, a great place from which to send a hail of rocks down onto the police. Soon, the Sheriff, the Procurators Fiscal, and everyone on the police side, were running like hell with their prisoners in tow.
People did get hurt. Mary Nicolson, a crofter, had a cut on the scalp, and fainted, blood all over the place. One old woman, deep in the scrum, slipped and fell down the hill, and bumped hard into a cop doing the same thing. Around twelve cops were injured, some seriously. But nobody died, so that’s something.
The cops and officials, with their five prisoners, now made the entire miserable journey back to Portree on foot, in pouring rain. I mean, is pouring rain news? This is Skye. Hey, at least they were a month too early for midge season. Pronounced “midgees”, these wee beasties, these creatures from hell, are miniature mosquitoes that attack in clouds, and, yes, they bite.
Yet even as the bedraggled police group marched, or staggered, into Portree, they were booed, and booed again when they later marched from the Court House to the Royal Hotel, where the Glasgow police were staying. Meanwhile, the prisoners were banged up in the Portree jail, from where they were soon transported to the prison in Inverness.
The Battle of the Braes, as it would be called (Braes is a village, while the braes means the hills, both apply), was one in which an entire British community of normally respectable, quiet people (devout Christians, to boot) had attacked the police. They had done so with the support of likely the majority of the people of Skye, and indeed people throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
In faraway Glasgow, in the Scottish Lowlands, a committee to support the people of Braes was immediately launched. Local businessmen paid bail for the five prisoners. They were convicted of assault, and their fines, again, were paid by supporters. By now, much of Britain was behind the crofters. After the convicted men were wined and dined in the finest Inverness hotel, they left for Portree (fares and meals paid by supporters) and then home to Braes, where Massive and enthusiastic crowds greeted them on their return. The message was clear, and by the time 1882 was over, Lord Macdonald had returned Ben Lee to the crofters. In exchange , expected an annual rent which then turned out to be hard for him to collect. This was only the start.
This Interference Is More than We Can Stand: “Outside Agitators” John Murdoch & Edward McHugh
While the five men of Braes were in court, two men quietly arrived on Skye. They were journalist John Murdoch, Gaelic-speaking Highlander, and his fellow land reformer, English-speaking Edward McHugh, an Irishman living in Glasgow.
McHugh did not speak much Gaelic, and he brought a bunch of leaflets— in English. These were about strikes, efforts to nationalize land (i.e. you can own your business , your home, etc, but the land on which it stands belongs to everyone), and land reform efforts around Britain and Ireland. None of these things, in the eyes of relatively conservative Skye folk, connected to what was happening to them on Skye, no matter what language the leaflets were in.
Just a couple of days before they arrived, McHugh and Murdoch got publicity from a surprising source: A leaflet in English and Gaelic that attacked their cause and totally backfired. It was called Address to the People, and was written by Sheriff-Substitute Alexander Nicolson. Nicolson lived in southwest Scotland, but he was a Gaelic speaker, a son of Glendale, and born into the landlord class. In his pamphlet, Nicolson reported how shocked (shocked!) he was by the news from Skye of rebellion.
Nicolson told Skye folk how ashamed he was of them. Certainly, they should be “manly, spirited”. But they must also remember that they are “sensible, devout, quiet, honest, courteous.” Skye people, he wrote, “will not give bad language in return for bad usage.” [US: “When they go low, we go high!”—also not necessarily great advice] A Skye man, he lectured, “will not refuse to pay the rent, although it be difficult for him. He does not seek the land for himself.”
In case Sheriff-Substitute Alexander Nicolson didn’t make himself clear, let me help: He was saying, you are making yourselves look silly and awful with this so-called standing up for yourselves! Dignity lies in being a doormat! This rebellion of yours won’t end well! And how could you involve outside agitators in our affairs? You’re shaming us and our allies in Scotland!
I mean, who can resist being lectured to shut up and put up with whatever misery life hands you for the sake of the honor of the team? That’s a fast way to ensure the success of your argument and cause, isn’t it? Attack your readers. Oh, yes. [Um , this also explains why Laing, despite her wit and entertainment value, will not be picking out a second or third expensive home soon. Well, that, and integrity, she flatters herself.]
ANNETTE’S ASIDE: Eh, shut up, Nicolson. I have heard this kind of rubbish in so many places, and especially during my long years in the Deep South.
Look, maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m not quite the rebel I seem. I’m all for respect where it’s due (and if you have been on the receiving end of my respect, deference, and the adoration that comes with, you know how alarming that can be, because I am intense —and yet sweetly harmless—in my loyalty). But I’m equally appalled by false leaders, those who put people in their “place” is an old tactic for powerful people (large and small, from a variety of motives, often very personal) seeking to prevent change that improves life for the rest of us. And now I’ve said it, dear reader, you’re going to see it everywhere, practiced by some ghastly people. Make it a habit to notice. And pass it on.
Visiting land reformers McHugh and Murdoch soon bumped into a couple of clergymen in Portree carrying stacks of what Murdoch called Nicolson’s "silly leaflet”. He immediately grasped its purpose: What we now call gaslighting, suppressing dissent, and which he called a “wet-sheet”, kind of like a wet blanket, I guess.
But even as Murdoch and McHugh set about informing and organizing the people of Skye with speeches, the context was changing around them, as tends to happen just when you think you have a game plan.
Only a few days after McHugh and Murdoch arrived on Skye, on April 26, 1882, Irish republicans in Dublin assassinated Lord Frederick Cavendish, a British senior official, and the civil servant he was with. The backlash in Britain against all things and people Irish was massive and immediate, and Edward McHugh was caught up in it.
To complicate matters, McHugh wasn’t just Irish: He was a Catholic. Almost everyone on Skye was either Church of Scotland, or the more working-class and even more radical Free Church of Scotland, and they were all fiercely Protestant and anti-Catholic. So that didn’t help.
But McHugh’s colleague, John Murdoch, hoped the two of them could keep the focus where it belonged: Land reform. However, McHugh promoted the Irish idea of land nationalization—the nation owning the land—while the more conservative crofters thought things didn’t need to (and shouldn’t) be that drastic. So circumstances for the two men to organize and encourage people were not exactly ideal.
This is not to say that the crofters didn’t give Murdoch and McHugh a polite welcome, though! And well done to them, because they risked eviction by landlord and factor for hosting the two visitors. So the meetings that Murdoch and McHugh held weren’t officially advertised except by word of mouth, and they were held in great secrecy. Years afterward, Skye folk denied having turned out to listen to Edward McHugh, an Irish Catholic with radical ideas. But they did.
Skye landlords and their major tenant sheep farmers, meanwhile, were eager to avoid any discussion of their own role in creating violent confrontation with the oppressed crofters. They were happy to blame an “outside agitator” as we might say today: And who better than Edward McHugh. Heavens, he was an Irishman! And a Catholic! Why listen to him, you ignorant peasants?
Donald “Tormore” MacDonald blamed McHugh and Murdoch for stirring up crofters in the north of Skye, by informing them “of their rights.” Wow. We certainly can’t have that, now, can we? Suddenly, I’m thinking of a 1950s Mississippi sheriff who held a press conference, in front of TV cameras, to inform the media that “their” Black people (he didn’t say Black people) were perfectly happy until outside agitators from the North came down and riled them up.
Blaming outside agitators in Skye in 1882, as in Mississippi seventy years later, also kind of ignores, as Mr. Hutchinson points out, that local people were actively rebelling en masse well before “outside agitators” turned up. And that the Battle of the Braes happened a week before Murdoch and McHugh arrived.
Before returning to the mainland, John Murdoch stopped by Hamara Lodge, the large factor’s house in Glendale occupied by Tormore, to meet with him. Murdoch wanted Tormore’s version of what was going on. Tormore accused Murdoch of causing trouble, but Murdoch was not going to stand for that, and sharply told him to knock it off. The two men ended up chatting civilly. However, Tormore showed Murdoch a gun from his mantlepiece, which he said he now carried everywhere. Things were serious.
Death and the Heir Apparent
Sir John Macpherson MacLeod, or JMM, owner of the Glendale estate, died in London in 1881. The Glendale Estate was now held in trust for JMM’s heir, Hugh Alexander Macpherson, a 23 year old who would become a Church of Scotland minister, and he served as one of the three Trustees. His fellow Trustees were a couple more Macphersons that you needn’t remember: Norman Macpherson (a sheriff in Lowland Scotland) and William Macpherson, a lawyer. Now that JMM was dead, these three trustees retained Tormore as the estate’s factor. Uh oh.
Change was in the air in Glendale. The lease on the big sheep farm at Waterstein was up for renewal in May, 1882, but the tenant farmer, Dr. Nicol Martin, was fed up with the crofters’ refusal to recognize his rights. He called them “indolent and lazy” a complaint you’ll hear echoing through British-American history, from medieval lords complaining in their castles about medieval laborers, to enslavers sipping mint juleps on their verandahs in Mississippi grumbling about lazy slaves to retired folk who spend all day in front of the TV whinging about lazy young people not wanting to work for a pittance oops did I say that?
Dr. Nicol Martin claimed that crofters were too busy playing look-out for police to get any work done (um, maybe hard to focus on work when you’re expecting eviction or even arrest?) And he muttered angrily that even if crofters were encouraged to leave Skye, nobody else would have them because they were useless . . . Another form of gaslighting I’ve run into before! It was aimed at people freed from slavery in Georgia from the 1860s to long, long after . . . and at history professors in Georgia in the 1990s who dared question being exploited and abused. Now, isn’t that interesting?
But the crofters of Glendale weren’t going anywhere. In February, 1882, well before the Battle of the Braes happened, several miles away, they were having meetings to plan their own resistance.
They did not use the dreaded phrase “land league”. They simply posted meeting notices in the window of the Glendale Post Office, advertising time, date, and location, which was always Glendale Church, the only place they could meet and not get wet.
The goal? Saying their problems out loud, with the factor present, to make the landlords aware. Their common goal was to get Waterstein back, now that Martin had quit the tenancy of his farm. They needed the grazing land. They were willing to pay rent. And, as crofter John MacPherson of Lower Milovaig said, “we had as much right as anybody else to get it.”
MacPherson claimed they weren’t organizing, but, while wise, that’s not true. At that meeting in February, 1882, they started the Glendale Land League, inspired by the work of Edward McHugh and John Murdoch. Mr. Hutchinson says “They achieved to a remarkable extent . . . the rough discipline of a revolutionary cell.”
In March, new flyers went up in the window of the Glendale Post Office. It not only advertised a rent strike in Skinidin, one of the Glendale hamlets, but threatened strikebreakers with arson, and even death. Another notice demanded that Dr. Martin’s sheep be cleared off the land at Waterstein Farm, immediately. Revolution by Post Office window notices . . . If there’s anything more British than that, I want to know what it is. Serving tea and biscuits [US cookies] at revolutionary meetings, maybe?
And what they did next in this “rebellion” was also very British: They formally applied to rent the Waterstein property, a serious and honest offer as well as an olive branch offering. Early negotiations went well, and crofters started driving their livestock, cattle and sheep, onto the Waterstein land.
Then Tormore met with the crofters, and surprised them with the news that he had rented Waterstein Farm for himself. But, he said, he was interested to know how much the crofters were willing to pay in rent if he transferred the tenancy to them. A sneaky move.
The Glendale crofters told Tormore that they would pay the same for the land as Dr. Martin had. They also wrote to the Glendale Estate trustees to make the same offer. The Trustees decided to come to Glendale to chat.
In May, 1882, the Trustees arrived. It was raining (of course), but, strikingly, bonfires were burning on all the hills to greet them. OMG, can’t you just see this in the movie that Mr. Hutchinson needs to get optioned?
The Trustees of the Glendale Estate stayed a week, I’m guessing in Hamara Lodge (Tormore’s home) Or a hotel? Probably not at Dunvegan Castle though—the Estate landlord and his fellow Trustees weren’t posh enough for the MacLeod of MacLeod, who had gone up in the world. But even after that week, the Trustees they still hadn’t made their decision about Waterstein Farm. They told the crofters to be patient. Wow. More shades of the US South: I’m thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: “This "wait" has almost always meant "never."“
John MacPherson already had their number. He replied to the Trustees. “We told them that our forefathers had died in good patience . . . that they never got anything by their patience, but constantly getting worse.”
And then Tormore told the crofters no. He resigned as factor, cleared the sheep and cattle belonging to crofters from Milovaig and other hamlets off the Waterstein Farm, and moved in his own animals. His only excuse was that the crofters of Milovaig and Borrodale who were holding a rent strike would surely not pay rent for Waterstein. This despite the fact that the crofters had guaranteed their rent payment with collateral: Their livestock at Waterstein, Imagine repossessing cows and sheep, but yes, that was a thing. PLUS the crofters had a “sympathetic gentleman” standing by to float them the rent, if need be.
Now, Tormore staked his claim to the Waterstein Farm by having eight hundred sheep driven all the way from his mainland property on the mainland to Waterstein. But the Glendale crofters were not going to stand for this. They wouldn’t allow the animals onto the land.
When the Trustees balked at confronting the crofters, Tormore backed out of his contract. The Trustees, however, refused to rent the land to the crofters, even on a temporary basis. Crofter John MacPherson believed that these city gents had been got at when they visited the homes of local landlords/gentlemen. I think of journalist Ray Stannard Baker who, in the aftermath of lynchings and a white riot in Bulloch County, Georgia, was taken aside by local whites who “explained” the problems of dealing with black people.
Everything in history is unique. Every event different. Sometimes things rhyme, we like to say. And sometimes there’s a pattern I cannot deny, much as I want to: People asking for simple justice getting bullshat on. Any academic historian who wants to tell me I’m full of it is welcome to get in touch. I’m listening.
Oh Why Did the Gods Make Me a Manager?
The Glendale Estate Trustees replaced Tormore as factor with John Robertson. Nearly 60 years old, Robertson was a Lowlander, and did not speak Gaelic at all. This, despite the fact that he had lived on Skye for thirteen years and in rural Ireland before that. He hadn’t even tried to learn the local language.
On the Trustees’ behalf, Robertson purchased the departed Tormore’s sheep, and moved them onto the Waterstein Farm. He then removed from the farm the remaining animals that belonged to the crofters. There was much confusion, and some sheep belonging to the Glendale Estate ended up grazing on the precious little land available to the crofters of Milovaig which, as you might imagine, did not go down well.
To try to fix things, Robertson offered the Milovaig crofters a bit of truly crappy land on the Waterstein Farm. They pointed out that this measly bit of crummy land would support maybe one (1) sheep per family, so no thanks. The crofters were also unhappy with having to use English to talk to Robertson—at least Tormore spoke Gaelic when he said awful things to you. The crofters carried on their rent strike.
Author Mr. Hutchinson shrewdly observes that the crofters of Glendale—like those of Braes— didn’t require leadership, much less outside agitators, because these were people who worked and talked together every day—whether fishing, digging peat, sheep-shearing, church. They worked and moved forward together, by consensus, and again, I’m reminded of American Indians.
And now, suddenly, the Glendale crofters had spokespeople, led by John MacPherson.
Go, ye heroes, go to glory! The Leading Elders of Glendale
Several Glendale elders led the resistance, and the only names you may need to know are John MacPherson (we already met him) and Postmaster Peter MacKinnon (ditto). So don’t worry about remembering the others. I just want you to be aware that even leadership was a group effort, even though MacPherson’s name is best remembered, and that these guys came from hamlets throughout Glendale, even though we hear the most about Lower Milovaig, where MacPherson lived.
John MacPherson, we have already met. Legend.
Peter MacKinnon, in his mid-fifties, postmaster/grocer of Lephin and all Glendale: A veteran of the Royal Navy who served in the Crimean War, MacKinnon now lives quietly on his croft in Lephin, in the middle of Glendale, and runs the general store/Post Office in Glendale. The Post Office was where signs were posted, and where people gathered to rebel. Tormore several times tried to put MacKinnon out of business. He failed, because this old soldier was not going anywhere. MacKinnon was a fierce community leader and supporter. Tormore had objected to his support of fair play for his neighbors, for sharing news from newspapers, for supporting the applications of the poor for charity, for expressing party political views.
Alexander Ross (age 47) of Fasach, defended the honor of Glendale. He was angry at media reports, from as far away as London, that crofters were living in anarchy. He pointed out that goods left twice a week by steamers were never stolen from the dockside, and that Constable MacVicar, who had arrived in Glendale a year earlier, had had precisely one (1) crime to deal with: A tinker (traveling peddler) had allowed his horse to eat some of a crofter’s wheat. She reported this to the constable, who confiscated a teapot from him to compensate her.
Peter MacDonald of Holmisdale, age 53 was most vocal about living conditions, and the solution: He described how the crofters were crammed together, and how the land, overused, was losing its fertility. His point: Crofters needed more land.
John Campbell of Hamara, age 64, a devout Christian, was not ashamed or afraid to say he had hosted Edward McHugh and John Murdoch in his home during the Sabbath. Tormore had verbally abused and threatened Campbell as a result, but Campbell stood up to him.
John MacKay of Colbost, and John MacSwan of Skinidin who testified to abuse by factors, including bullying, exploitation, and theft.
Alexander MacKenzie of Borreraig, testified said that he and his family and neighbors were required to work for free for their landlord, Dr. Nicol Martin ten days a year, harvesting wheat, under the direct supervision of Dr. Martin’s employee who made them “work like slaves”, under threat of eviction.
… and more.
John MacPherson plays a major part in the rest of this story. He emerges like a new chief. But he was not a boss. He was a first among equals; a spokesman, not a boss. And once again, I am reminded of many American Indian nations, in which respected elders are not only valued, but powerful, and among whom consensus matters in government.
Even though the fate of the Waterstein land was a direct issue only for crofters who lived in Milovaig and Borrodale, all the people of Glendale saw that they had common cause, in the demeaning treatment the Glendale people were getting from factors, the landlords’ representatives: The abuse, the theft, the rack-renting, the overcrowding, the exploitation. In language the Gaels did not use, it all sucked.
Not everyone in Glendale, however, wanted to confront the factors and, through them, the landlords. Fear drove much of this minority view: If you offended clan chieftains, how could you ask them for protection? This baffles me. The Macleods of Macleod and the Lords Macdonald, living as English people in London, selling their land and jacking up rents with no thought to the consequences for the crofters, raising their kids in posh English boarding schools, seem unlikely clan patriarchs, don't they? There’s no indication they cared. But hey, old loyalties sometimes die hard.
But let’s not romanticize the Glendale crofters (tempting though it is) because Mr. Hutchinson does not: The Glendale Land League bullied dissenters, threatening them with physical violence. Several worried ministers of the Free Church of Scotland even met and appealed to John MacPherson and the others to knock that off.
It wasn’t pretty, this bullying.
Ewen and Marion MacKenzie, crofter couple in Milovaig, complained to Constable Alex MacVicar that they were forced to go to Glendale Land League meetings. Ewen had signed the petition to the Glendale Trustees to ask for the Waterstein Farm lease.
Marion told Constable MacVicar that the crofters were pooling money to pay fines in case they were convicted of a crime as part of their protests. Ewen described the last Land League meeting’s discussion of how to get the Waterstein shepherds not to mess with the crofters’ animals. In other words, Ewen and Marion Mackenzie grassed out their neighbors. No wonder they were afraid of retribution. And it was starting: When Ewen didn’t go to a meeting, he said, “I was hearing whistling about my house and I knew it was the young ones trying to get me out to give me a thrashing.” Then he named names.
In fact, Mr. Hutchinson notes, no violence followed against the MacKenzies or their property. Ever. They lived and died among their neighbors in Upper Milovaig, unbothered into old age. Interesting.
Meanwhile . . . Sheriff William Ivory, who had survived the Battle of the Braes, only just, had now lost the rest of his dignity. On that grim day, sliding along in mud under rain, stones, and curses, he had fled back to Portree. As if that weren’t bad enough, he now found himself made fun of in the Scottish newspapers, including in a hilarious satire based on Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, about a disastrous military action in the Crimean War.
This satire portrayed the police action in Braes, with Ivory in charge, as a fiasco. Here’s an excerpt:
. . . All in the valley of Braes Marched the half-hundred. 'Forward, Police Brigade, In front of me," bold Ivory said. Into the valley of Braes Charged the half-hundred. 'Forward, Police Brigade! Charge each auld wife and maid!' E'ven though the Bobbies [US police] knew Someone had blundered! Theirs not to make reply Theirs not to reason why Theirs but to do or die Into the valley of Braes Charged the half-hundred
*The whole parody of Charge of the Light Brigade is wonderful and, even by itself, worth the price of Mr. Hutchinson's book which, to remind you, I do urge you buy to support him and get this book to more attention. Publishing is in freefall, and if you’re not supporting any journalist or academic, and you're not in financial trouble, then, as a reader, you need to step up.
Sheriff Ivory did not, to say the least, feel warm fuzzies for Skye crofters. In fact, he wrote to Inverness on Sept 21, 1882, asking that a British Army and Navy force invade Skye to put down the crofters.
I’m not kidding.
Tarantara?
When the foeman bares his steel,
Tarantara! tarantara!
—W.S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance (1879)
The Inverness authorities hastily forwarded Sheriff Ivory’s letter to their local MP, John Blair Balfour. An MP was (and is) a Member of Parliament, an elected representative in the House of Commons in London. And as it happens, John Blair Balfour was not only an MP, but a very influential one.
Balfour was a member of the ruling Liberal Party, and he was Lord Advocate for Scotland. This meant he advised Queen Victoria and her government on all legal matters in Scotland.*So Balfour was a powerful MP, indeed.
*From Queen Victoria on, Kings and Queens don’t get to make decisions. We just pretend they do. Shhh . . . I don’t want to hurt the King’s feelings.
Balfour read Ivory’s letter, which gave a full account of events on Skye (from Ivory’s perspective). Ivory advised a crackdown on three particular areas: Braes, Glendale, and Kilmuir, where crofters were all on rent strike. Of the three, only Kilmuir had not yet seen a violent protest.
In Sheriff William Ivory’s view, the Braes villagers had got off scot-free after a violent assault on the authorities, including and especially himself. About fifty or sixty crofters were now supposed to get summonses to court, but Sheriff Ivory had no idea how these summonses might be served: Even Glasgow’s police force refused to help after what had happened in Braes.
So Sheriff Ivory and Lord Lovat, the Lord-Lieutenant of Inverness-shire, had decided that the only course left to the government was full military invasion to restore order, from the coast (not by land), so the crofters could be caught by surprise. This was what Ivory recommended to Balfour.
Less than two weeks later, in early November, 1882, Lord Advocate John Balfour responded to Sheriff Ivory’s request. Balfour agreed that messengers-at-arms (the men who served summonses) needed to be protected, and so the question was whether police or soldiers should be the protectors.
But to Balfour and the Liberal Government, it was not a question of choosing between police and army: ONLY police, NOT soldiers, should have this responsibility. This was modern Britain in 1882, for heavens sake! We have fountain pens, phones, and a theatre in London’s West End lit and powered entirely by electricity, staging the state-of-the-art wit and music of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan! We don’t send in troops with guns to deal with British people (dangerous scary foreigners are another matter, mind)! We send our unarmed policemen, unarmed so they don’t come across as tyrants!
So the Inverness-shire county government needed to rustle up police to help. But it wasn’t London’s job to tell them how they could do this. However, London would approve increasing the size of the police force in Inverness-shire, if that helped.
So that’s what Lovat and Ivory did: They started funding the police, big time, aiming to hire more officers, and arm them as “a paramilitary squad of counter-insurgents,” Mr. Hutchinson writes, “not young Constable Alexander MacVicar. . .” Yes, the young police officer in Glendale on the Isle of Skye was popular! He knew his place! Having a nice cup of tea with locals, and turning a blind eye, that was his job!
Nobody on Skye wanted to be a paramilitary policeman and have everyone else hate them. Nobody in Glasgow wanted to send police to be humiliated as they had been at Braes and in the newspapers afterwards. Other Lowland cities and counties were also not rushing to send cops to Skye.
Not, that is, until mostly rural Lanarkshire (not to be confused with England’s Lancashire), a county close to Glasgow in the Lowlands, offered to send “a few dozen” officers. However, before anyone in Inverness got too excited, the Lanarkshire authorities made it clear that they weren’t actually passionate about helping Skye landlords. They were only passionate about the money. And they would only be doing this work for the right money and conditions. They wanted Inverness-shire to pay all their expenses. They wanted the right to veto the accommodations provided to their officers (only the best for our Lanarkshire lads!), and to choose their own hotels if need be (with, again, Inverness paying the bills) Lanarkshire Police wanted Inverness to pay their cops’ wages and clothing, and to pay any compensation if a Lanarkshire cop was killed or injured.
Inverness Police Committee was desperate, so they said said yes to all of Lanarkshire’s conditions. But despite being agreeable, the Inverness-shire government still managed to recruit only 135 cops from across Scotland. They could only contribute 35 of their own officers. It was pretty obvious that a tiny wee force of just 170 policemen wasn’t going to cut it for a major mission to restore order among thousands of crofters—men, women, even children— on Skye.
But now, as it happened, the problem of Skye wasn’t just a problem for Inverness. London was paying closer attention.
You Ask for Guidance--This Is My Reply
Gaelic and Highland Clubs in the big cities, and individual reformers like John Murdoch, all wanted an official enquiry to look into the appalling situation in the Scottish Highlands and Islands (including Skye) in the 19th century.
One person who was paying attention: Alexander MacKenzie (another Alexander! Another MacKenzie! Sorry), whom Mr. Hutchinson describes as the “upwardly mobile son of a crofter”. This Alex MacKenzie edited Celtic Magazine, which peddled a romanticized clan history and folklore, but now was also a fierce advocate of crofters’ rights.
Alex MacKenzie enters our story because he asked an awkward question. He attended a public meeting in Inverness with a reformist MP named Charles Fraser Mackintosh. Yes, Charles Fraser Mackintosh is a pretty big part of our story, so a name to know. And not to be confused with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a later iconic Scottish artist and designer, but I digress.
At the Inverness meeting, MacKenzie asked Charles Fraser Mackintosh, MP, a question that caused a ripple of delighted laughter to run through the Inverness audience: The London government had already appointed two committees to look into the state of seafood in the Highlands. So how about having an committee to look into the state of people?
The MP said, alas, he didn’t have that kind of power to start such a committee, not at present. He explained that there needed to be an upswelling of public opinion around Great Britain before he could suggest in the House of Commons that such a committee be formed, and have any hope of that happening. So he threw the ball back into MacKenzie’s court, urging him to stir up public opinion, to organize a petition or arrange for a group to visit the Prime Minister. Once public opinion was riled, Mr. Mackintosh, MP, said, he would be glad to raise the issue in Parliament.
A Letter from the Mikado!
A letter from the Mikado! What in the world can he have to say to me? (Reads letter.) Ah, here it is at last! I thought it would come sooner or later! --W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885)
Annette’s Aside: Charles Fraser Mackintosh, MP, knew how to motivate Government to get things done about the crofters’ plight on Skye! This calls for a great quotation from a historian, and I have it!
For years, I have been quoting legendary early American historian Dr. T.H. Breen:
Public opinion is how ordinary people make history.
Only . . . When I looked while writing this post, I couldn’t find the quote in any of Dr. Breen’s books. So, as proof of the hard historical work, intellectual rigor, and commitment to evidentiary excellence for which Non-Boring History is known, I did a careful search of the historical literature by emailing Dr. Breen and asking him where he wrote it.
Now let me be clear: His Historical Eminence the Mikado aka Dr. T.H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History Emeritus at Northwestern University, Illinois, a James Marsh Professor at Large at the University of Vermont, is a total legend. I had to avert my eyes while writing to the dazzling glow of His Historical Eminence. So this was a bit cheeky of me.
And Dr. Breen’s reply? “I do not remember making that claim in print, but if I had done so, I would praise my own insight.”
Oh, blimey. So I wrote back, “Would you mind sending it out as a Tweet or a press release, because nobody will think it clever if I say it, but they'll believe it if you do? Alternatively, I'll just use weasel words like "apocryphal", "legendarily", or, if push comes to shove, "allegedly".
Dr. Breen: In terms of political campaigns, I say, my name is T.H. Breen and I endorse this quotation.
Annette: And that's a quote! Woot! Thank you! :)
So here it is folks, from Professor T. H. Breen himself. . .
Public opinion is how ordinary people make history
. . . My name is T.H. Breen and I endorse this quotation*
*Okay, so if it turns out that it was some other historian entirely who said this, and who is now frothing at the mouth? Um, it’s Dr.Breen’s fault. Ignore the short British historian cowering behind him. You can reach Professor Breen c/o The Mikado’s Palace, Northwestern University, Near Chicago, The Frozen North. Thx.
Everything Must Have A Beginning
Perhaps we're a little awkward at first -- but everything must have a beginning. --W.S. Gilbert, Patience (1881)
By 1882, there were loads of influential Scottish clubs, like Gaelic Societies and Highland Land Reform Associations, and they began announcing support for a Royal Commission ( a national government committee of investigation, approved by the Queen at the Prime Minister’s recommendation, like she had any choice in the matter, but we do like to pretend) to look into the state of the crofters.
As promised, Charles Fraser Mackintosh, MP, swung into action in the House of Commons.
The goal of getting a Royal Commission? Once the truth about what was happening—and had happened—in the Highlands and Islands was widely known, thanks to a Royal Commission’s investigations, then laws would be passed, and make a huge difference to crofters’ lives. But let’s be clear: The actions of the crofters at Braes and Glendale was what finally made the Royal Commission happen. If they hadn’t stood up for themselves, I doubt anyone would have stood up for them.
Thanks to the crofters, when Charles Fraser Mackintosh raised the question of their plight in the House of Commons in 1882, this wasn’t the first time that MPs had heard about the travesties on Skye. In 1881, journalist and MP Charles Cameron had asked Home Secretary William Harcourt in the House of Commons if the Government knew about families, a hundred people in all, being threatened with eviction in Kilmuir.
Now, in 1882, Charles Fraser Mackintosh, MP, stood up in the House of Commons and asked Lord Advocate John Balfour why Glasgow policemen had been sent to Skye, whether he had approved this move, and who, exactly, was paying for this invasion? Balfour responded with an account of the Battle of Braes in which crofters were portrayed as rent cheats turned violent thugs. He said he had approved policemen being sent from Glasgow to help the overwhelmed Highland forces.
Another question came in 1882 from Donald Macfarlane, an Irish MP, who asked a question in the House of the Prime Minister, W. E. Gladstone himself. Just as the five men from Braes were being tried in Inverness, and the crofters of Milovaig and Borrodale in Glendale were refused a lease for the sheep farm at Waterstein, Donald Macfarlane asked Prime Minister Gladstone if he had been informed about the situation on Skye, and whether he planned to find out more about the crofters’ concerns via a Royal Commission. Gladstone, like Harcourt before him, refused to be baited into an immediate reply, but he promised to get around to a reply.
Another MP, Dick Peddie, a Lowland Liberal, urged the Prime Minister in April 1882 to admit that, given the situation on Skye, he needed to pick up the pace a bit. Gladstone again refused to be hurried.
Interesting, because when I think of Gladstone, I usually think of the “Old Man in a Hurry” that was one of his nicknames. He was, after all, 72 in 1882, and still had a lot he wanted to get done. In this, his second go at being Prime Minister (out of three), between 1880 and 1885, Gladstone was focused on two big issues. First (last year) was his Irish Land Act, which he got through Parliament in 1881, giving Irish tenant farmers a sort of rent control and protection from eviction.
Later, but not yet, we’re still in 1882, but two years later, in 1884, Gladstone would massively expand the electorate, the voting public, with the Third Reform Act, so male farmworkers and other rural men got the vote. This was huge: Six million men, including almost every male crofter in Scotland, got the vote, and it would make a very big difference. Public opinion expressed most powerfully, by votes.
W.E. Gladstone was an evangelical Christian (US Doesn’t necessarily mean what you think), and the older he got, the more he certain he was of right and wrong, and the more sure that his moral duty meant aiding the underdog. But Gladstone was also a realist. He knew that he was up against powerful forces, the same class of rich people that had enclosed (i.e. stolen) common lands from people in England over the past two hundred years. To complicate things, this theft had not only made a few people rich, but had led to more efficient farming, and had fed the millions of Brits who served Britain’s role as the workshop of the world, the first industrial nation. Why should the crofters be exempt from such change, Gladstone had to ask?
Meanwhile, in November, 1882, while Sheriff Ivory was trying to recruit cops to go to Skye, MP Donald Macfarlane asked Gladstone in the House of Commons whether a Royal Commission was to be appointed to look into why Skye was in uproar. Again, Gladstone put him off.
But these MP supporters of the crofters were persistent. Just two days later, Sir George Campbell, a Lowland Scottish Liberal MP and veteran British administrator in India, asked why Highland Scots weren’t entitled to the same respect for their ancient land rights as the Irish got in Gladstone’s Irish Land Act? Note his career in India, wokesters. Confused yet? You should be, when you’re always looking for simple answers. So there.
Gladstone didn’t have time to reply before a Conservative pro-landlord Scottish MP, Sir Charles Dalrymple, pushed back. He argued that the situation on Skye was being resolved “by friendly arrangement”, and surely Parliament didn’t need to meddle? Yeah, Charlie, just like baristas, nurses, and teachers don’t need unions, because the people in charge will nicely share. Uh huh.
Mr. Gladstone was pleased for this lifeline from Sir Charles: If the issues on Skye were being resolved to everyone’s mutual satisfaction, then it wasn’t the time for the Government in London to step in. Not that he was ruling this out, but he wanted more time to see how things played out.
However. As you can probably guess, a “friendly arrangement” was NOT happening on Skye in November, 1882.
The Army of the Conqueror
A few weeks after that exchange in the House of Commons, John Balfour, the Lord Advocate for Scotland, discussed with William Harcourt, British Home Secretary [US equivalent to a blend of the heads of the departments of the Interior and Homeland Security] plans for a police or military invasion of the Isle of Skye.
I wish this was a joke. It wasn't.
Harcourt and Balfour wrote to William Ivory, Sheriff of Inverness-shire, to ask where he needed help, exactly, how much help he needed, and what kind of help he needed. They also wanted him to send evidence to back up his requests, to show he really needed the help. What about the new cops Inverness had hired? How many police were on Skye, and where? Had Lord Macdonald and the Braes crofters settled their differences? Had the police tried to protect the shepherds at Waterstein Farm from the crofters?
Ivory was frustrated, and scribbled notes all over this letter from London, ranting about the crofters’ outrageous behavior and threats, including their supposed threat to use scythes in battle if rocks weren’t enough. Ivory now sent the new Chief Constable of Inverness-shire to Skye: Gaelic speaker Alexander “Alasdair” McHardy, in his early 40s, was in charge of getting information to answer London’s questions.
McHardy duly reported to the procurator fiscal in Inverness, and the procurator fiscal sent a report to London in January, 1883. Bottom line: London was asked to help protect police officers sent to arrest people in Glendale who were charged with attacking the tenant’s shepherds in Waterstein. Once again, help was requested in the form of British marines and a group of policemen, to arrive on a steamship or two or three that would hang around for a while to impress the locals.
But only 170 cops were currently available to help on Skye, and it wasn’t enough. Chief Constable McHardy was now trying to hire fifty cops to add to the only eleven who were already there, spread thin over that large island —and still, only one was in Glendale, poor wee Constable Alexander MacVicar, sipping his tea and nibbling scones, or whatever he did all day.
No police were in Braes, where things had allegedly been resolved with Lord Macdonald. But at the end of 1882, Lord Macdonald’s factor, Alexander “No Nickname” MacDonald, said he didn’t expect the quiet to last, and was expecting more trouble.
Meanwhile, nobody in Glendale would offer hospitality to any police, not even a room for the night, not even to one cop. Not even a cup of tea and a wee scone, reserved exclusively to the obedient Constable MacVicar.
And then events took over. Specifically the event with which we began this whole story: The Court of Session in Edinburgh, on January 11, 1883, decided—against lawyers’ advice— not to take the unusual step of posting a letter via the Royal Mail to send summonses to the five crofters in Glendale accused of trespass and assaulting a shepherd at Waterstein Farm.
So the unfortunate Donald MacTavish, messenger-at-arms, with his symbols of office, a badge and the Wand of Peace, began his trek from Glasgow to Skye to do his job. And we all know how that turned out.
Meanwhile, Chief Constable McHardy messaged the police in Portree, advising them that he was dispatching a few cops from the mainland to help the messenger-at-arms and then keep the peace at Waterstein and elsewhere.
Replying from Portree to McHardy’s message was Sheriff-Substitute Peter Speirs. He was a Scot, born in Cawnpore, India, in 1842, and sent back to Britain at age five to be fostered and educated by his aunts. Why am I telling you all this? A good reason. Young Peter Speirs had a lucky escape when he was sent back to Scotland, as Mr. Hutchinson notes, because he missed the Indian Rebellion against the British in 1857: Out of 1,200 Brits in Cawnpore, just seven survived. “The place of Peter Alexander Speirs’s birth,” Mr. Hutchinson writes, “remained . . . a byword for the collapse of British law and order and the brutal triumph of Indigenous insurrection.” In faraway Scotland, Peter Speirs had read of the gory details in Cawnpore. It had an impact. It would. It’s horrific, the sort of thing you can’t unread, FYI.
Not shockingly, Speirs was disturbed to find out things were happening in Skye that reminded him of events in Cawnpore leading up to the 1857 Rebellion. No shock, then, that Speirs warned Chief Constable McHardy that the only safe place for the mainland cops to stay in Glendale was in Hamara Lodge, the spacious home of John Robertson, Tormore’s replacement as the Glendale Estate’s factor.
Given that the police were being sent for the Estate’s benefit, hosting them was the least it could do. The two men who couldn’t fit there could stay at the hotel in Dunvegan.
Speirs warned McHardy that the two “outside agitators” from Glasgow, Edward McHugh and John Murdoch, were still stirring up trouble. However, he said, to calm the situation, he was getting the word out among the crofters that the police were not coming to arrest anyone, just strengthening the police presence in Glendale. He suggested that MacTavish, the messenger-at-arms, do his duty without police at his side, and just bring someone else as a witness. Um, that someone was Black Angus McLeod. And, again, we all know how that ended, with Black Angus hiding under Norman Raild’s dining room table in Colbost House while MacTavish went ahead alone. OK, I made up the dining room table. But I wouldn’t be surprised.
Oh, and Speirs suggested that the regularly-arriving steam ships at Glendale and Dunvegan be surveilled in case they were bringing in guns for the crofters. He did think there were limits on the potential violence mind. He didn’t think the crofters would lay mines in Loch Pooltiel (Glendale’s bay) because they would be afraid of blowing up their own fishing boats.
This bizarre conversation, Mr . Hutchinson suggests, has much, much more to do with Speirs’s horrific memories of reading about the Indian Rebellion in Cawnpore in 1857 than with reality in Glendale in 1883. The only thing Peter Speirs was spot on about? Trouble was brewing. And it would not end well.
So, Tuesday, January 16, 1883, Chief Constable McHardy’s crack force of mainland cops (all six of them) marched from Portree toward Glendale. None of them had the first clue about Skye or its geography. Two were dropped off in Dunvegan to help the lone local constable there. The main part of the force, all four (4) policemen, were to set up field HQ at Hamara Lodge, in the heart of Glendale, and help local Constable Alexander MacVicar do . . . something. I guess.
MacVicar, likely hiding behind his police station’s counter (if it had one) learned of the approach of this scary band of (count them) four mainland policemen from his crofter neighbors. I hope he didn’t choke on his scone.
Glendale people, unlike their wee police constable, had been waiting with relish for just such an event. “The horn [think sirens] was blowing in all directions,” MacVicar reported later, “and the people running towards the road throughout the glen (valley).” When crofters from Milovaig ran toward the Post Office with sticks they had made especially for the occasion, Constable MacVicar followed them. He saw the crowd gathered. Within an hour, about eight hundred crofters were waiting outside the Glendale Post Office.
Three hundred more crofters had arrived by the time the four cops, led by Inspector Macdonald and the local constable from Dunvegan, were walking past Colbost, toward the center of Glendale. Oh, dear. End well for the invaders? What do you think?
That evening, Chief Constable Alexander McHardy got a telegram from Inspector Macdonald, now safely returned to Dunvegan. Things had not gone well for the police. An “excited crowd” of four hundred crofters had attacked the cops. They had been “kicked, thrown to ground, roughly handled, forced for six miles, several times assaulted (although nobody had serious injuries except to their dignity).”
The crofters celebrated their triumph by composing a victory song, Thainig Sgeulachd gu ar Baile (Word Came to Our Township). You have to get Mr. Hutchinson’s book to read the words (in English translation) and it’s worth the purchase for this alone. The lyrics are awesome, and they come down to “We kicked the coppers’ arses . . . You should have seen us marching up the hill of Fasach, banners flying, men and women both, we sent the useless buggers packing. Yay, us!”
And yet, poor wee Donald MacTavish, as we know, decided the next day to take one for the team, and try to serve his summonses. Give the man points for bravery, if not for common sense. In fairness, as Mr. Hutchinson points out, MacTavish had had no reason to expect anything but courtesy from crofters. His previous summonses had been received politely, then quietly deposited in burning peat fires. Often, crofters had kindly given him a lift in their boas to serve his summonses, which, of course, then ended up in the fireplace. The crofters knew MacTavish, and knew his job, which they allowed him to do, before popping his bits of paper into fireplaces. He did not expect them to kick his arse into the stratosphere as they had done with the police.
Alas. As we know, they did.
Now, the only person representing Scottish law allowed to remain in Glendale was poor wee Constable MacVicar, who knew his place.
Glendale had become a settlement of renegades, and oh, how I love these people. But Chief Constable McHardy was not standing for this sort of lawlessness. He fired off a telegram to Sheriff Ivory, and then set to writing his own report. If we’re going to send unarmed policemen, he advised, we need at least 250 of them, but seriously, this is a place in revolt, so we may need the armed forces.
Sheriff William Ivory was now determined that whoever was sent to Skye, police or military (and he preferred military) needed to be armed. He sent all the info he had to London, to Lord Advocate Balfour, assuming he would be supportive.
He assumed wrong. Balfour, Home Secretary Harcourt, and Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone himself were not about to send armed police or the Royal Marines against a bunch of righteously angry crofters on Skye.
So who did the London Government send to Skye to sort out the troubles?
A civil servant. Yep, bloke with a briefcase and, for all I know, a bowler hat.
Come on, this is isn’t the 18th century. This is early 1883. Former civil servant and lawyer, now lyricist, W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan (think Andrew Lloyd Webber, only talented) had recently opened their smash hit light opera musical Iolanthe at the Savoy Theatre.
The Savoy Theatre was the first playhouse in the world lit entirely by electricity, and the musical was now the hot ticket in London’s West End theatre district. It’s a hilarious musical satire of British law, the political party system, the House of Lords, and fairies. It’s about a fairy who marries a boring old lawyer, has a son with him, and then—being a fairy who looks perpetually young, just like Tinkerbelle— is mistaken for her son’s girlfriend. The fairies wore battery-powered wreaths on their heads. Despite all this weird yet modern stuff, keen evangelical and Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone said it was all in good taste: He was a G & S fan.
Yeah, nobody in London’s in the mood in 1883 to send British soldiers to murder unarmed Scottish crofters. Now, that is in bad taste.
The Man From the Ministry
Now, as the country is in a state of insurrection, it is absolutely necessary that you should assume the reins of Government at once.
—W.S. Gilbert, The Gondoliers (1889)
Malcolm MacNeill, the civil servant sent to Skye, had the best profile possible as someone to represent the government of W.E. Gladstone, and find out what was going on with the crofters. He was a son of the Highland aristocracy, born on the island of Jura. He was educated at Eton and now lived in a posh house in Edinburgh New Town. But he spoke fluent Gaelic.
Not that Gladstone’s ministers didn’t already have views. Officially, the London government agreed that the crofters had been very, very naughty, what with attacking shepherds, messengers-at-arms, and even the police. Unofficially, they didn’t see how sending cops or soldiers with guns would help. Most especially, they sympathized with the crofters: Home Secretary William Harcourt told his wife around this time, in January, 1883, “It’s the fault of the silly lairds [landowners]” Plus Harcourt spent a lot of his holidays on Skye, and liked crofters.
In February, 1883, Malcolm MacNeill arrived on board an elderly Navy ship, HMS Jackal, in Loch Pooltiel, Glendale’s bay and port. Before going ashore, one of the ship’s officers popped a overcoat on to hide his Navy uniform, so local people would not be scared, although I’m betting the ship was a giveaway.
Never mind: Like American Indians, most of Skye’s Indigenous people had big respect for the military, as people with a long tradition of armed service. The officer met with crofters, and they arranged a proper meeting at the Free Church of Scotland that afternoon. Horns blew from the hilltops, and by the appointed time of two, about seven hundred crofters were packed into the little church, and around it.
Malcolm MacNeill entered, along with Glendale’s minister, Rev. John MacRae, and a landowner, Captain Allan MacDonald, of Waternish House, in the north of Skye. All three men spoke Gaelic, and the discussions were mainly in Gaelic. However, Malcolm MacNeill kicked off the meeting by reading a statement in English, which Rev. MacRae translated for the audience.
In his statement, on behalf of the British government, MacNeill told off the entire community on behalf of the London government. He reprimanded the crofters for their collective assault on Messenger-at-Arms MacTavish. He allowed that they might not have realized that this was a very serious matter, one that the government would not overlook. But now they must listen.
Four crofters, he said, John Macpherson, Malcolm Matheson, Donald Macleod, and John Morrison, must give themselves up for punishment. Everyone, he stressed, must know that taking grazing land without permission or legal right, was not on, even if they did have a “moral right” to the land, which still needed to be proven. There was no excuse for mass threats and violence. Now the people of Glendale knew what they had done, MacNeill’s job was to warn them “that the Government are resolved to enforce law and order in Skye at whatever cost.” They forget, he said, that while Justice carries scales in one hand, representing fair judgment, she also carries a sword, representing punishment.
MacNeill’s advice was for the four accused men to board HMS Jackal, and give themselves up to the law. He had other conditions, too: They must take their grazing animals off Waterstein Farm. The elders of the community must write to John Robertson, Tormore’s successor as factor, pledging that they would not mess with his animals or shepherds.
With that, MacNeill left them so they could discuss what they would do, and promising to return the next morning to get their decision. Between now and then, he would visit crofters in their homes, and hear their individual complaints himself. He trusted everyone to be sensible. If they weren’t? Then they will have brought the consequences on themselves.
Gotta hand it to MacNeill and Gladstone’s government. That was quite the persuasive statement.
But now, according to a journo from the Glasgow Herald, who was reporting from the Free Church of Glendale, Captain Allan MacDonald of Waternish (not to be confused with Waterstein) accused the crofters of being daft enough to listen to Irish outside agitators (Edward McHugh, I’m guessing).
This was too much for John MacPherson, who was sitting at the front of the church. The crofters were not responsible for the uprising, he said, the landlords were, for turning down the crofters’ offer to rent Waterstein. There were no agitators from Ireland, he said, only Edward McHugh of Glasgow, and nobody listened to him. The crofters, he said, had not deliberately put their animals to graze on Waterstein Farm: There were no fences, and their animals had simply strayed onto the land.
And now MacPherson reminded everyone how, eighteen years earlier, Tormore’s shepherds had put 150 sheep onto the crofters’ grazing land at Milovaig, effectively stealing it. Captain MacDonald, unmoved, urged Macpherson to give himself up and go to Edinburgh, where he could explain all this to the court. Macpherson ignored him, and carried on speaking. He complained of how the crofters had tried to rent Waterstein from Tormore, but how, instead, Tormore had resigned as factor, and taken the farm for himself. Would the crofters be allowed to explain this to the Edinburgh court?
Captain MacDonald said that Tormore had offered to put up a fence to show which land was his, and which the crofters. Macpherson pointed out that the planned fence would have taken away land from the crofters. He also argued that the shepherds had not been assaulted: Just told off and told to leave.
Postmaster/Shopkeeper Peter MacKinnon spoke next. He started by pointing to his own British patriotism, as a severely wounded veteran of the Crimean War. But he had his own complaints about how he had been treated in Glendale over the past two decades. He spoke of how Tormore had stopped him from buying fish from local fishermen, so he could buy the stock and sell it himself. How Tormore’s staff had used their dogs to harass his milk cow to death, for which he was not compensated. It doesn’t sound like much, but these are both examples of bullying, and here’s where it led, according to Peter MacKinnon: Tormore scared locals away from seeking justice in the courts. He wouldn’t allow them to go to the Sheriff in Portree, he decided their cases himself, and if people didn’t respect what he decided, he evicted them. Tormore WAS the law in Glendale. When MacKinnon complained to Tormore about the fish issue, Tormore said “You are reading too many newspapers, and you don’t deserve to get justice.”
Annette’s Aside: Wow. My blood ran cold reading this: I have been bullied as an adult, and this is what it looks like: Don’t get excited, little person, by what you learn from the media. You’re not getting help, and you aren’t worthy of it anyway.” If someone’s doing that to you, get help or escape.
The crofters didn’t want to violate the laws of the land. They wanted the landlords and their factors, like Tormore, to respect their legal rights, instead of acting like tyrants. In challenging the factors, Peter MacKinnon resorted to the language of the Bible, language well understood by the people in the Free Church of Scotland in this place on that day. “Solomon, that was Tormore, beat them with swords,” MacKinnon said, and the people, who knew the reference of course, cheered him. “But Rehoboam [John Robertson] tormented them with scorpions.”*
*Rehoboam was Solomon’s son and successor. When people appealed to him for kindness and justice denied them under his dad’s rule, he told them “My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” 1 Kings 12, King James Version.
Now a crofter rose and asked about the rumors that the British Army was coming to Glendale. Captain Allen MacDonald said that if the crofters did not agree to Mr. MacNeill’s terms, then the Army (or armed police) would indeed come to Glendale.
Peter MacKinnon said that the four accused men might choose to attend the Session Court in Edinburgh, but that they were not going to back down over Waterstein, or their rights.
As the crowd began to disperse, the Glasgow Herald reporter heard another crofter say that only a Royal Commission, or the landlords giving up something, could resolve the unrest.
Rev. John MacRae now held another meeting with the crofters. It was attended by Peter MacLean, a merchant in Dunvegan, who said it was very clear that if the four accused didn’t surrender, they would be arrested. What’s more, armed forces (police or Army) would come to the area, which was not great for the community. He urged that the accused go to Edinburgh, and that they not do anything that could make things more difficult for themselves by issuing written statements—like press releases I’m guessing.
Of the four accused, Malcolm Matheson was not in Glendale on the day of the meetings: He was on the Isle of Lewis training as a member of the Royal Naval Reserve. The other three, however, were present. So MacPherson, MacLeod, and Morrison consented to go to the Session Court in Edinburgh, and the other crofters showed their hands for them to surrender, with no dissenting votes.
Meanwhile, on that Saturday morning, Peter MacKinnon at the post office got a letter from Her Majesty’s Civil Servant Malcolm MacNeill, from on board HMS Jackal in Loch Pooltiel. MacNeill was determined to get something accomplished before leaving Skye. He wanted to ensure the four accused men showed up in Edinburgh, and so he wanted to be sure everyone knew that the only charge was for not showing up in court when ordered. He said he would personally donate to a fund to pay the travel costs of other crofters who wanted to go to Edinburgh to serve as witnesses. He set a deadline of 1 p.m., the time HMS Jackal was scheduled to depart.
Late that morning, Mr. MacNeill got a response: The three accused who were in Glendale would go to Edinburgh. But their animals would continue to graze at Waterstein, and they would not be writing to John Robertson to promise not to mess with the Glendale Estate’s animals or shepherds. Oh, and by the way? They would not travel to Edinburgh on board HMS Jackal, like prisoners of the Government. They would travel by regular ship, like a bus, from Dunvegan, leaving first thing Monday morning. Like the free men they were.
Malcolm MacNeill left Skye. And two days later, sure enough, so did John MacPherson, Donald MacLeod and John Morrison. The media were present, in the form of a Gaelic-speaking reporter for the Inverness Courier, who heard what John MacPherson, speaking in Gaelic, had to say to the weeping neighbors, family, and friends who came to see them off. This wasn’t like them going to jail for stealing a sheep, MacPherson said. They should be proud that they were going to jail on principle, on behalf of the community.
Taken from the County Jail
Taken from the county jail By a set of curious chances --W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885)
Now, February, 1883, even as the Savoy Theatre was packing in the Gilbert and Sullivan fans for Iolanthe, the whole of the UK was captivated by tiny Glendale, in the Isle of Skye. The stories of the meetings in the Free Church and the departure of the men for Edinburgh was repeated in newspapers nationwide.
By the time they arrived for an overnight stop in Glasgow, two days after leaving Glendale, the three men were celebs. Supporters paid for them to stay in a posh hotel. A letter was fired off to The Court of Session in Edinburgh to let them know the men were in the Lowlands, ready to learn their trial date.
That letter ended up being read by Donald MacTavish, sore-arsed messenger-at-arms, now home in Glasgow. He saw a chance of revenge on the men of Glendale, and he took it. Two days after the Glendale men landed in Glasgow, in the early hours, Donald MacTavish broke into the hotel room of MacPherson, MacLeod, and Morrison, and arrested them. He took them on a train to Edinburgh, and brought them to Calton Prison.
But Calton Prison’s governor [US warden] refused to take custody of the Glendale men. MacTavish had an arrest warrant, but the governor didn’t accept this as enough authority to justify jailing these three men. After all, um, they had been on their way to give themselves up to the court.
So MacTavish imprisoned the men himself at the Ship Hotel in Edinburgh.
Events had definitely turned into a Gilbert and Sullivan production.
Awkward questions were now asked of Lord Advocate Balfour in the House of Commons in London, by the usual askers of awkward questions, MPs Donald Macfarlane, Charles Cameron, and Charles Fraser Mackintosh. Why were the three Glendale crofters arrested, when they were on their way to court, they asked? Who arrested them? Was the Government consulted? Was it true that the prison in Edinburgh refused to admit them? How was it legal for them to have been imprisoned at the Ship Hotel in Edinburgh? What was the Government going to do?
Balfour assured the MPs that the Government was not responsible for the surprise arrests of these men. He could only advise that the three were in close contact with “competent advisers”.
The Law is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent.
—W.S. Gilbert, Iolanthe, 1882
The trial date was set for February 20, 1883. Macpherson, MacLeod, and Morrison appeared in court, and were immediately granted bail for £100 each. That’s a huge amount, but their bail was straightaway bonded by well-off Highlanders living in Edinburgh. The hearings now began, before the judge, Lord Shand, and a court packed with supporters and the media. The trial was held in English, but interpreted into Gaelic.
John MacPherson pointed out that, without a fence, Milovaig crofters’ sheep and cattle could not be stopped from straying onto the land of Waterstein Farm, so the crofters shouldn’t have been arrested, and the sheep and cattle shoudn’t be, either. MacPherson also denied that he and the others had trespassed onto Waterstein Farm, since they didn’t come to do anything illegal: They simply approached the shepherds to talk “in a friendly way.”
Thing is, though, that there had been repeated attempts by the landlord to stop the Milovaig crofters from grazing their animals at Waterstein: There was a paper trail suggesting the crofters (and their sheep) had not been staying on the right side of the law.
And there were witnesses for the prosecution: Former Waterstein shepherd John MacDermid testified he was visited at home by several crofters, who threatened to destroy his house. His shepherd colleague, Donald MacDonald, said that, as we was driving sheep onto Milovaig land, he was approached by several men, one of them Malcolm Matheson (the Naval Reservist), and one man he didn’t know, hit him twice. Another man grabbed him by the coat and pulled him backward. They shoved him all the way from Ramasaig to Hamara, a good four miles. A third Waterstein shepherd , Donald Nicholson, named the men responsible, and they included the three men in court and Malcolm Matheson, also on trial in his absence doing service for the Royal Navy reserve.
A Little Liberal
That every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative! --W.S. Gilbert, Iolanthe (1882)
Lord Alexander Burns Shand, presiding judge at the trial of the Glendale men, was a Scot, a Lowlander from Aberdeen, raised in Glasgow. He was also politically liberal (with a small l) and believed that employers should be responsible for creating safe and healthy workplaces, a big issue in Glasgow, where factories were neither healthy nor safe. However, as Mr. Hutchinson points out, that’s no guarantee that Lord Shand worried about the health and safety of shepherds in remote Skye.
In his judgment, Lord Shand said that the only issue before him was whether the crofters had violated the Court’s orders not to trespass at Waterstein, not to graze their animals at Waterstein, or permit their animals to set so much as a hoof on that land, and not to harass the farm’s staff.
Bottom line: They were all guilty of these things, and of ignoring the summonses sent to them. They were guilty of contempt of court.
It’s really hard to argue with His Lordship on that. I mean, come on. Guilty as charged. I salute Lord Shand, a fair man. The whole of Glendale had been contemptuous toward his court and its representatives, including Donald MacTavish the hapless messenger-at-arms who had had his arse kicked from here to Sunday.
Lord Shand read newspapers. He had noticed that the Glendale crofters had used violence against MacTavish and the police, and he was very cross at them for it, even though, technically, the men before him at court were not charged in the matter of violence.
Thing is, the Glendale men didn’t care about the Law. They cared not about rules. They cared about fairness and justice. They had expected to be let off. They had expected to be able to use Lord Shand’s Court, full of reporters, to get publicity for their plight. But they were not in charge of the Court. Lord Shand was. And he was not happy with them. At all.
Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
"My object all sublime I shall achieve in time —To let the punishment fit the crime
W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885)
Lord Shand sentenced all three men present—John MacPherson (48), Donald MacLeod (22), John Morrison (59)— plus the absent Malcolm Matheson (37)— to two months in prison.
All the observers and the convicted men were stunned. As the three men were taken from court, members of the public gave them a standing ovation (which was and is, let me tell you, a much, much rarer thing in British culture than in American),
A Dungeon Cell
For crime unknown, He goes to a dungeon cell!
W.S. Gilbert, HMS Pinafore, 1878
The three convicted men arrived at Calton Prison (where, this time, the governor let them in). They were given prisoners’ uniforms and taken to cells, where they would sleep on wooden pallets. MacLeod’s and Morrison’s hair was cut, but MacPherson managed to hold on to his (he could have lost his amazing beard, like something straight out of the Old Testament!) That’s because the lawyers arrived in the nick of time. They told the prison governor that the Glendale men had been convicted of civil, not criminal offences, so should not get the full prison experience.
One friend said that, obvs, the prison authorities could not stick the guys’ hair back on, but they got back their civilian clothes, and were allowed visitors, food, newspapers and books from outside the jail. They also got proper beds, and were housed together in the same room, warmed by a fireplace.
Three meals a day were now delivered from a nearby restaurant, plus books, newspapers, magazines, and everything else the Glendale men might want, paid for by the Edinburgh Highland Land Law Reform Association. Oh, and someone in Edinburgh arranged for a morale lift for the prisoners by paying bagpipers to play popular folk tunes outside. I mean, personally, I could live without, but I have to admit, there must have been quite a Scottish thrill attached to hearing pipes in your support, without having to pay the piper! Only one problem: John MacPherson, the only one of the three who knew how to write, could not get paper and pens. And they all worried about their families, in faraway Glendale.
In faraway Glendale, people at first refused to believe that their heroes had bene imprisoned. And then they got angry. Not at the Court or Lord Shand, but at the landlords, the Trustees of the Glendale Estates: It was their authoritarian attitude toward the crofters , and refusal to concede anything to them, that was to blame for this mess.
And these feelings didn’t stay on Skye, fenced in by its remote location. Newspaper reporters on the ground in Skye were reporting, and their words were going around Scotland, around Britain. The man from the Dundee Evening Telegraph sent a telegram from Dunvegan to his newspaper reporting that the Glendale people were determined to protest “to the bitter end”, and would “never surrender.” The men now became known as the Glendale Martyrs, and this had encouraged the spirit of resistance. The gentle, hospitable, Christian people of Glendale had been transformed into fierce freedom fighters because, after all, there’s only so much crap and gaslighting people will take.
And in London, Irish MP Donald Macfarlane got up in the House of Commons and asked Home Secretary William Harcourt if he was aware of the imprisonment of the Glendale Three, and if he planned to commute their sentence? Harcourt said that he could not commute a sentence for contempt of court, nor should he, since this was the direct result of mass civil disobedience, a single-finger salute to British law.
However. Harcourt now unleashed a major surprise announcement: Queen Victoria had approved a Royal Commission to look into what was going on with Scotland’s Highland and Island crofters.
The Royal Commission was to be be led by a Scot, Lord Napier, and the secretary would be Malcolm MacNeill, the civil servant who had visited Skye. What’s more, the Commission was ready for action, and it had been for months: Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, Home Secretary Harcourt, and Lord Advocate Balfour had cooked this up long ago. Malcolm MacNeill already knew this was in the works when he visited Skye—and maybe even quietly mentioned it to people in Glendale. MP Charles Fraser Mackintosh was on the committee, and that meant he knew, and his contacts in Inverness knew—like journalist/land reformer John Murdoch, and Alexander MacKenzie , editor of Celtic Magazine, the man who first challenged MP Charles Fraser Mackintosh at that meeting in Inverness to push for a Royal Commission.
Now three men were in jail, it was full speed ahead with the Royal Commission! The Glendale Martyrs’ sacrifice was not to be in vain.
By imprisoning the men as lawbreakers, the Liberal Government had shown it didn't have a liberal bias toward the crofters (although of course it did). But now was the time to sort things out properly.
While the Glendale crofters carried on rent-striking, and refused to give up Malcolm Matheson, they now removed their cattle and sheep from Waterstein Farm, and again offered to rent the farm themselves. And now they eagerly awaited the Royal Commission,
The Royal Commission would eventually be called the Napier Commission, after its chair, so that’s what we’ll call it. On Tuesday, May 8, just seven weeks after Home Secretary Harcourt dropped his bombshell announcement, the Napier Commission would be in Braes for its first hearing.
Meanwhile . . .
In the intervening weeks between announcement and this first hearing, things had accelerated. The alarmed Trustees of the Glendale Estate handed out nearly 70 notices of eviction to rent strikers: If this did take place, four hundred people, including kids, would become homeless. Lower Milovaig would have been emptied, and protest leaders across Glendale would have been on the street.
The press was watching. The Dundee Evening Telegraph, for one, pointed out that the landlords were picking a fight not only with the Glendale crofters, but also with their many supporters on Skye, and with the entire British Establishment, which was working to resolve the dispute via the Napier Commission.
But the evictions did not happen. Remember hapless Black Angus MacLeod, the sheriff officer in Portree who tried to hide at Colbost House during MacTavish’s errand? He now set out for Glendale with eviction notices, and I bet you know what’s coming next. Yup, he was stopped by a crowd of a thousand people. With his usual bravery, Black Angus turned on his heel, and sprinted back toward Dunvegan, mission unaccomplished, as fast as his legs could carry him. There, that very same day, he courageously popped the notices in the mail to the landlords’ lawyer in Portree. Black Angus wasn’t touching this job again with a ten foot pole.
Glendale folk, meanwhile, let everyone know that they needed help, by hoisting flags, and lighting bonfires on hills, the news traveling all through Skye, like smoke signals, only with actual fires.
In this atmosphere, the lawyer in Portree who got the undelivered eviction notices returned to him in the mail from Black Angus wasn't about to try again with another messenger. Instead, he, too, popped the eviction notices in the mail, this time sending them as registered letters to the people of Glendale.. Peter MacKinnon, Glendale postmaster, opened his own eviction letter, and did nothing about it. Nobody else even bothered to pick theirs up from the Glendale Post Office.
Meanwhile, in London on April 16, Irish MP Donald Macfarlane asked Home Secretary William Harcourt in the House of Commons if he knew about the eviction notices in Glendale, and whether he would make sure nobody was evicted while the Napier Commission did its work.
Harcourt said he didn’t know about the notices, but he couldn’t stop legal actions—like eviction for non-payment of rent. He suggested the crofters pay rent while the Commission did its work.
Finally, a month later, after visiting Braes, the Napier Commission would come to Glendale, and hold a hearing in the Glendale Free Church on Saturday, May 19. But first, the Glendale Martyrs, the leaders of the unrest, and especially John MacPherson, would be released from Edinburgh’s Calton Prison.
So, just four days before the Napier Commission’s arrival in Glendale, on Thursday, May 17, 1883, the Glendale Martyrs became free. And what an occasion that was. They stepped out of the prison to find a thousand supporters, including two bagpipers, waiting to greet them. The crowd marched alongside the free men to the Ship Hotel, their one-time jail, where they were treated to a breakfast with their most prominent supporters. Then John MacPherson, eager to give his testimony to the Napier Commission when it came to Glendale, took the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow, where he caught the Clydesdale ferry for Skye.
As his ferry approached Braes, bonfires were burning in the hills, and MacPherson could see flags flying miles away. When his ferry reached Portree, crowds waited, and when the people saw MacPherson, with his distinctive long beard, standing on the deck, men lifted their hats, and everyone waved their hankies in joyous greeting.
Holding his hat in his hand, John MacPherson never even set foot on land from the ship: He was hoisted onto four men’s shoulders, and carried to the Portree Hotel, with a piper leading. At the hotel, he gave a speech to thank everyone for his warm welcome home. Standing on a beer barrel, MacPherson told everyone to reach for justice, to do it now, to insist upon it. And he used the language of the Bible, the book most familiar to his audience.
“If Joseph had never been sent into Egyptian bondage,” MacPherson said, “the people of Israel might never have got out of it.” In other words, his own imprisonment was the most important event leading to justice.
A party was now held for him in the hotel in Portree. Men came from as far away as Braes to celebrate. The next morning, John Macpherson finally set off for his much-missed home, Lower Milovaig, in Glendale, to another emotional welcome.
What’s that in my eye? Nothing. Nothing at all. I am an objective historian. Sniff.
The Napier Commission arrived at Loch Pooltiel on Saturday morning, and walked to Glendale Free Church. According to oral tradition, as the Commission members turned left to cross the River Hamara, they saw a homemade cloth banner hanging over the road. It said, “Down with Landlords!”
Seven men sat on the Napier Commission. Among them was civil servant Malcolm MacNeill, acting as secretary, who had been here before on behalf of Gladstone’s government. Then there were Donald MacKinnon, the first professor of Celtic at Edinburgh University, who had been the interpreter at the Martyrs’ trial in Edinburgh, and Charles Fraser Mackintosh, Liberal MP, both of whom were sympathetic to the crofters.
But then there was Sheriff Alexander Nicholson, who grew up in Glendale, but was now on the landlords’ side. And so were the other two Commission members: Sir Keith MacKenzie of Gairloch (new to us, he’s a Liberal reputed to be concerned with his tenants’ welfare, but, we may also assume, not interested in giving crofters much) and Donald Cameron of Lochiel (also new to us) Conservative MP for Skye and much of rural Inverness-shire, who was pro-landlord.
And the Royal Commission chairman? Lowlander Francis, 10th Lord Napier, from the Scottish Borders, the southern part of Scotland, next to England. Napier was a career diplomat in India, who had been Governor of Madras and also, for just a few months, acting Viceroy of India (like, British head honcho). No less a source than the New York Times had said Napier was “gifted with inexhaustible energy, tact, common sense, and acuteness of judgment.”
Ok, so I have to say, the Napier Commission sounds like a thoughtfully-chosen committee. Yes, it’s a bunch of white guys, but, hey, this is the 1880s.
John MacPherson, addressing Lord Napier, said he hoped “I would not be blamed for telling the truth—that no hurt would be done to me—for I got sixty-one days’ imprisonment already for telling the truth, and asking for justice.”
Lord Napier was honest, and said he could not guarantee John MacPherson’s safety: The Commission didn’t have the power to protect him from his landlord in legal matters. But, Napier said, he had been assured by the landlords’ representatives on the Commission that there would be no retaliation for whatever was said at this hearing.
MacPherson stood silently, and his silence spoke volumes. Now, there was a quick conference between the Glendale Estate factor, John Robertson, and a Glendale estate Trustee, after which Robertson assured everyone that nobody would be punished for what they said at the meeting.
With that made clear (and in public, in front of Lord Napier) John MacPherson read a statement from the whole community of Lower Milovaig: They wanted to rent Waterstein. They were tried of Glendale Estate factors treating them like crap, first Tormore, and now Robertson.
For the rest of the day, McPherson answered questions, and on Monday, after the Commission took off the Sabbath, he answered more. And then representatives of the other hamlets in Glendale gave their testimonies.
That Monday evening, the Napier Commission walked back to their steamship, and sailed off toward the island of Raasay, to hear testimony there. Their journey and hearings would continue until December 26, 1883, and took the Commissioners all over the Highlands and Islands.
Finally, in April 1884, the Napier Commission issued its report, and then presented it to Parliament, the media, and the British people. The Commission had prepared a history of what had been going on in the Scottish Highlands and Islands since 1800. As you already know, it wasn’t pretty: The theft of common land. The Clearances. The vicious abuse. The jacked-ups rents. The evictions. And always, the threats.
And the landlords and factors who testified to the Commission—including Donald “Tormore” MacDonald—had not done themselves any favors. As cruel and self-serving people tend to do when confronted with truth, they showed their true colors. They often showed up at Napier Commission hearings in various places to accuse and attack crofter witnesses, often very personally. Everything they said went in the official minutes. Oops.
Also in the minutes was so much credible testimony from the crofters that it was overwhelming. They testified to vicious behavior by the landlords and their agents. Mr. Hutchinson notes that at least two of the Commissioners —two of the three representing landlords— were utterly shocked by what they heard.
And as Lord Napier himself said, even when evidence wasn’t 100% verifiable, or misunderstandings happened, it was, at the end of the day, a tidal wave of damning evidence. Even when incidents reported to the Commission, Lord Napier said, “are not specifically and literally true, they are akin to truth.” He noted how the crofters’ integrity—their honesty, kindness, intelligence— shone through their testimony. The awful experiences of the people of Glendale in dealing with their landlords was typical throughout Skye, and typical of the experiences of Highland crofters.
Annette’s Aside: This hit me in the gut. I’m working on a bit of memoir, and I’ve been trying to reconstruct events from 45 to 50 years ago, some only from personal recollection, buttressed with the recollections of others, and it’s extraordinary how a coherent, consistent, and yes, true picture is emerging, even when my memory isn’t as clear as I would like, and when I have doubts here and there that I have yet to resolve, and even when I have to translate what was said for clarity. Evidence must remain central, but truth outshines occasional factual inaccuracy.
We Know it's Weakness, But the Weakness is So Strong
Just to show you that I pick on everyone at NBH, I'll say that liberals failed to get it in 1884, as they often do now: They want to do good, but they don’t want to go too far and have to, you know, get all radical and possibly open a Pandora’s box of things they don’t want to pay for. They compromise to the point of leaving huge numbers of people out in the cold, to the point, even, of shooting themselves in the feet.
After the Napier Commission’s detailed enquiries and searing revelations, it issued an unnecessary and weak final statement. It was a compromise, which, like all compromises, pleased nobody or, as in this case, pleased a small minority, the landlords. The Commission didn’t seriously challenge private property, of course, even though it was mostly stolen property. They encouraged crofters to emigrate to North America and Australia. They did not do much —or anything—for most crofters, who desperately needed much more.
End result? The Commission’s opinions ceased to matter. You can read about their proposals in Mr. Hutchinson’s book, and it does make fascinating reading.
Napier Commissioner Charles Fraser Mackintosh, MP, dissented from the report. He saw the recommendations were mealy-mouthed, and didn’t go far enough to actually help most crofters. A proposed high annual rent of £6? He knew the people of Milovaig could not afford it. He would compromise down to £4 if he had to. But what Charles Fraser Mackintosh really wanted was not weak compromise. It was the land going back to the people.
Home Secretary William Harcourt thought the opposite. He thought the Napier conclusions went too far. He was irritated that Napier didn’t just limit his Commission’s work to gathering evidence, that they had proposed solutions, and especially, he told Queen Victoria, that they encouraged “fantastic projects for the restitution of the tribal (clan) system and common property in the Highlands.” He was about to find out that “common property in the Highlands”, shared land, was not the fantasy he assumed. The crofters were taking it very, very seriously. “Napier’s proposals were dead in the water,” Mr. Hutchinson writes, “but the power of the preceding testimony was very much alive.”
The crofters and their allies were already moving on from the Napier Commission and from the Government, neither of whom were lifting a finger to improve their lives. The Gaels now returned to war.
The Highland Land League, born in Glendale in secret meetings in 1882, and dedicated to national ownership of the land in the Highlands and Islands, was, by 1883, firmly established in London among Highland exiles.
Now, at the very start of 1884 came the news that the Highland Land League was starting branches throughout the Highlands, aimed at nationalizing the land, having it returned to the people. This was being organized by two men who knew a lot about land reform: Irishman Michael Davitt, founder of the Irish Land League, who wanted land nationalized in Ireland and all across the UK, and American journalist and political economist Henry George, who advocated for land belonging to the people, including in his bestselling book, Progress and Poverty. Talk about outside agitators!
Seriously, though, it was Skye people who now led the way: Davitt and George were following, while Henry George came all the way from America knowing he would get audiences, only thanks to the crofters.
George took a lecture tour around Scotland, arranged by Edward McHugh, starting in February, 1884. Called “the prophet of San Francisco”, George gave a speech to big crowds in Portree and, yes, Glendale.
There, John MacPherson served as Master of Ceremonies. MacPherson also accompanied George to the township of Kilmuir. George’s stump speech focused on this: It was wrong that Skye and its 17,000 residents should have been put under the power of eleven men, the landlords. Yes, “wrong, and unjust and downright robbery . . . While landlordism existed, it was impossible to relieve poverty.”
In Portree, Henry George was asked by landlord Lauchlan MacDonald what the people of Skye should do with the landlords if they had their lands confiscated? George recommended that landlords be treated like oysters: Opened, the oyster removed, and the shells thrown away.
Well, that caused a kerfuffle. Lauchlan MacDonald walked out: By amazing coincidence—and George didn’t know this—MacDonald had recently told his tenants they could no longer harvest shellfish around his land.
In April, James Shaw-Maxwell, a socialist and land reformer from Glasgow, visited Skye, and, once again, John MacPherson was host. Within the week, the Highland Land League announced that it had launched chapters all across Scotland, including in Skye, where the leader was —you guessed it!—John MacPherson. The crofters were no longer content to be led by liberal allies. They had their own leader now.
In June, John MacPherson himself gave a speaking tour of the Isle of Lewis, to enthusiastic reception by crofters who now committed to supporting change. Throughout the summer, MacPherson visited several Scottish islands. There were rent strikes in the isle of Lewis, in the distant Outer Hebrides, and by October, 1884, a thousand crofters with bagpipes and banners were protesting in the Lewis capital of Stornoway, and spurred to more action by speeches in Gaelic. The following month, a thousand crofters at Kilmuir on Skye, on Captain William Fraser’s estate, were rent striking, accusing the factor, Alexander Macdonald, of being a tyrant.
Sheriff William Ivory and Chief Constable Alexander McHardy sent ten police officers led by Inspector Malcolm MacDonald to Uig, in Kilmuir, with predictable results: Hundreds of crofters met the cops, and sent them packing back to Portree.
The authorities in Inverness were in shock as community after community stood up for itself. Inverness contacted London and asked, again, for the Army to intervene. McHardy even said there was a “reign of terror” on Skye. Ivory wanted a Royal Navy gunboat sent.
And for the first time, W.E. Gladstone’s Liberal government agreed to send armed force. This is not to say that everyone in Gladstone’s government was keen on the idea. Lord Advocate for Scotland John Blair Balfour was definitely not happy about it. He flat-out refused to prosecute the crofters at Uig who chased the ten police out of Kilmuir because, he reasoned—and this blows my mind that the Lord Advocate used this reasoning—they did so believing that the police were simply acting as the landlords’ goons.
Holy cow. I just have to say this: It’s very clear that the police were not being requested for neutral reasons, or to protect the people, or Britain’s fragile but growing democracy, and the crofters in 1884 totally got that. And Lord Advocate Balfour agreed with them. While Gladstone’s government was tipping conservative, threatening to send in the Army, their own chief law officer for Scotland was headed Left.
The whole of Britain now awaited the invasion of the Isle of Skye by a Liberal government. And on November 8, 1884, 350 British troops arrived in Uig Bay.
A Short Sharp Shock
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block! --W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885)
Six days after the troops landed in Uig in the district of Kilmuir, Home Secretary William Harcourt found himself defending his decision to send them in the House of Commons.
MPs were gobsmacked, and Harcourt knew why. He was a bit shocked himself. He reassured them that he sympathized with the crofters, and that he really was regretful that he had had to make this difficult decision. In fact, he considered it “evil” to use the military against civilians. But he was “convinced that it was absolutely necessary.” Basically, things had got very serious in Skye and the West Highlands.
But, he assured the House, this was not a permanent military government: He wanted the police back in their proper place of keeping the law. Meanwhile, the Army was there to help the police, not take their place.
Now, I want to make sure you don’t miss any of this, so, annoyingly, I’m bolding it and even using BIG LETTERS.
Here was the lesson, according to Home Secretary Harcourt: The fact that a military presence was necessary to police civilians is a HUGE red flag that something is very wrong on Skye, and needs to be fixed.
And the problem that needed to be fixed, according to Home Secretary William Harcourt, was . . .
THE HIGHLAND LANDOWNERS
Thought I would put that in nice big print so nobody misses it.
And Home Secretary Harcourt’s speech in the House of Commons gets more gobsmacking: There was no justification for evicting people, he tells the MPs. Everyone knows that in the Highlands and Islands there is “extreme poverty, in some parts borne for many years with extraordinary patience.” Um, the patience was exercised by the Highlanders themselves, not their motsly absentee landlords.
Some said the answer was emigration, the Home Secretary, said, but he wasn’t having it: “Well, Sir, in my opinion, emigration is a very poor remedy indeed. I have myself no sympathy with a policy which improves a country by getting rid of its people. To my mind that is the policy of despair.”
GO, HOME SECRETARY WILLIAM HARCOURT!!
Let me help, sir, by translating your moral outrage into 21st century English. This is what Mr. Harcourt said next, only made more user-friendly:
“The landlord who owns the sheep farm massively increased the rent when his costs hadn’t gone up at all. That’s unearned income for the lazy git. And the landlords have started charging fortunes for land to be used by posh people from London and Edinburgh for grouse-shooting and game-hunting, including deer, and guess what? That’s the crofters’ grazing lands they’re using. Gentlemen, wtf? While thousands of acres went toward their greed, the landlords wouldn’t even spare a few hundred acres for crofters’ grazing, which was all they needed? Why was their land taken away? Why were they charged completely unfair rents and driven into poverty?”
Ooh! When the British Home Secretary sounds like John MacPherson himself, stuff is going down. But most people never took in Harcourt’s awesome speech, a fab late Victorian model of doing the right thing, of urging fair play, the sort of thing that, within a few decades and despite tow World Wars, led to people like me being well-housed, well-educated, and being given the means to, you know, enjoy modern life without spending a lot of money or trashing the environment. But I digress.
Why did people miss Harcourt’s speech in the newspapers? Because all eyes were on the Isle of Skye, and the impending arrival of British soldiers. The media were on the ground, ready to report. Ministers and the Highland Land League asked everyone to stay calm. And crofters with horns were posted on the hills around Uig Bay to sound off if any Royal Navy ships were spotted.
I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General
One person paying attention was a five year old girl in London. Her grandad was Norman, the 25th MacLeod of MacLeod who, following the potato famine, had left Dunvegan Castle to be a civil servant in London in the 1840s. Her dad, the 27th chief, was born in London in 1847. and made an excellent marriage with the English aristocracy. Wee Flora MacLeod was destined to be the 28th MacLeod of MacLeod, and the first woman in that role. I remember seeing Dame Flora (as she became) on the telly in the 1970s. In adulthood, Dame Flora recalled an Army officer coming to her house to ask her dad about the best place to land the troops.
British Navy and merchant navy ships sailed into Portree Bay on the weekend of Saturday, November 15 and Sunday, November 16, 1884. On Saturday, John MacPherson and fifty other men from Glendale arrived in Uig, to ask Kilmuir crofters not to resist the soldiers.
MacPherson told them that he thought that they could better win their case in court. From Uig, MacPherson traveled to Portree, and told Sheriff William Ivory that the crofters of Uig were ready to negotiate, and did not plan violent resistance. Impressed, Sheriff Ivory sent a telegram to the Home Secretary in London, while John MacPherson went to the Portree Hotel, where his portrait was drawn by the Illustrated London News. He was now a celebrity.
The Army occupied Skye for seven months, and no shots were fired, but the people were both angry and outraged by this takeover. One man in Kilmuir, John MacLeod, said “he never thought he should have lived to see the day when an armed force would be sent to their beloved island” because the Skye people were “attached to their beloved Queen.” And the soldiers, finding the islanders polite and welcoming, also wondered why they were there in the first place.
The story wasn’t done. By 1885, the last of the soldiers had left. A new day was dawning. And soon there would be an election in which millions more men, including Skye crofters, could vote. And I do encourage you to buy and read Roger Hutchinson’s book to get the whole story, including the astonishing conclusion. It’s cheap.
I have a great background story in which I’m personally involved, coming in Part 3. It’s reserved for Nonnies, readers who are paying annual and monthly subscribers to NBH. I worked more than a month on this post, and that’s why I need support. When you give money to wealthy writers, you buy them another house. Send it my way, and you support my continuing this work. Beyond that, I have a cause to support: Saving academic history for historians, for you, and for that fed-up kid of yours who doesn’t like math, and wants more from education than a bad job training in tech. Once we hit my surprise goal, I’ll lay out my plans. Surprise goal? I have reasons.
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