Murray Pittock's Reading List

"This book is not on the list because it’s the best book: it isn’t. But it’s an extremely influential book. Ian Adamson is a former Lord Mayor of Belfast, a retired pediatrician and a long-serving unionist politician. In the 1970s, he developed a theory called ‘the theory of the Cruthin’ whereby Northern Ireland, or Ulster—as he would always call it—had a different ethnic makeup from the rest of Ireland. He supported some of the activity and ideas that were circulated in the 1980s that were trying to appropriate ancient Irish mythology—the Rúraíocht or Ulster cycle as it’s called—into Ulster unionist identity. So what he is trying to do is create some sort of mythological history, whereby there is an ethno-cultural basis for Ulster unionism. “The United Kingdom included the whole of the island of Ireland until 1922.” He then became very prominent in the development of the Ulster-Scots Language Society, and became chair of the Ulster-Scots Academy. He was at the centre of promoting the idea there was a separate language, called Ullans, which is a variant of Scots spoken in Northern Ireland and actually across the border in Donegal. That actually got a lot of UK government funding, and indeed some Irish government funding, as well. He’s not a historian. He’s somebody creating a political mythology, a political prehistory, to suit the current conditions and to defend, ultimately, a unionist agenda in Northern Ireland. The Irish pre-history he created—which was published by Nosmada Books in 1974 and then another small Northern Irish publisher in 1978 and so on into its revised impressions—is really a mythological history. It has been very important in its influence on a conception of a modern and separate Ulster identity. It reinforced Ulster unionist identity at a crucial time in the 1980s and 1990s. Ian Adamson was quite a senior politician, and he became very influential in promoting this idea of Ulster separateness. The interesting thing about books like The Identity of Ulster is that they’re at the meeting point between the way people imagine their communities—that Benedict Anderson phrase—and history. Often there is a big overlap between the way you imagine your community and what actually happened: World War I, Bannockburn, the French Revolution. In the case of The Identity of Ulster , there isn’t really very much historical overlap at all—it is a kind of instant, readymade, Unionist foundation myth. It unquestionably influenced popular opinion—the idea that there is a separate Ulster Enlightenment, that there’s a separate Ulster identity that goes back hundreds of years. Ulster is one of the original provinces of Ireland, but if you look at Irish unionism in the 19th century, although there was a slightly different flavour in the North, nobody was saying that Ulster had a totally separate identity, or that that was why it couldn’t be incorporated. They were trying to prevent the whole of Ireland from moving out of the Union. This idea that Ulster has a particular ethno-cultural identity is very modern. “A lot of what is driving Brexit is pure English nationalism, except it doesn’t say it is” Adamson has also been chair of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council and is currently president of the Belfast Civic Trust. He’s got a whole range of ways that he’s been able to have a really significant impact on Northern Irish society—and he’s got the books that support his interpretation. His interpretation can be found in a light or diluted way in a lot of the way that Ulster Unionism conceives Ulster identity and separateness. But, actually, it’s challenging to find the documentation to support his thesis in The Identity of the Ulster. That’s a good choice of identities, but they all go in the same direction, I think. They are part of the United Kingdom and that’s their aim. But what became very visible after the Troubles started in the 1960s is that they have a very different approach from the rest of the United Kingdom. Their politics is completely separate. That’s not very well understood. For example, just before the 2010 election, the BBC reported the Conservative Party’s formal union with the Ulster Unionist Party, the UUP. David Cameron wanted to get the UUP on board and thought that by having the Conservative Party involved in Northern Ireland—and the UUP fully identified with it as they had been up to 1970—they would get more seats and that that would help him if he was a bit short of a majority. But the UUP were more or less massacred. The link to the Conservative Party was actually unhelpful to them. So they rescinded it in 2012, which was not widely reported. It’s very difficult for a UK political party to operate in Northern Ireland, which means that, really, it’s very difficult to see how, functionally, it’s part of the UK. But it is. The DUP seem to be in no hurry to let the Prime Minister off the hook, in terms of supporting her administration. They want a number of things, probably financial, linked to Brexit, and maybe other things too. Greater marching rights for the Orange unionist community has already proven itself to be on the agenda. It’s very difficult to categorize them. The official Unionists, the UUP, were linked to two organizations, the Orange Order (and they stopped being linked to that many years ago—directly, anyway) and the Conservative Party, which they were linked to briefly in 2009/10-2012, but also up to the time of the 1970 general election. So the UUP were associated with middle-class unionism and clearly aligned with the Tories. But, in Northern Ireland, the UUP was seen as increasingly soft on alignment with the nationalist community. “I know it’s old history, but we are still living with it” So the DUP was begun by Ian Paisley and his allies. They’re basically a working class, populist party. They’re seen as tougher than the UUP and have had some associations, in the past, with the seamier sides of the Northern Irish conflict. That’s not true now, obviously. But it’s difficult to say they’re a Labour Party or a Tory party. They’re Labour in the sense that they want a lot of expenditure on Northern Ireland. They’re Tory—and more than Tory—in their attitudes to same-sex marriage, abortion, and a whole range of issues that have moved into general social legislation across Europe, but are still very much opposed by many members of the DUP. It isn’t UK politics, really. Currently, the Northern Irish executive is suspended because they can’t form a government. All governments in Northern Ireland are formed on power-sharing principles, which are now, really, between the DUP and Sinn Fein. What’s happened in Northern Ireland is that politics has gone more to the extremes—between Unionism and Republicanism. That’s now happened at the Westminster elections too. Northern Irish politics in Westminster is divided between seven Sinn Feiners who don’t take their seats and 10 DUP members who do. Sinn Fein have never taken their seats, since 1918. “Like Gladstone, Tony Blair understood that there was a real problem in the historic relationship with Ireland that needed to be addressed—whereas quite a lot of other politicians have just seen it as some sort of issue that’s got to be resolved” Nearly all the Sinn Fein seats are in the west of the province, and the DUP seats are in the east. Sinn Fein’s seats are in the majority Catholic areas, and they’re also in the very high majority Remain areas. That was evident in the Assembly elections as well: Sinn Fein have benefited from a Brexit polarization coming on top of the standard Northern Irish polarization. All Sinn Fein representatives tend to, intermittently, demand an all-Ireland poll, on the future of Ireland. They ultimately want reunion with the Republic. All DUP representatives want to stop that at any price and remain united to the Crown and Great Britain. There are a lot of polarizations happening in the UK at present, and this is a very old one. Brexit has added another level to it. What you began to see in Scotland, for the first time in the last two or three years, is a similar polarization between Unionism and Nationalism, accentuated by the way in which Brexit is taking place, against the background of a Remain vote. Among countries in the EU, of the polling I have seen (which covers 10-15 countries) support for the EU is highest in the Republic of Ireland. The difficulty is that a lot of these places that are now voting Sinn Fein—and have done in the past—voted Remain by 80:20. And they’re right on the border with the Republic. For these people, this is a very difficult moment, because they never wanted to be in the British state anyway. Now they find they’re actually being dragged out of Europe, when their neighbours, who they want to be reunited with, are, generally speaking, passionately pro-European. I think that’s a very shrewd point. I think one of the reasons we keep hearing about how the United Kingdom is so united on this issue is because it clearly isn’t. A lot of what is driving Brexit is pure English nationalism, except it doesn’t say it is."

"This is still a very, very good history of Unionism. It’s on the list because it provides a very detailed, blow-by-blow account of the development of Irish unionism, the organizations that it tried to maintain itself through, and its eventual failure. Buckland was writing at the time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and it’s interesting to see the history of unionism from the point of view of having suddenly become relevant again, as it has today. He describes the separation of Ulster and southern Unionism, as he calls it. After the 1880s, the southern Unionists were a tiny minority, because outside Northern Ireland they could only win three seats—and those were the unopposed Trinity College, Dublin seats. But, still, for a long period of time, they were getting the British government to fail to introduce Irish Home Rule. It’s an extremely good account of the politics, the details of how that happened, and the organizational way Irish unionism constructed itself, in the face of a challenge brought about by the changes in the franchise in 1884. “When the British Army went in, during the Troubles, they didn’t get it right, because they didn’t understand that they were perceived as being on one side” Gladstone supported the changes to the franchise—which brought nearly universal male suffrage—and understood the consequence would be that Ireland would start voting for independence, or at least a very strong form of Home Rule. That happened instantly. The whole situation changed because politics was no longer controlled by a landed elite in Ireland. There were a huge number of Irish nationalist members to deal with—86 out of the 105 seats in Ireland—straightaway after the December 1885 General Election. That’s why Gladstone introduced the first Home Rule Bill. All historians have their sympathies, but I would say it is, yes. I chose two books which I didn’t think were impartial accounts, one of them is the Adamson and the other is the one by Ruth Dudley Edwards. Actually it is quite difficult to get impartial accounts. A lot of the way you understand an issue depends where you come at it from. Even if you think you’re being neutral, it’s very difficult to get it right. One of the things that the British government did, for example, was protect Orange marches in the marching season. For that, they were perceived as supporting the Orange marches by the nationalist community. Then, when they tried to ban the Orange marches—because it irritated the nationalist community so much—the Orange community claimed that the British government was siding with the IRA. When the British Army went in, during the Troubles, they didn’t get it right, because they didn’t understand that they were perceived as being on one side. They didn’t work hard enough to alter that perception, because many of them didn’t understand they were being perceived as being on that side, but they were. It’s in two parts. It goes right up to the era of the Troubles, but the meat of it starts in the 1880s when Irish unionism had to start to organize to survive. It’s not until you get that large proportion of enfranchised Irishmen (women don’t get the vote until 1918) that you get a situation where Irish unionism has got to organize because, before, it could rely on its elites to control the political process. It didn’t appear that it was always stronger in Ulster. In days gone by, when people thought that the nobility counted for much more than ordinary people, Irish unionism was regarded as very strong in the South, because there were a lot of aristocrats with big estates. But, once you get to the era where people actually have the vote, the reason that Northern unionism is perceived as stronger is because they form a majority of the population within the six counties of Northern Ireland. That is why there are six counties of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was an exercise in protecting the unionists within that area of Ireland, in which, alone, they were in a majority. Yes, and that was also a difference with Irish unionism in the South. By origin, they are Scots Presbyterians, by and large, rather than English Anglicans. Particularly among wealthy or elite Catholic families, there was a tradition of Catholic Unionism in the south. But, in the North, Catholic unionism never seems appreciably to have existed. It was always very strongly down the religious divide."

"What Ruth Dudley Edwards is doing, in this book, is getting inside the Orange Order. She’s not a person of belief herself, but she’s a Catholic by background. She writes about it broadly sympathetically, because it’s an embedded report, she’s writing from within the Orange Order, and naturally, her views are quite sympathetic. It goes up to the Drumcree controversies of the mid-1990s and the issues over policing and Army protection of marches. It’s very contemporary in the way that it understands the Orange Order and the marching season. “If you’re from a unionist community, as far as I’m aware, you’re just as likely to vote for the DUP if you’re 20 as if you’re 70” It’s also important in the way it describes the Order as an international order. She points out that there are African, Canadian and New Zealand branches and so on—as well as its very strong support in Scotland and Northern Ireland. And of course there are still a few Orangemen in the Irish Republic, mostly in the border counties. The Orange Order is generally thought to have grown out of the conflicts in Ireland, north and south, in the 1790s, which were associated with the developments that led to the rising of 1798. It was a defensive order, primarily to defend the interests of northern Protestants, but also to express their loyalty to King William of Orange and celebrate the victories that have defined their identity—particularly the successful resistance to King James’s forces at Derry in 1689—the apprentice boys shutting the gate—and the victory at the Boyne in 1690. It’s rather like the Freemasons—and there was quite a lot of overlap between the two. It’s set up in lodges, and there are worshipful masters, grand masters and so on. The Orange Order is not a secret society, but it’s a social club that reinforces Presbyterian Protestant and unionist values. And that’s really how it’s remained up to the present day. “One of the reasons why the marches are so controversial is not just that they go through nationalist areas—because they do—but also because they are about possessing history” It’s not a paramilitary organization, which is not to say that none of its members have ever had any links with paramilitaries. It’s not, in itself, an organization that seeks to operate outside the law, at all. It is largely peaceful, but intensely tribal. They’re marching to reinscribe important sites in the history of Northern Ireland— their history of Northern Ireland. One of the reasons why the marches are so controversial is not just that they go through nationalist areas—because they do—but also because they are about possessing history. They are about possessing the history of a place, by commemorating the victory of one side over the other. Although Orange marches annoy people, and sometimes people object to them in other towns and cities, in Northern Ireland, they have a special quality. They are reenacting a history of overlordship. That no longer exists, but that’s what they commemorate. It doesn’t look like it. I haven’t got the figures for the annual Boyne reenactment, but the Orange Order—both in Northern Ireland and slightly more surprisingly, in Scotland—though declining, isn’t declining as fast as you’d expect. The signs, such as they are, are that there isn’t a big generational shift in Northern Ireland that would lead to different forms of voting behaviour. If you look at the Scottish independence referendum, you’re much more likely to vote for the Union if you’re old than if you’re young; if you look at Brexit, you’re much more likely to vote to leave if you’re old than if you’re young. But if you’re from a unionist community, as far as I’m aware, you’re just as likely to vote for the DUP if you’re 20 as if you’re 70. Very interesting. She’s a very interesting writer and she’s been very courageous in getting into the heart of Orangeism. I suppose the only thing is that it is very much one side of the story. It’s like histories of the IRA that are written by people who interview a load of IRA men and nobody else—there is a risk you get a bit too sympathetic. Similarly, she gets into the heart of the Orange Order—she’s met a lot of them and naturally she likes them and gets on with some of them. She does enjoy their trust, and that means she’s got to be sympathetic to them. So you do have to put it in perspective and say there was a group of other people out there with very different views. But it’s a very important book."

"This is a book that is not just about unionism. I chose it because it deals with unionism a great deal, and, also, because you can’t understand unionism properly without having the full context. Just as Buckland is very good on the politics, Jackson is very good on the constitution. He’s very good on what Gladstone was prepared to concede in 1886, what was in the Second Home Rule Bill, what was in the fight over who controlled customs and excise and the idea of federalism as a potential solution in World War I—as against the independence of the Free State that eventually occurred. Also, interestingly, the Scottish devolution settlement of 1998 was based on Gladstone’s 1885-6 sketches for Irish Home Rule, and the first Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886. A lot of the thinking that Alvin Jackson goes through—what’s the future relationship between Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom?—is the same kind of language and debate that’s been going on in the Scottish context for 20/30/40 years. It’s very similar to the way the Irish debate unfolded except that the exact environment and political situation are different. So, from this book, you get a really good sense of the constitutional problems that politicians were trying to address. He goes right up to the modern period, but he’s particularly good on the early period and why those constitutional problems proved so intractable. It was urgent they were addressed because there was a threat of violence, but, at the same time, they couldn’t be properly or consistently addressed because the threat of violence was always there. That was the paradox. Both sides ultimately resorted to violence. Jackson, like other writers before him, is very clear that one of the worrying things about the time before World War I is the way a lot of British parliamentary politicians turned a blind eye to gunrunning that supported unionism. That helped to feed the idea that the political process was ineradicably one-sided, and to feed gunrunning for nationalism. You possibly ended up in a violent situation because of the inability to tackle Home Rule in a constitutional way before World War I. I know it’s old history, but we are still living with it. Because Northern Ireland itself was the only way the British government thought it could satisfy unionist demands and avoid civil conflict. Nobody, in 1900, would have conceived of the present Northern Ireland as a satisfactory political entity. The unionists would have wanted a whole Ireland, or, failing that, the whole 9 counties of Ulster, and the nationalists would have wanted the whole 32 counties of Ireland, North and South. The British government produced what was, basically, a compromise, in order to minimize conflict on the island and to protect elements of the unionist community. And that’s what we’ve got. A compromise. All the political problems and the Troubles of Northern Ireland stem from that compromise—which is not to say that there was any other solution. Just over a century ago, Northern Ireland is a place that nobody conceived of as existing, in its current form. Home Rule is a slippery concept. It effectively meant near-independence. When they finally got it in 1922, the Free State presented it as independence. It was actually closer, formally speaking, to dominion status. The Home Rule bills ranged from a situation which was actually rather like the current devolved settlement of Scotland, to a settlement where there would be no Irish MPs sent to Westminster, so a quasi-independent settlement. There were also federal solutions proposed. The settlement that eventually occurred, as a result of the Anglo-Irish War and the negotiations that followed it, was a settlement that was quite akin—in shape and form—to the settlement of the Canadian or New Zealand government. But, the spirit behind it was totally different. Hardly anybody in the Irish Dáil thought of themselves as Irish and British. They thought of themselves as enemies of the British state—at least all the nationalists did, and that was nearly everybody. So it was very different in terms of the ethos behind it. It became independent in 1922, but what it formally had was dominion status, because it had a Governor-General and was under the Crown. The Governor-General wasn’t got rid of until the end of 1936, and Ireland didn’t become a Republic until 1949. One of the reasons there was a civil war in Ireland, following the grant of Free State status in 1922 was that hard-line Republicans didn’t think that was enough. The argument of Michael Collins—who had negotiated the treaty—that the Free State gave us the freedom to achieve freedom (i.e. the Republic would come from the Free State) wasn’t accepted and there was a civil war. Eventually the Republic did come from the Free State. Ireland became an independent Republic, and left the Commonwealth. Basically, the British government knew there wasn’t a great deal of support for it in Ireland. Ireland wasn’t very friendly or helpful. It was neutral in World War II—and none of the other dominions were neutral. It did pass information to Great Britain under the counter, but it was a very small country that had clearly not acted like Australia or Canada. It didn’t see the UK as the mother country: it saw the UK as an opponent. Now, of course, relations are much better. But it did require full independence for that to happen."

"I’ve chosen this because the Orange Order and Orangeism is just so important to Northern Irish identity. This book goes in depth into the connections between the Orange Order and the unionist movement, and the way Orangeism as a socio-political organization has huge influence on politics. It also provides a useful balance, because it’s a relatively objective history, to an overly optimistic view of the Orange Order. Just as in any study of Irish Republicanism, the Irish Republican Brotherhood is very important because it was not a political party, but had huge political impact, so this book demonstrates how the Orange Order has had a huge political impact. The book also analyzes the social background and the social profile of the Orange Order—the kind of people who support it and who is involved in it. “Northern Ireland is already the most heavily subsidized part of the UK” It looks at Orange engagement in Northern Ireland since 1969/7. It provides very much a contemporary view of the role of the Orange Order and Orangeism in community tensions and the community politics of Northern Ireland since then. He does talk about ‘identity choices.’ In Northern Ireland, the term ‘identity choices’ does seem a bit weak. You might call them that but they make a big impact compared to other identity choices… But mostly it is quite light in terms of nationalism theory. It’s more of a contemporary history and the social science methodology comes in the make-up of the order and the kind of people who are involved in it, and the Order’s attitudes to, for example, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and ‘mixed marriages,’ as they’re called. If you’re a member of the Orange Order, you were traditionally not supposed to marry a Catholic. That’s very old-fashioned now, and people do. But, traditionally, that was the Order’s attitude. It is really quite a peculiar organization to have major political and social impact in the 21st century. Absolutely. It also has a lot of contemporary relevance because anyone reading it will say, “Gosh, I can see these debates in the Scottish context.” But it provides the wider historical perspective, yes. Probably Kaufman’s The Orange Order because although it is a detailed, quite academic book, it’s just so amazing to see how a political process is inflected by a group that isn’t a political party. What’s interesting is what they’ll play for, and if they will, indeed, play for anything. I suspect—this is very contemporary, it could be outdated tomorrow—that the perception of weakness surrounding Theresa May is such that one of the reasons the DUP are not actually hammering out even a basic confidence and supply deal is that they are waiting to see what happens in the Conservative Party. They don’t want to be associated with a Conservative prime minister who is not going to last more than a month or two. They want to extract maximum advantage, financially, for Northern Ireland in terms of their own position. They’re not really interested in imposing their policies on the rest of the UK. You can disagree or dislike the DUP because of their attitude to same-sex marriage, but they’re not interested in getting the Conservative Party to adopt it. “Ireland got forgotten—because to include it would be too complicated. It would suggest that Britain, in some sense, no longer existed in the way it had existed in 1900—and continuity is really important to national memory.” Their interests are about showing that they can deliver for Northern Ireland, and that it’s a waste of time backing any other Unionist party but them. They want to show they can increase public expenditure—because Northern Ireland is already the most heavily subsidized part of the UK. The other thing they’ll want is a soft border with Ireland, because Irish business also sustains the Northern Irish economy. One of the ironies of Northern Ireland is that it’s virtually unsustainable without UK government support and without Irish government trade. They supported Brexit, but they want to have a soft border with the Irish Republic, which probably means at least staying in the Customs Union. The answer to that is no. Ireland has been written out of Britain’s history. If you look at the way British history was written in the 19th century, there are a lot of Irish people in it, and there’s a lot about Ireland in it. The United Kingdom included the whole of the island of Ireland until 1922. Then, when the Free State happened and Ireland became more or less independent in 1922, people’s consciousness of Britain changed. Suddenly, you had to deal with the fact it wasn’t part of the UK. People had to ‘remember’ a British history that excluded Ireland, and it became very difficult to include the six counties of Northern Ireland, not least because of the intensely sectarian character of the politics. So Ireland got forgotten—because to include it would be too complicated. It would suggest that Britain, in some sense, no longer existed in the way it had existed in 1900—and continuity is really important to national memory. So the end of the Union, which was a huge disruption, potentially, in 1922, was coped with by pretending that Ireland was never involved anyway. That was in spite of the hugely significant that Irish men and women played for the UK in, for example, World War I. Lord Kitchener was an Irishman. Garnet Wolseley, who was chief of staff for the British Army between 1885 and 1900 was an Irishman. The 1st Duke of Wellington was born in Ireland. Once you start scratching the surface, there are a lot of Irish people in British history, it’s just that their Irishness has been forgotten. British politicians were better informed than the public, but they still acted in a way that didn’t always create optimal outcomes. I’d have to say here that among Northern Irish secretaries, Mo Mowlam was unusually sensitive and effective, as was Tony Blair among Prime Ministers. Like Gladstone, Tony Blair understood that there was a real problem in the historic relationship with Ireland that needed to be addressed—whereas quite a lot of other politicians have just seen it as some sort of issue that’s got to be resolved. But actually it’s so deep-seated, it’s so long-term and underlying, that you have to have a lot of conversations and a lot of understanding to get to the heart of the sensitivities. And, for many people, the sensitivities appear completely ridiculous. One of the oddest things about understanding Northern Ireland as British—in the sense that many people in Northern Ireland intensely feel themselves to be British—is that the way the society operates, their politics, their passionate view of history, are completely alien to modern British identity."

"It is not an easy read, that’s true, but it is a terrific book. Clark argues that the British state, in the 18th century, was a confessional and an aristocratic state. It was very strongly Anglican and very strongly aristocratic. That aristocratic influence continued long after, even, the Reform Act of 1832. It wasn’t progressive. It wasn’t interested in the ideas of John Locke. Clark came up with the idea that Locke wasn’t influential at a time when people thought he was. There’s now quite a lot of digital humanities, data-driven analysis of 18th century texts which supports Jonathan Clark’s thesis that Locke’s ideas were not particularly influential. But it was inspirational 30 years ago. “Clark came up with the idea that Locke wasn’t influential at a time when people thought he was.” I’ve tried to stay off books about Scottish or Irish Jacobitism specifically to be able to look at them more generally. Clark does have a bit about Jacobitism in the book, but by presenting this version of society, the fundamental issue he shows is that Jacobitism was normative. The idea that British society was progressive and the Jacobites were wild men from the hills who were just off their nut is completely blown apart by Clark’s book. He shows that what it’s fundamentally about is who controls an aristocratic and church-dominated state. It is not about fighting progressive modernity from the backwoods: it is about which party (and he argues—as many others have since argued—that the Tories will remain largely Jacobite up to the 1760s) is going to control that state. That’s fundamentally a political question. It makes Jacobitism far more serious. And it takes you well out of that kind of slough, which we still live with, which is that the Jacobites are dirty and hairy and that the forces facing them are progressive and interested in democracy. Absolutely, that’s one of the reasons Jonathan Clark’s book was very polemical. He goes against the historical orthodoxy and accuses that orthodoxy of presentism, of saying, ‘We got here because we were always going to get here because this is the way people thought in the 18th century, and that’s how progress has happened.’ Whig history, in other words: the idea that there is a development from the idea of rights, and property rights, to the ability of ordinary people to take on their rulers, to a modern democracy. He is saying that’s actually just a comforting story that democracy is telling itself. That’s right. There are other dimensions to Jacobitism, but basically it is about contestation of who controls the structures of what is a fairly conservative, aristocratic, confessional or religious state, with extensive monarchical power."

"I chose this book because, like Jonathan Clark’s work, it was an absolutely seminal book. It destroyed the idea—which was then the absolute orthodoxy and associated with the work of Sir Lewis Namier—that there were no real political parties in the 18th century, just groups of people jostling to maintain their self-interest. By looking very, very closely at the lives and actions of individual members of parliament, Eveline Cruickshanks demonstrates the existence of political parties. Of course, once your demonstrate the existence of political parties, you are demonstrating the existence of divergent political goals. “The Tories were excluded from power for 48 years in fact, from 1714 to 1762.” Her case has always been—in the work she’s done following that text—that those divergent political goals were Jacobite versus non-Jacobite. Most scholars don’t go all the way with her on that. But, crucially, she is defining the conflicts of the 18th century in terms of political parties rather than in terms of individuals. That’s never been seriously attacked since, far less overturned. Once again, as Jonathan Clark was to do later with a much more comprehensive study, she is the first to set the scene for the idea that Jacobitism is about contestation about who wins and who controls the political process, rather than a battle between that process and people whose values are completely anachronistic to it. There remains a big debate about just how many Tories supported the restoration of the Stuarts. Certainly some did. Eveline Cruickshanks, to this day, believes that most or nearly all of them did, but there is quite a debate about that. Some Tories definitely supported the restoration of the Stuarts, and the Whigs opposed it: very much so. The Whigs were also associated with being pro-war with France to a much greater extent than the Tories were. There were a lot of attacks on the Tories for making peace, the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, from the Whigs. “Without London, you hadn’t got the central economic power, and if you didn’t have the central economic power, there’s only one long-term outcome for your campaign: you will lose.” But if you just step back you see that neither George I or George II were prepared to see the Tories in power. The Tories were excluded from power for 48 years in fact, from 1714 to 1762. George III, the first Hanoverian born in England—a new broom—was a young man of 22 when he came to the throne in 1760. He introduced a Tory prime minister for the first time: Bute, who was also the first Scottish prime minister. Throughout the 1760s there were popular attacks, particularly in London, on Scots as closet Jacobites. That was very powerful and showed the antipathy and characterisation of the Tories as Jacobite was still there. Bute lasted in power just over a year. Even in the 1760s it was very difficult to sustain a Tory administration. The exclusion of the Tories from government is a smoking gun that they weren’t trusted to support the Hanoverian dynasty. To be fair to Sir Lewis Namier, there’s a lot of overlap. There are a lot of people in these two parties that believe the same things. That’s hardly surprising because there are a lot of people in different political parties in the UK today who believe the same things in quite a number of areas. But apart from Jacobitism, the key dividing lines would be: the Tories would be strongly against dissent: that is non-conforming Protestant churches in England. The Tories would also be likely to support the country interest, the the rural squirearchy against the interests of the City of London in particular, and the financial markets."

"Yes, and this book is pivotal because no book has attacked it successfully, or replaced it, since it first appeared in 1989. It comprehensively goes through a huge range of records—including 2000 seditious words prosecutions against ordinary butchers, bakers and candlestick makers in the west of England. It looks at anecdotes, at folk memory, at the way radicals often followed Jacobite routes when they were protesting in the early 19th century—to present a picture of popular Jacobitism. Everything from non-conformist chapel burning to saying ‘God Save King James’ in the street. He demonstrates that it’s not just at the political top end. There’s a depth of interest and support for Jacobitism in English society that’s evident in the way Jacobitism is frequently used as a catch call or a motivator for crowds who are gathered together to protest about other issues. That’s the thing about Jacobitism, if you look at it as a political option and a political process—rather than some kind of wild-man-from-the-hills stuff— then you’ve got to separate the Jacobites who are prepared to fight and prepared to conspire and, therefore, risk execution from people who would vote for them in a referendum. Samuel Johnson said in 1777 that if there were a referendum in England, people would vote for the restoration of the Stuarts. Goodness knows if he was right or wrong. It’s totally unscientific and YouGov was not there to help. I happen to think he’s probably wrong, but nonetheless, we’re looking at a whole range of identifications. “ There were global consequences to the victory or otherwise of the Jacobite cause.” Just like today there’ll be people in the Brighton who’ll be turning up for every Labour Party motion in support of Jeremy Corbyn. Then there are other people who think they’ll vote Labour but not while Jeremy Corbyn is leading it. The Jacobites were like that too. Do you support a restoration? Yes, that would be nice. Yes, if I can stop having my common grazing turned into rentable property by the landowner, that would be nice. If I can get this, then it would be nice if the Stuarts were restored. If they can do this, then I would back them. All that is there, but the issue is that expressing even very, very limited verbal sympathy with the Jacobite claim could, in the wrong circumstances, get you up to two years imprisonment. So the fact there was so much of it is quite impressive."

"I chose this book because it’s the only really modern study of the Great Rising of 1715, replacing the study done in the 1930s. There are a lot of things that are good about it, but one is the detailed research on the level of support the Jacobites commanded and the fact there are English Jacobites involved. We’re talking about a 90%+ Scottish army. The support for the repeal of the Union, and also the size of the army… Daniel Szechi demonstrates that the size of the Jacobite army was 22.000, which was enormous because it meant that 1 in 6 adult males in Scotland actually fought. That was about two thirds of the maximum number — of ‘fencible’ men, that is men who can be raised for military service in Scotland, who could fight, at that time. So what we’re looking at is a national rising and enormous levels of military support. These are people who are not just risking their lives in the battlefield, but risking their lives if captured because they are traitors in the eyes of the government, not prisoners of war. It is a staggering demonstration of the military power—incompetently led in 1715—but the military power that Jacobitism could generate. Yes. The ‘15 was not so well led because it wasn’t authorised by James III and VIII (as his supporters would have called him) and he actually landed several months after it started at Peterhead. By that time, it was already in retreat. Its very poor leadership at the hands of the Earl of Mar is a significant factor in people not finding it as exciting a rising as the lightning dash to London, practised by Charles Edward Stuart 30 years later. Mar jumped the gun and effectively launched the rising. As he said in one of the commissions he granted, whether King James was restored or not, the aim was to address the grievances of Scotland and end the Union. It absolutely can. Yes, Mar wants to restore James. But, although he voted for the Union at the time, his overwhelming aim is to end the Union. Such is politics."

"What this book does is that it demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, both the size of the French effort which went astray because of bad weather in 1744 to support the Stuarts, and the extent to which France was seriously planning a landing in 1745. The big problem was that when Charles Edward Stuart was at Derby, his communication lines with France were simply not good enough to understand or communicate about the nature and timing of a French landing. McLynn demonstrates from the archives that that landing was very much on the cards, and that it would have been spearheaded by Irish troops in the French service of whom there were several thousand, with the French troops only as a backup. I’m not sure the French were right about this. France did, of course, reinforce the Jacobites in Scotland quite extensively, but it was the major landing in Essex (or elsewhere, but Essex was a favourite spot) that was the fear of the British government in 1745, and for which the French were actively planning, It didn’t happen. The French became aware of Charles Edward’s retreat and, therefore, it didn’t happen. They moved to reinforcing him in Scotland. Of course, there’s a school of thought that says, ‘Yes, all this material is in the archives, but would the French really have done it?’ As far as French landings go, there’s always this, ‘after you, after you. Will you commit? If you commit, I’ll commit.’ It’s like two people can’t make up their mind which restaurant to go to. “People say, ‘Well, he turned into an alcoholic.’ Normally one says to them, ‘If you lost your job at 25 and didn’t get it back before you died, wouldn’t you?’ ” But the point about Frank McLynn’s book is that it does demonstrate serious intention to launch a French invasion in 1745, and that had not been demonstrated before. I happen to think the odds would have been against him, ultimately, but if Charles Edward had advanced on London, he would almost certainly have reached it because there would only have been 1700 troops (including the Black Watch who weren’t trustworthy) between him and London. If the French had set sail on the news that Charles was approaching London and had landed the initial force of around 6000 men in Essex, then things could have got very interesting — or terrifying depending on your point of view. Yes, and he was completely right about that. People still say, ‘Why didn’t he stop at the border?’ If he really wanted an independent Scotland, why did he go to England?’ But the thing that had destroyed Charles I in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms or the civil war was that, after the Battle of Edgehill, he didn’t advance on London. Charles Edward did not make that mistake. “If the Stuart Scottish army had won at Culloden, it would not ultimately have changed the outcome of the war.” Every moment, every week, every month, that London remained unoccupied, unattacked, unapproached, parliament could continue to vote more and more national debt. That would enable—as it did enable in 1745—Hessian and other mercenaries to come over to bolster the British army and increase the force that it could bring to bear, and also made it possible to press more men for the Royal Navy to screen French ships. Basically, without London, you hadn’t got the central economic power, and if you didn’t have the central economic power, there’s only one long-term outcome for your campaign: you will lose. Charles was absolutely right to move on London. He was immensely frustrated when his commander forced him to turn back. I’m not sure it’s appropriate to be a ‘fan’ of people in history. One has to see the man in the round. He was a man of great talent. He had significant strategic insight, though he wasn’t very good, operationally, in battles. He understood what was necessary. He was certainly a glamorous and determined figure. He was very interested in a wide range of things and people. He was interested in French thinkers, like Montesquieu. He followed the American War of Independence blow-by-blow as it was developing when he was in exile. People say, ‘Well, he turned into an alcoholic.’ Normally one says to them, ‘If you lost your job at 25 and didn’t get it back before you died, wouldn’t you?’ He lived for the whole of his life, not altogether creditably, on the basis of an episode that happened when he was 25, 26 years old. That’s a terrible thing to carry with you, if that’s the highest point of your entire existence. His brother was the retiring type, but he was not. He wanted the crown. He was active, he was engaged, he was a man who had no outlet for his talents after 1746. First of all, there’s Culloden. That would have changed nothing. If the Stuart Scottish army had won at Culloden, it would not ultimately have changed the outcome of the war. Had they occupied London, they did have a chance. There were two big armies in the field who couldn’t have reached London in time. One of them was Cumberland’s. The other was Wade’s at Newcastle. Wade was very ineffective as a commander, and didn’t seem to be that interested in trying to intercept the Jacobites. So you can rule him out of the equation. “There was systematic starvation rather like Stalin and the Ukraine in the 1930s.” The question is, if the capital had fallen to the Jacobites, what would have happened to the morale and determination of Cumberland’s men? If he’d been able to hold them together then he would probably have had, before the French got there, enough men to see off the Jacobites — particularly because previous history shows the Jacobites were not good at street fighting. A lot of London would have been hostile to them as well. Even though they could have managed to occupy it, they wouldn’t have taken strongholds like the Tower and so on. On the other hand, if George II had left in his yacht for Hanover, leaving Cumberland in the field with an army, and it was known that George II had left, and there were question marks over the Bank of England and the national debt…It was really a matter of morale and timing. Cumberland could have reached London in 2 or 3 days after the Jacobites got there, and that might have been enough. But if, for any reason, he was held up for a week or two, that might not have been enough because he would have faced the consequences of a rapidly accumulating level of doubt and anxiety about the sustainability of the state his dynasty had helped to create. The other issue is how many English Jacobites would have come out of the closet if the Jacobite army had occupied London. I still think the ultimate defeat was likely but if they had got to London they did have a chance. It was absolutely brutal. It was suggested—even by moderate figures like Forbes of Culloden—that entire clans, entire groups in a particular landholding who for various reasons took the name of the landlord, should be deported. There was systematic starvation rather like Stalin and the Ukraine in the 1930s. There was also a longstanding British army occupation in Scotland — not just in the Highlands, but right across the country for almost 15 years after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746. Then there was Fort George , recently in the news because it’s no longer going to be a military base for the first time since 1746. A huge amount of money was spent on that, in terms of British GNP, which shows just how worried the British government and the Georges were."