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Why the Glencoe massacre holds
a timely lesson for Blair
Magnus Linklater
Columnist: Scotland on Sunday
Filed 04 Feb 07
©magnus linklater
This article,
which was originally published in the Opinion section of
Scotland on Sunday on 4th February 2007, is reproduced on Land-Care
with the kind permission of the author and the newspaper
SMALL massacre, not many dead. That might have
been the headline in February 1692 as news filtered south about
a minor military action in the Highlands of Scotland. A party of
government troops had taken on a band of rebel clansmen in a place
called Glencoe, and left 38 dead. In terms of casualties it was
a minor affair. It hardly compared, for instance, to the 200 or
so Lamonts who had been slaughtered by Clan Campbell in 1646, or
the hundreds of Campbells cut down by their Macdonald enemies after
the battle of Inverlochy two years earlier.
And yet, 315 years on, the Massacre of Glencoe
is still remembered long after the others have been forgotten. Tomorrow
evening on BBC 2 the facts of the case are examined yet again, the
causes disinterred, the victims remembered, the perpetrators brought
to justice. Why should it still loom so large when so few were killed?
Part of the reason, of course, is the despicable nature of what
happened - troops who had been billeted for a fortnight with the
MacDonald clan in Glencoe were then ordered to turn on their hosts
and put them to the sword. It was "murder under trust",
and regarded even then with a peculiar horror.
But there is another reason why it became an almost
immediate cause célèbre, and it is one that has not
changed much in 300 years. This week, as detectives comb through
the Downing Street e-mails in the cash for honours inquiry, they
are looking for what is known in the trade as "the smoking
gun" - the killer evidence that nails the guilty men. In the
case of Glencoe, too, there was a smoking gun. It came in the form
of a paper trail which not only led back to the perpetrators of
the massacre, but went straight to the top, linking them to the
Secretary of State for Scotland and even the King himself. It was
sensational stuff, and it had the 17th-century equivalent of an
investigative journalist to piece the clues together.
Charles Leslie was a pamphleteer, a Jacobite propagandist,
based in London but with contacts in Edinburgh. He had picked up
rumours about some form of government action in the Highlands, and
when the troops who had taken part in it passed through the capital
en route to Flanders, news about what had actually happened began
to leak.
The man in charge, Captain Robert Campbell of
Glenylon, a heavy drinker, but also, possibly, a man with a conscience,
had some devastating documents. They were orders to exterminate
an entire clan, and they were couched in language which still, today,
makes the hair stand up on the back of the neck. Written by his
commanding officer, they said: "You are hereby ordered to fall
upon the Rebells, the McDonalds of Glencoe, and putt all to the
sword under seventy. You are to have a speciall care that the old
fox [the clan chief] and his sones doe upon no account escape your
hands, you are to secure all the avenues that no man escape ...
This is by the King's speciall command, for the good safety of the
Country, that these miscreants be cutt off root and branch."
These were damning enough, but Leslie uncovered
more. Orders straight from the Secretary of State, the Master of
Stair, showing not only that King William was aware of what was
planned, but that there was collusion with another great Highland
magnate, the Earl of Argyll. It is as much the gothic language of
Stair's commands as the instructions themselves that chill the blood.
"Let me hear from you..." he wrote to his general in the
Highlands, "whether you think that this is the proper season
to maul them in the long cold nights." Then, later: "Let
it be secret and sudden ... cutt off that nest of robbers who have
fallen in the mercy of the law ... it's a great work of charity
to be exact in rooting out that damnable sept of thieves, the worst
in all the Highlands ... if M'Kean of Glencoe [the chief of the
clan] can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication
of the publick justice to extirpate that sept of thieves."
This was, in effect, attempted genocide. The orders
not only bore Stair's name, but were signed by the King.
However much they might be brushed aside as Jacobite
propaganda, they could not be ignored. Public pressure for a full
inquiry became too great to resist, and, three years after the event,
a full, official investigation was ordered. Campbell of Glenlyon
was disgraced by its findings, and died in exile. Stair was implicated,
and though he was cleared by the King, his reputation never recovered;
the smoking gun had found its target. As Leslie concluded: "Qui
Glencoat Glencoabitur." That is, "he who Glencoes, will
himself be Glencoed." It is a thought that Tony Blair might
ponder on.
The Glencoe Massacre, BBC 2, Monday 9pm
©Magnus Linklater
This article: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=184492007
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