A view on Burns
Alex Johnstone is the MSP for North East Scotland. Alex is also the Scottish Conservative Transport and Housing Spokesman Read more from this author
I like haggis; really I do. It is possible to have too much of a good thing though, that’s all I’m saying. With the Burns Supper season now drawing to a close, I’m looking forward to a more varied diet in weeks to come.
Never the less, the start of this year has been distinguished by an increased number of Burns quotations falling from the lips of politicians. I think it must be something to do with Alex Salmond and his plans to rip Scotland from the very heart of the United Kingdom.
Robert Burns was born in 1759 in the humblest of surroundings. He lived for only thirty seven years, but they were the most tumultuous of times and it is well worth taking the time to recall the state of the world into which he was born and in which he grew up.
Only 13 years had passed since the battle of Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil and one in which Scots fought bravely on both sides. Then, as now, the British Army recruited heavily in Scotland. The year of 1759 was right slap bang in the middle of the 7 years’ war, which Winston Churchill much later described as the ‘first real world war’, and which did not come to an end until 1763.
When Burns was 17, news came of the American Declaration of Independence, and by the time he was 30, the French Revolution was underway resulting in a series of conflicts with France that remained unresolved at the time of his death. So these were difficult times – full of trouble and suspicion. All through his life Burns observed conflict and instability, and whenever you live with these, you will live with a certain amount of fear, suspicion, danger and challenge.
Much of the uncertainty and challenge of those days was also reflected in the thinking and the philosophy of the time. Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man, Rousseau, David Hume and Adam Smith and many others were all challenging the very basis of how society was ordered, and all of that was bound to have influenced the inquisitive mind of a young Robert as he sought answers to the questions that must have poured out from his fertile imagination.
Many of those questions of course had to be political, and, any writer of the day had to be wary of the political sensitivities that existed. Yet I am always fascinated by the fact that most shades of political groupings can and do claim Robert Burns as one of their own. I will not hesitate to join them.
A feminist might be drawn to ‘The rights of Women’: “Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention.”
A Socialist might look to ‘A Man’s a Man’: “Fer a that and a that, its comin yet fer a’ that, that man tae man the world o’er, shall brithers be fer a’ that.”
A Nationalist might quote ‘Scots wha hae’: “Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has often led, welcome to your gory bed – on to victorie. Wha for Scotland’s king and law, freedom’s sword will strongly draw. Free man stand or free man fa, let him follow me.”
William Wallace of course, had been dead for nearly five hundred years when Burns penned these lines and, some might suggest, they were written with a similar level of romantic licence to that demonstrated by Mel Gibson a few centuries later.
There was little romance to be spared in the latter years of the eighteenth century. Having at first been taken with the notion of the French Revolution, Burns quickly came to realise that what was going on across the channel posed a real threat to HIS country, Britain.
In April 1795, just over a year before his death, Robert Burns had been at a public meeting in Dumfries, where he was noticed to be significantly less joyous than usual. When he went home he wrote four verses and sent them, with his compliments, to Mr Jackson, editor of the Dumfries Journal.
Under the title, “Does haughty Gaul invasion threat”, also known as the address to the Dumfries Volunteers, he showed himself to be, in the cold light of reality, both a Unionist and a Euro-Sceptic. While the full text is available in all good book shops, as well as on the internet, these words appear in the second stanza.
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!
Loading ...
Alex, like you i am perturbed by the recruitment of our national symbols, emblems and notable characters, to the nationalist cause. Robert Burns is of course a principle hostage, however as you rightly point out, in his address to the volunteers of Dumfries ( not likely to have been read at Mr Salmond`s Burns night supper ) his political sympathies as a Unionist and Monarchist, were explicitly revealled. In this appropriation of our country`s history and heritage, there is one notable exception: Adam Smith. Surely such an eminent Scottish philosopher and economist, whose works have shaped political and economic thinking for more than two centuries, should have been recruited into the SNP cause, years ago? But no. I wonder why……
It is a simple fact that much more of what Burns wrote supports the view that he regretted the union of the Parliaments than that he favoured it-that does not mean that he was right or that he was wrong, but it is utter nonsense to portray him as someone who was a unionist.
Colin Rose is no more correct about Adam Smith than he was about Robert Burns when he wrote “In this appropriation of our country`s history and heritage, there is one notable exception: Adam Smith. Surely such an eminent Scottish philosopher and economist, whose works have shaped political and economic thinking for more than two centuries, should have been recruited into the SNP cause, years ago? But no. I wonder why…”…
From the Scottish Government website of December 2011
“First Minister Alex Salmond today highlighted the work of Adam Smith and his relevance to modern China in both his keynote address to the party school of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Beijing and in the presentation of a bronze of the famous Scots philosopher.”
No doubt Mr Rose will now complain about this very appropriation that he was regretting had supposedly never taken taken place,but a few minutes ago
On the contrary, it was gratifying to see our First minister selling the virtues of free market economics to freedom loving China. Unfortunately, Mr Salmond has difficulties selling these same ideas to many in his own party, for whom Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism and free economic thinking, is simply beyond the pale. This may be the reason why the great man has yet to join the ranks of those long dead eminent Scots who are now endorsing Mr Salmond`s plans for Independence.
Burns is a complicated and contradictory indivudal. There is the Nationalist Burns as expressed in “Parcel of Rogues” and there is the Unionist Burns in “The Dumfries Volunteers” So much so that in Burns there is something for everyone. For the Unionist, for the Nationalist, for the Socialist and for the Libetarian
He is a Lowland Scot so the Jacobite cause seemed to have little appeal to him at least as expressed in his writings. Even the “Stirling Lines” while contemptable about the House of Hannover is more a reflection of Stirling’s decline but parcel of Rogues is a lament for a past while the Volunteers is a plea for the future. His works seem to reflect British Public opinion which initially welcomed the French Revolution but grew distant as the Terror took over
Illness robbed us of the later Burns so there is no comment on Nelson or on Wellington. We are left with his strength which is in his incisive understanding of the human condition such as the pithy comment about the Louse or the philosphical and empathatic lines on the destruction of the Mouse’s home and the satirical views on the Bretheren and Elders of the Kirk in Holy Wiliie’s prayer
Interesting piece Alex. Pretty much anyone in politics can take something from Burns. Also, like Sandy that is not, for me, the appeal of Burns – as a country loon I love ‘To a Mouse’, and as a middle aged guy who has at times endured life and someone who, hopefully, has plenty life to live the last few lines are timeless.
His most controversial moment reflects, as Alex argues, that although many of his observations of human nature are timeless he was a man of the 18th Century. How do we square the fact that he nearly went to work on a slave plantation with his Slave’s Lament? I first heard it on a Vic Galloway radio show performed live by Aberfeldy and it stopped me in my tracks, literally – I was delivering election leaflets at the time.