Maggie Craig's 'One Week in April' 2020

 

Berlinn first edition - 2020

The dust wrapper flyleaf explains: In April 1820, a series of dramatic events exploded around Glasgow, central Scotland and Ayrshire. Revolution was in the air. Demanding political reform and better living and working conditions, some 60,000 weavers and other workers went on strike. Radicals marched under a flag emblazoned with the words 'Scotland Free, or Scotland a Desart [sic] whilst others armed themselves and set off for the Carron Ironworks, seeking cannons.

It was not until I finished the book, that I read the Author's Note on pp. 224-5. Maggie Craig has wanted to write this book for more than thirty years...I had never heard of the Radical Rising of 1820. I wasn't alone in that. Too true, nor had I, even though I had read novels written by Galt, Scott and others set in that period. Craig went on: The memorial to the Condorrat radicals of 1820 which stands outside the local library bears the words 'Weave the Truth'. I've done my level best. I'm glad I read the note, as I then felt the dedication and passion of the author for something she strongly believed in. It made me rethink some of my stringent comments I was about to make.

I vaguely recalled the Cato Street Conspiracy, where Arthur Thistlewood and others planned to surprise Government ministers at one of their regular Cabinet dinners in London and kill all of them. Of course, I knew of the Manchester meeting at St Peter's Fields in August 1819, when 60,000 people protested and called for political reform. Soon dubbed the Peterloo Massacre - 15 were killed and over 650 wounded by the local Yeomanry - it caused outrage amongst not only Radicals and Reformers, but among the less politically inclined public. What I did not realise was the interconnection between the radical movements of Glasgow and Ayrshire and Manchester and the Midlands (especially Nottingham) and London. Newspapers, tracts, posters and fliers quickly spread the news of any meeting or flare-up.

Maggie Craig charts, through brief Chapters, the story of strikes and marches, starting with the Strike of the Calton Weavers between July-September 1787. Weavers, known throughout Britain for their sharp intelligence and thirst for knowledge, played a central part in all these movements.

Leaders such as Thomas Muir of Huntershill, who organised the first 'Edinburgh Convention' of reform societies in 1792, were supported by not only weavers but printers and other skilled tradesmen. The unrest of the 1790s continued throughout the Napoleonic Wars - there was a Glasgow weavers' strike in 1812 and the return of servicemen from the wars (similar to 1919) meant there was not enough work to go around. The Thrushgrove Meeting, in fields on the outskirts of Glasgow, in October 1816, presaged further events to come. The aims were usually annual elections, secret ballots and universal suffrage. Britain should be run for and by the many not the few. Sounds familiar?

Part II is simply entitled, One Week in April. Saturday 1st to Saturday 8th saw the grim story played out. Hundreds of posters and placards urged active support for the outbreak. 2,000 copies of the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain & Ireland sprang up everywhere. The Scots expected similar rising in England (at one point they heard that 200,000 had taken the field in the South), but this never came. Around 60,000 in and around Glasgow answered the call. The Lord Provost of the city and the Sheriff of Lanarkshire issued their own printed proclamation and called on the yeomanry and regulars (e.g. the Glasgow Sharpshooters) to put any disturbance down. One interesting point thrown up was whether spies and/or agitators for the government fomented the strikes and rebellions? This is unproven and probably unknowable, but there is enough evidence to suggest one or two named men were fifth columnists. The famous Battle of Bonnymuir, on Wednesday, 5th April - was a damp squib and the danger had petered out by the end of the week. 

Scores of Radicals were arrested; there was a minor massacre in Greenock on the 8th April. Three ringleader were tried, found guilty of treason and suffered death by hanging and then beheading. James Wilson (at Glasgow) and Andrew Hardie and John Baird (at Stirling) forever after martyrs to the cause. There are memorials to all three; one to the Battle of Bonnymuir as recently as 1981.

My main criticism, is that the author could have done with a good editor (rather than proof reader). There are end notes, but they mainly consist of titles of books, followed by Ibid. The book needed foot notes. Then, so many extraneous sentences, almost off-the-cuff remarks/additions, could have been withdrawn from the main text. They interrupted the flow of thought far too often. It felt as if Craig had found something from her extended researches and simply had to put everything in. My pencilled comments in the margins included: jumping around rather...too many asides...another 'aside'...should this be a foot note? There is often repetition - e.g. the details of Peterloo - which could have been pruned.

Coincidently, one of the BBC's online articles today is headed 

Calls to allow people to return to Edinburgh's Radical Road

The Radical Road runs along Salisbury Crags at Arthur's Seat. The path got its name from the unemployed west of Scotland weavers who were set to work paving a track there. Also known as the Scottish Insurrection, the uprising was the result of social unrest among workers who were fed up with what they perceived to be unjust working and living conditions. Some of the Edinburgh unemployed were set to work clearing Bruntsfield Links and creating the paths round Calton Hill, but what to do for the west-coast weavers who said they had no work?

The answer was proposed by Sir Walter Scott. Get them away from Glasgow and find them a job in Edinburgh. There was a narrow path skirting Salisbury Crags, which was in dangerous  disrepair. This could be widened and improved to make a pleasant walk towards Arthurs Seat. The weavers were brought to Ediburgh and set to work; an event remembered ever after in a local playground chant: 'Round and round the Radical Road, the ragged rascal ran...'

Thanks to reading Maggie Craig's book, I knew exactly what was the background to this.