29/2/20 "THE SCOTTISH CLEARANCES" by TOM DEVINE

Devine is Scotland’s current pre-eminent historian. His general history of Scotland 1700-2000 is probably his best known work but Scotland’s Empire and To the Ends of the Earth have highlighted the huge contribution of the Scots to the British Empire and emigration.

The Scottish Clearances is his most recent work. Note the title; not Highland Clearances but Scottish Clearances. The Highland Clearances are a potent part of Scottish mythology both in Scotland and amongst the diaspora. The popular view is that the dispersal of Scots across the seas was caused by greedy landlords. Devine shows from historical record that the realities of the diaspora are far from simple. Many more Gaels left the Highlands voluntarily rather than being evicted. Yet the myth of total eviction is hugely prevalent and powerful both historically and culturally. John Prebble’s The Highland Clearances has more influence among the general public than among historians. Given the absence of academic histories of the Clearances until recently it is unsurprising that the simple narrative of betrayal, loss and forced exile has held the field.

Devine attempts three main tasks; to de-mythologise the Highland Clearances; to address the Lowland/Border experience of clearance which has attracted hardly any attention compared to the romantic Highland history; and finally to place the Highland experience of rural transformation within a broader European context of urbanisation.

BORDER CLEARANCES

Devine discusses the definition of “clearance”. Traditionally the popular usage applied to the removal, often by force, of peasant communities in the Highlands, was to make way for sheep farms. Modern scholarship, discussed by Devine, shows that this is too narrow a definition.

Many peasant communities in the Borders were also dispossessed but attracted virtually no attention. This is partly because those dispossessed in the farming areas of the Eastern Borders made no noise. Devine suggests that this may be because of continuing employment opportunities there, both in the labour intensive large arable farms and in the woollen trade in the Border towns. Gradual dispossession was the norm, eviction was rare. It was Clearance by stealth.

In the hill areas of the Borders, more suitable for sheep rather than arable farming there was no such alternative employment opportunities for most of the dispossessed. In Galloway were protests involving levelling the dykes against the enclosing of lands for cattle rearing. This was a rare example of protest. Interestingly the memory of the Galloway “Levellers” revolt of 1724, though it lived on locally, has made no lasting popular expression.

An alternative to finding other work in Scotland was emigration. As Devine shows between 1700 and 1818 some 100.000 Scots emigrated to North America from lowland Border areas.

HIGHLAND CLEARANCES

Devine argues that a rapid and sustained increase in population was the critical factor in the social history of the Highlands c 1750-1850 though ignored in popular accounts of Clearance. In southern Argyll and the eastern Highlands the increase was small but in the far west and north, the poorest agricultural lands, it was very considerable. In the southern and eastern counties more people migrated to the booming Lowland towns and cities. The North and West Highlands have become notorious for the large scale Clearances to make way for sheep runs. Yet mass migration leading to depopulation did not automatically follow. Only where removals were particularly severe was there evidence of abandoned dwellings, e.g. in Sutherland. Indeed more Gaels emigrated after the Clearances than during. No other set of Clearances matched those of Sutherland. Gradual displacement was the norm; most people were not evicted but “moved voluntarily”. But for the rapid spread of the potato after 1750, there would have been much greater flight from the land.

The Highland military tradition metamorphosed into Imperial Service in the British Army. The connection between the new regiments and the traditional clans was superficial. Landowners harvested the population of their estates for the army in order to make money. Recruitment to the army provided the Chiefs with many benefits. In the late 18th century and early 19th they were opposed to emigration. It meant the loss of valuable military manpower and workers for the estates. Few Highlanders left for north America before 1790; many did so subsequently. Many army veterans also stayed in America after  the Seven Years War, enjoying service land grants.   After the American War of Independence the remaining British Colonies in Canada were more attractive, not least because most were Loyalists. This was not flight of the poor and dispossessed. They were the middling ranks of Highland society, particularly the Tacksmen. A mixture of demographic and economic factors were the reasons. Emigration was opposed by the state and the landowners but the emigrants prospered free from landlord oppression in America.

Much of the emigration of Highlanders in the 19th century was led by the search for opportunities overseas. But in the 1840s and 1850s emigration was driven by subsistence crisis, clearance and peasant expropriation. Potato blight was the background. Disaster was averted as compared to Ireland, by its smaller scale and intervention by the Scottish Authorities,  churches, landlords and charities. The positive role of Scottish landlords contrasts with the indifference of their Irish counterparts. Scotland was also a richer society with a range of employment opportunities.

The deep recession in Scotland from 1848 changed the situation. Cattle prices fell by half. Relief work ended. In addition quite a number of Highland estates were insolvent and managed by trustees. Trustees were more rigorous than local owners.; their responsibility was to creditors and they could not assist the poor. Eviction was therefore unavoidable. Racist attitudes towards the Celts was also a factor as seen in Scottish newspapers. Anti Celtic racists saw poverty in the Highlands as not caused by economics but because of racial inferiority. The traditional values of the highlanders were in conflict with capitalism and the morality of the time.

In 1850 Sir Charles Trevelyan was convinced that emigration was the answer to the social ills of the Highlands. From 1840 to 1860 there was a huge decrease in the population of the Western Highlands primarily as a result of emigration. Coercion was employed widely and systematically. These extreme Clearances were unique in the history of the Scottish Clearances and made a deep mark and their memory endured while most of those that had gone before were forgotten.

Mass clearance in the highlands ended in the late 1850s. Economic conditions improved. Transport improved. Seasonal employment opportunities vastly increased. Life was still precarious. Recovery was modest and insecure. The Crofters Act of 1886 made clearances impossible. The legislation made the tenancy of a Croft heritable thus depriving the landlord of much of his right of ownership.

CONCLUSION

Clearance is an omnibus term. The forcing out of people in the Highlands is the most notorious, best documented and remembered. As Devine shows a myriad set of influences and pressures led to loss of land. But in the Highlands clearances were more dramatic. Highland landlords had fewer options than those in the Lowlands for industrial development. Racist dogma against the Gaels was present. Traditional Gaelic values were a factor including the belief that landlords had a duty to protect their people in return for rent and service.  The tide turned against the landlords by the later C19th and sympathy for the Highlanders grew.  Alexander Mackenzie’s ‘History of the Highland Clearances’ published in 1883 was the definitive guide to the subject, strongly influencing later writers such as John Prebble and Ian Grimble. The narrative of landlord iniquity and forced evictions is compelling and poignant but is only partially true. It ignores the limitations of natural resources in the Highlands; a large increase of population on poor land with no alternatives for subsistence or employment; bankruptcy of the old traditional landed class; and the power of market capitalism. These factors cannot be ignored but a tale of wicked landlords is more appealing. Many landlords did their best at considerable cost to avoid clearance but in the end they failed. Consumerism got the better of many.

The Members really enjoyed the book. “A triumph to cover such a broad sweep of history while doing full justice to its complexity and keeping the book readable.” One asked when the Clans stopped fighting. One of the themes of Scottish history is the gradual envelopment of the Highlands within the State. This was completed after the Union and resulted in the break-up of the Clan system. One of our number reported that Loch is a family middle name because an ancestor was Factor to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland. James Loch was handsomely remembered. Another Member was descended from crofters who had been ejected from the Sutherland Estate during the same period.

Finally the military aspect where the unemployed could join the army was an interesting element that most had not appreciated.

30/1/20 "WARLIGHT" by "MICHAEL ONDAATJE"

INTRODUCTION

Born in Ceylon in 1943, Ondaatje's erratic family split up and he went with his mother, in the middle of his schooling, to London where he attended Dulwich college [like Raymond Chandler, PG Wodehouse and other literary figures]. He chose to go to University in Canada in 1962, and from then on English Literature was his chosen path. He wrote poetry, published from 1967, and most of his books are still of poetry. The English Patient made his international reputation, winning the Man Booker Prize, and later the award for the best novel ever to win the award. He is also an essayist, editor and film maker. He lives with his second wife and has children. His credits also include “Leonard Cohen [ Literary criticism]” in 1970. He continues to write novels, each taking years to complete.  Warlight was published in 2018.

Why did the proposer choose it? A friend who is a Professor of Eng Lit gave him the book and suggested it should be read. The proposer felt enveloped by its mood and atmosphere. He loved the characters and the recounting of events was subtle and nuanced.

The title referred to light not visible from the air. The proposer considered  it a book about family memory. There were parallels with the Secret Scripture in this respect. The past never remains the past. It came back to Nathaniel because he became reconciled to his mother Rose. He tried to get his mother to help him and she only offered slight insights although she did offer herself to him more fully in the present. His memories were those of a boy of 14 over a period of about two years. His sister Rachel was 16 at the start and her assessment of what was happening was more mature; she understood the Moth and his role. But she never forgave her mother’s action in abandoning the two of them. She took some of the same opportunities with Nathaniel but she also seems to have been the young woman of parties etc. Her relationship with her brother, like her mother, did not survive and  she remained embittered. Nathaniel sensed that his mother would not answer many of his questions  and he  often pulled out of asking them. Of course his mother’s work was top secret. However his mother might have said more and invited him to ask while saying she would not always be able to answer. The chess games with the mother were interesting , perhaps a metaphor for the need for concealment and sacrifice of pieces. Only a secretive boy would have failed to ask about his father, i.e. why did he never appear even after the war?

The young Nathaniel befriended the Darter and Agnes. He may have been remote at school but he got himself together and went to college where he became a linguist like his mother. He then bonded with Mr Malakite but finally he ends up with a greyhound as his only friend. The end is the saddest part of the book. All folly, risk taking and comradeship are gone. And what of Rose? Possibly “groomed” by Felon [a hint in his name?], she then abandons her children and possibly she abandons her husband too. In return is she a heroic figure? Her orders latterly were to neutralise  right wing former enemies, being ex-fascist Croats and Italians. Was she always Felon’s property at the expense of her children? Was Rachel right? The end of their relationship was when Nathaniel went back to mum. In reality Mum wrecked the lives of both children .

DISCUSSION

There was general agreement that the book was unusual and intriguing. There was an amazing level of research and detail and it was no surprise that there were long gaps between his novels.

 A number of members had found it necessary to read the book twice.

There was a consensus that in Warlight it was difficult at times to work out what is happening. The novel is narrated by the central protagonist, Nathaniel, who is an adult at the time of writing, but is remembering the destabilising years of his boyhood, years that made him an uneasy, unsettled man. His mother, as he recalls it, left him and his sister, Rachel, at boarding school and went to join their father in Singapore, where he worked for Unilever. When his narrative begins, Nathaniel is 14 and Rachel is 16: they hate their schools, and run away from them almost at once. When the children arrive back in London they find that The Moth – the odd character their mother left in charge – has taken up residence in their home, along with various cronies, including The Pimlico Darter. The Moth and The Darter, like their names, come from a Dickensian dream of London: up to their  necks in greyhound racing, smuggling and art theft, they navigate the backwaters of the Thames in suspenseful darkness, and are full of arcane expertise. The Moth’s face is ‘lit by a gas fire while I asked question after question, trying to force an unknown door ajar’. There are middle-class mavericks too, weaving in and out of the children’s lives, always appearing to know more than they let on, never quite telling their whole story. Gangly, schoolboyish, clever Arthur McCash hands Nathaniel a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories as if it were a clue; Olive Lawrence, an element in The Darter’s colourful love life, is an ethnographer and geographer who speaks to the children ‘of Asia and the ends of the earth’.

The children slip the leash of the middle-class conventions of their era, and escape into the wilderness of the city. Nathaniel takes a job in the kitchens of the celebrated Criterion hotel; Rachel goes partying, comes back late, yet no one asks where she has been. They join The Darter on mysterious expeditions, smuggling dogs and goods (and, it turns out later, explosives). The idea of a teeming secret London concealed under the grey surface of postwar privation, throbbing with life and trade and risk and pleasure, is engaging enough. 

‘The munitions factories had been dismantled and the unused canals were silting up, becoming narrower between their overgrown banks. And on weekends this was where Rachel and I, the sidekicks of The Darter, now floated in the silence of those waterways … What we carried was probably not dangerous, but we were never sure … Rachel and I no longer fully believed The Darter’s stories about the delivery of European china to pay back the merchant who had let him borrow his barge during dog-racing seasons.’

It was mentioned that the post-war London scene was well set out in John Boorman’s film Hope and Glory. The blogger mentioned that the young seven year old star of the film was in his daughter’s class at the time in the late 1980s.    

The Suffolk sections of the book were also very powerfully described.

Nathaniel has an affair with Agnes, a girl from the Criterion, whose brother is an estate agent and has the keys to a succession of empty houses: this is rather a wonderful idea, and these sexual encounters, where the young lovers run around naked in the dark, are some of the best passages in the book.

And yet all these scenes and their striking ephemera – the greyhounds, the china, the empty munitions factories, Agnes’s handstands in an empty house, the sculptures of goddesses hidden in tunnels under the Criterion – are not quite as seductive as they ought to be. Part of the problem is in the awkward narrative positioning, with everything told through Nathaniel’s long retrospect. Since we only hear about it afterwards, in descriptive summary, we are never actually present in any scene; every element of the action, all the adventures and encounters, come to us muffled and at arm’s length.  The present of Warlight is located nowhere in particular, in a lost man wandering inside his past: the adult Nathaniel spends his days searching in a Foreign Office archive for traces of his mother’s story – and yet even the time of his searching is voiced as if from a distance still further on. Such time-play is standard novelistic sleight of hand, but it ought to be managed so that we do not notice it. And because the story is not anchored in any present, it shifts scene too often, adding to the blaze of its effects: there is simply too much that is striking, atmospheric, evocative. No detail, no place, no particular moment, has the breathing space to come into its own.

Rachel discovers their mother’s steamer trunk hidden in the basement of the house: the same trunk she packed with ostentatious care in front of her children, choosing dresses suitable for evening parties in Singapore. They wonder if she is dead, but the truth that gradually emerges is stranger than that: she is a brilliant, exceptional woman, estranged from their father and working for British intelligence in the Balkans, among other places. Later she seems to become disenchanted with this work: not only does her high-minded self-sacrifice come up against the grubby equivocations of real politics (she may have inadvertently helped Tito’s partisans locate a village where they massacred the inhabitants), she also realises that she has left her children at the mercy of malevolent forces. There is at least one attempted kidnapping. Her qualms seem belated. It is all very well, in fact it was standard middle-class practice at the time, to go abroad and leave your children behind, if you have important work to do (or even if you have not). But would she not have provided them with solid, ordinary defences: surrogate parents, establishment figures to oversee their safety and shelter their ignorance? For that matter, why not hide your steamer trunk somewhere less obvious? The plot of the novel – The Moth, The Darter, The Darter’s enthusiasm for Henry James, Agnes’s love-talk full of poetry, the near kidnapping, the archive, the effortless class slippages – strains credulity. Of course in a romance it does not strictly matter what is believable in real-world terms; but the other-world has to work, according to its own logic.

Every one of the adults around the baffled runaway teens seems brilliant and exceptional, not only their mother. The Darter has all along been engaged in essential government transports, alongside his smuggling; Olive Lawrence’s expertise on climatic conditions was invaluable on D-Day. We learn that their mother had a formative relationship with Marsh Felon (Marsh Felon, ‘Buster’ Milmo, The Forger of Letchworth, Sam Malakite: very Dickensian names). Marsh came from a local family of thatchers; she helped to nurse him after he fell from the roof of her house and her family paid for his education. Later, Marsh becomes her mentor in the secret service.  The adult world in Warlight is charged with power, as if everyone is in on secrets the children are shut out from – even though Nathaniel is an adult as he writes, and is supposed to have his hand on all the secrets contained in the archive. Now that time has passed and his mother is dead, he is trying to make sense of what she did to her children; he is trying to forgive her for it, but first he needs to understand it. Not following up on the father is odd. The narrative leaves a lot of unanswered questions

There was a recognition by members present that children never really understand their parent’s lives, particularly as the most significant part of their lives was usually, as in the book, before the children were born. Children also are not usually interested in their parents’ lives until they are much older and may not get the truth, particularly the bad stuff, from them. For example, holocaust survivors did not tell until they were very old and concerned about holocaust denial.

All-in-all members found the book, despite its faults, rewarding and enjoyable .

28/11/19"FIRST LIGHT" by GEOFFREY WELLUM

The author, Geoffrey Wellum, joined the RAF in 1939 at the tender age of 17. He tells his story in this book: learning to fly, ‘going solo’, getting his ‘wings’, serving as a Spitfire fighter in the Battle of Britain (July – October 1940) and beyond, and leading a group of eight Spitfires in a daring mission to get supplies to the stricken island of Malta.

He wrote this book 35 years later, from notes taken during those three hectic years – apparently not much embellished in style or content and making no attempt to embroider or to add historical context and analysis. In his Squadron they called him ‘The Boy’ as he was the youngest, although almost all were very young. Boyishness shines through to the text, perhaps it was his nature as much as his age.

We made comparison with a book we read last year, No Parachute, the diary of a fighter pilot from World War I. It is written in a more mature style; and that pilot (Arthur Gould Lee) rose to the high rank of Air Vice Marshall. His book is quite different, including opinion, criticism of how the war in the air was waged, and historical context.

Perhaps the boyish Wellum better conveys the man-machine relationship. One reader startled us by making the unexpected comparison with the book Half Man, Half Bike about Eddy Merckx the legendary racing cyclist. Both books portray how rider and machine blend in a symbiosis.  For example, the author writes:

They are alive, these Spitfires. They live like the rest of us, they understand. Never, no matter what the circumstances, shall I cease to be thrilled and excited by such a sight and the wonderful feeling of being involved in what I see. My thoughts are apt to stray from the task at such moments.

Yes, there are insights into psychology. The day-to-day fear of failure, overcoming the fear of death, coming to terms with loss of comrades and sheer mental exhaustion – these are all well represented. The good times are there too: the exhilaration of flight, the warmth and companionship of the Officers’ Mess and the evening excursions to the pub with its pretty barmaid.

Some of us were surprised that the pilots seemed unaware of ‘the bigger picture’. Did they  not read newspapers? Were they huddled around the radio in the Mess? Probably not – these things are scarcely mentioned in the book. Like soldiers, they followed orders from above. In the day-to-day action there was little free time; any free time was spent writing home, going for a drink with ‘the chaps’, generally unwinding. I checked newspaper reports: it’s all there for anyone to read – the Battle of Britain is vividly portrayed though often with inflated claims of numbers of downed German aircraft. Wellum has no comment on newspaper reports, and says nothing about what is happening beyond his squadron – for instance the extraordinary feats of the foreign pilots exiled from Nazi-occupied Europe, and pilots who came from Commonwealth countries. They formed entire squadrons and were very successful.  Nor does he mention the controversial ‘Big Wing’ idea favoured by Douglas Bader whereby several squadrons attack together. It seems a pilot’s interest was survival rather than the tactics and the progress of War as a whole. Again, very boyish.

Wellum joined the RAF because he wanted to fly. We have the impression he got more than he’d bargained for.  He learned skills in training and on the job. He didn’t shoot down many enemy planes, and he got lost on several occasions. But he survived whilst most of his colleagues and friends were killed or captured.

Compared with some of our books, this one was certainly an ‘easy read’, and for most of us, it was thrilling and enthralling to the end. You are there with him in squadron 92 (call sign Gannic), in the cockpit, looking out for bandits (enemy), especially snappers (Messerschmitt 109 fighters) and flying to the angels (clouds):

Gannic leader, this is Sapper. One hundred and fifty plus approaching Dungeness at angels twelve. Vector 120. Over.

Sapper, this is Gannic, message received and understood.

Gannic, bandits include many snappers (I say again, many snappers, keep a good lookout. Over.

Sapper, this is Gannic. OK, understood. I am steering 120 and climbing hard through angels seven. Over.

He dodges the flak, learns to out-manoeuvre the enemy, and shows no hesitation in going for the kill. To kill or be killed; to be killed or to fly away. In peacetime these young men would be what today we call ‘boy-racers’. Boy-racers annoy us in peacetime but become heroes in war-time, and they get medals.

We discussed the recruitment policy of the RAF at the time of the War. It seems Wellum was accepted following the revelation that he had captained his school cricket team, and we know he attended an independent school, suggesting he came from the ruling classes. In fact, in contrast to WWI, most pilots were middle-class. Later, Churchill observed the “failure” of Eton, Harrow, and Winchester schools to contribute pilots to the Royal Air Force1.  Less than 10% were from elite schools. Churchill said, “They left it to the lower middle class”. Of those “excellent sons” of the lower middle class, Churchill concluded, “They have saved this country; they have the right to rule it.”

What was it like to shoot down an enemy plane? The author says this to himself:

Geoff, you’ve just killed a bloke, a fellow fighter pilot…That was just about as callous and as calculating as you can get, just plain cold-blooded murder…It’s all bloody wrong somehow, that twentieth-century civilization should have been allowed to come to this.

We considered the morality of war. Ironically, when the same English coast was being defended in Elizabethan times there were Rules of Engagement. But not so in the twentieth-century. However, at the start of the War Hitler gave strict orders that civilians should not be targeted in bombing raids, but when the RAF bombed Berlin he was furious and changed his mind.

We were joined by one of our e-mail members, an ex-RAF man; he greatly assisted our discussion about the tactics of the protagonists and the strengths and weaknesses of their respective aircraft. On the central question of ‘how did Britain manage to win this battle?’, the answer seems to lie less with the speed and agility of the aircraft i.e. the Spitfire and the Hurricane versus the Messerschmitt Bf 109, and more on the fact that Luftwaffe aircraft (fighters and bombers) would run low on fuel and be forced to head home after ten or twenty minutes of engagement. There were also strategic errors on the German side: they should have realised the difficulty of flattening enough airfields to disable RAF operations, and they should have focused their bombing on eliminating Spitfire manufacture. Was German intelligence good enough? Maybe not; they seemed to have under-estimated the size and strength of their enemy.

By the summer of 1941 Hitler abandoned his plans to invade Britain; Wellum’s squadron participated in ‘sweeps’ over occupied France escorting Blenheim and Stirling bombers in an effort to take war to the enemy. That summer Wellum was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In September 1941 he is told he is ‘over the hill’ (although he’s just 20 years old); he is gutted. He was taken off duty from Squadron 92 and posted to a training squadron, flying Hurricanes. But there’s a final twist to his story: he resumed action to become a Flight Commander and in July 1942 he is sent to Glasgow for the top-secret Operation Pedestal – a convoy mission to carry supplies to the besieged garrison at Malta. He commands a flight of eight Spitfires operating from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious, sailing from the Clyde. This account occupies 30 pages of the 338-page book, but for some of us it was even more interesting than the Battle of Britain – it tells an incredible story we never knew, despite our recent family holidays in Malta.

We pondered the title First Light. Where does it come from, and what does it mean? Squadron 92 was often scrambled early in the morning, in the silent beauty of dawn, aka First Light, but with the fear and apprehension of flying eastward, blinded by the low sun and presenting the aircraft as easy targets for the oncoming Luftwaffe fighters.

The short Epilogue describes the physical and mental fatigue when it is all over. He is still a young man. He recovers and become a test pilot, remaining in the RAF until 1961. Civilian life may not have agreed with him, he suffered business failure and divorce. He settled down to become a deputy harbour-master in Cornwall; he lived to the age of 96 (he died in 2018).

1Ricks, T.E. 2017 Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom. Penguin.