I WAS somewhat amused by Gordon Barclay’s Agenda contribution (“Debunking more myths of Battle of Glasgow”, The Herald, April 20). As anyone with even a passing knowledge of history realises, history is written by the victors and as such can never be taken as factual and must be checked against original source material if possible. This is by no means a new phenomenon. The Picts were portrayed by the Romans as blue-painted savages yet evidence is coming to light that they actually had a sophisticated social structure. How long will it take to alter the text books which perpetuate this mythology?
As one who studied history both at school and university it was glaringly obvious that I was never taught a single fact about Scottish history and this was the Scottish education system. One has to draw the logical conclusion that after 1707 the Unionists and their supporters in Scotland, either consciously or subconsciously, adopted the role of victor and hence Scots history was either marginalised, ignored or altered to suit the current status quo.
We should not fool ourselves that this is a thing of the past. David Starkey, the media favourite historian, stated that Scotland had no worthwhile history prior to 1707 and that other media personality Neil Oliver attempted to rewrite the Highland Clearances as voluntary emigration. It was ever thus and still goes on.
David Stubley,
22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.
GORDON Barclay usefully debunks some myths around the “Battle of George Square” in 1919. On the other hand the reputation of our armed forces at the time meant that their relative proximity, which Mr Barclay confirms, was enough to put the fear of god into elements of the “labouring classes”.
Employment prospects in 1919 meant working-class families, through their relatives who were employed in the then armed forces, were fully conversant with the operational details that underpinned the central doctrinal tenet of our armed forces, imperial policing.
A few weeks after the mythical battle of George Square a brigade of the Indian army expended all of its small arms ammo to resolve a public order issue in Amritsar in the Punjab. A few short years after that the RAF, with the use of chemical ordnance and armoured cars in Iraq demonstrated, to the satisfaction of Winston Churchill, that it could do the imperial policing role and do it cheaply. As Churchill said: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.”
As a sometime teacher of history I share Dr Barclay’s wish that we “should be thinking more about writing evidence-based, nuanced history. I am also of the view, and I am confident that Dr Barclay shares it, that history has lessons for the present.
Our armed forces are of course no longer configured for an imperial policing role – rather the requirements of the constant expeditionary warfare role mode our forces have been in since 9/11 underpin current doctrine. Indeed the RAF, in its current manifestation, according to Sir Stephen Hillier its current head, is a very busy organisation. In recent interviews he pointed out that the current tempo of operations is at its highest since the Second World War. An interesting point when we bear in mind the scale and nature of current operations in the Middle East.
Bill Ramsay,
84 Albert Avenue, Glasgow.
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