Defensive Position: What will be Nicola Sturgeon’s equivalent of Robert the Bruce’s shiltrons when proud King Boris sends his army north against a people determined to “be a nation again”? For this is the twenty-first, not the fourteenth century. Courage and a 12-foot spear might be enough to turn aside an English warhorse, but what does Scotland’s SNP Government have to turn aside an English tank?
I WAS WATCHING Neil Oliver’s “Rise of the Clans” last night
on the History Channel. It’s a quirky production. Lots of re-enactments and
even more burly Scots hurling themselves at one another, axes and broadswords
flashing in the thin Highland sunshine. The directorial decision that I found
most interesting, however, was to make Oliver himself a witness to the drama –
as if he had just stepped out of a time-machine. This is Scottish history as
seen, quite literally, through Oliver’s eyes.
The story begins with Bannockburn, the battle that Scottish
football crowds recall whenever they sing “Flower of Scotland” and boast of
their forefathers’ success against “Proud Edward’s army” and how King Robert
the Bruce and his peasant soldiers “sent him homeward – tae think again”.
As a trained historian, Oliver was at some pains to explain
how it was that Bruce’s much smaller force was able to defeat the heavily
armoured English knights.
The answer was William “Braveheart” Wallace’s military
innovation – the Shiltron. Wallace had equipped his peasant soldiers with
12-foot spears and taught them how to deploy them against English cavalry.
Contrary to what you may have seen in Sir Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings”,
horses are not given to suicidal gestures. Set a barrier of sharp spearpoints
in front of them and they will rear-up and shy away.
Even so, not a little courage is required to make the
Shiltron formation work. A charging “destrier”, sixteen hands high and galloping
‘full-tilt’ at 30mph, is not something most people – even holding a 12-foot
spear – are able to confront without cutting-and-running. But such was the
Scots’ faith in “The Bruce”, that on the road to Stirling Castle they stood
firm and turned aside the English charge.
But Bruce did more than repeat the tactics of Braveheart, he
taught his men how to manoeuvre on the battlefield. The Shiltron, to use the
modern military jargon, evolved from being a “static” formation, into a
“kinetic” weapon. The Scots ability to manoeuvre en masse destroyed
“Proud Edward’s” invasion force. Their retreat blocked by the steep-sided river
– the Bannock “burn” – and hemmed-in by the advancing Shiltrons’ bristling
spears, the superior numbers of the English army availed them nothing. Bruce’s
own Shiltron’s decisive charge put the English to panic-stricken flight. Thousands
were either cut down or drowned.
Stirring stuff! But what, I wondered, will be Nicola
Sturgeon’s equivalent of Robert the Bruce’s shiltrons when proud King Boris
sends his army north against a people determined to “be a nation again”? For
this is the twenty-first, not the fourteenth century. Courage and a 12-foot
spear might be enough to turn aside an English warhorse, but what does
Scotland’s SNP Government have to turn aside an English tank?
Well, Sturgeon and her government have their own, very
special, kind of shiltron – millions strong – and with more than enough courage
to face down an England ill-disposed to countenance the break-up of the
“United” Kingdom. A Scotland which has voted, democratically and peacefully,
for its independence has us – the Scottish diaspora. We are her
shiltron.
King Boris should understand that there are millions more
people of Scottish descent living outside Scotland’s borders, than there are
living north of the River Tweed. If he doubts the power of the Celtic diaspora
he should, perhaps, have a word or two with Tony Blair.
Without the backing of Bill Clinton, and the millions of
Irish-Americans at his back, the Good Friday Agreement would never have held
firm. President Trump, similarly, owes too much to the support of those
hard-bitten descendants of the Scottish borderers who settled the South and
West to stand idly by and let English triumphalism crush the pride of four
million defenceless Scots.
Fanciful nonsense? It won’t come to anything remotely
resembling the doomsday scenario painted above? I imagine there were many
Catalonians who were similarly dismissive of the idea that the Spanish State
would violently suppress their independence movement and imprison its leaders.
And yet, that is exactly what the Spanish Government did.
Catalonia, moreover, could not point to the arrogant
over-ruling of its own people’s clear, democratic, and twice-expressed
preference to remain a part of the EU.
Proud Boris should keep England’s army south of the Tweed –
lest, from Nova Scotia to Dunedin, the indignant clans of the Scottish diaspora,
give him cause “tae think again”.
This essay was originally published in The Otago
Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 December 2019.
