A proud military tradition

Published on Monday 14 February 2005 12:10

ALL NATIONS have symbols of their identity but few have such a rich collection as Scotland. Tartan, bagpipes, Highland dress, the thistle, the Saltire - all are instantly recognisable the world over as standing for Scotland.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that for the past 400 years Scotland, the state, has lived, with reasonable happiness, within the body of something larger - Great Britain and the Empire. It might have been expected that the Scots, as relative newcomers making the most of the opportunities brought by this arrangement, would have been more interested in expressing their commitment to the idea of Britain and the Empire and less in stressing their differences.

Yet apart from a few unsteady steps in the early decades after the Union of 1707, when the nation tried unconvincingly to pass itself off as "North Britain", a sense of Scotland has prevailed. The key to achieving this has been to balance a distinct - but adaptable - national identity with full participation in an enormously profitable and succesful imperial state. The service of Scottish soldiers has been a central part of this achievement and it is no accident that it is many of their symbols which have now come to stand for Scotland.

Of course there had been Scottish soldiers long before 1707, serving across Europe in virtually any army that would have them. Too many people at home and not enough of anything to go around were the main causes, but Scotland’s interminable instability and division also helped, not only to send Scots on their way but also to have given them a grounding in war. The recruitment of Scots, both Lowland and Highland, into a British army was therefore just a new verse to an old song.

By the early 1800s, the success of Scottish regiments on the battlefields of the Empire provided inspiration for a nation now enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity, and the political stability which followed. Scots were also looking to express their achievements, not as interlopers on someone else’s success but as respectable, if junior, partners. In the Scottish soldier, and in the Highlander in particular, Scots not only found a token of their commitment and contribution to Britain and the Empire, they also discovered a symbol of their own national unity.

Even if Scotland's new found prosperity failed to solve (or failed to be used to solve) problems of over-population, it was no accident that emigrants to Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand took the idea of the Scottish soldier with them, not as a skill to be sold as before but as an identity to unpack in defence of their new homes and the empire they felt part of. When the call came in 1914 and again in 1939, they went as Canadian Scots or New Zealand Scots - the older half of a split identity contributing to the forging of a new, younger one. To this day, the Scottish military image continues in these countries long after the bonds of empire have fallen.

Resource

Here are a look at some of Scotland's colourful military traditions

On the web

National War Museum of Scotland

In Scotland itself the world wars reinforced the military tradition through mass involvement. Even in peacetime, Scotland continued to provide a disproportionately high number of soldiers compared to the rest of the UK. It was therefore to be expected that the decline in Britain’s world role and the reduction in her army would affect Scotland particularly badly. The mass campaigns to save regiments in the 1960s, and to a lesser extent in the early 1990s, are a clear indication of a deep-rooted popular attachment to the idea of the Scottish soldier.

Now that the Scottish regiments are once again under threat of amalgamation, the same support has been called up. Much of the justification for these reorganisations is based on a dwindling number of recruits for which many explanations have been put forward. Yet the implied conclusion is that Scotland has been "punching above its weight" in terms of its military establishment and that this is a situation that now cannot be sustained.

Although decisions about a new single Scottish regiment have been made in government, it remains to be seen if the strength of Scottish public support can modify or reverse them. Yet the existence of this support and its potential translation into electoral votes are as good an indication as any of the continued existence of a Scottish military tradition.

Allan Carswell is Principal Curator of Military History for the National Museums of Scotland. The Thin Red Line - War, Empire and Visions of Scotland by Stuart Allan and Allan Carswell is published by the National Museums of Scotland