It's the 3oth June. I've always waited to play
the bagpipes. Never-mind, I can wear the kilt. But I wouldn't have be able to
on this day in 1782. You see if we were living in 1782 then tomorrow is
the day they repeal the Proscription Act. That means that tomorrow you can wear a
kilt, but today is against the law. I did a survey of my group on Facebook and
almost all of them said that for a formal do they'd wear a kilt rather
than a dinner suit. I'd be interested to know if that's any different for the
YouTube Watchers. If you go to a posh night oot are you wearing a dinner suit or a kilt. Answers in the YouTube comment section below.
Now the point is that two hundred thirty years ago today the punishment would
have been six months in prison for wearing a kilt. ...for a first offence,
Transportation and indentured servitude for the further offences. To convict it
just needed one credible witness to say that they'd seen you wearing higland
dress and boom! Corroboration? No. Imagine that. Somebody that the crown sees as
credible says that they saw you with a kilt on, twice, and you're off to a penal
colony. It seems crazy doesn't it? That it'd be against the law to wear your own
national dress. Imagine if they stopped you playing the
bagpipes. That would be even more mental! What? I want a gun. So let's summarise and
grossly oversimplifying in thirty seconds. Anti-catholic politicians
overthrew the English government in 1688 (details are in my video Birth of James VIII. This spilled over into Scotland and Ireland.
Some people fought to bring back the original 'rightful' King (Jacobites) A lot
of people died in Ireland and Scotland. Scotland talked about having their own
King back, so they were swallowed up by England. That made some Scots want the
original king even more a big counter-revolution was put down in 1715 and
Highlanders lost the right to carry arms. Thirty years later it all happened again.
but worse. So the British state wanted to make sure as well as arms they took away
Highlanders culture, language, freedoms and social structure. 35 seconds but I
needed the extra five seconds to fit in bitterness. Now some of you will be even
more embittered by the time I'm finished, trust me on that one. Look ultimately
every regime imposes itself by force, and we can bang on about democracy, but
in the end of the day the state imposes its will with the ultimate threat of
violence. For that to work, the regime has to have the weapons. There's no good trying to
impose parental discipline if your son does kickboxing and your daughter's got
a flick-knife ...and they're both demanding a paternity suit. In 17th century Britain
there was part of the population that had never accepted the legitimacy of the
current regime, but the regime didn't tolerate dissent. The dissent appeared to
be coming from the Highlands, so the Highlands had to be crushed; but crushed
mercilessly, totally and utterly. That's why, after the Battle of Culloden
in 1746, they passed the Act of Proscription. Now there had been
a ban on weapons after the uprising in 1715, but this time it was going to have
to stick. You weren't allowed weapons before. You definitely aren't allowed them now. Now I
think most of us in the UK look at gun toting Americans and we think: 'They're so
nutty, no wonder the grey squirrels are massive.
And then you look at what happened to Highlanders when their weapons were taken away from them.
You think: 'Hmm maybe an AR-15 for squirrel hunting is not such a bad idea
after all.' Don't worry no red squirrels were harmed
in the making this video. Of course it wasn't just that they took away the
Highlanders weapons. I heard of a man being executed post Culloden for
using the weapon of war known as bagpipes. The deadly bagpipes. Imagine if
every month or so we heard on the news that some American have gone crazy and
rampaged through a shopping centre with a set of bagpipes. A SWAT team are on the
scene. Six people are deaf and several others have suffered burst eardrum
wounds. Police are investigating whether or not it was some kind of terrier incident. I'm
just saying the Americans wouldn't seem so crazy of bagpipes or a weapon of war.
So they didn't just stop at banning weapons. The kilt is banned too. In our parent
analogy earlier it's like saying to your daughter: 'Put down in a flick knife... and
by the way you're no' going oot dressed like that.
Now I don't want to be too frivolous, because the impact was brutal. OK, bear
with me for a bit. To say, not to a teenage girl, but to an
entire people: 'We're gonna strip you naked of all that represents you and
what you represent.' Each morning at school, children are forced to pray for
the king that their parents tell them as an imposter. Can you imagine what that
does kid? The Chinese might seem masters of indoctrinating poor Uigars in
re-education camps, but they stole that technology from us. So it's 30th June, and I'm wearing my kilt to make the point that 238 years ago today it was
against the law, and then on the first of July 1782 the London government
graciously gave us permission to wear kilts ...and so far that permission has
remained. But remember what London gives it can also take away. Seem ridiculous?
People come across the Atlantic and they wonder why Scots don't know about the
smash TV hit show Outlander, set in the Jacobite period. Well in 2014 a
referendum on Scottish independence came close to toppling the British
establishment, and that could never be allowed. All cultural
references have to be removed. Now in the run-up to the referendum Outlander was
banned by David Cameron, in case it gave Scots a sense of what the British state
is capable of. After, Scottish strawberrys start to become British strawberries, and
saltires were replaced by Union flags; making it taste just a little bit more
bitter. No more Scottish beef. I've even seen
whisky and haggis labelled as British rather than Scottish. Imagine Nicola
Sturgeon declares a second independence referendum giving the Scottish people the
right to express their opinion. An opinion the majority of Scots say they want to
express, but London overlords tell us is their right to grant. When Nicola
Sturgeon gives the people their democratic voice you can be sure that
Boris Johnson will not enact a new law that criminalises the kilt, Irn-Bru,
speaking with Scottish accent, and belief in the Loch Ness monster.
Anything that Scots take any kind of pride in will be banned in order to
protect the British state. How does that make you feel? I'll be honest. Some of the
stuff I just said isn't actually true. just wanted to see how it made you feel.
I'm hoping aroused emotional responses from both sides of the political debate.
And if you're not Scottish, or a Highlander and this all seems a bit
parochial; imagine how it would feel like if everything that gives you a sense of
cultural identity was taken from you.I'm just trying to give you just the tiniest
soupcon of a taste of what 1746 politics must have been like. Obviously from
the Hanoverian perspective: a bunch of hairy, maggot ridden, claymore wielding,
murdering, baby eating Highlanders... with an alternative view on the constitutional
arrangements... have crossed the border, threatened order... and they don't even
speak English! The regime controlling the British state had come close to being
overturned, so they banned Highland dress. In 2014 the Scottish
independence referrendou came close to doing the same, so they banned Scottish
strawberries. They are the most seditious of fruits. Scots are still
each other's through six years after a democratic referendum. Imagine six months
ago we'd been in a shooting war. The good good news is I'm not suggesting the British
state is uniquely evil. I'm saying people are. Would the Stuart monarchy have been much
different? I doubt it. They're not taking our
strawberries because we're Scottish.If Wales, the West Country or Cornwall was as
uppity as us Jocks, then they'd ban Welsh rarebit and Cornish Pasties too. If
the Chinese state thinks that Uigars or democracy in Hong Kong will
threaten the regime, they'll clamp down on them. Your body will produce antibodies to
protect itself from corona virus. Organisms act to protect themselves; and
when the organism feels safe (for example on the first of July 1782) then the
organism will let you wear a kilt again. By 1822 even the Hanoverian monarch, George IV was wearing a kilt on his visit to Scotland. That's when highland dress was
properly rehabilitated, because the threat was finally over... or was it? I said
by the end of this video you'd know whether I had anything on under the kilt. Now that's still to be revealed, so hold on just the second. Obviously I'd
love you to like and share this video. If you enjoy the videos that I create
then there's also a link in the description section below where you can
click and buy me a coffee, just to say thanks. Or you can support me on a
regular basis and help me to make more videos for you in the future. In the meantime Tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh Tiorridh an drasda
