William Wallace; a name that conjures
up emotion in the heart of any Scot.
The monument to this Scottish patriot
towers like the giant he was
over the site of his greatest
triumph at Stirling Bridge
after which he had the
English Governor Cressingham flayed and his skin used as a scabbard.
But what if I said this is actually a monument to the British Empire and
glory of the Anglo Scottish Union.
If you re interested in the people
places and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe button at
the bottom right of the screen.
In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
We live in a time where internet spin and
propaganda has people believing red is green.
At the very least the waters are
muddied enough that people can confidently believe what they want to believe.
By the time I m finished you re going to see that William Wallace isn t a Scottish hero,
but a shining star of the British Empire.
If you think that s an uphill struggle,
you ll need to come with me to find out.
Let s get pedantic for a minute.
You see we might drive past this place
and lazily call it The Wallace Monument,
but it s more correctly called
The National Wallace Monument
unlike the statues and monuments to Wallace across
the country this one represents the nation.
The Statue of Liberty in New York,
The Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin
You see people at a football world cup carrying or wearing the things that identify their nation.
Americans dressed as Liberty, English as crusading knights, French as Asterix or Obelix,
Canadian Mounties, Greeks in Togas, Italians as Roman Legionaries.
When this monument was built, it was built to hold and represent
the hopes, dreams, values and characteristics of a nation
framed in the character and name of one man.
So who decided what characteristics and
values the Wallace Monument would represent?
Who was the driver behind it?
The idea of a Wallace monument had been around for a while,
but in the early 1850s
national pride and enthusiasm for a monument
to William Wallace on the Abbey Craig
was taken up by one Rev. Charles Rogers.
He was an energetic town councillor and Stirling Castle Chaplin who d raised funds
for other monuments in the past
and was the impetus behind the 1851 formation
of the National Wallace Monument committee.
Now Rev Rodgers wasn t a nationalist, certainly
not in any sense that we d recognise.
Polite Victorian society would never
endure the idea of Scottish political nationalism.
The Empire sir!
Like Walter Scott before them, you might
have a love for things culturally Scottish,
but the idea that there should be a political
element to national sentiment outwith the Union
no, no, no, no, no.
The fund raising and management committee had to be very careful not to give the impression
of promoting Scotland in its own right.
After all Rodgers had agents in Birmingham,
Manchester, Liverpool and London.
A monument to a Scottish hero that focused on
his triumph, even temporarily, over the English
would send all the wrong signals.
In fact, The Times of London thundered that
Wallace was little more than a myth and the idea
of a monument was provincial petty exclusionism.
No, the message would be of
a William Wallace who stood for ideals that transcended national boundaries
a William Wallace of whom
Scots could be so proud
that there d be no question
of political independence
We needed a national statue to celebrate
what William Wallace did for the Union.
One 1856 magazine article said that
Wallace s value to English liberty
was equal to his efforts
for Scottish independence .
Wallace was a unionist hero, nay a
champion of the British Empire
At Stirling Bridge William Wallace
fought for Union and The Empire.
He just didn t have the foresight to realise it.
At the ceremony laying the foundation stone, the
huge crowd was reminded that if it hadn t been for Wallace s victory at Stirling Bridge
Scotland would never have brought an independent nation to the table to
forge a union of equal nations,
creating an Empire to the glory of
God and the benefit of the world.
If you think Mel Gibson played fast
and loose with Scotland s history .
But hold on
Rodgers and his ilk weren t the only people on the committee.
Let me tell you about William Burns;
solicitor, historian, influential Glaswegian and
rabid radical nationalist leader in the NAVSR .
The NAVSR was a catchy Victorian
title, but to be honest
the National Association for the
Vindication of Scottish Rights weren t really that radical.
They were nowhere near SNP
although it might be ignoring them was
what eventually led to led to the SNP.
Their complaint was that, based on
population and value to the exchequer
Scotland was underrepresented at Westminster.
The larger partner in the union permanently outvoted the smaller neighbour who
was inevitably disadvantaged.
What they wanted was an increase
in Scottish MPs at Westminster that would reflect Scotland s population share
That s right, they wanted EVEN MORE Westminster
but that was still SEEN as radical,
dangerous and anti-English
So the radical firebrand NAVSR
members of the committee
had to give assurances that they wouldn t
hijack the monument for their own ends
which seems ironic,
since by definition every monument is for some cause s ends
Throughout Scottish history there have
been a succession of minority monarchies;
James IJames II, James III, James IV, James V,
his daughter Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI
were all minors when they came to the throne.
Generation after generation, those with
an eye for a chance fought to be regent
because who controlled the
king, controlled Scotland.
In the nineteenth century constitutional debate
whoever controlled the National Wallace Monument
would control how Scotland saw itself.
Imposing the meaning of the monument to Scotland s patriotic hero seemed
like a prize worth fighting over.
The struggle for the committee s future
would be to decide who owned the past
William Burns and Charles Rogers
were continually at odds.
I mean bitter, bitter rivals.
So who would be the winner?
At one key point, with Burns in the ascendency,
a design for the monument was adopted.
Artist J. Noel Paton s Lion and Typhon
Typhon was a grotesque giant man serpent monster thing
and one of the deadliest creatures from Greek mythology.
The plan was to make a huge structure of a lion with a broken chain overthrowing this creature
the symbolism, of course, being the Scottish lion breaking the chains of tyranny
Well, the establishment had to order in extra quantities of super soft
loo roll they shat themselves that hard.
Fortunately a subsequent committee
meeting was held and in June 1859 Lion and Typhon was rejected.
Oooft, that was a close one.
Paton s design was dropped and
new designs were called for.
The winner was the Scottish baronial tower
that stands on that rocky crag today.
It would be perfect
a rocky crag surmounted by roughhewn tower and topped by an imperial crown
symbolising the power of the British empire.
Scottish history and heritage crowned with
the achievements of Union and Empire
in one harmonious whole.
Did you realise that The Wallace Monument
was a shining symbol of the British Empire?
The battle for the design of the monument
had been won, but the war wasn t over.
By the time the foundation stone was
eventually laid in 1861; Rodgers,
who d written 20000 letters in one
five-year period, had gained enough support from around the empire
for just half the funds needed to build the monument
Lack of inspirational leadership ?
or as Burns argued financial mismanagement?
Rodgers jumped or was pushed
from secretary and principal fundraiser
of the Wallace Monument Committee...
Who replaced him?
William Burns.
Some had suggested that the
very fact that NAVSR members like Burns were involved in the Committee
was the reason that fund
raising had been a problem.
Whether Burns s extremist nationalist
views or Rodger s creative accounting had slowed down the project,
under William Burns s chairmanship
fund raising, and construction went on
successfully and Rodgers set up his own supplementary committee.
The National Wallace Monument was completed with Burns in the chair
almost twenty years after conception.
During construction the architect had died,
and the project had run well over budget
What Scotland really needed
was a parliament building?
The inauguration ceremony in 1869
might have seemed like a finish line,
but it was really only the
passing on of the baton.
Rodgers had won the design, Burns had
overtaken him to bring the project home
but there was another hurdle to come
In 1886 they opened the Hall of Heroes,
with busts of other great heroes of
Scotland, starting with Robert Burns.
WILLIAM Burns had run his race.
His finish line had passed ten years earlier and Rodgers and his unionist nationalists
were once more in the ascendency.
In 1896 they held a celebration
here to commemorate
the 600 year anniversary of Wallace
s victory over the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge below.
Forty years after The Times had decried a Wallace monument as petty provincialism.
It now celebrated the deep and lasting impression that Wallace had made upon the Empire
The Telegraph said that Englishmen and Scotsmen should join together in celebrating the
shared advantages and yeoman service
that the national independence of Scotland had
brought to the Union and the British Empire,
So Rodgers had won
and The Natoinal Wallace Monument stood as a symbol and celebration
of the British union and empire.
Is that how you see it today?
Let me know in the comments section.
Has poll position in the race changed since 1896.
Will it change again?
Unlike with the tortoise
and the hare in this race,
as long as the monument stands
the finish line is never reached.
You see monuments don t occupy a date
or point in time, but a continuum
and they don t represent the designer s
intentions, but the viewers interpretation
As we enter the National Wallace Monument we see
Rodgers on one side and Burns on the other.
They may have seen two opposing sides of a debate
with regard to Scotland s heart and soul.
You might see it that way too.
In fact there are richer and deeper choices still,
as we ll see in the hall of heroes.
From outset it was decided that Wallace wasn
t to be the only hero celebrated here.
Maybe to soften the idea of any nationalist
sentiment focusing on Wallace there was to be a whole hall of heroes .
Starting with Robert Burns
Then Robert Bruce, John Knox, James
Watt, Robert Tannahill, Thomas Carlyle,
David Livingstone, Allan Ramsay, Sir Walter
Scott, Adam Smith, William Ewart Gladstone
and more
but how are THEY seen today?
Are these white male bastions of
Victorian Scotland representative, or even recognised
as today s heroes...
or do we have a richer or
poorer range of choices?
It s not a point I m making,
but a question I pose
and an observation that our idea of heroes,
like national identity isn t static.
Since the first time I came here years
ago, female heroes have been added
Does the addition of missionary Mary
Slessor and Maggie Keswick Jencks, co-founder of the Maggie s Centres
make this national monument more representative of who we are today ?
Who chooses?
How often should they be augmented or replaced?
Where are the heroes of Red Clydesyde?
Is it the people in this room who have formed us
and what are the heroes inside us doing to frame the image and values of Scotland going forward
as we pass on the baton to our children?
I made this video to ask
questions and to prompt thought.
With a hero like Wallace there s always
going to be feeling as well as thought.
Personally, I can t understand the mental
gymnastics that allowed folk to frame Wallace as a hero of British empire, rather
than Scottish independence.
Maybe the challenge for me is to at
least understand the people who do.
You see without the support
of differing points of view this monument would never have been built,
and I for one am glad it was.
Because whatever you think William
Wallace and his monument represents
The legacy he left us is Scotland
If you want to know more about the people who preserved Scotland
then there s a video coming up on screen now
In the meantime
