No doubt, some other members of the Robertson clan, like my late dad but unlike me, take pride in their part in the history of the Black Watch and its many battle honours. I’ve since read too much about the regiment’s dark history ‘policing’ the English Empire, from India to Ireland.
Their base, Fort George, is to be sold by the MoD in 2031 and some locals want to find a new role for it.
BBC Scotland today has:
A fortress originally built to supress Highland clans and enforce rules preventing clansmen from wearing tartan could become a hub for production of Scotland’s famous cloth. Fort George was constructed after 1746’s Battle of Culloden, when Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Jacobite forces were defeated by a government army.
Clans loyal to Charlie were targeted with laws, including one banning the wearing of tartan in the form of Highland dress, which the government regarded as a Jacobite uniform. There are now calls for tartan weaving to be part of the 255-year-old fortress’ future once the Ministry of Defence moves out. Clare Campbell, of Evanton-based tartan design and weaving business Prickly Thistle, is among those campaigning for the property to be community-owned in the future.
I don’t agree. Three years ago when the closure of the fort was first mooted, I wrote:
Scotland’s ‘Fort Apache’ to close?
In the Times today:
Up to 1,700 soldiers could be axed in Scotland as the Ministry of Defence seeks to cut costs and create a leaner army to meet the demands of the cyber era. Three of Scotland’s seven garrisons face closure in cuts to be announced by the end of the year. Fort George near Inverness, home to the Black Watch, and the Glencorse and Redford barracks in Edinburgh were scheduled to close by 2032 but army chiefs want to speed up the plans. A regiment of Royal Engineers at Kinloss may relocate to England. The moves could see the number of regular soldiers based in Scotland being cut from 3,700 to 2,000.https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/three-scottish-barracks-may-shut-in-army-cyber-move-dfw5wg7c5
There are only 3 700 soldiers based in Scotland? Out of 82 230 full-time? 4.5% for more than 8% of the population?
The cyber era? To hack the Russians or to hack us?
Many readers will have read of the 77th Brigade of ‘Facebook warriors’ and their alleged interference in the 2014 Referendum: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/politician-claims-that-british-army-77th-brigade-are-attacking-scots-online/
However, it was the proposed closure of Fort George that caught my eye and reminded me that I had written five years ago about a threatened closure:
Images: caernarfon.com, undiscoveredscotland.co.uk, fortapachearizona.org
Here’s what the Aberdeen-based Press & Journal thinks:
‘Fort George closure would cost Highland economy millions of pounds. Plans to close the historic Fort George barracks could cost the Highland economy £14million a year and lead to the loss of more than 100 jobs, it has emerged.’
Further down, the PJ reports:
‘Built after the Battle of Culloden, the garrison has been the home of the famous 500-strong Black Watch battalion for almost a decade, and also houses the regimental museum for The Highlanders.’
The campaign to save the fort has full cross-party support including that of newly-appointed Depute-Leader of the SNP, Angus Robertson. Is he biased? Like some of my Robertson ancestors, some of his probably got jobs with the Black Watch helping to keep the other tribes down, on behalf of the German, House of Hanover, UK monarchy at the time…..and still today? And, his mother is German and he speaks German fluently. He needs to declare any interests on this one.
I’m going out on a limb here, I know, but why don’t we think differently about this and similar historical sites? You could see them as places best forgotten rather than preserved. I began to think this way during a visit to North Wales with it’s impossible-to-ignore string of massive Norman castles. They are big ugly and physically dominating things just at face value but if you think what they were for, it’s much worse. These 12th Century monstrosities were built to dominate the Welsh, to remind them of their inferior status and were places of torture and imprisonment. It’s important to remember too that they were part of a wider domination of the Anglo-Saxons/English by a brutal French-speaking warrior elite just at the beginning of their imperial expansion.
More than four hundred years later, that imperial project had just finished off the last element of resistance in mainland Britain, the tribes of the Scottish Highlands. After victory by an imperial army at Culloden in 1746, the clans were ‘pacified’. This brutal process of punishment, humiliation and killing is today well-known. As with the Welsh, centuries before, Celtic cultural expression was banned and a chain of great forts was built to maintain control of the ‘tribes’. They are still with us today as Fort William, Fort Augustus and Fort George. Going further in the humiliation for the local population than was the case in Wales, they take the names of British aristocrats and have become the place-names of the settlements they stand in.
Less than two centuries later, a more fully genocidal project but with its roots still in Anglo-Norman imperialism was to put down many more forts across the lands of the aboriginal tribes of North America. Fort Apache is the best known but there are many more.
Is Fort George just our Fort Apache? Would the descendants of the Apache like to pay taxes for its preservation, I wonder?
Back to today, have I changed my views? Nope. Knock it down and recycle the stone.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
My thoughts exactly Prof JR. As I was thinking the other day in Kilchuimen by Loch Ness….
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Thanks
Most folk I know want to keep it and educate with it suggesting I’m immature -***!!!!
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I think there are two (maybe more) things which have to be separated in this discussion.
Firstly, as you have summarised well, there is its brutal suppressive history and it’s impact not just on Gaels and Highlanders but on the whole of Scotland, which continue, to a lesser extent into the present. My Gaelic speaking mother, as a child, suffered from the active suppression of Gaelic as a child in school.
Secondly, the fort derives from a period when the concepts of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were subsumed, to varying degrees, in a concept of GREAT BRITAIN. The imposition of this concept had a lethal impact on many in the Celtic nations and also on other native people’s across the globe.
I think these matters need to be developed by the process of ‘contientization’ as set out by the Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire. People have to be engaged to reflect upon what their condition is and why it is as it is. It is this which will pull apart the myth of ‘Britishness’, separate the concept of England from the concept of Britain and allow the people of England to explore what England is and what it is to be English. We in Scotland, Ireland and Wales have always had an idea of our countries and what it is to be people who live there and this idea is different from Britain and Britishness. We are also aware of that difference, even though some in the Celtic nations cleave to this idea of Britishness and feel somewhat ashamed of their other, day to day, historic, cultural, lived identity.
Personally, I prefer to keep old buildings, not just as part of history, but also to repurpose them for a new narrative. Black people, gay people and other oppressed groups use the strategy of ‘owning’ disparaging terms which are applied to them by oppressive groups. By ‘owning’ them and expressing pride in them, they turn the insult into something they can use to express solidarity.
In Nuremberg, near the site of Hitler’s rallies, the Germans have repurposed a building to house a history of the warts and all Nazi era. The building from the outside looks dilapidated, and this is emphasised by a giant arrow which pierces the building diagonally from top to bottom. It makes a powerful statement.
Repurposing Fort George and including a factory producing tartans and other Scottish dress would be an example of ‘owning’ and repurposing a symbol and instrument of oppression.
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Intelligent and mature but not for me. The brutality requires cleansing
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So, I share your disgust at the horrible history of these places and I have zero respect for them as institutions.
However, the buildings are sturdy, demolition is expensive and there is no doubt that closure will have a detrimental effect on the local community.
Why not have the buildings converted into something that will make good use of the structure and feed into the local community.
It could make some wonderful social rent homes at the centre of an attractive “new” town if shopping, entertainment and transport links were made available.
Or, why not a craft hub? Aye tartan and tweed weaving, woodworking, pottery, horn crafts, cheesemaking etc.
Or . . . it could be treated with total disrespect for it’s inglorious past by turning it into a tourist resort with fun fair, restaurant, pub, cafe, cinema, with adventure courses, walks and cycling tracks around.
Loads of ways to use it while not respecting it’s past. I’m not seriously suggesting painting it purple and adding a neon sign saying, “AugustusMacAugustusFace Funland” but you get the gist.
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Here’s an idea – render it into fist sized rocks and use them to beat every single one of the pig bastard foreign enemy state soldier scum deployed in Scotland to death. Feed their corpses to dogs then dump the resultant dog shit on the border on a large union flag to be pissed on by passers by.
Alternatively, get the UN in to remove them by force. Preferably German French and Irish troops that we can actively support.
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Given the lack of public conveniences these days, I would hope that some of the stone could be remodelled into for use in new public urinals.
No better way to toast King George after a few pints of Belhaven*
*Other swally is available
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Fort George is a liability, not an asset as it is in danger from erosion and will cost a fortune to maintain until the rising sea eventually claims the land.
It aspears to be a sensible idea to reclaim the natural assets that are in the structure of the building for use elsewhere.
The wood is well seasoned, possibly quite valuable and the stone has already been quarried, cut and finished as manageable sized building blocks.
As the fort has always been UK Government property much of the wood and stone could possibly be utilised at no cost in the complete refurbishment of the Westminster Parliament buildings.
Remember that the cost of raising the northern approach roads to the height of the Queensferry Crossing deck was significantly reduced by routing them through a small hill, using the rock taken off the summit along with shale from the bings in nearby West Lothian to fill the huge gap.
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👏🏻👍
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