Paul Basu - Narratives in a Landscape - Part Two

THE MONUMENTS OF CRUELTY

Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn…
Thy hospitable roofs no more
Invite the stranger to the door;
In smoky ruins sunk they lie,
The monuments of cruelty.
(Smollett, The Tears of Scotland)

A monument insists that its meaning is worthy of remembrance (Gass 1982: 133).

As Young demonstrates in The Texture of Memory (1993) different places of memory evoke different kinds of memory. Riegl explores a similar theme in his classic essay, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” written in 1903 as preface to a legislative proposal for the protection of historic monuments within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Riegl develops a typology of monuments expressing a range of different values. In its original sense, Riegl suggests, a monument is a “human creation, erected for the specific purpose of keeping single human deeds or events (or a combination thereof) alive in the minds of future generations” (1982: 21). Such monuments may be described as being “intentional” and may be either figurative or inscriptive or both.

Riegl’s essay is, however, more concerned with “unintentional” monuments. Unintentional monuments, like their intentional counterparts, have commemorative value, but “it is not their original purpose and significance that turn these works into monuments, but rather our modern perception of them” (23). Because unintentional monuments are not constrained by any notion of original purpose, they form a much more fluid category. For instance, intentional monuments may become unintentional monuments because their original purpose may be lost, but an unintentional monument, according to Riegl, cannot become an intentional one. I question this latter point since an unintentional monument can be appropriated by a particular viewpoint and ‘constructed’—(re)made— in much the same way as an intentional monument. For the moment, however, I stick to Riegl’s definitions:

INTENTIONAL MONUMENTS: “The Wee Mannie…”

…most monuments lie (Gass 1982: 140).

Perhaps the most notorious intentional monument to be associated with the Clearance story, is the statue of the 1st Duke of Sutherland which stands on the summit of Beinn a’ Bhragaidh overlooking Golspie, Sutherland. The statue fulfils Riegl’s definition in that it was erected at the suggestion of James Loch, the Sutherland Estate Manager, to preserve the memory of the Duke who died in 1833. The monument, completed in 1838, was financed by “public subscription,” the sum of £1,400 16s 8d being raised by a total of 2,229 subscribers. As Withers notes, it is a matter of “awful irony” (1996: 330), that many of those who made donations were the same tenants who were evicted in the Duke’s programme of ‘improvement’. It is widely held that such tenants felt compelled to contribute for fear of further eviction if they did not (Gibson 1996b: 3). One of my informants told me that he feels “a certain pride” in the fact that his ancestors’ names are missing from the list of subscribers to the statue.

The symbol has swallowed up the man

Although the statue has been the subject of many “demolition rumours” throughout its life (Gibson 1996a: 13), since 1994 a well-organised body of activists—the Book of Ben Bhraggie Steering Group—has led a serious campaign for its destruction. Publicity surrounding this bid to ‘topple the Duke’ has provoked much comment in the local and national press, reinvigorating the memory of the Clearances and demonstrating dramatically how the meaning of a monument may change over time. With the iconoclasm that accompanied the disintegration of the Soviet bloc still fresh in the public mind, Neal Ascherson wrote in the Independent on Sunday that he would “Blow up the Duke of Sutherland, but leave his limbs among the heather…”

I would blow him up, not just as a statement about the Clearances but as a gesture about ‘Heritage’, for the Duke’s removal is a reminder that Heritage, after all, is not just a dry schedule of monuments. It is a ceaseless rolling judgement by a people on its past (quoted in Gibson 1996b: 16).

Mumford asserts that the very idea of the monument is an archaism bound—in its intentional form at least—to an illusion of permanence and continuity. His scathing comments seem especially appropriate in the context of the Clearances:

They write their boasts upon tombstones; they incorporate their deeds in obelisks; they place their hopes of remembrance in solid stones joined to other solid stones, dedicated to their subjects or their heirs forever, forgetful of the fact that stones that are deserted by the living are even more helpless than life that remains unprotected and preserved by stones (quoted in Young 1993: 5).

Discussing Riegl, Forster observes that the intentional monument, “is exposed to a kind of historic double jeopardy: memory is all that sustains its meaning but its physical form will have to survive the vagaries of changing perceptions and values” (1982: 6-7). In other words we could say that a monument, by virtue of its enduring materiality, may outlive the intentions of its makers: the intentional monument to one memory becomes an unintentional monument to another. Thus, instead of commemorating the deeds of a philanthropic agricultural improver, the Duke of Sutherland statue on Beinn a’ Bhragaidh now symbolises, for many, the injustices and crimes of unchecked landlordism and all the evils associated with the Clearances.

Whether the statue should stay or go is another matter. One of my informants explained why she thought the statue should be left standing:

“I feel the Duke’s statue should be left because the Clearances will be forgotten all over again unless that irritation is left there on Ben Bhraggie. I don’t think it should be pulled down at all. It’s a continued memory of man’s inhumanity to man.”

It is wrong even to assume there is a consensus of opinion contra the original meaning of the statue. In Withers words, the issue demonstrates “the conflicting purposes in the present to which commemoration of the past may be put” (1996: 332). Local people, in particular, see the whole debate as an unwelcome intrusion by outsiders—particularly publicity-seeking SNP members—on their local business. For many people of Golspie the statue is a benign landmark fondly referred to as ‘The Wee Mannie on Ben Bhraggie’. Gibson—one of the protagonists of the Steering Group—quotes a letter from a “self-proclaimed ‘Sutherland-lad’”:

…we feel we are HOME when Ben Bhraggie comes into sight…forget Gibson and Lindsay and other outsiders or nationalists. These people are not interested in the people of Golspie, Sutherland or Scotland. They seek personal gain/power and position for themselves at all costs, any platform to gain media attention (1996b: 21).

The Chairman the Divisional Planning Committee of the Golspie Community Council stated that

The statue is one of our best tourist attractions and we would be extremely upset to see it removed. The committee agree unanimously that it should be left alone. Removing the statue will not change history. The Clearances were cruel and tragic, but Sutherland was not the only place where they occurred. We feel that the money which would be used to remove the statue could be put to better use (quoted in Gibson 1996b: 23).

Having been refused planning permission, it is unlikely that the statue will be removed. Such a conclusion was perhaps inevitable. But it could be said that the campaigners have succeeded in achieving at least one of their aims: that of renewing the controversy of the Clearances. “This planning application has roused dormant passions which see atonement for the Highland Clearances to be unfinished business,” writes Gibson (1996b: 52).
When I asked Gibson whether the matter was now closed, the answer was a clear ‘no’. They are now campaigning for a “proper interpretation” of the statue, and there are plans for a new monument and visitor centre in Helmsdale dedicated to the Clearances which “wouldn’t rival in size, but would rival in concept that glorification of freemarket landlordism” which is the ‘Wee Mannie on Ben Bhraggie’.

“It’s a highly political and emotive issue, and I think it’s something that has to be resolved in people’s psychology, not something that can possibly be allowed to continue. You know, to live in Golspie is to live a lie because most people do not accept the vast impact it’s had [i.e. the Clearances], or, if they do, they want to forget it, and that isn’t a way to actually resolve problems, because the East of Sutherland isn’t exactly booming, it’s not the most healthy of communities” (Gibson pers. comm.).

But not all are convinced even about the new monument. One informant told me that she wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to be a monument to the Clearances, or a monument to Dennis Macleod, a millionaire who is putting forward a considerable sum towards its construction. Though notions of a £1-million memorial have now been quashed in favour of a more modest project, the sentiment expressed in one of the local papers has much sympathy:

If erecting a massive stone and metal structure is the best way of spending £1-million… a memorial on a much smaller, and cheaper scale, by all means, but spend the rest of the money on projects which will help the people currently living in the Highlands, where hundreds of ruined cottages are the most powerful memorial to the clearances of all (quoted in Gibson 1996b: 26 emphasis added).

It is to these “ruined cottages” I now turn.