Chris Hedges on America's Ruling Class and the November 2024 election

This 2 minute clip from Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, formerly of the New York Times, is pretty remarkable on the circus of the US election and the ruling class. "Our political class does not govern, it entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out".

If the Duke of Monmouth had succeeded in 1685, nobody today would know about William, Prince of Orange

Check this out. The authorities reported a sighting of James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, near Dublin in 1683, and wanted him to be apprehended. "they knew by his pretty black brows that it was the Duke of Monmouth, he had seen his pretty sweet face fourty times on the picture on horseback". The Duke and William were a similar age, they were first cousins, with the same grandfather, King Charles I. How history could have been different.

What was 'the picture on horseback'? Below is a 1675 painting of Monmouth, showing him during the 1673 Siege of Maastricht. From the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

The 1685 Monmouth Rebellion and the untold Ireland dimension

I was in Devon last weekend and went to Lyme Regis where, in June 1685, the ill-fated James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, rebellion began. I walked along Monmouth Beach, marvelling at the huge ammonite fossils that can be seen there at low tide.

Lyme Regis Museum has a small display about the story, including a wooden panel from the bed that Monmouth slept in (pic above).

In many ways Monmouth's attempt was the exact precursor to what his cousin, William Prince of Orange, would succeed with just over three years later in winter 1688. Monmouth was the bastard son of King Charles II, and was something of a megastar of his era, who believed that he should be the next King. However, the King's brother - James - got to the crown first. So Monmouth tried to oust him, and for a few days that June it looked like the plan just might work. 

During the rebellion, he planned to open a new front in Ireland - Monmouth sent two of his key men, Venner and Parsons, back to Holland to organise boatloads of arms to equip an invasion of Carrickfergus which were to be landed there by a John Waltere. The army forts at Cork, Kinsale, Limerick and Dublin were all ready to rise in mutiny. But it all failed. 

"... J. Tillier, in his examination, stated that Colonel Venner and Major Parsons ... were sent by Ferguson, Major Wade, Captain Tyley, and others, to Amsterdam, to buy arms and ammunition to send to England.

John Waltere, pilot to the Duke of Monmouth's ship, was to pilot those ships that were to carry the arms for Ireland, and to land near Carrickfergus, and there to take a castle. Waltere said there would be men to receive the arms. 

Some Cromwellian officers were to take the forts of Cork and Kinsale and the city of Limerick by treachery; and if his Majesty drew his forces from Scotland, they would rise in Cheshire; and if the King sent his forces to Ireland, London would rise. 

Mr. Hooke was sent for this purpose; and all the prisoners were to be set at liberty, and to assist in setting up a commonwealth. They looked to have all the arms and ammunition in the storehouse at Dublin. There was a plan about blowing up a magazine. John Cragg was to kill the King at Windsor, or at the Lord Mayor's show, and have for doing the deed 1000l. from Ferguson..."

After the rebellion failed, the unimaginable cruelties of King James II’s army in 1685 sent a clear message to continental Europe that James had to be deposed. Some of those cruelties were inflicted by renowned figures who would eventually defect to William of Orange, such as Percy Kirke:

"... But they were so called some time before Kirke's cruelties in the west. When Jeffreys opened his bloody commission at Taunton, this regiment composed his guards, and was cantoned on the piece of ground west of the castle, which has, ever since, been called Tangier, from the name of this regiment.

The colonel, one day, invited his officers to an entertainment, and, after dinner, commanded thirty men to be executed, by ten at a time, while the glass went round in three healths; one to the king, the second to the queen, and the third to judge Jeffreys, of whom news was just then received, that he was to try the rebels. When, in the last agonies of departing life, the feet of the dying were observed to shake, he would cry out, “They shall have music to their dancing" and commanded the trumpets to sound, and the drums to beat, surrounded by the soldiers, with colours flying." "This," observes bishop Burnet, "was both so illegal and inhuman, that it might have been expected that some notice would have been taken of it ;" whereas Kirke was only chid for it.

But the most shocking outrage against all decency, generosity, and humanity, with which, if it be true, the character of colonel Kirke is blackened, is his conduct to a beautiful young woman, whom he is said to have decoyed to his embraces, with the promise of sparing the life of a person, endeared to her by blood or affection, and to have conducted, in the morning, to see the person, for whom she had made the sacrifice of her virtue, hanging on the sign-post of the inn, where he had glutted his brutal lust. Shame, remorse, and distraction are said to have seized the unhappy, injured fair one, and she died within a few days…

… One writer says, that the young woman yielded herself to Kirke's desires, for the sake of her husband, another for her father, and a third for her brother; and though jealousy might have urged the execution of a husband, yet, in case the person were a father or a brother, it is not to be conceived what end his death would have answered: that it is incredible, that a man who could have committed such an inhuman action, such a wanton barbarity, could afterwards have been consulted with the Sidneys and the Cavendishes, on the plan for the revolution; or that the glorious William could have armed such a wretch in the cause of LIBERTY ..."

Even though a failure, the Duke of Monmouth provided a template to show King James’s son-in-law, William Prince of Orange, what he needed to do to succeed in 1688. William arrived three years later, just a few miles along the same coastline, with a similar flag, and a similar Declaration, and the same intent – but with the biggest Armada ever assembled.

As Tony Robinson says in the video below:

"... Such brutal retribution did little more than prove everyone's worst fears about the tyrant James II... Monmouth's mistake was to rebel to early. Instead, he laid the stage for the real winners of this whole saga, his cousins, William and Mary... the joint monarchs were crowned in 1689 and swiftly signed the Bill of Rights. The Glorious Revolution had occurred... enshrined the notion that never again could the monarch rule without the will of its people ... I believe that, above all, they followed the Duke because they wanted to see a Britain that was ruled by Parliament, not by an absolute monarch. And in that respect their legacy is very great indeed..."

• Lots more detail about Lyme Regis is online here. 

Liberty and Transparency

This story caught my notice recently, it's my own local Council, but it was the concept rather than the geography or even the specific issue that I found interesting. The Council - made up of elected representatives voted for by local people - made a decision which it (correctly) thought would be controversial, and so therefore it also took a policy position to not disclose which councillors had voted for it. Undoubtedly they were navigated through these waters by senior staff.

For a few days there was a minor media kerfuffle about it, but that seems to have fizzled out now.

However, Northern Ireland's obsession with politics makes us all think that politicians run the place, but they don't. Northern Ireland is mostly run by public sector 'officials', not unlike the colonial era British Raj which my father-in-law was born under in Lahore in 1942.

My (limited) experience of years interacting with the public sector here is that - when it deems it necessary - it specialises in anonymity, making decisions and issuing directions - but redacting and camouflaging the names of the individuals who did so. I have seen numerous examples of this.

Over the years, senior civil servants have openly told me how incapable they think most politicians here are. And no surprise – particularly at even a small local council like ours - the idea that 40 elected councillors (all of whom already have proper full time day jobs) can in their spare evenings somehow manage the labyrinthine policies and decisions and activities of say 900 full-time salaried staff is lunacy.

The local councillors that I know, and also those whose social media I follow, seem to spend most of their time as an interface between the public and 'the system' - roads, bins, environmental improvements, etc - a lot of the time expending their energies trying to get the people within 'the system' to do the jobs that they are already salaried to do. 

James Burnham wrote about The Managerial Revolution in 1941. This is our world. The politics is a sideshow.

PS: The German-American writer Hannah Arendt's superb definition of bureaucracy was "rule by nobody".

From Ulster to Yorkshire's Spen Valley - the Exodus of 1689

West Yorkshire isn't on the radar for our stories from 1689-90, but here are two, showing both Protestant civilians and also defeated Jacobite soldiers fleeing there.

"... The handful of Protestants in Ireland took the alarm, and every ship that came over was full of families who had fled for their lives, leaving all their possessions behind them.

When these fugitives landed at Liverpool and other ports they were often destitute, and had to get the customary passes from the authorities there, and with the aid of little sums given to them by the chief constables of every village through which they passed, gradually made their way to the places at which they had determined to settle.

Thus the entries in the towns’ books come thick and fast : “Paid to nine Protestants fleeing from Ireland, 2/6” “Paid to Irish Protestants travelling with a pass, 1/9” &c..."

.........................

"... This was a stirring time in our national history, and the year 1690 especially was one of mingled disaster and victory for King William. The struggle of the bigot James to regain the throne he had so ignobly deserted was not over, but William, by the crowning victory of the Boyne, had destroyed his power in Ireland where sympathisers had mustered in strong force, and we find after this date no more entries of frightened Protestants fleeing through this district for their lives. There are, however, passes for wounded soldiers and destitute seamen in plenty. Here is one that speaks volumes, “Paid for two men and a horse for William Dwyer, an old wounded soldier who had seen thirty years service to hurry him on a sled through Heckmondwike, 1/6.”"

- both extracts are from Spen Valley, Past and Present by Frank Peel (1893) 

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Interestingly, it seems that they were to be dissuaded from going to London:

"... The number of Protestants fleeing from Ireland to England was so great that the April 25–29, 1689, edition of the London Gazette included instructions to them not to try to make their way to the capital as it was already over-burdened with the influx of refugees: 

"These are to give Notice to all Poor distressed Irish Protestants who came lately from Ireland, and are at present in several remote parts of this Kingdom, That they keep their respective places of abode, unless other necessary Occasions draw them to London then [sic] the Charity of the Brief, seeing they may live much cheaper elsewhere, and many of them cannot find Employments fit for them in the City. The notice indicates that if they comply, “speedy care will be taken to send them Relief out of the Monies that shall be given by virtue of Their Majesties [charity] Brief granted for that purpose.”

 - source here.

1798 Rebellion and Community in the Ards Peninsula

I am deeply thankful to a transatlantic and distant relative - or as we say in Ulster-Scots, a far-oot-freen - who recently sent me typescripts of some family letters from ancestors we share, which are correspondences written between an emigrant who had gone to Philadelphia, and his family back home.

The letters date from 1797 (written to Ballygarvan and Nunsquarter near Kircubbin) and there's a further one dated 1821 (to Ballybally, which I suspect is a typo for Ballyboley, between Carrowdore and Greyabbey).

The 1797 letters give fascinating community context to the era before the 1798 Rebellion, and position the 'United Men' rather differently than the nationalistic way in which they have come to be presented.

We are usually shown them in the simplistic national duality of "British v Irish". However, these letters show them as being one of three elements within a complex community dynamic, made up of the Catholic agrarian "Defenders", Protestant agrarian "Peep O Day Boys" and then the "United" as a different strand altogether. For example:

"this country still continues the war against France contrary to the general wish of the people. There was a great talk of peace the while past but no, found to our cost it was too good news to be, the peepaday men and Defenders still continue at war in this country and are making great depradations the folly of these parties makes a union next to impossible" (letter, 23 April 1797)

"our rulers continue to oppress and lode us more and more and they are at present persecuting the peasable and well disposed for being united in the case of liberty" (letter, 24 April 1797)  

There is much to think about in the content of these letters, which are very much in line with the Canadian academic Donald Harman Akenson's enlightening book about the Islandmagee community entitled Between Two Revolutions. In it he takes a 'bottom up' community perspective to explain the seeming contradictions of how the Ulster-Scots acted in 1798 compared with 1916, rather than the usual 'top down' national perspective.

It was when reading Akenson (see post here) that the penny finally dropped with me that our era's binary fixation on nationality in Ireland is a dead end. In reading Between Two Revolutions, community, and community liberty, emerged as a more fluid and vivid way to think.

However, our ongoing political context in Northern Ireland, and 'hybrid non-linear warfare', remains focussed upon concepts of nationality; every issue ends up there, by design. 

Or, as the old adage says, when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

• High profile 'conversations' like this about a hypothetical future Ireland are a cosmetic distraction when almost the entire political establishment of the Republic of Ireland is already gaslighting its own population and seeking to diminish its liberty. Thankfully the population defied them at the ballot box (Guardian report here).

• Gravestone below of Alexander Byers of Greyabbey who was killed at Battle of Ballynahinch in June 1798.

Self-identifying as an Ulster American President

The American Presidency is seldom out of the news, but in recent weeks it's been relentless. The forthcoming election, the assassination attempt on Trump, the Biden withdrawal, the introduction of Harris and also the selection of Vance (who I have blogged about here a few times). The Ulster dimension of the Presidency has been well known for over 100 years, but it also has been exaggerated and over-stated too.

The 1942 book Ulster Links with the White House shown above proposed a list of 14 Presidents that it claimed were of Ulster Scots descent (replete with wonderful pencil portraits of each by Frank McKelvey). However the research was dubious in places, as the first three it featured - John Adams, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams - were not of Ulster descent at all, and were dropped from the 'canon' by later writers. And, as time went on, subsequent Presidents were added. We're at about 20 now. 

Excellent genealogists have meticulously traced roots, but amateur ones have overstated them.

The strongest case can only be made for those Presidents who in their own writings or speeches self-identified their Ulster-Scots roots. That might make the Ulster Presidents list shorter, but also stronger. 

For example, in recent years I have read people insisting that the controversial President Andrew Jackson only ever described his ancestry as 'Irish', not 'Scotch-Irish', as a wedge from which to de-legitimise the concept of Scotch-Irishness. But, this is merely a present day retro-fitting of a modern idea, a culturally narrow and exclusive definition of what is meant by 'Irish'. 'Irish' does not have to be a mono-cultural and ethnic term, which is sadly what it has often become. Regardless of that issue, during Jackson's own lifetime, one of his closest friends wrote a biography of him, in which it said –

“The family from which General Andrew Jackson is descended were ... among the emigrants from Scotland to the province of Ulster. They were strict adherents to the Church of Scotland, and transmitted their religion, as well as their dialect, to their descendants of the present age.” 

– From Life of Andrew Jackson, by Amos Kendall, 1843. (Kendall was one of Jackson’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’).

So, in an era where self-identification is all-important, self-identification is the only credible way to list the Presidents of Ulster-Scots descent. They were the ones who were aware of it themselves, and for whatever reason, regarded it as culturally and politically important.

• Amos Kendall Wikipedia here

Rev James Shaw - 'The Scotch-Irish in History' and a blunt view of the 1798 Rebellion

This view, expressed here by Rev James Shaw in 1899, was almost exactly 100 years after the rebellion - "The Presbyterians in the north got frightened, withdrew after a few fights, and the rebellion collapsed". Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge are what Shaw is referring to – I posted this about those events, back in 2020.

Rev James Shaw - 'The Scotch-Irish in History' and a radical view of King William III

Rev James Shaw was a Methodist minister, born in Co Longford. He emigrated from Limavady in 1854 and settled in Indiana, USA. He became a major figure in the Scotch-Irish Society of America. His book from 1899 has tonnes of content - I think some of you will find this reference to William III and Mary II interesting - “he would have given to the Catholics emancipation, as he had the Presbyterians, but he was hindered by the prejudices of his Parliament”. This echoes precisely what figures like Henry Grattan and Rev William Steele-Dickson had written too. William of Orange wasn't the real villain - the 1700s Dublin Parliament was. • The Scotch-Irish in History (1899) is online here • Twelve Years in America (1867) is online here

Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania and the Glorious Revolution

Joseph Reed (1741–85) was one of America's 'Founding Fathers', as George Washington’s First Adjunct General and Secretary During the American Revolution.

His grandfather, also called Joseph Reed, was from Carrickfergus and emigrated to West Jersey.

In a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth written from Philadelphia on 25 September 1774, Reed said:

“No king ever had more loyal subjects ; or any country more affectionate colonists than the Americans were. I, who am but a young man, well remember when the former was always mentioned with a respect approaching to adoration, and to be an Englishman was alone a sufficient recommendation for any office of friendship and civility. But I confess with the greatest concern, that these happy days seem passing swiftly away, and unless some plan of accommodation can be speedily formed, the affection of the colonists will be irrecoverably lost...

... all the principles of the (1688) Revolution show that there are certain cases wherein resistance is justifiable”. 

 

A Liberty 12th - First Presbyterian Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania - the "Carlisle Resolves" of 12 July 1774

250 years ago, on 12th July 1774, a committee chaired by a John Montgomery met in Carlisle First Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania to publish the 'Carlisle Resolves'. The church held some events last week to mark this: https://www.facebook.com/firstprescarlisle.org

The committee members were James Wilson, John Armstrong, John Montgomery, William Irvine, Robert Callender, William Thompson, John Colhoon, Jonathan Hoge, Robert Magaw, Ephraim Blaine, John Alison, John Harris and Robert Miller. The community of Carlisle expressed their "common cause" with the other "British Colonies in North-America" due to the Parliament of Great Britain annulling the Rights and Liberties of the people of Boston and Massachusetts when it revoked or 'abrogated' the 1691 Charter of William and Mary (see Wikipedia article here).

The Carlisle Resolves were just one of a series issued from Ulster-Scots communities in Pennsylvania. Some of the others from June & July 1774 were the Hanover Resolves, the Middletown Resolves, the Lebanon Resolves and the Lancaster Resolves.

"Scotch-Irish districts were firm yet dignified in their demands for justice and in the denunciation of British tyranny and wrong. These Hanover Resolves ... (show that) the liberty-loving Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania were the head and front of the American rebellion of 1776” 

- quoted from ‘History of the counties of Dauphin and Lebanon: in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania' (1883) page 78

One of those who was present at the meeting that authorised the 'Carlisle Resolves' was Ulster-born James Smith. Two years later he would sign the Declaration of Independence.

Ged on the Shankill for the 12th

One of my sons knows this guy, as you'll see in the video below he has undergone a complete faith transformation in recent months and is using his skills as an online influencer to now do evangelistic work and voxpop interviews. It's an insight into the condition of our society and deeply embedded narratives.

Pastoral Letter from The Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia, 20 July 1775

On 12 June 1775, a few weeks after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress published an appeal for a national day of fasting and prayer on 20 July (full text online here). On that day, the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia published a 'pastoral letter' to its congregations across the 13 Colonies:

"... The Synod cannot help thinking, that this is a proper time for oppressing all of every rank seriously to consider the things that belong to their eternal peace. Hostilities, long feared, have now taken place; the sword has been drawn, in one Province, and the whole Continent, with hardly any exception, seem determined to defend their rights by force of arms.

... If, at the same time, the British Ministry shall continue to enforce their claims by violence, a lasting and bloody contest must be expected ...

... Surely, then, it becomes those who have taken up arms, and profess a willingness to hazard their lives in the cause of liberty, to be prepared for death, which to many must be the certain, and to every one is a possible or probable event... let every opportunity be taken to express your attachment and respect to our Sovereign King George, and to the (1688) Revolution principles by which his august family was seated on the British throne ..."

The full text is online here.

Synod minutes image from this website. Congress order from this website.

Stolen Valour

This story was in our headlines recently - a top police officer who lied about his past record to gain career advancement. In the United States this is known as stolen valor and is a federal crime which comes with a prison sentence.

This is a lesson that would serve Northern Ireland well - various commercial brands have been revived here in recent years, whiskeys especially. This allows the companies who have renewed these defunct trademarks to effectively also acquire the emotional heritage of those brands too. 

Various "organisations" here have appropriated names from the distant past. You'll see their brand names, and their laying claim to the imagery, insignia, accomplishments and events of that past, on flagpoles during July - during the season when the original men, who would also serve with unimaginable courage in the Great War, are annually commemorated. My grandfather's cousin James Thompson was one of them, killed at the Battle of the Somme aged just 20. Below is my grandfather's memorial poem about him.

Valour stolen generations later by those with little or none. We live in a very messy society. 

Triggernometry with Rory Stewart – how political change changes nothing, because the public sector (mis)rules the nation

"They call themselves Scotch-Irish": Delaware and the Scotch-Irish in the 1720s

 “They call themselves Scotch-Irish ... and the bitterest railers against the church [Church of England] that ever trod upon American ground.”
• Rev. George Ross, Rector of Immanuel Church, New Castle, Delaware, September 1723

"The first settlers of this County were for the far greatest part originally English. Some few however there are of Dutch families, but of late years great numbers of Irish (who usually call themselves Scotch Irish) transported themselves and their families from the North of Ireland unto the Province of Pennsylvania and have distributed themselves into the several Counties where lands were to be taken up. Many families are settled in the County Sussex. They are Presbyterians by profession"
• Rev. William Becket of Lewes, Delaware, 1728