Scottish democratic movement in the age of the French Revolution

Abstract

By the late eighteenth century, as a result of economic developments and growing social divisions, the role of the traditional governing classes was being increasingly called in question and demands were arising for a fundamental reorganisation of the political system.

In July 1792 certain Foxite Whigs, dissident burgh reformers, religious dissenters, and radical artisans formed the Society of the Friends of the People to channel growing popular unrest into constitutional agitation for parliamentary reform. The society attracted a large membership and won wide popular support, but failed to win over the bourgeoisie and gentry who, alarmed both by numerous demonstrations of support for the French revolutionaries and by the rapid circulation of republican literature, became convinced that their liberties and properties were threatened by popular radicalism and rallied to the defence of the 'old regime'. The reactionaries had little popular suppcrt, but, backed by the state, they embarked upon a partly successful campaign of intimidation. Increasingly fearful of the threat to liberty and reform posed by the 'despotism' of government and convinced, by the lapostacyl of their erstwhile allies and by the rejection of their reform petitions, that a more radical approach was called for, the Friends of the People allied themselves with their English colleagues and held a British Convention to decide how to resist any further acts of tyranny and to declare for universal manhood suffrage. The forced dispersal of that convention and the subsequent conviction of leading radicals destroyed the reform movement and led directly to the 'Pike Plot', a naive insurrectionary conspiracy, which alerted government to the increasing danger from revolutionary movements and caused the screw of repression to be tightened further. By 1797 the United Scotsmen, a secret revolutionary society modelled on the United Irishmen, had taken advantage of mounting popular discontent to promote their aims and organisation. Identified with unpopular republican and deist doctrines, and seen as Lhe agents of French imperialism, their appeal, while not insubstantial, was limited.

Dependent for their success upon ample French support for co-ordinated uprisings in Ireland and Britain, the dismal failure of the premature Irish insurrection of 1798 and of the French to provide more than token military assistance damaged the United Scotsmen's morale and virtually destroyed their credibility. A revolutionary 'underground' continued to operate into the 1800s, but organised radicalism was only to revive in strength in the post-war period.