The Battle of the Braes: How it led to Crofter's Rights!

Recently I was in North Yorkshire and by the A167 near Northallerton I came across a monument to a battle fought in 1138 that was called the "Battle of the Standard." The Battle had been the first major clash between England and Scotland for some 200 years. Yet it had been an "unusual" clash which had more to do with "internal English politics" than any "enmity between the two kingdoms" (Matthews 2003). In 1135 King Henry I of England had died. The Crown was left to his daughter Matilda. But in the event power was seized by King Henry's nephew, Count Stephen of Blois. Matilda had support though, including from her maternal uncle, King David I of Scotland. In 1138 King David decided to launch a full scale invasion with up to 25,000 men. Stephen was preoccupied with rebel barons in the south. So it was left to Archbishop Thurston of York and his priests to raise local militias in the north. Thurston revelled in this task. To fight the Scottish was "to do God's work" he said. Thurston also organised the construction of THE STANDARD. It consisted of a "large wagon pulled by an oxen on which was mounted a ship's mast." This would be used as a rallying point and it would give its' name to the Battle (Matthews 2003). The battle itself took place on 22 August 1138 at Cowton Moor, just north of Northallerton. There the English took up position on the crest of a hill. The Scots, attacking uphill, came under the withering fire of English archers. Thousands died. David, conceding defeat, had to withdraw. Back in Carlisle he regrouped and -despite having lost the battle- was able, within a month, to negotiate a "very favourable truce" (Ibbotson 2009).

Sir Walter Scott isn't everyone's cup of tea! Yet he does have some admirers on the left..Marxist George Luckas being one! Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771 and went to the Royal High School and then on to University. After studying law he became an Advocate in 1792 and in 1799 was appointed Sheriff of Selkirk (be became a Clerk of Session in 1806). Increasingly however he was turning his hand to writing --poetry, ballads, novels. LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL (1805) was an early narrative poem. And WQVERLEY, published anonymously in 1814, was his first novel. Thereafter Scott had a prodigious literary output. He had to pay for his lifestyle as a border laird based at Abbottsford. Plus Donnachie (2001) notes that he was a partner in Constable and Ballantyne, Edinburgh printers and publishers, who collapsed in 1826. He undertook to repay creditors a debt of £100,000. Worth a read is ROB ROY (1818) and A LEGEND OF MONTROSE (1819). But his best novel is perhaps REDGAUNTLET (1824) and it has a Jacobite theme exploring as it does tensions and divisions that divided Scotland in 1745!

*In April 2841 Marx received a doctorate on the differences between the "Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature." *However the increasing conflict between the Prussian state and young Hegelians put paid to any hopes that he might have had of an academic career. *Marx returned to Trier and turned instead to journalism where he began writing for Rheinische Zeitung in April 1842. It had been set up by Rhineland industrialists but had fallen under the control of Young Hegelians. *A turning point in terms of Marx's politics came when he had to report on debates in the local Rhenish estates (parliament) on the tightening of the wood theft law. Marx baulked at the criminalisation of impoverished Rhenish peasants. *Marx was now adamant that the state was NOT above classes. He made this clear in his CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT, written in 1843 whilst he was on honeymoon. *By now Marx, who'd resigned from Rheinische Zeitung, just before the censors finally shut it down, was now very much under the wing of the most radical of the Young Hegelians, Ludwig Feuerbach.