'We're Just Big Bullies …' Gregory Burke's Black Watch
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‘We’re just big bullies …’ Gregory Burke’s Black Watch By David Archibald It seems almost disloyal, traitorous even, to voice critique of the National Theatre of Scotland’s There are moments when the soldiers do flagship production,Black Watch. Based partly undercut the monumentalising narrative: on interviews with former members of the eponymous Highland regiment who recently Writer: Is that why your granddad joined? served in Iraq, it was the undisputed hit of the Cammy: I dinnay ken. 2006 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Rossco: He was probably just a fucking idiot picking up a rake of five-star reviews and theatre tay? awards on both sides of the border. The Scottish Granty: He’s fay a long line ay idiots. (p. 25) press reported its successful 2007 US tour in terms usually reserved for national sporting But the general thrust is one that is at ease with champions: Black Watch appears to be firm the official Golden Thread mythology. In one favourite in the ‘most successful Scottish play of the theatrical highlights of the piece, Cammy of all time’ competition. Praised highly by Alex stands, centre stage, a strip of red carpet placed Salmond, the new SNP Government mounted beneath his feet. In a process reminiscent of a two Gala productions to mark the opening of catwalk fashion parade, he is then dressed in the the new Scottish changing uniform parliamentary of the regiment session. going back three Consequently, Black centuries, from past Watch now bears to present. While its own burden this takes place, of representation: Cammy narrates a it is not simply history of the Black a Scottish play Watch that starts about Iraq; it is the in 1715 in Scotland Scottish play about and encompasses Iraq. But despite Culloden, The the seemingly American War universal praise of Independence, that Black Watch has France, Egypt, received, its politics Portugal, Spain, are deeply problematic. Flanders, The Crimean War, The Boer War, The First World War, The Second World War, Burma, Let’s start with history. History is to society Korea, Africa, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. what memory is to the individual. In Black Watch ‘Here we are. Again,’ he concludes (p. 33). the two are fused together as the soldiers’ Cammy alludes to the regiment’s problematic stories are collected, ordered and placed within formative years, but not in any detail. The Black a broader historical narrative – ‘The Golden Watch has been, to use Engels’ phrase, a perfect Thread’. As the soldiers discuss their familial example of one of the ‘armed bodies of men in connections to the regiment with a fictional defence of private property’, deployed, primarily, writer who interviews them, there is the for reasons of economy. Look at the early following exchange: formation of the regiment: Archibald K. Murray points out in his 1862 History of the Scottish Writer: So the history’s important? Regiments in the British Army, that the Black Watch, Granty: They drum it intay you fay the first day. or ‘Freiceadan Dhu’, were assembled following Rossco: Fucking non-fucking stop. the 1715 Jacobite rebellion and deployed in the Cammy: That’s what a regiment is ay? It’s ‘more troubled districts of the Highlands … for history. The Golden Thread. That’s what the old maintaining order and preventing any sudden timers go on about. It’s what connects the past, rising, as well as for the protection of property the present, the future … (p. 25)1 in those lawless times.’ He continues, ‘[t]hey the drouth were mostly composed of the sons of the landed denial about the atrocities committed during gentry, as the Government felt that care was Britain’s imperial past. necessary, especially in this their first experiment, in selecting individuals who had something There are moments in the play which do disrupt at stake in the common country’.2 The only the official history: Highlanders permitted to wear Highland dress under the post-Culloden 1746 Disarming Act,3 Cammy: And people’s minds are made up about in November 2007 the Black Watch, now known the war that’s on the now ay? They are. It’s no as 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland right. It’s illegal. We’re just big bullies. Well we’ll (3 SCOTS), announced a move to a new HQ need to get fucking used tay it. Bullying’s the at Fort George at Ardersier, near Inverness: fucking job. That’s what you have a fucking army appropriately enough it was built in 1746 to for. (p. 4) assist in the suppression of any further Jacobite risings. Later, as the soldiers watch a four-hour long air strike on fleeing Iraqis, there’s the following Well, perhaps that’s simply the distant past; what exchange. of the regiment’s noble foreign excursions? Cammy: This isnay Historical understanding fucking fighting. This is is dependent on the just plain old-fashioned construction of the bullying like. causal development of Rosco: It’s good fun, events over time, but though. Cammy’s chronology Cammy: Do you think? has no explanatory Rossco: Aye. It’s good power, containing, as it to be the bully. (p. 40) does, only a few passing references to why the And, finally, when the Black Watch ventured soldiers discuss the abroad – in Egypt and imbalance in military Portugal they fought equipment between the the French, alluding to UK and Iraqi fighters: conflict between colonial powers, and in Kenya, where they were sent ‘tay crush the Mau Mau Cammy: Like I say, way the difference in kit. rebels’ (p. 33). But there is one glaring omission After a while, it’s more bullying than fighting ay. from Cammy’s list: Ireland. Stewarty: You dinnay join up tae bully cunts day you? The history of the Black Watch in Ireland is both Rossco: Bullying’s the job. long (going back to the early 18th-century) and Granty: It’s no’ the reason you want tay be in Troubles(ome) – until recently they were based the army, though. in Holywood Barracks in Belfast and tours to the Cammy: It’s a buzz, you’re in a war ay, but US by the Black Watch pipe band are picketed you’re no really doing the job you’re trained regularly by Irish groups. It seems inconceivable for but it’s no like they’re a massive threat tay that Ireland could have been simply forgotten you or tay your country, you’re no defending in the production process: perhaps it was; your country. We’re invading their country and regardless, its erasure allows a more acceptable, fucking their day up. (p. 48-9) easily consumable, version of The Golden Thread to be presented. Aside from Ireland, what So there is space, if not to construct an about further afoot? There has never been a alternative history, then at least to read the one compassionate imperialism, but Britain’s role in that is presented against the grain; nevertheless, Kenya is one that is drenched in blood. During the historical narrative that is privileged is the the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s the British official one, the myth of ‘The Golden Thread’. army established concentration camps which Henry Kissinger observed, rather shrewdly, that housed anything up to 1.5 million people: mass ‘history is the memory of states’. Black Watch hangings, mutilation and murder were routine4. slots unproblematically into an official (Scottish) Yet, from Gordon Brown down, there is simple state version of the past. It has issues with Iraq, the drouth but not with the previous three centuries of the Highland soldier appears to stand both inside imperial subjugation. and outside Empire6 Spiers observes that, in the 19th-century, ‘Highlanders continued to provide Black Watch presents Britain’s involvement in excellent material for battle-painters and the Iraq as an aberration in a 300-year history: the popular art market. Lady Butler delighted in officer states, ‘It takes three hundred years to making Highlanders the subject of her paintings: build an army “these splendid that’s admired troops,” she and respected wrote, were around the “so essentially world. But it pictorial”.’7 But only takes three there’s more years pissing at stake than about in the aesthetics. desert in the Cammy’s biggest Western perfectly foreign policy choreographed disaster ever fashion to fuck it up parade both completely.’ (p. explores the 71) Britain’s appropriation involvement and in Iraq is constructed a disaster; nature of unfortunately, Highland dress it is not an by British aberration. Alan imperialism, Greenspan, whilst former head of simultaneously the US Federal becoming Reserve, writes complicit in the in his latest fetishisation of book, The Age the Highland of Turbulence: soldier that the Adventures in a British Empire New World, ‘I am excels in. saddened that it is politically In an essay inconvenient to commissioned acknowledge by NTS, the what everyone novelist Alice knows: the Miller writes, Iraq war is largely about oil.’5 It may have been ‘[i]t is good to see political theatre reviving in a miscalculation on the part of the US and the Scotland. Black Watch is political theatre – and UK to invade Iraq, but the raison d’être for the art – at its best: energetic, powerful, questioning, invasion is the raison d’être for the countless moving, complex, subtle, truthful, with no easy invasions that the Black Watch has participated answers to offer. It portrays people who live in over the last three centuries. political decisions in their flesh, in their blood, in their bones.’8 173 British soldiers have died Yet it’s surely a mark of the immaturity of since the invasion of Iraq, 9 from the Black political debate that Scotland’s role in Britain’s Watch.9 On 17 September 2007, Opinion imperial past is marginalised.