1820

This 1820 is the date of the last armed insurrection on mainland Britain and the Scottish Nationalists would like it portrayed as a struggle for Scottish independence. It was nothing of the kind. It was one incident in the general unrest over the changes in farming, the return of soldiers from the Napoleonic wars and the concentration of weaving in factories as it became mechanised. The government, which in those days was the aristocracy and growing rich business class, managed to isolate the disturbance as it arose, first in Ireland, then England, where the Peterloo massacre subdued it, before the malcontents from both places joined the industrial belt Scots in an attempt to establish a revolutionary government. While most know about Peterloo, few know that several people were killed in the riots that erupted in central Scotland. The reason the movement never had a chance was not that the government had spies among the workers but that the workers never acted as a national, British, movement, but insisted on their own regional identity