The History of Glencoe

The Massacre of Glencoe is commonly thought to have been a bloody incident in a meaningless feud between the Scottish Clans Campbell and MacDonald, which it was not. On a higher level, it is thought to have been incidental to the political events of the time, when in fact it was the product of an oppressive government carried out against the determined, stubborn, and fiercely indepenent MacDonald Clan.

The Highland people were once the majority of Scotland's population, a military society that largely helped to establish and maintain her monarchy. This society, tribal and feudal by nature, could not change itself to meet a changing world, nor did it have the desire to do so. Its decline became more rapid in the second half of the seventeenth century, and within 150 years, its people had been driven form the mountains. By 1690 the Highlanders were already regarded by many Lowlanders as an obstacle to the complete political union of Scotland and England, and their indepence of spirit - expressed in their customs, their clothes and their language - had to be broken and humbled.

The MacDonalds of Glencoe were early victims of what Highlanders called Mi-run mor nan Gall, the Lowlanders Great Hatred. Lowland leaders naturally despised what they wished to destroy, and therefore that destruction seemed to be a virtuous necessity. No Scots or English statesman would have thought of ordering the extermination of a Lowland or English community, but a Highland clan, particularly one of the Gallows Herd, was a different matter.

One of the principals involved in the Massacre said afterwards, "It's not that anybody thinks the tribe did not need to be destroyed... It was only regrettable that the murder of men, women and children should have been carried out in a dishonourable way."

The same contempt for the Highlander was responsible for the brutalities that followed Culloden in 1746, and the same indifference to his way of life was shown when the Clearances began fifty years later. In the end Mi-run mor nan Gall was triumphant.

The story has relevance for our society today. Our age has seen a monstrous attempt at genocide, and we have had to determine the moral responsibility of those who carried it out under orders.