Is the SNP Imploding? Ep 148. 6 Aug 2025

Alistair McConnachie of pro-UK unionist campaign group and think tank, A Force For Good (AFFG), guest Avellina Balestri, and viewers discuss:
0:00 Welcome.
4:37 Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes resigns!
9:19 Here are the 22 SNP MSPs standing down so far.
10:35 John Swinney's "mandate" for a second referendum is different from Sturgeon's.
23:50 The Bradbury Pound, of 7 August 1914.
30:34 We need a "British Central Bank" ATM system.
33:22 GUEST: American historian and musician, Avellina Balestri: Background to the 1745 Jacobite Wars; not just a Catholic v Protestant or England v Scotland conflict; Col James Gardiner; The Army under Marlborough was "unifying" even before political unification happened; the Scots and the "Act of Security"; Gardiner's early religious awakening; "warrior mystic"; the Battle of Prestonpans 21-9-1745; "Gardiner fought and fighting fell"; his memorial obelisk; religious letters.
1:03:39 Please consider buying an extra copy of "Protect our Country" and sending it to a Legislator - link below.

New book "Protect our Country: Policies to Stop Mass Immigration" is at
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FJ2GWMD4

LINKS for GUEST
Avellina Balestri is at: https://www.youtube.com/@avellinabalestri

Her book "All Ye That Pass By: Book 1: Gone for a Soldier" is available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Ye-That-Pass-Soldier/dp/B0D9QMCS6N/

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This is the 148th episode of "Good Evening Britain" broadcast on Wednesday 6th August 2025.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Good Evening Britain, a Force for
Goods weekly show coming to you live from our studios
here in the heart of the great British city of Glasgow,
with me your host, Aliston mcconachey. We are broadcasting on
all our digital platforms throughout the United Kingdom and across

(00:23):
the world. We're bringing you quality pro UK comment and
analysis every Wednesday from seven until eight pm on Facebook,
on YouTube, on x and also on TikTok. Folks, we
have got a packed show for you this evening. I'm

(00:46):
pleased to say that we have a guest on at
seven point thirty. It's our good friend from across the Pond,
Avelina Bilestri, who's going to be talking again about the
seventeen forty five conflict and in particular the Battle of
Preston Pans, what that was all about. And she's going
to focus on a major character of that particular battle

(01:13):
and his unfortunate fate. That's at seven point thirty. Before then,
a lot to talk about in the news today and
of course in the past week, and we've headed this
particular program is the SNP Imploding Because goodness me, there
seem to be more people leaving the party than joining,

(01:36):
and especially MSPs who are currently MSPs and who are
not going to be standing again, including virtually all of
the big hitters. So I have a little bit of
hay fever tonight. I think I'm going to get through
the program, absolutely, but needs must. As the say, we

(02:00):
are professionals. We rise to the challenge of bringing you
quality content every week if we possibly can, so we're
not going to let that stop us. Let's say hello
to one or two people who have come in so far.
Derek was first on the scene. He says, good evening everyone,

(02:21):
A nice August evening, isn't it, Although you're back at
work no longer watching the the Shenanigans on Bodwell Street.
If you know what I'm talking about, as in the
filming of the Spider Man movie that I know you
are posting about the other night, Derek, hope you enjoyed

(02:45):
that day out. Hello to exiled Viking, who says good evening,
and to Paul who comes straight in straight in fighting
with enough is enough stop the boats? Absolutely well, we
are going to be stopping the boats to as much
as we possibly can anyway, with our new book protect

(03:06):
our country. A big book for the Union, Volume two.
It's all about enough is enough, It's all about stopping
the boats. More about that later in the show. Hello
to Catherine from Glasgow, and to Ian. Nice to see Ian.

(03:30):
Given the state of their opponents, says Ian, the SMP
could implode utterly and still fail, by which you means
still form the government. Yes, I knew you meant that.
Good evening to Debbie and to Christopher and to Anthony. Anthony,

(03:53):
I hope you've got the book now, Please tell me,
Please tell me you have. Christopher's says, hang in there
with the hay fever. I feel your pain. Yes, well,
could the SNP still win even though they are in
an absolute state of affairs? Let's just look at that.

(04:14):
Kate Forbes this week was it yesterday? In fact? Put
out this message on Twitter, and she said, after careful
thought over recess, I've decided not to seek re election

(04:37):
to the Scottish Parliament next year. I've written to the
First Minister this morning. I will continue to serve the
First Minister, the Government and my constituents to the best
of my ability until May twenty twenty six. And she
did indeed put out that letter as well, which I
thought about reading, but quite frankly, it doesn't say anything

(04:59):
of any no whatsoever, and it doesn't tell us why
she has resigned. And believe you know this person is
I had to just check. I had to google it.
But she is the Deputy First Minister of Scotland, which
means she's like the second in command in Scotland. Now,
if I was the second in command in Scotland, I'd

(05:20):
be wanting to kind of hang on there. I'd be
wanting to say, you know, this is a pretty good position.
I would like to continue being the second most important
person in Scotland. So to give that up, it's kind
of odd. I would have thought. I'm not saying that
there's any real reason behind that. I don't know. Maybe
it's just to spend more time with her family, but

(05:42):
you know, you know, step down from stuff like that
just because it's like, oh I can do something better.
Oh yeah, what are you going to be? The only
better thing you could be? Is like the first Minister,
and everybody thought she was going to be the next
first Minister, or at least the next leader of the SNP.
But clearly, clearly our heart's not in it. Because if

(06:02):
her heart was in it, then she wouldn't be stepping down.
Because I was wondering, is she in a constituency where
you know she's in trouble? And firstly her constituency is
we'll just put the pickup of our constituency. It's here

(06:24):
we go. It's sky Loch Abba and Badenoch. Isn't that funny?
Sky Lochaber and Kemmy Badenoch. That's basically her constituency. And
there it is in the slack bang there in the Highlands,
including sky seventy six thousand people in twenty nineteen, which

(06:50):
means if you add on the asylum seekers today, it's
probably somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million.
I'm kidding, of course, but that's the constituency skylock Aber
and Kemmy Badenoch. And if we look at the result

(07:10):
of the twenty twenty one Scottish parliamentary election for skylock
Aber and Kemmy Badenoch, Kate Forbes got twenty four thousand,
one hundred and ninety two and in second place it
was a Conservative at eight thousand. So it's not like
it's not like Kate Forbes is being pressed there at all.

(07:38):
That's an easy win again for her, and even when
reform comes in next year, the SNP is still going
to take that to take that seat, so there can't
be anything to do with that. So what's the reason?
Does anybody have any ideas why she would want to

(07:59):
stay and down? Why she would want to give up
Deputy First ministership, especially at such a young age as well?
We have to presume she's maybe just wanting to raise
a family. Maybe that's all it is. But it is
a bit kind of crazy really because for a while,
didn't I mean, she stood as as a candidate for

(08:22):
the leadership, didn't she Who is she against? Was it against?
Something's the use of and it's all a big thing,
you know, oh who's going to win? And now she's
just like, oh, do you know what? Can't be bothered
or just step down? Strange. It could just be that
she realizes the games of bow game. I mean, if
I was in the SNP, I would think that as well.

(08:43):
I would just be like, you know what, come back
to this in one hundred years or something like that.
But for now, it's just a waste of energy. So
let's look at the all the MSPs who are standing
down so far that we know about that the snpmsps.
And that's a list that I compiled earlier today, and
there's twenty two MSPs there that we know about. The

(09:07):
first two four six, eight to twelve. The first twelve
in bold are the MSPs from the SNP that I've
actually heard about. I've heard of Nicholas Sturgeon, homes of
Yusuf Kate Forbes, Marie Goodgin or Googie On I don't know,

(09:29):
Michael Matheson, Annabelle Ewing, James Don and Christine Graham, SHAWNA.
Robinson feeling it his, Richard Lockhead and John Mason. We've
all heard of them. As for the others two four
six eight in As for the other ten, I've never
heard of them in my life, but they've been living
high at my and your expense. Anyway, we're not going

(09:53):
to be seeing any more of them, which is good news.
It's like goodbye to them. So my own view is that, yeah,
the SNP is probably imploding. Swinny majority will pave way
to Indie rev to what he means by that. And

(10:16):
this is a report from from last week's Daily Telegraph
twenty ninth July, the First Minister said that the SNP
winning an outright majority at Hollywood should be good enough
to force Secure Starmer to drop his opposition to allowing

(10:38):
a vote on separation, and so by winning an outright
majority there, what he means is winning most of the seats.
There's one hundred and twenty nine seats at the Scottish Parliament.
To win an outright majority you need to have in
your party. You need to have sixty five of these seats,

(11:02):
and Swine says that if they get sixty five seats
then that should somehow be enough to force a second referendum.
And in a sense he makes the point which is
difficult to gainsay, in that a precedent has been set

(11:23):
at the two thousand and eleven Scottish election when Alex
Salmon led the SNP to a majority win and then
Prime Minister David Cameron authorized a referendum. However, precedents can
be thrown out, and I would strongly urge that we
threw out that particular precedent, and it's not really appropriate anyway,

(11:50):
because it doesn't symbolize a nation that really really wants
independence and back in our very first book, A One
Big Country, A big book for the Union. Volume one,
we explained what the SNP would need to do to

(12:12):
genuinely get a mandate. And for all those Scottish National
Party people watching who want me to tell them, I'm
going to have to say no, you're going to have
to pay nine ninety nine for the book. But in
this book we do explain from historic precedent how a

(12:35):
political party does actually get a mandate for a split
democratically speaking. We run through all the options and we
show you the one that it actually is. You can
get this by just going onto Amazon and searching for
One Big Country. And so it's most certainly not. It's

(12:57):
most certainly not getting sixty five seats at all Hollywood election,
despite what David Cameron, in his lack of constitutional knowledge,
ended up giving them. Now, this differs from Nicholas Studgeon's approach.

(13:18):
Nicholas Sturgeon would remember her. She said that if the
SNP and the Greens and ALBA together got sixty five
seats then that would be sufficient. That was an even
weaker mandate than what Swinney is suggesting, which is that
the mandate has to be the SNP themselves getting the

(13:41):
sixty five seats. However, it's been greeted with some degree
of skepticism even among their own ranks. Alex Neil, a
former Scottish health secretary, said backing for the SNP would
have to increase by fifty percent in less than a
year for the party to achieve majority in this way,
and this was quote almost impossible. Miss smister Neil, who

(14:08):
last month called for mister Swinney to be quote replaced immediately,
said to win an overall majority, the SNP would have
to get about forty five percent of the vote. The
SNP is currently at about thirty percent of the vote
and has been stuck at that figure for some time.
It's almost an impossible task for it to increase its

(14:29):
vote share by fifty percent in the next ten months
given the poor performance under Sturgeon, Josef and Swinney. He said,
mister Sweeney's announcement was an attempt to silence his critics
at the SNP conference. So all the top people jumping

(14:52):
ship and even Swinney's attempt to silence his critics at
the SNP conference is not being accepted, and Swinney has
set himself a goal which even his most ardent supporters
recognize is going to be very difficult to effect. And

(15:16):
even if he got it, even if there was some
miracle and he got sixty five seats next year, he's
still facing the fact that Cure Starmer has been, to
his credit, pretty strong about not granting another referendum. To

(15:36):
have a quote here first from Starmer, Cure Starmer insisted
that a stronger Scotland would be better off within the
strength of the United Kingdom, and he said it was
time for mister Swinney to spend more time getting domestic
politics right in Scotland rather than the constitution. Absolutely, so

(16:01):
they're under a lot of pressure. So now is the time.
Now is the time to really push hard, to push hard,
which is what we try to do all the time
here at a Force for Good, to not let up,
to keep making the case, to keep making the case

(16:23):
for our fantastic United Kingdom. Alan says, got a couple
of books on Amazon, very good and very thoroughly researched.
Good job, fantastic. We're building up a library of books

(16:45):
and we've got three books. We've got five books really
more that we've got in our head. But we're going
to get one book out before the end of the year,
but it won't actually, it will be a complete diversion.
It won't be anything to do with either the Constitution
or anything. It's going to be me on money and
that's going to come out before the end of the year,

(17:05):
and then next year we'll get the third volume on
this one going. We could be in trouble if they
get back in again, but you know what, if we
get candidates from other parties, then it could actually it
could actually stir things up a bit. So I'm hoping
that we can get new Blood in which will really

(17:27):
really help. James is watching from Ireland tonight. Once in
a lifetime eighty years, yeah, absolutely, or one hundred years.
Let's make it one hundred years, what with lifetimes increasing
these days. Thank you Christopher, who says I bought a

(17:49):
kindle and a paper version of volume two, looking forward
to reading it. Well, everybody who's been reading it says
that it really is something. Somebody called it a work
of art, which I thought it was just fantastic. Thank
you very much for that. But it is a work
of art, and it's like nothing you'll have ever read
because it's just solution after solution and it's not, Oh

(18:14):
isn't things aren't things awful? You know, some people like
they get very successful by just complaining about how awful
things are. We take that for red. This is just
how do we mend stuff. This is the root map
to the solution for our clueless politicians who will get

(18:37):
a clue after they've seen this.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Now.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
I mentioned there about a third book that we're planning
in our head at the moment that will be out
in about November, and it's going to be something. It's
going to be a wee bit going back for me
to stuff I was involved in back between nineteen ninety
nine and twenty thirteen, which was looking at the monetary
system and how debt was exploding and how house prices

(19:04):
getting out of everybody's reach and why that was. And
a lot of it is, of course, due to the
way that money is created. And this is something that
people never that's really I don't want to sound esoteric,
but it is a sort of hidden It is a
hidden knowledge and is deliberately hidden because the reality makes

(19:30):
some people a great deal of money. And I was
thinking about that the other day and I realized that tomorrow,
seventh of August is the one hundred and eleventh anniversary
of something called the Bradbury Pound. Now, on the fourth
of August nineteen fourteen, World War was announced, at least

(19:53):
Britain's war with Germany was announced. And what happened in
the next two days was that there was a run
the banks. Everybody, or not everybody, but anybody with substantial
money wanted to get the money out of the banks
because they were concerned that the banks were going to
fail and they wanted gold. Now, of course the gold's

(20:17):
not there to give people. So the government were faced
with a crisis and what could they do? And so
the Secretary of the Treasury and chap called James Bradbury
came up with the idea that what will simply do
is give them paper and it was called the Bradbury Pound.

(20:37):
And let's have a look. There it goes, these notes
are a legal tender for a payment of any amount,
issued by the Lord's Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury under
authority of Act of Parliament. And it's signed there by
John Bradbury, John Bradbury, Secretary of the Treasury. And that's

(20:58):
on the left. There there's a little emblazoned pick of
the king at the time, which was George the Fifth. Okay,
so how does the government of the day explain that
I found this explanation from the British Treasury Today, Let's

(21:23):
bring up that pick their Freedom of Information Act. The
Bradbury Pound. The Bradbury Pound was introduced in nineteen fourteen
at the outbreak of the First World War. The government
at the time needed to preserve its stock of bullion,
so asked the Bank of England to cease paying out
gold for its notes. Instead, the Treasury printed and issued

(21:44):
ten shilling and one pound notes, so called Bradbury pounds.
The gold standard was then partially restored in nineteen twenty five,
and the Bank of England was again obliged to exchange
its notes for gold, but only in multiples of four
hundred ounces or more. Britain left the gold standard in
nineteen thirty one and the note issue became entirely fiduciaria,

(22:05):
that is, wholly backed by securities instead of gold. Okay,
what they mean there by fiduciary is basically backed by
backed by other pieces of paper. Because what happens today
is if somebody, if the government wants money it prints

(22:28):
what it calls securities, which are promises to pay the
buyer whatever is denominated on that particular security plus interest
sometime in the future. So the government wants to raise
a million pounds, it sells a million securities, it gets

(22:48):
a million pounds in, but it's then indebted to give
that million pounds back at some time in the future
to the purchasers of these securities plus interest. That is
what's called the national debt. And we actually talk about
this in a chapter here. We've got a whole chapter

(23:08):
on the markets and why the markets panic when they
hear about immigration. Is immigration policies that they don't like
the panic and why do they panic? And so on
and so forth. And it's a very good, very good
explanation in that book. But I want to flesh that

(23:31):
out in another document. And I want to just before
we bring on our guests in two or three minutes,
I just want to say that the Bradbury pound was
actually a very good idea because it was not backed
by debt. It was simply government created money. The government
didn't create the Bradbury pounds by selling Bradbury securities to anybody.

(23:55):
It just just said we need we need one hundred
million pounds or whatever the figure was. We need to
get that into society because people are asking for their money.
So they just printed the money debt free. There was
nobody that it had to be that, there was nobody
that was purchasing the securities. It was just government created

(24:15):
or what I like to call publicly created debt free money,
which by its very nature of being debt free, was
also interest free, and that completely undermined the financiers and
the financial system because the financial system is built upon
the whole idea that they lend to the government and

(24:38):
the government gives them money in return with interest. So
the Bradbury pound is a good idea, but the City
of London basically put the kibosh on it and stopped
that privately created debt free money from being rolled out

(24:59):
as it where in the years to come. But it's
an answer to Britain's great level of indebtedness because we
it's the financial system to whom we owe the debt,
and for many of us it's becoming intolerable. The way
that money is created is becoming intolerable and it's becoming

(25:19):
an actual real problem. ATMs are dying out you can
bank on that fears for ops and rural communities overclosures
for cash machines lost every week from Sunday Mail third
of August. Now, what this is saying is that in

(25:41):
these rural areas you can't get access to cash. And
the reason you can't get access to cash is these
ATMs are run by the private banks and it does
not pay the private banks to have these ATMs in
these areas where there's not that much business. But we

(26:02):
need cash. People in rural areas need cash. So how
are we going to get cash if it doesn't pay
the private banks to be in these areas. And that's
where a national form of money comes in. You should
have basically ATMs which are British Central Bank ATMs, maybe

(26:24):
even a special note emblazoned with British Central Bank which
is British currency, and it's not a private bank, so
it doesn't need to make a profit, but it does
provide the people with the means of exchange that we
so desperately need. So I'm going to develop that idea.
It's actually two books, but the first book is going

(26:44):
to be a best of my previous articles that I've
written on all of this in the past, which are
now unfortunately lost to the Internet, but which I've still
got here on the computer and can be put back
in to some form anyway. Anyway, folks, starting a couple

(27:07):
of minutes later, we have our good friend Avelina Blestri,
who is going to join us right now, all the
way from Maryland. Please say hello to Avelina.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
Hello, Alistair, good company, good evening. Thank you to your
book coming out on the referendum, because I know that's
how we all met you be Ian Inkster Duncan McIntyre,
So it'll be it'll be really fun to be able
to read your reflections on that.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yes, yes, yes, indeed, how are things in Maryland this evening?

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (27:45):
What time is it over there? I always ask you.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
It is two thirty three, so we are at five
hours behind you, I believe. When sometimes there is that
there's that weird little thing when there's the daylight savings
time for one or another of us sort of moves,
you know, sooner than the other and then it shifts.
But usually we are five hours behind on the East

(28:10):
coast of the United States.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Excellent, excellent, Well, thanks for coming back in again. You
had an idea to develop your your historic series. Now
you've given several very good interviews with us regarding the
British soldiers who fought for the British side during the

(28:34):
French and Indian Wars and also the American War of Independence,
and you're bringing it a little bit closer to home
for us on this side of the pond tonight.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yes, so you're speaking about Colonel John Gardner. Now my understanding, James,
Sorry James, and could you just take this from the
from the beginning, because this is like the seventeen forty
five Jacobite British conflict and just kind of give us

(29:13):
some background on that what that conflict was about. That's
that's the Gardner chap right there.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Sure, so in brief, because I could go on forever
about the forty five. It's one of my hobby horses,
so I'll try to keep this very truncated.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Essentially, the Jacobite.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Rebellions were dynastic conflicts for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
I'm not gonna oh, man, I can go into everything, but.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Essentially, James the second was exiled from Britain in large
part due to his Catholic faith and because he was
trying to essentially offer religious toleration for Catholics and various
types of dissenting Protestants, and that ended up clashing with

(30:07):
you know, various Anglicans and various other groups who didn't
much like that. There were other elements involved though, as well,
because James, for example, was allied with France versus people
who were very you know, opposed to Louis the fourteenth Expansions,
and so you have eventually William of Orange and his

(30:30):
wife who's James's daughter, marry the second they take the
throne and what is known as the Glorious Revolution in
sixteen eighty eight, and then subsequently they are Protestants, and
so you have this, you know, it's not a strict
it's complicated because it's not a strict religious divide in
terms of who's on what side. So, for example, a

(30:52):
lot of people think in their minds also it's Catholic
versus Protestant. Well, it's a little trickier than that, because
you have a lot of Protestants actually on the side
of James and his descendants, who then come back to
claim the throne in the Jacobite rebellions. Jacobite meaning essentially
James supporters, and they would then support his son, James

(31:15):
Francis Stewart, and then James Francis's son, Charles Edward Stewart
in their claims for the throne. So suffice to say,
you had plenty of Protestants doing that, but at the
same time, you had Catholic powers allied with William of Orange,
for example, in his efforts to put a halt to

(31:39):
Louis the fourteenth's expansion. So when he went over, when
he went over and you know, did his essential bloodless
coup conquest thing, which wasn't completely bloodless because the battles
happened subsequently, but it's kind of remembered as WELLSS. You
had various Catholic powers actually ironically saying asked for him,

(32:00):
and you even had the Holy See, so the Pope
in Rome kind of giving him the thumbs up because
his lands were also endangered by Louis, so it was
beneficial for all of them that William wayne.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
So it was a complicated things my point.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
So you got, yeah, yeah, you find that in all
wars that it might just seem it's like black v.
White or something, but there's actually lots of different groups
have got their own particular interests in seeing one side
dominate another side, which might be an interest that really
has not got nothing to do with even what seems
to be the central conflict. And so that's just the

(32:37):
nature of war.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
Absolutely, and that was the case in each one of
the subsequent Jacobite risings that occurred. So the one that
we're focusing on currently because of Gardner's role in it,
is the seventeen forty five Jacobite Rebellion, which is by
far the most famous because it's the one that really
is remembered through romantic storytelling and song. The last one

(33:06):
that you know, again, it's just commemorated in so many
different ways that it, you know, outlands have made it,
you know, very popular among some you know viewers for example,
who may not be history buffs, but they will have
watched that program and they'll remember it from there. But

(33:27):
suffice to say, this is when Charles Edward Stewart, so
Bonnie Prince Charlie or the young Pretender called by those
who were not as in favor of him, comes over
to Scotland and tries to retake the Triple crown, essentially
of England, Scotland and Ireland, and so he has his uprising.

(33:48):
He marked, he lands up in the North, he marches
down through the Highlands, he collects support for himself, gets
down to the Lowlands, and he ends up taking Edinburgh,
which was a rather largely Hanoverian city actually, so Hanaverarian,
being those pro the House of Hanover. So real quick,

(34:10):
you basically have after William and Mary die, they are
succeeded by Mary's sister Anne.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Then when she dies, the crown.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Passes over to her Protestant cousins from Germany and the
House of Hanover.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
So that's where you get the many.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Georges that come to power and so at this point
in time, so they're skipping over essentially the Catholic line.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
That's what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
They're doing kind of a circumvention where it's like, we're
not going to have you guys, because you guys are Catholics,
so we're going to give it the Protestant distant cousins.
So at this point in time, it's George the second
who is in command of this shebang. When the forty
five occurs in Charlot, Edward comes over and so forth.

(34:54):
So basically you do though, and this is an important distinction,
because this conflict has been so badly co opted by
nationalists that it is made into this England versus Scotland
conflict a lot in popular culture, and that just simply
was not the case whatsoever. You have many many Scots
who either were outright pro the House of Hanover or

(35:20):
they were neutral. You did, you know, a minority frankly,
given all of that, were pro Jacobite. So so really
it isn't it isn't what it's set up to be.
But so then this is this story, here is a
perfect case scenario for it, because tonight we'll be focusing
on a Scottish gentleman who died fighting for the House

(35:45):
of Hanover, you know. And and this this is.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Is Colonel James Gardner.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
So Gardner started off his military career when he was
very young, like when he was around fourteen or so,
and he served very briefly as a mercenary for the Dutch.
And even though this would later go on to like
I mentioned when I did my episode on General Simon
Fraser of Bowing, that mercenary service could be frowned upon,

(36:15):
but it depended what time period you were in so
when it comes to Jacobites or people from clans that
were semi Jacobite or you know, Highland clans or whatnot,
or even split like Fraser, they would use that against them.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Like, oh, they're you know, they went.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
And they served mercenary capacity, and they would kind of
use it as a negative. But you can see throughout
history plenty of people did stints in their armies in
this time period especially, and this is the case with Gardner,
and why he doesn't get any flack for this is
because this is the aftermath of the Glorious Revelation and
what is that about. It's about a Dutchman becoming the

(36:55):
king of the Triple Kingdoms, So so serving in the
Dutch army for a little while was no big deal
in this capacity.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
He's very young.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
He serves for a year in the Dutch Army, about
a year, year and a half something like that, and
then he ends up serving under Queen Anne, so he goes.
This is prior to the active Union, right, so in
the War of Spanish Succession, everything is a little wibbly
wobbly in terms of what is going to very very
shortly hereafter become the British army proper, but so you

(37:26):
have Scottsmen and Englishman though I almost feel like it's
fair to say that the British Union began with the
military before it began with the parliaments in a way,
because on a practical level, like in the War of
Spanish Succession, you had the forming of the British Army
before it was even officially formed, if you want to

(37:48):
put it that way. You had Englishmen and Scottsmen, for example,
working so closely together. So yeah, there was it was
almost as if, like the army under Marlborough practically what
is unifying, even before the unification officially happened. Marlborough is
a major figure in that, and we could do a
whole episode on him separately because he's awesome, but that's

(38:09):
another thing for another day.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
So yeah, I'd like to I'd like to do that.
It just thinking about it what you were saying there
about the Scottish soldiers, of the Scottish soldiers fighting for Marlborough's army.
Oh yes, and the Parliament, the Scottish Parliament made a
first book post about this the other day. Actually, the
Scottish Parliament said that they would take the soldiers out

(38:32):
of Marlborough's army if the English Parliament at the time
I didn't allow Scottish Act to be passed. But what
was it? It was the the The Scots wanted their

(38:52):
own act of their own Act of settlement, but the
English were like, no, we don't. We've decided it's going
to be a Protestant, and the Scot's well, yeah, yeah,
we do want it to be a Protestant as well,
but we want to be able to decide we disagree
with you, you know, if you pick up a different one,
we want another one if we don't like the one
that you pick And there was this big carry on
about it and the Scots we're going to take the

(39:13):
soldiers out of the Marlborough's army. And so the Queen
Queen Anne based or at least our governor capitulated and said, okay, okay,
you get your way. You can have you can you
can have your your particular act of security as we
called it. The English called it the Act of Settlement.
We called it the Act of Security, both essentially the

(39:33):
same things. But that was all to do with the
Scots in Marlborough's army being you.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Because it.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Was a very trick because when you think about it,
it's like, for example, the Earl of Stare, you know,
he was essentially an aide of moral Borough, very famous Scotsman.
So this wasn't even just it wasn't just lower figure Scott's.
These were high, high ranking Scotts who were in the army.
Because when you look at it was a very interesting time.

(40:06):
Like you said, it was very interesting because you have
these various acts and assertions of are we separate things
completely or are we kind of like meshing in some way?
Or how much are we meshing? What are we giving up?
When aren't we giving up? Are we distinct? How long
will we be completely distinct? Or are we ever completely distinct?

(40:27):
Because like when you read even oh, I was reading
the life and letters of Samuel Rutherford recently, a very
famous Presbyterian divine from the sixteen hundreds, from the era
of war of the Three Kingdoms, and this is a
man who is referencing Britain as a whole very often.

(40:48):
And so there was an understanding of it on some
level that they were all part of the same island
and they were joined by fate in you know, a
certain way. It had been joined by the crowns. Inevitably
they were joined by by destiny essentially, and after a
while they were starting to refer to themselves as a

(41:09):
single unit even though they're was so.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
So the point is, yes, all of this was going
on at the same time.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
So you have Gardner coming in on this where he
was part of a lot of Scotts who were indeed
serving in this military. You have it with the Convenanter
Regiment as I mentioned under a major pit Karen's episode
that his dad was a chaplain for that served under
Marlboro and all.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Of this this stuff. So it was very much on
the cost of the Union.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
I would say these are like the final years you
might say, the final decade prior to when it finally
kind of comes together. So it was a lot of
different tugging going on of pros and cons and what
do we keep and what do we lose and is
it going to happen and it's pulling for it happening
kind of thing. So anyway, Gardner, he gets shot in

(41:55):
the mouth at Remilly's, so he gets badly injured. This
when he's like fifteen, he nearly gets killed by a scavenger.
He gets rescued by a nun of all things, and
then so he gets kind of patched up and taken
care of, and she tries to convert him to Catholicism,
but even though he has no interest in religion, he

(42:17):
kind of has ethno Protestantism going for him, so he's like, nah,
thank you no, but I'm not really religious, period.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
So then he goes on in life.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
He serves in various capacities, and he tends to live
a fairly dissolute kind of early life and just sort
of likes the wine, women and song going on about it,
and then and extinction in various parts of Europe during
this time in his career. This is again post Union
at this point, nowadays officially the British Army has come

(42:50):
together as an entity, and so one of the most
famous incidences that happens in his life is that when
he is prepping essentially to meet up with this married
woman in this romantic rendezvous, he is trying to kill
some time while he's waiting for her, and so he

(43:11):
ends up reading his book which his pious mother packed
him in his luggage, called The Christian Soldier by the
Puritan divine Thomas Watson, and so he's reading this sort
of again to pass the time, and then as he
recorded it, saw this light fall on the pages, and

(43:32):
he thought it was the taper sort of flaring on
the sort of end table nearby. And then he turns
and he has this dream vision type of thing of
the crucified Christ who says to him, Oh, Sinner, have
I suffered all this for thee?

Speaker 2 (43:51):
And these are the returns.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
So Gardner gets very affected by this experience, turns around,
his life, becomes very pious, becomes famously pious figure, famously
renowned in Presbyterian circles, was quite a sort of it
became like a sort of emulation in Presbyterian circles this time.

(44:17):
So he, you know, you know, very very much is
kind of dealing with the aftermath of that experience, kind
of his whole life, you might say, because he continues
to have and record these these visions and ecstasies and
dreams and so forth, and in his writings and so forth,

(44:37):
as he's continuing his military career, which makes me a
very fascinating character. He almost falls into this this some
sort of type of the warrior mystic due to to
these these things so it's it's really interesting that way.
And I'm just looking at my notes because there's a
lot on Gardner, like you could just go on forever
on Gardner, but so out.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
But we've got a butt some five minutes, So bring
us to the big battle then that he is probably
later in his career and is unfortunately the final one
for him.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Sure so so yeah, So, as mentioned, he's a Hanoverian,
he's a Presbyterian. He's serving in the regular army, and
so he for a long time has sort of worried
about this rebellion. He thinks the rebellion is going to happen,
and he essentially believes that this is going to be

(45:34):
kind of a chastisement on a sinful land. And so
he talks a lot about having exhausted himself with strong
cries and tears which he poured out until he was
hardly able to stand when he arose from his knees,
and so he was he was foreshadowing that there was
going to be bad things going to hit the country,
and he believed it was sort of a chastisement on it.
So but he's determined essentially to he he basically says

(45:58):
at one point he thinks he's gonna die.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
I think dock from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
But he says he's willing to sacrifice himself for the
security of the country. And he doesn't fear dying. He
doesn't fear fighting. He only fears sinning. This was his
famous line. He goes into it and he serves under
Sir John Cope, so he becomes famous about Hey, Johnny Cope,
are you walking yet?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Song?

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Poor Cope. You know, I coul get a whole thing
on himy too. I feel a little bit bad for him.
I think he gets a bit a bit harshly treated.
But shall we just say Gardner and Cope didn't really
see eye to eye on how to do the you know,
how to combat the Jacobite threat.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
They didn't see hied eye.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Gardener really does feel like Cope isn't isn't handling it
right when he said they're going toward Preston Pans so effectively.
Preston Pans, you know, was a great Jacobite victory. It
was a big Jacobite high and you know, the floor
gets kind of wiped with, you know, team Hanover. And

(46:59):
so Cope does try to rally his troops and he
famously tells them, you know, trist to rally and saying
behave like Britain's, you know, and so forth. And you know,
but everybody was kind of freaked because they're being you know,
they're being the recipients of the Highland charge.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
And that was pretty terrifying. And I mean, this is.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Worth another mention that you know, Lowlanders were actually more
likely to dread and be afraid of Highlanders than the English.
You know, like when we think about the English versus
the Scots, we have this cartoonish version of what Scotland was,
and they're all Highlanders technically, Like the Lowlanders were a
different group of people. They were just different, and they

(47:39):
felt very different to their Highland you know, counterparts who
were different in many many ways, language, oftentimes religion. They
tended to be more Catholic and Scottish Biscopalian, whereas the
Lowlanders tend to be more Presbyterian.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
I could, very obviously, but generally speaking.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
And in dress, in manners and culture, in what they
felt comfortable doing in terms.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Of casual violence.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
So there was a lot of different things in the
Highlander We're terrifying. They were totally terrifying, especially the Lowlanders
freak the heck out by these people. So so so
Gardener though, because Keith pretty awesome himself, is kind of like,
all right, we're being you know, attacked by Highlanders and
they're freaking terrifying, but you know we're gonna we're gonna

(48:29):
hold the you know, we're gonna hold together here. So
so Gardner, as it says Gardener fought and fighting fell
and you know, so so essentially he would not get
off the field. He would refuse to get off the field.
He kept fighting until he was shot roughly four times
and then hit in the head with a lacke a
bra ax, because did we ever mention in this series

(48:53):
of Scottish soldiers I've been presenting, Scotts can't just die.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
These guys cannot just die.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
They need to have something strap and before they can die.
So all this happens to him, and you know he
should be dead. He's not, though, so you basically have
his manservant eventually finds him, you know, prostrate under a
thorn tree, which becomes this whole you know, allegorical and

(49:21):
religiously symbolic thing, and and so then he ends up
taken to essentially a church Manse where he is nursed
rather ironically by two Jacobite sympathizing young ladies, not terribly
far from his own home. He was married with many
children himself makes it round tragic, but he was quite close.

(49:44):
It was his own turf, you know. He was a
Lowland Scott and he was very near to the place
where this thing was fought. And so he he dies
there and and that's where you know, you basically have
the monument that is is there to him.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Currently, Yes, we've got to. We've got a picture here
at a Bankton house in Preston Pans there is a
memorial to him, and there it is there and I
don't know to what extent you can see it from
the picture, but there's there's four sleeping lions at each

(50:21):
of the four corners of that obelisk. And I had
not been aware of it until researching the matter. I
had not been aware of this man until today.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Actually a bit tragic, because he was, you know, quite
a famous figure, you know, at the time for sure,
And I actually had him included in my American Revolution
novel by way of Major John pit Karen telling his
story because pitt Heeren came from the same general area

(50:53):
of Scotland that comes from this very strong Presbyterian family,
his dad being you know, a common enter style moderator
and so forth. So I had him just just tell
the tale because I really wanted to, you know, get
it in there.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
And he was such a famous figure at the.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Time, so that's presumably him in this picture here.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
It is, yes, being awesome, and I know we're running
low on time. So what I'll do is quickly just
read a quote from him and a quote from the
book he was reading. Oh say, so this was a
this I mean, Gardner was fairly prolific. Anybody who wants

(51:37):
to look up his stuff, I highly recommend it. Quite
a good read to get a sense of the era,
both as a military man, but also the religious tone
of the era, for especially like pious Presbyterians, but also
just in general Christianity of the era and its expression

(51:59):
in the British Isles. To be highly highly recommend it.
So like track down his letters by all means just typeening.
Google has them there for free. But anyway, I'll just
read two bits. You know, we're running out, so that
this is from him. I think I can bear anything.
The loss of all the loss of health, of relations

(52:21):
on whom I depend and whom I love, all that
is dearer to me, without repining or murmuring. When I
think that God orders, disposes, and manages all things according
to the counsel of his own will. When I think
of the extent of His providences that it reaches to
the minutest things, then though a useful friend or dear
relative be snatched away by death, I recall myself and

(52:44):
check my thoughts with these considerations. Is he not God
from everlasting and to everlasting? And as he not a
God to me?

Speaker 2 (52:52):
A God?

Speaker 3 (52:52):
And all his attributes to God, and all his persons
to God and all his creatures and providences.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
And this was immediately before Preston pans this line.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
He was writing to a friend when he's still nothing
bad had happened yet, but he was saying, I have
been very busy, hurried about from place to place, But
blessed be God, all is over without bloodshed, and pray.
Let me ask what made you show so much concern
for me in your last Were you afraid I should
get to heaven before you? Or can any evil befall

(53:24):
those who are followers of that which is good and Leslie.
This is from the book he was reading when he
had his fateful epiphany convergier moment from Thomas Watson again
the Puritan Divine. He's also a very fascinating character from
out of British religious literature. But it sums up Gardner

(53:45):
extremely well, I think, and would go on to define
everything about him going forward from that point. A Christian
fights the lord's battles. He is Christ's and sin bearer.
Now what though he endures hard fate and the bullets
fly around, he fights for a crown. And this ties
in very much from the legend that when Gardner was

(54:09):
was was.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Was laying on the ground wordally wounded.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
You know, some jacko bites were around him, and Gardner
essentially says, your your you've come here to fight for
your prince, you know, or something like that, your prince
has come here to fight for a crown. Well, I
have already gained a crown. So that kind of ties in.
And the thorn the thorn tree also ties in with

(54:34):
the imagery of crowns as well in Christian murderology traditions.
So so that was Gardener and that that is his
his legacy.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
And that well, thank you very much. I'm just gonna
five his name up here for people.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
James Gardner Garden the A R d I n e R.
This one says Gradners, does it? That's quickly it's James
then g A R d I n e R.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Yeah, that's just just that's my fever.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Sorry, no worries. I live on a farm, you see.
So why why should she? Why should we be cowed
by mere hey when we have predecessors uncowed by no
hey is worse than bullets.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
We should be cowed by it.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
You've been very entertaining tonight. Thanks very much for introducing
us to another lost scotsman that many of us had
never heard about, and who's who's famous enough to have
his own memorials as well.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
The last shall be found that right.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Anybody wants to find out more about you, go to
your YouTube dot com forward slash at Avelina Blestri. That's
a V E l l I n A b A
l e s R for the benefit of those listening
on audio only, and we'll have you back. And there's
countless people. Johnny Cope you mentioned there, Marlborough Crite, you
take up several issues.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Thought here's the thought I have.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
I think it would be fun to do Sir Hugh
mackay because he's in the same realm of the general
glorious revolution Jacobite period. And he's also a Scotsman who
served with the Dutch a bit. And yeah, so I
think it would be fun to do him as follow.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Let's do it. Let's do it. We'll make a date
for some time later this year or whenever suits your fancy, Evelina.
But in the meantime, have a lovely afternoon over there
in Maryland. And thanks once again for coming back on.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Thank you for having me on deablass, thank you.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
You're welcome. Fantastic folks, say thanks to our friend Avelina there.
Christopher says, thank you Evelena, as do Zusanna and rapha hm,
and thank you sir. We must get you on Preston,

(57:07):
Journalists must get you on these days. Good stuff, good stuff, excellent.
Well we we uh we we're gonna have guests for

(57:28):
the next two or three weeks. We've got guests on
next week. Glad to say it will be Damien. And
in the meantime, folks, please do check out if you
haven't got it already. Please go to nice to see
we say it in the house. Please let's remove that banner.

(57:54):
Please go to Amazon dot co dot uk and just
type and protect our tree and you'll get this book
and three hundred and fifteen pages of solutions, a work
of art. As one of our customers said to us,
it's subtitled Policies to Stop Mass Immigration and it's the

(58:19):
second in our big book for the Union series. And
what I think about this book is it's it's just
sensible stuff. I was watching somebody who's got a big
following on the internet on Twitter last night and they
were saying stuff which is just not likely. It's like, oh,

(58:41):
we have to send these people to Ascension Island. That's
never going to happen. So don't say stuff that's just
silly stuff. You know what can literally be done in reality.
There's a lot that can still be done without going
to the Let's send them to the to the South

(59:06):
Sandwich Islands, you know, And there's a lot that can
be done, workable, practical, sensible policies that can stop not
just the levels of channel crossing, but to stop the
massive numbers of legal immigrants who are coming in and

(59:28):
legal immigration is very easily sorted. You simply just control
the visas, whether it's for work or study or family reunion,
and you can you can put out a million visas,
or you can say there's going to be no visas.
And if you have no visas, then nobody gets into
the country via the legal means airports, ports of entry

(59:51):
and so on and so forth. So it can all
be easily done. And we just this is like a
bringing people back to reality. Here's what can be done.
And don't think that your politicians know about this. I
read some of the people I won't mention any names,
but cabinet members, and I think to myself, I don't

(01:00:12):
think they know how the system operates, like I don't
think they know how the UN Refugee Convention works. I've
got a degree in Scott's law. I've spent many years
studying it. I know how it works exactly, and it's
not really how many people would think. And we show
what's the problem with it here, and we show the
little things that need to be done to make it work. Indeed,

(01:00:35):
to make it work, we have to leave it because
it really is the critical convention that messes up our country.
The UN Refugee Convention, and so there's no way we
can stop the boats without leaving the UN Refugee Convention.
And that's a big, serious takeaway from this book, even
though we only cover it in two of the nineteen chapters.

(01:00:59):
So some of you may think, well, I'm not going
to read three hundred and fifteen pages, but I think
my MP should at least know about this. So why
don't you just simply buy it when it comes, send
it to your MP, and maybe point out one or
two of the chapter headings for your MP or his
or her office to look at, because we hear it

(01:01:22):
a force for good. We don't have the money to
send copies to even the whole of the cabinet, but
if you think that there's an MP who should see this,
then just buy a copy and send it to them,
even though you yourself might not actually be reading the book,
because we need to get this information into the hands

(01:01:42):
of as many legislators as possible so that it can
at least give them ideas that they can then articulate.
And as I say in the book, I'm not wanting
any recognition for any of this, not that I would
expect any. I'm just wanting people to use these ideas
in whatever way they think best, people who are much

(01:02:03):
better placed than I am. So if you can get
if you can help get books like this, this book
specifically into the hands of MP's cabinet members MSPs as
well leaders of the Scottish political parties. Within reason obviously,
send this to a Green person, send this to Patrick

(01:02:25):
Harvey will probably send it to the police, and say
can you get Aliston mcconnichey on anything that's in here please,
But you know reasonable politicians that you can think of,
send them this copy. Let's get it, Let's get it
circulating among those who can make what's in here happen.

(01:02:46):
And as I say, it's all just very sensible, workable, serious,
serious politics. There's nothing in here about sending people to
Ascension Island or imprisoning them in Saint Georgia along with
the penguins. You know, there's nothing like that in here
at all. This is the most sensible read you will
have ever read on this matter. And as I like

(01:03:08):
to say, it was one year in the writing, twenty
five years in the making, and folks check it out now.
On that serious note, Derek says, it's all been very interesting.

(01:03:34):
Thank you, Derek Goles. Nice to see you in every week.
Paul Handler says, great guest. Needed another half hour, absolutely absolutely.
Christopher says more knowledge gained as usual here, that's the aim.

(01:03:56):
James says, enjoyed the show. Christopher says we should send
a copy to ruput Low. Our office did take the
opportunity to send ruput Low a copy. We've sent to
about four politicians ruput Low, or at least ruput Low's team.
Nigel Farag's team sent one to suwella braveman. I mean,

(01:04:20):
I thought, is it worth the is it worth the postage?
But we sent one anyway. And because I'm pretty sure
she doesn't know how the UN Refugee Convention actually works.
I know that's ridiculous, but I don't think she does,
because if she did, she would not be saying things
that she's saying. She's concentrating on ECCHR. E CHR is
a bit player, it's a secondary player. The main one

(01:04:42):
is the UN Refugee Convention. That's what legalizes the traffic
into the UK. The ECCHR only kicks in for a
small number of people who can claim a family right
to stay and it's usually after two or three years
of them being in this country, and that's for a minority.

(01:05:04):
It's the UN Refugee Convention, which is the big one.
Oh thank you, Rafa. Alistair Mcconniche is a real British
patriot and Scottish Unionist and you sound like a great

(01:05:26):
chat yourself, Rafa. One copy for the self, one for
someone else, says it says Christopher James says. Everyone in
the SNP needs to read it. Absolutely, they actually do,
because I hold out hope that there are still some

(01:05:46):
intelligent people left, if not elected to high position, at
least in the membership. And I know that for a
fact because I know two or three of them who
will very much appreciate this and who really need to
get who really need to get these ideas circulating within
the SNP, because what's the The SNP is meant to

(01:06:07):
be for the Scottish nation. Okay, it's not meant to
be for the world. It's meant to be for the
Scottish nation. So if they are true Scottish nationalists, they
should be interested in how do we protect Scotland. There
are several labor Cabinet ministers that we have identified Osannah

(01:06:31):
that should should get it, and also some libor MPs
who should get it, especially read Wall libor MPs who
need good advice. And yeah, we're we're on it, but
we can't send to them all unfortunately, but we can
certainly tell people who we would like. If somebody says,
I've bought ten copies, who should I send them to?
We can give you the names. Who is the fourth person?

(01:07:00):
Let me find out who the fourth person was? Did
they There wasn't a fourth person. There wasn't a fourth MP.
There wasn't a fourth MP, not yet anyway. Okay, folks,

(01:07:27):
we're going to be back next week. Thank you for everything,
for all the comments. Really busy show tonight. We'll be
back with our guest, Damien Davies next week and we'll
look forward to seeing you then. So in the meantime,
it just remains for me to say, God Bless the
United Kingdom and God Save the King. See you next week.