Scottish Parliament petitioned to commemorate Thomas Muir

One of the five Scottish Martyrs transported to the penal colony of Botany Bay, Glasgow-born Thomas Muir (1765-1799), founder of The Friends of the People in Scotland, has never been commemorated by a statue in his own country.

Now an e-petition has been launched by The Friends of Thomas Muir and Robert Burns’ biographer, Paddy Scott Hogg, calling upon the Scottish Parliament to erect a statue to Muir at the Scottish Parliament or on the Royal Mile.

Most Scots  know little or nothing of this man and are not taught about him in school, yet this churchman-turned-advocate forged alliances with those of democratic republican sympathies from the French Revolutionaries to the United Irishmen and was internationally respected.

His intellect, his commitment to egalitarian politics, his willingness, from his early days as a student, to defend those under attack from corrupt  authority – and his ability to adapt to whatever circumstances he found himself in anywhere in the world, are remarkable.

The reformist, republican bush-fire that was the French Revolution took light in London with the London Association of The Friends of the People, riven with internal rivalries. This movement, essentially focused on political reform, was echoed in Scotland in the establishment of The Friends of the People in Scotland – but here it had a unity of purpose which made it a real threat to existing authority.

Such people mark your card and bide their time – and they did so with Muir, co-founder of the movement with William Skirving, a Fife farmer and another of the five Scottish Martyrs.

Muir had found common cause with The United Irishmen, by far the most significant of the Irish republican movements. They sent an Address of Fraternity to the first Convention of the Scottish associations of The Friends of the People. Muir’s reading of it there – itself in combative circumstances, was held to be seditious, leading ultimately to his sentencing – at a show trial whose processes were patently injudicious – to fourteen years transportation to Botany Bay.

Because of money raised in London for him and his fellow reformers also sentenced to transportation, they did not have to labour at the colony and, as educated, articulate men who were political ‘convicts’, their lives there gave them latitude to buy land and build houses in the bay area.

Muir prepared for an eventual escape, which he successfully effected and then began a series of  sea transports and periods of residency across the world – often in semi-custody and in flight from the British who had, before his transportation, named him a fugitive from justice.

These journeys took him from Vancouver Island, his landfall on the Otter (at Nootka Bay) after his escape from Botany Bay; Monterrey in California; Mexico City; Havana in Cuba; Vera Cruz in Spain; Madrid; San Sebastian; and eventually Paris, where, on 26th January 1799, he died.

In his last days in Paris, where he was feted as a longtime friend of the Republic, he retained his focus on helping his friends and associates in the reform movement in Scotland. He became a friend of  Thomas Paine and James Napper Tandy of the United Irishmen, and learned from them the news of the near-insurrection in Scotland over the Militia Act.

Throughout 1798 he submitted a series of letters and memoranda to the Directory of the French Republic, urging military intervention on behalf of the Scots people to help them to create  a Scottish Republic.

He learned of the strength of the United Scotsmen, the organisation which had since replaced The Friends of the People. He met Scots emissaries from this movement who came to Paris to seek the support of the French.

He became aware that spies instructed by the English Prime Minister, Pitt, were keeping him under scrutiny and so asked permission of the Directory to move out of Paris to a more remote place where he could meet his associates, free from this threat.

He moved to Chantilly on the Ile De France where, a couple of months later and very suddenly, he died.

This was a man of remarkable ability whose lifelong service to the cause of political reform saw him hunted around the world and, at one point, a semi-prisoner on a Spanish ship, the Ninfa, engaged in a running battle with English ships and left badly disfigured when shrapnel took away his left jawbone.

A few years ago the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Jim Wallace, post-devolution Scotland’s first Deputy First Minister, described Thomas Muir as the founding father of Scottish Democracy.

The eminent Scots sculptor, Alexander Stoddart, was commissioned to create a bust of Thomas Muir (above) but Muir, the leader of the Scottish Martyrs, is publicly commemorated only in the Obelisk to the Martyrs on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill, along with Thomas Fyshe Palmer, William Skirving, Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerrald.

That obelisk bears a sentence from a speech of Muir’s in the Court of Judiciary on 30th August 1793: ‘I have devoted myself to the cause of The People. It is a good cause – it shall ultimately prevail – it shall finally triumph’.

The Friends of Thomas Muir – based in Bishopbriggs – have, with Paddy Scott Hogg, now launched the  E-Petition aiming to have a statue raised to Muir.

They are asking people who agree that Muir is a historical figure worthy of a statue in the vicinity of the Scottish Parliament to sign the petition which is on the Parliament’s website.

The picture above shows the bust of Thomas Muir created by Alexander Stoddart, photographed by copyright holder Dumgoyne and reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.