International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Like others, I greatly enjoyed the opening speech by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and the contributions from other hon. Members. I love the historical context because, as I shall elaborate, it is extraordinarily important.

Mention has been made of statues losing their heads and of the brutality, on both sides, of the Reformation. One thinks of Mary Tudor and, as has been mentioned, of the gunpowder plot, which is currently being dramatized on television. In my country, Scotland, described by the Reverend Sydney Smith as

“that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur”,

the town of St Andrews, where I went to university, saw the particularly brutal martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton, who was the Abbot of Fearn, which is near my home town in the highlands. In 1528 he was burned to death at the stake for his Protestant beliefs. He burned for six hours, from 12 noon until 6 o’clock at night, in a particularly cruel and brutal martyrdom. It is said that on his death an angel’s face appeared in the tower of St Salvator’s chapel in St Andrews University. To this day, due to a natural act of God through erosion, there is a rather beautiful face in the stone. In the place where he was burned, the initials PH are set in the paving stones, and students at St Andrews make a conscious point of never standing on those stones. It was said at the time that

“the reek of Patrick Hamilton hath infected all those on whom it blew.”

It was a turning point in Scottish Reformation history.

It is easy to over-simplify this. We tend to think of the rebellions in 1715 and 1745 as having been Protestant versus Catholic, but it is not quite so easy. In the 1745 rebellion, Bonnie Prince Charlie took his troops south through Carlisle and got as far as Derby. If we examine who the Jacobites were, we find that among those from north of the border there were some Catholics, high Anglicans and Episcopalians. But an awful lot of them were Presbyterians—I look to the two Scottish National party Members in front of me, the hon. Members for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day)—of a nationalist persuasion who were not at all convinced by the 1707 Act of Union. We must remember that the rebellion of 1745 was during the time of Whig supremacy, in my own side’s glory days. The people who joined Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flag from the south were actually Tories who wanted to change the Government, so it was not nearly as simple as one might like to think.

I have an interesting anecdote about religious tolerance. One of the people who most strongly supported Bonnie Prince Charlie was Cameron of Lochiel, the chief of Clan Cameron, known as Gentle Lochiel. The Camerons were and are to this day of a high Anglican persuasion, but it is interesting that they protected their Catholic tenantry on their estates of Auchnacarry and Lochaber. A late gentleman who graced this place, Charles Kennedy, was of the Roman Catholic persuasion. His family had a croft on the Cameron estates but were allowed to worship in freedom, protected by the Cameron family. That is why they have their own graveyard, where Charles is buried today, on the Cameron estates. The future Cameron of Lochiel is a Tory Member of the Scottish Parliament. I would have loved to get him to the Liberal persuasion, but I did not prevail in that regard.

In Scotland it has been a journey towards tolerance. We learn from history, as other Members have said, but we must learn not to be too complacent. SNP Members may touch on this, but we know what can arise at an old firm match between Celtic and Glasgow Rangers. In the UK it is easy to pat ourselves on the back and say we are doing very well. However, the hon. Member for Strangford made mention of 1947. The question is: was Cyril Radcliffe too hasty when he drew the boundary lines between India and Pakistan? What if we had departed the Indian subcontinent in a way that was a little more considered? Goodness knows, but it was sadly a blot on this country’s record. A British decision led to some of the most ghastly inter-religious murders, and we may never know the sum total of people killed.

In conclusion, it has been a journey. The point was very well made by the hon. Member for Strangford in his opening remarks that we must reach out via our embassies and everything we do through the FCO and the like. In my own small way, I am a member of the Church of Scotland, and I have learnt from this debate and found it absolutely fascinating. My days of saying that I am a newbie are drawing to a close, and I cannot get away with that argument for terribly much longer, but it is great to learn and I will do what I can. To be perfectly fair to HM Government, I have no reason to doubt the good intention that they are pursuing in this regard, as far as I can see.