The battle for Berwick, the ancient corner of an English field that is forever Scotland
Used as a political football over the centuries by two warring nations who could not live at peace, a quiet town is caught up in the conf lict once again
CALLING it the Cold War might be overdoing it but for more than a century there had been a certain diplomatic froideur between mighty Mother Russia and the citizens of a long-disputed Border town. It began when Queen Victoria kicked off the Crimean War in 1853 with a declaration signed ‘Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-uponTweed and all British dominions’. The curious inclusion of Berwick reflected several hundred years of Scotland and England playing pass-the-parcel with the town.
But when the Treaty of Paris concluded the war three years later, Berwick was somehow missed out – leaving it technically still at war for the next 110 years.
Fortunately, in what looked like the most onesided struggle since Muhammad Ali v Richard Dunn, the two sides never came to blows and good sense eventually prevailed. And in 1966, a member of the Soviet politburo at last made his way to Northumberland to declare peace at a meeting with Berwick mayor Robert Knox, who declared somewhat mischievously: ‘Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds now.’
Yet it seems Berwick is forever destined to find itself in the middle of geo-political truculence. The town has been England’s nearest frontier outpost to Scotland for more than 500 years, yet remains characterised by the dozen times it changed hands between Scotland and England in the previous 400.
Now, just over five months before the referendum on Scottish independence, the market town lying just two miles from the Border, finds itself once again on the cusp of great events.
This place could be considered the poster town for the Union. For while it currently belongs to England, it would easily get a game for Scotland, any time, owing to its strong tartan bloodlines.
ON a Wednesday afternoon on Marygate, the main thoroughfare, I stop for a few minutes and listen to the sound of the town. This is a garden of accents in which the cadences of several distinct dialects blend joyously with each other.
The pitch and swell of a conversation between two retired gentlemen sitting on a bench at the top of the road indicates Geordie, but it is flecked with the flat vowels of Lowland Scots. There are five distinct dialects between Berwick and Newcastle, they tell me.
The two ladies with the nice winter coats are talking to each other with barely a hint of anything in their accents that might be considered English. As it turns out, they are both born and bred in Berwick. As I introduce myself, they become delightfully pink and giggly and pretend to be bashful – but it turns out they’re anything but. So what are their views on Scottish independence?
‘ Oh, I don’t want anything to change,’ says Eileen Sutherland, a retired guest-house owner. ‘Scotland has always been part of who we are and I want it to stay that way.
‘Berwick is unique and beautiful and friendly. It’s just a shame that the heart of it has been ripped out,’ she adds sadly, indicating all the To Let signs over shops that once belonged to thriving local traders.
Her friend Nancy Steele is proud to work at the Barracks, home of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, saying proudly: ‘The regiment is the jewel in the Berwickshire crown, the Blue Bonnets over the Border. They’re part of what this town is all about.
‘But all the local businesses are selling up, because the rates are too high – and the three big supermarkets at the entrance to the town have sucked all the trade away.’
Both ladies, it would appear, consider themselves to be Berwickers first, English second – and more than a little Scottish.
Returning to the language, there exists also an entire compendium of words and phrases unique to this neighbourhood, which has its origin in the Romany gypsy community which once thrived here.
Fortunately I am armed with the Coosty Barie dictionary, ‘the number one guide to understanding Berwickers’. This informs me that ‘ coosty’ means ‘very good’ and ‘ barie’ is simply ‘lovely’. Thus, if you’re a man in these parts and you encounter a fetching lady whom you might wish to know better, you might say: ‘You’re a coosty, barie manishee, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
To which, of course, she might reply: ‘You’re nothing but a lairy spraff and your patter is cack, not to mention shan.’
Disconcertingly, this dictionary seems to include a disproportionate number of terms associated with the baser physical urges and the more unmentionable of the bodily regions. But I was reliably informed by one well-versed in this usage that on a Saturday evening, in certain locations, it could be the difference between a promising night and a sore face.
You get a big welcome in Berwickupon-Tweed and it’s not long before friendly faces are approaching the stranger in their midst. They are all happy to talk and each speaks of pride in this town, one of the most historic in the UK.
The Marygate, still handsome despite the clutch of empty shopfronts, slopes gently down to the imposing town hall with its old debtors’ gaol and clock-tower, the epitome of 18th-century stony rectitude.
A street runs off down to the right and soon you are looking out over the Tweed from the middle of its three landmark bridges. In July, the currents will be jumping with salmon, but today I have two seals for com- pany, playing hide-and- seek with each other in the waves.
Berwick’s unique beginning-and-end location in the middle of Britain is exemplified in the offices of the Berwick Advertiser and Berwick News, two separate publications under the same roof, operating quite distinctly from each other on either side of the Border.
The News is the Scottish title and the Advertiser looks to the English side of the Border. They share a website, where an online poll indicates a heightened interest in the campaign to decide Scotland’s destiny, asking the readers. ‘What should Berwick do if Scotland becomes independent?’
So far, 36 per cent of respondents say the town should become Scottish, while 46 per cent want no change – and 18 per cent want an independent Berwick, breaking away from Northumberland County Council to form its own administration.
THE figures, with roughly a third supporting Scottish independence and the No group ten points ahead, are broadly in line with voting intentions north of the Border. Intriguingly, the third question reflects growing and deep-rooted resentment at the town’s shoddy treatment at the hands of its English local authorities.
Phil Johnson, group editor of the local newspapers, is disdainful of Northumberland and its neglect of Berwick, and he is fearful of what might happen after the September 18 vote in Scotland.
He says: ‘ Our papers have campaigned for town- centre parking charges to be dropped, as they are strangling hard-pressed local businesses, while town-centre parking is free when you travel further south.
Northumbria Healthcare Trust shut our maternity unit, meaning expectant mothers faced a 90minute journey on a single-track road to the nearest one. They also tried to take one of our two ambulances away, in a town with a population of nearly 15,000. It was only after our campaigns in the paper that they had a partial re-think.’
As such, Mr Johnson is keen to test Alex Salmond’s pledge that ‘after Scottish independence, the growth of a strong economic power in the north of these islands would benefit everyone – our closest neighbours in the north of England more than anyone. There would be a northern light to redress the influence of the dark star – rebalancing the economic centre of gravity of these islands’.
Certainly Mr Johnson finds anything that happens to Scotland is important to Berwick these days: ‘Our letters page is beginning to reflect the independence debate.’
Outside on the street, beside a market stall selling fruit and vegetables, Alan Morton has stopped to chat to some old friends. He is a proud Englishman with a great affection for the Scots who live and work in Berwick: ‘This place is as Scottish as it is English, and I don’t see why Scotland should break away. This island is too small to start splitting.’
At the northern entrance to Berwick-upon-Tweed lurk the three ugly sisters – Tesco, Lidl and Morrisons.
They stand accused of sucking the life out of Berwick’s heart and some of the town’s older residents wish a curse on all their houses. Morrisons, in particular, stands accused of upsetting the otherwise happy relationship that exists locally between Scots and English by dispensing only Scottish currency at its check- out machines, to the displeasure of English holidaymakers heading home.
Sure enough, when I purchase some newspapers, my English £20 note gives me back a Scottish tenner and fiver.
The checkout assistant says this is hardly surprising as the machines are made by a Scottish company but I detect no visible displeasure among my fellow shoppers.
If Mr Salmond is serious about engaging with England’s northern fastnesses, the citizens of Berwickupon-Tweed would like to hear from him long before the referendum. They want to know exactly what he means, lest he be accused of being a spraff.
And yet, no matter how we vote on September 18, this corner of an English field will always be forever Scotland.