The Radical Laird
Kenny MacAskill looks at the life of George Kinloch, political outlaw turned MP for Dundee
ON the day of a rather ironic anniversary, George Kinloch became the first MP for Dundee in 1832. When declared winner at the count in December 1832, Kinloch pointed out that it was 13 years to the day, since he had been pronounced an outlaw at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh.
There, in December 1819, he had faced charges of sedition in the High Court, for speeches he had made. Fleeing abroad for his liberty, if not his life, it would be many years before he returned.
The 1832 election was the first contest for the city of Dundee, and was conducted under the widened franchise following the passing of the First Reform Act that year.
It only extended the eligible voters from 5000 to 65,000 in Scotland, a country of 2.3 million, but this was enough for the election of radical figures, such as Kinloch, who was better known as the Radical Laird.
Born in Dundee on April 30, 1775, Kinloch was the younger son of an army officer who had inherited an estate in Strathmore. His parents died when he was very young and, with his brother being disabled, the boys were sent to study in Italy and France.
George returned to Scotland in 1791 just as the radicalism of the French Revolution was taking hold. Studying briefly at Edinburgh University he became laird of the Kinloch Estate on his 21st birthday in 1796. That same year he married his cousin Helen Smyth and they had six daughters and two sons.
His early years weren’t by any means an indication for his later radicalism. Indeed, he commanded the Coupar Angus Volunteers, a militia established to repel a French invasion and also to suppress internal dissent. But in those times, many enlisted just to appear loyal, such as the Scottish Bard, Robert Burns. So, whether George enlisted due to belief or to mask radical sympathies isn’t known.
However, a few years later his radicalism came to the fore. He resigned from his position in 1808, stating that he was opposed to a standing army in peace time, and by 1812 he was condemning the war that had broken out with Spain. His fiery rhetoric attracted attention when he said, “We have been fighting for a worthless king, an insolent nobility and a useless clergy.”
The only landowner of consequence in Scotland to support radical reform, he was progressive in his actions. Buying land, which is now Carnoustie, he supported tenants as well as being involved in the construction of Dundee Harbour. He was, though, a slave owner having inherited a Jamaican estate.
It is a sad reflection of the times that radicalism applied to neither women nor anyone that wasn’t white.
With the ending of the Napoleonic Wars in 1816, the economy slumped and the calls for change increased. By 1817, Kinloch was speaking in support of universal suffrage and annual parliaments in the city of his birth.
Perhaps because of his wealthy background he was targeted by the authorities in the period following the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in August 1819, and which culminated the following year in the 1820 rising.
Kinloch had been speaking at rallies, demanding the universal franchise and social reform for many years, but he made a further name for himself in Dundee on November 10, 1819. Following the massacre at Peterloo, he addressed the crown and condemned the “unprovoked, cruel and cowardly attack made on the people of Manchester” and called for radical reforms.
They included the franchise where he stated “the whole of our misery, the whole of our distress, can be clearly traced to the circumstances of the people… not having a voice in the election of persons to represent them in the House of Commons.”
This speech was quoted extensively at rallies in the west of Scotland, and it was too much for the authorities fearful of a revolution. Within a fortnight a warrant was granted and he fled.
Kinloch headed to England, before going on to Paris where he remained for almost three years until the events of the turn of the decade had died down.
A lessening of the repression saw Kinloch able to return initially in secret to London before coming home to Scotland in 1823. In May of that year he was finally granted a pardon.
He picked his life up again both as laird and as a radical. His election as the first Dundee MP in 1832 was the culmination of that, but he wasn’t to enjoy it long, dying in March 1833 just a month after taking his seat.
It was a long journey for such a short stay, but for someone who believed so passionately in reform, it would have been a journey worth making.
Next month former Justice Minister Kenny Macaskill remembers William Chalmers, whose legacy helped develop Gothenburg, Sweden, in the Industrial Revolution.
“A warrant was ” granted and he fled