Edinburgh Castle and Scotland’s redcoats reckoning

Edinburgh Castle has said it will review the name of its cafe after claims that it is “deeply offensive to the Scottish people”.

Almost 4,000 people signed a petition demanding that the Redcoat Cafe within the castle be renamed because of its links to the British Army’s crushing defeat of the Jacobites and the Highland Clearances in the 18th century.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES), which operates the castle, said it would consider changing the name of the cafe, which has been in place since 1992, as well as the name of the Jacobite function room. A spokesperson for HES said the cafe’s name reflected “the military history which is told throughout the castle” but added that the way people “interpret history is constantly evolving”.

‘Elevates British imperial history’

Despite the “steep soup selling price”, people have used the castle’s cafe “without much consternation” over the past 32 years, said Andrew Learmonth in The Herald. 

With only one previous complaint about the name, there was a surprising “flurry of criticism” and “strong emotions” when the cafe reopened last weekend after a refurbishment. The petition itself said the cafe “glorifies” the Redcoats, who played “a significant role in subjugating Scotland and suppressing its people”.

This outcry could be because “people of a nationalist persuasion” are now more “sensitive about the cause” than previously, said Scottish historian Tom Devine in the paper, and over many decades a “fixed belief” had developed in the “association between Jacobitism being a cause of Scotland versus England”. Devine also said in The Telegraph that Scottish troops and Highland regiments had “had a high profile in the British Army” and often wore red tunics, arguing that the offence taken from the cafe name was “simply ludicrous and reflects historical illiteracy”.

But the name has stirred some nationalist politicians. Chris McEleny, general secretary of the pro-independence Alba party, said the whole of Edinburgh Castle “elevates British imperial history” and should “better reflect all of the ages of Scottish history”. He argued the cafe name was akin to “the White House having a wing named the Red Coat Wing”. Douglas Chapman, the Fife SNP MP, said the castle should consider a “swift rebrand” for the cafe.

‘Confected outrage’

There should be questions over a politician’s “suitability for elected office” if the name of a cafe is “enough to trigger” them, wrote Euan McColm in The Scotsman. He said the “confected outrage” was “difficult to discuss without feeling deep embarrassment on behalf of those speaking out”. These people, he said, have become “programmed to find offence in the slightest thing” to support the independence cause.

The nationalists have used “triviality” to fuel their “resentment of all that is British”, agreed Robert Tombs in The Telegraph, and in doing so were “willing to rubbish their own patriotic heritage”. The Jacobite rising had “nothing to do with ‘freedom and independence for Scotland'”, he said, and many Scots were “much keener on Union than the English”. But the idea that many of the “greatest Scottish names were vocal unionists” must be “hard for today’s nationalists to swallow”, he added.