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Trevor Royle, Facing the Bear: Scotland and the Cold War

Article  in  Northern Scotland · November 2020

DOI: 10.3366/nor.2020.0222

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Samuel J M M Alberti
National Museums Scotland
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 BOOK REVIEWS

Facing the Bear: Scotland and the Cold War.

By Trevor Royle. Pp. xvi, 320.
ISBN: 9781780275260 (hbk).
Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2019. £25.00.
DOI: 10.3366/nor.2020.0222
In 1964 Alexander MacIntyre of Strone designed a tartan for the personnel of
the American Submarine base at the Holy Loch. The tartan is registered as
‘Polaris Military’ after the infamous nuclear missile carried by the US Navy’s
ballistic missile submarines, and includes navy blue to represent the naval uniform,
dark green for the depths of the oceans and the royal blue and gold over-checks
represent the ‘Blue’ and ‘Gold’ crews who alternate. Polaris Military is evocative
of the cultural and physical impact of the Cold War in Scotland, and is one of
many details of the military-civilian encounter in Trevor Royle’s well-researched
and important book.
Scotland was strategically critical during the four-decade nuclear stand-off
between East and West. For although in Europe this Cold War never turned
‘hot’, there were nevertheless profound consequences for those on the northern
frontline. Perhaps most famous and divisive are the Royal Navy and US Navy
bases on the Clyde, home to Polaris and later Trident; but there were over 200
military bases and other installations in Scotland at the height of the so-called
‘imaginary conflict’. Strategists regarded it as a vast, stationary aircraft carrier,
guarding the North Atlantic, the Norwegian Sea and, especially, the Iceland-
Greenland gap. Facing the Bear addresses what this meant for the Scottish economy,
politics and military establishment. The Cold War is a critical but overlooked
episode in the history of Scotland, featuring in the title of only one article in
Northern Scotland in the journal’s five-decade history. The nation was re-shaped in
the Cold War period, and it deserves increasing attention.
In Facing the Bear: Scotland and the Cold War, this imbalance is addressed by
Trevor Royle, a prolific historian of Scotland’s armed forces. This completes a
trilogy of volumes on Scotland and twentieth-century global conflict, following
The Flowers of the Forest: Scotland and the First World War (2006) and A Time of

Northern Scotland 11.2, 2020, 204–220

© Edinburgh University Press 2020
www.euppublishing.com/nor

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 Reviews

Tyrants: Scotland and the Second World War (2011). All three have been published by
Birlinn in their commendable and concerted campaign to promote an accessible
but informed history and culture of Scotland. Royle’s prose is punchy, his research
thorough, and the volume is nicely produced and well-illustrated.
Unsurprisingly, given its author, Facing the Bear goes into great detail about
the regimental history of the armed forces in Scotland – in particular, Royle is
fond of counting troops. He follows Scottish regiments to Korea, to Northern
Ireland, and to the north German plain, where all ten Scottish Infantry regiments
were stationed at one point as part of the British Army on the Rhine. Soldiers
and air personnel would spend five or ten years at a time in West Germany,
which was effectively the home base of UK armed forces for much of this
period.
Royle also spreads his net wider to the political and social impact of the
imaginary conflict. His structure is helpful to the reader, a broadly chronological
sequence of topical chapters covering topical discussions as well as significant
milestones (including the Americans arriving, Margaret Thatcher’s influence, and
of course the Scottish experience of the collapse of the Soviet Union). Royle
addresses politics thoroughly – less so the social history of the conflict but he
includes an important chapter on peace and protest, including cultural responses
to the conflict and of course the protests against the US presence in Holy Loch
and HMNB Clyde at Faslane. Scottish CND was formed in 1958, barely a month
after the wider UK body came into being. Whereas there was little support for the
campaign in East Anglia, north of the border resistance was fierce with powerful
echoes of Red Clydeside. Faslane Peace Camp is the longest running active protest
site in the world.
Spying and subterfuge make for one readable chapter, including the catalogue
of errors involved in covert maritime operations in the waters around Scotland.
Royle also incorporates a thorough treatment of the economic consequences of
the Cold War, including the electronic companies Barr & Stroud and Ferranti.
At its height the latter had eight plants and was the largest industrial employer in
Scotland. Their success, Royle convincingly shows, best makes sense in the Cold
War context. The most in-depth elements of Facing the Bear are the details of
the military assets involved in readiness, such as the six nuclear-powered ballistic
missile submarines that headed to sea from Holy Loch in response to the Cuban
Missile Crisis. He keeps the broader international and UK context in view
throughout.
Readers of Northern Scotland may not be surprised that much of the focus is
on the political and military activity in the central belt – Dounreay, for example,
receives surprisingly little attention given the importance of the experimental
power station and the presence of the HMS Vulcan Royal Navy test facility. But
we do learn from one of the many original documents Royle exploited for this
volume that had a conflict materialised, RAF Saxa Vord on Unst would have
been a possible target for three-megaton bomb. This is doubly unnerving given

205
 Reviews

how timely the book is, especially for the generation who did not experience
the Cold War first-hand as East-West tensions escalate once more. RAF Saxa
Vord closed down in 2005, but is now once again operational as a radar
station.

Samuel J.M.M. Alberti

National Museums Scotland

A Protestant Lord in James VI’s Scotland: George Keith, Fifth Earl Marischal
(1554–1623).
By Miles Kerr-Peterson. Pp. xvi, 238.
ISBN: 9781783273768 (hbk).
Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2019. £60.00.
DOI: 10.3366/nor.2020.0223
The subject of this biography has traditionally been remembered for a few key
moments and roles in his life: as a member of the embassy to Denmark in 1589
for the royal marriage of King James VI and Anna of Denmark; as the founder of
the towns of Stonehaven and Peterhead; and first and foremost as the founder of
Marischal College in Aberdeen. Yet, despite these achievements, George Keith,
fifth Earl Marischal, remains a rather shadowy figure. This is the challenge which
Kerr-Peterson has ambitiously met.
The first section of the book (chapters one to three) mainly concentrates
on national politics and initially focuses on Marischal’s involvement in Scottish
politics up to 1595. It looks at the long-term background (Chapter 1) before
progressing onto Marischal’s involvement in high politics and his major clashes
with the earl of Huntly and with Chancellor John Maitland of Thirlestane
(Chapter 2). That high political angle is picked up (in Chapter 3) to consider
Marischal’s overall governmental career and his relationship with the king in the
period 1595–1623. In the next section (chapters four and five), Kerr-Peterson
then shifts his attention to the exercise of power in the localities, primarily
feuding and the protection of the earldom (Chapter 4), before moving on
to Marischal’s family strategies over his own succession and that of his son
(Chapter 5). The last section is more thematic and tackles Marischal’s interaction
with the reformed Kirk within his lordship (Chapter 6). Zooming out and looking
at the wider picture, the author contextualises Marischal’s wider efforts to expand
his influence in the broader region (the north-east) propped by his wealth, as
he then was one of the richest nobles in the land (Chapter 7). The last chapter
(Chapter 8) repositions Marischal’s crowning achievement, his Marischal College,
and his subsequent relationship with that institution. The author has added a series
of genealogical tables in the appendix.

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