With a general election looming in the UK, here is a topical issue from the past with a visit by Liberal Prime Minister Asquith to Earlston in October 1908. It
features on several postcards in the
collection of "Auld Earlston", and old local newspapers,
held at the Heritage Hub in Hawick, give a colourful account of the event.
"The Jedburgh Advertiser" of October 3rd described the
plans for the visit. These included the erection of a tent, measuring 220 feet by
60 feet with seating accommodation for
about 4000 people - this when the population
of Earlston in the 1911 census was only 1677! How
many political meetings in the Borders attract that kind of number today?
Special trains were laid on from Jedburgh, Kelso and Edinburgh; a large number of M.Ps. had intimated their intentions to be present, and it was
noted that presiding over the event would be Mr H. J. Tennant, M.P. for
Berwickshire.
It proved to be a notable
occasion, disrupted by the late
arrival of reporters and M.Ps on a delayed Edinburgh train which took three
hours to reach Earlston; crowds spilling out of from the crowded hot marquee, the intervention of a woman
suffragette, and noise from the "shunt, snort and whistles" of
a railway engine threatening to drown
out the speakers.
When Mr Asquith stood to speak "He
got a warm greeting. Mary of the people rose to their feet and
waved hats and handkerchiefs and cheered with great cordiality".
However he had only said a few words when, at the remark "My
primary purpose in coming here this afternoon is...., a woman startled her
neighbours by exclaiming " Give votes to women!". The interrupter was a young woman of graceful
figure and pleasant features. Stewards
made their way to the fair
suffragette and quickly bore the
woman out, calm and unresisting but with
her sailor hat somewhat awry".
The newspaper reporter clearly found this incident far more interesting than Mr Asquith's speech which he
described as "Unimpassioned with no
striking phrases."
But what had prompted this meeting to be held in a Berwickshire
village in the rural Scottish Borders? Mr Asquith was M.P. for East
Fife and had Border connections. His
second wife was socialite Margot
Tennant, daughter of the prominent Tennant family of the Glen, Innerleithen, whilst his
brother-in-law Mr H. J. Tennant was the
local Berwickshire MP.
No general election was looming.
For Mr Asquith had assumed office
only a few months before, on the resignation of Mr Campbell Bannerman
due to illness. A turbulent political
situation faced him, with issues of House of Lords reform, home rule for Ireland, industrial strife, an
increasingly militant women suffragette movement and worsening international
relations with Germany, culminating in the First World War.
But on a brief
Saturday afternoon in October, Earlston was on the national stage politically.
Official photograph taken by Walter Swanston, an Earlston-born photographer
who set up a studio on Leith Walk, Edinburgh.
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who set up a studio on Leith Walk, Edinburgh.
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