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Dirty Hands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Martin Hollis
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Extract

February 13th, 1692, is still remembered in the Western Highlands of Scotland. At 5 a.m. a blizzard was raging down the valley of Glencoe but there were soldiers about. They were two companies of the Argylls under Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, peaceably billetted on the MacDonalds of Glencoe for the past two weeks. The MacDonalds, who had newly sworn allegiance to King William of Orange, had treated them well. Sacred bonds of hospitality had been forged – a reassuring sign that enmities were fading between MacDonalds and Campbells and between Highland supporters of the Stuarts and the new Edinburgh government of 1688. But that was illusion. Captain Campbell had received secret instructions the previous day. ‘Sir, You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and to put all to the sword under seventy… This you are to put in execution at five of the clock precisely… This is by the King's special command, for the good and safety of the country, that these miscreants be cut off root and branch…’ At five of the clock precisely the Argylls turned on their hosts. Almost forty MacDonalds were killed on the spot and many more, who scrambled away up the bleak walls of the glen, died of exposure in the blizzard. Crofts were burnt, cattle and goods carried off. That was the infamous Massacre of Glencoe. I shall start from here and gradually follow the moral questions which arise into the arena of politics at large.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 385 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Prebble, John, Glencoe (London: Secker and Warburg, 1966Google Scholar; and Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin Books, 1968), is a well-evidenced and reflective account, which I have followed gratefully. My warm thanks go also to Professor J. R. Jones of the University of East Anglia for historical advice and helpful discussion of an earlier draft, to Patricia Hollis and to A. R. H. Glover, Chief Executive of Norwich, for experienced comment on the twists of civic virtue.

2 For an illuminating discussion see Walzer, Michael, ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, III (1973), 160–80.Google Scholar

3 As Thomas Nagel says in his fine paper ‘Ruthlessness in Public Life’, in Hampshire, S., ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar J. R. Jones has pointed out that there might be grounds for another view in the early days of the Mafia, when the extended family was a last unit of resistance to alien rule. I have also been much helped by reading Williams, Bernard's paper, ‘Politics and Moral Character’Google Scholar, in the same volume.

4 The case against a simplistic view of integrity in politics is well put by Max Weber in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ (in Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948), pp. 77–128).Google Scholar

5 According to Jones, R. V. in Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–45 (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1978)Google Scholar, Churchill was given no such information. But certainly those who deciphered the German signals did know; so the case can stand, even if Churchill is not the focus of it.