The Border Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed

When I read books or watch movies things go much faster when I don’t have access to the internet. A person, place, or event will pop up that catches my interest and I’ll end up googling it, or even more time consuming, searching for more information about it in various academic databases (MUSE, JSTOR, Lexis-Nexis, google books, etc.). For example, while eating some noodles for dinner this evening and reading the latest issue of the Economist, I got distracted looking at the flag of Singapore in an illustration and then ended up looking up the meaning of the various parts of the flag online; not believing the standard explanation of its parts and ended up trying to find alternative descriptions which told me more about the crescent in the flag. My noodles got cold.

Now I’m watching my latest Netflix movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade and while watching the movie got distracted trying to find out more about the Crimean War (Did you know the excellent Iron Maiden heavy metal song “The Trooper” is inspired by Tennyson’s poem about the famous charge?). I then got interesting in searching for more info on a curious story about the English-Scottish border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

In the Wikipedia entry on the Crimean War, there is this little note at the bottom mentioning the town:

There is a rather charming but apocryphal story, recently repeated on the BBC comedy programme, QI, that goes that when the UK joined the war, Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions declared war. Berwick-upon-Tweed is situated in Northumberland and had been long disputed by England and Scotland. When the war ended, Great Britain, Ireland and all British Dominions declared peace. The Mayor of Berwick-upon-Tweed subsequently visited the Soviet Union in 1966 to negotiate a peace settlement.

Actually, if you go to the Wikipedia entry for the town itself, there is a longer description:

There is a curious apocryphal story that Berwick is (or recently was) technically at war with Russia.
The story goes that since Berwick had changed hands several times, it was traditionally regarded as a special, separate entity, and some proclamations referred to “England, Scotland and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed”. One such was the declaration of the Crimean War against Russia in 1853, which Queen Victoria supposedly signed as “Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions”. However, when the Treaty of Paris (1856) was signed to conclude the war, “Berwick-upon-Tweed” was left out. This meant that, supposedly, one of Britain’s smallest towns was officially at war with one of the world’s mightiest powers for over a century.

The BBC programme Nationwide investigated this story in the 1970s, and found that while Berwick was not mentioned in the Treaty of Paris, it was not mentioned in the declaration of war either. So was Berwick ever at war with Russia in the first place? The true situation is that since the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 had already made it clear that all references to England included Berwick, the town had no special status at either the start or end of the war.

Nevertheless, in 1966 a Soviet official waited upon the Mayor of Berwick, Councillor Robert Knox, and a peace treaty was formally signed. Mr Knox is reputed to have said, “Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds.” To complicate the issue, some have noted that Knox did not share the authority of Queen Victoria in the arena of foreign relations, and thus may have exceeded his powers as mayor in concluding a peace treaty.

I find this little story amusing and I absolutely love border areas like this. A Lexis-Nexis search turned up lots of newspaper articles on it and whatever the BBC program determined about its accuracy, the story continues to be told as historical in a majority of them. However, an April 16, 2002 article in the British Daily mail told the story and concluded with a quote of an Italian proverb, “‘Se non e vero, e ben trovato’ if it’s not true, it’s well invented” Other articles told me more interesting things about the place. Though now part of England, their soccer and rugby teams apparently plays in the Scottish league, and one resident was quoted in a Feburary 9, 2000 article in the Scottish Daily Record as saying, “We prefer to call ourselves Borderers and are proud of our unique identity.” Another article claimed that an old cannon from the Crimean War is to be found in the town as a reminder of its strange role.

Lexis-Nexis also turned up an interesting article in the Glasgow Herald on the town from its March 30, 1996 issue by the politician Alan Beith. I’ll leave you with a few more words about the town from that article:

BERWICK still looks like a Border town. Its dramatic walls and fortifications show that it had to be defended. Its barracks, guard house, and governor’s residence show that it was a garrisoned town, often dominated by the military.

But romantic recollection of Border warfare tends to ignore the fact that life and death in and around Berwick-upon-Tweed in those days must have been like life in recent Bosnia. If it sounds like fun to have changed hands 14 times between England and Scotland, it cannot have been so at the time. Every summer, on a Border hillside, a dignified and dramatic commemoration of the battle of Flodden takes place. It is led by the chief citizens of Coldstream, with more than 100 riders and their horses. The brave of both nations are remembered. The thought that thousands perished on a blood-soaked hillside gives a sharp meaning to lines of the paraphrase

No more shall hosts encountering hosts
The crowds of slain deplore.

It all seems a long way from after-dinner jokes about Berwick still being at war with Russia. It was included, they say, in the declaration of the Crimean War, but they forgot to mention it in the peace treaty after the Crimea. Actually, all these anomalies, along with those of Monmouthshire, were supposed to have been sorted out by an odd-sounding eighteenth-century statute, the Wales and Berwick Act. But who wants to spoil a good story?

Border towns make their living out of anomalies, so they have to be preserved or created. Even in the dark days, merchants made money out of the town’s position on the Border.

In modern times, with once staple industries like the port, fishing, and farming no longer able to support everyone, Border status is still important, mainly nowadays because it is of interest to tourists. There are no current fortunes to be made from legal differences: gone are the days when pubs open on Sundays could make money from Scottish drinkers who were still subject to Sabbath closure.

Berwick did once have a Gretna-style marriage industry at Lamberton, but that is no more. Indeed, from Berwick’s point of view, the sooner we can have a Scottish parliament prohibiting something which is legal in Berwick, the better! I see devolution as a safe each-way bet for Berwick.

If it succeeds, as I believe it will, Scotland will prosper and Berwick’s local economy will gain because more Scottish money comes into the town. However, if the most dire predictions of devolution’s opponents come true, Berwick, can do what it has always done and take advantage of being an alternative jurisdiction largely surrounded by Scotland, with lower taxes making it an attractive centre from which to trade into Scotland.

Berwick tries to get the best of both worlds. Hogmanay and Christmas are celebrated with equal fervour (although in appropriately different ways) and an assortment of English and Scottish holidays are variously observed. Scottish and English bank holidays and trade holidays mark out the town’s busiest times, as the holidaymakers of one nation take over from those of the other at the town’s holiday parks and guest-houses…

…There really is no Anglo-Scottish tension to speak of in Berwick. Apart from the very occasional Saturday-night scrap between inebriated local youths and others in a similar condition from Eyemouth, which is town rivalry rather than national rivalry, it is not an issue. Berwick gatherings will join in sentimental choruses of Scotland the Brave and The Blaydon Races with apparently equal relish. Those of conspicuously Scottish or English ancestry may flaunt their sporting allegiances, but traditional Berwickers can be found in the home crowd of whichever side will supply them with a ticket – or supporting whichever side is on a winning streak.

Every once in a while someone disturbs this Border peace with a bid to move the national boundary. That is the only time that there is any hint of tension, because, all of a sudden, people have to declare themselves for England or Scotland, when the whole Border way of doing business depends on not doing so.

It is in any case rather impractical, because two-thirds of the modern town and hundreds of square miles of the modern borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed are outside the small area that has been in Scotland. The town would have to be sliced through the middle by a new national boundary, or a very large annexation of English territory would have to take place, to the bewilderment of the residents in Seahouses, Wooler, and Belford.

It is tempting, of course, because many public services in Scotland are visibly better off than ours because of higher public expenditure. Edinburgh is a lot nearer than London, which regularly forgets Berwick, along with everywhere else north of Hadrian’s Wall. A touch of jealousy can produce its own tension. But it is more trouble than it is worth.

Leave us where we are – a Border town which has exchanged years of turmoil for peace.