British Government Various Groups Earl of LiverpoolThomas BradfordHenry MonteithSamuel Hunter Non-centralised leadership The Radical War, also known as the Scottish Insurrection of 1820, was a week of strikes and unrest in Scotland, a culmination of Radical demands for reform in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which had become prominent in the early years of the French Revolution, but had then been repressed during the long Napoleonic Wars.

Gentry fearing revolutionary horrors recruited militia and the government deployed an apparatus of spies, informers and agents provocateurs to stamp out the movement.

A Committee of Organisation for Forming a Provisional Government put placards around the streets of Glasgow late on Saturday 1 April, calling for an immediate national strike.

Of those arrested by government troops at Bonnymuir, John Baird and Andrew Hardie were similarly executed at Stirling after making short defiant speeches.

Two years later, enthusiasm for the visit of King George IV to Scotland successfully boosted loyalist sentiment, ushering in a new-found Scottish national identity.

In 1816, some 40,000 people attended a meeting on Glasgow Green to demand more representative government and an end to the Corn Laws which kept food prices high.

The industrial revolution affected handloom weavers in particular, and unrest grew despite attempts by the authorities to employ the workless and to open relief centres to relieve hardship.

On 13 December, the "Radical Laird" Kinloch was arrested for addressing a mass meeting on Magdalen Green in Dundee, but he escaped and fled abroad.

Walter Scott urged his Borders neighbours to "appeal at this crisis to the good sense and loyalty of the lower orders... All you have to do is sound the men, and mark down those who seem zealous.

As 1820 began, the government, frightened by the "Cato Street Conspiracy" in London, acted to suppress reform agitation and drew on its apparatus of spies and agents provocateurs in Scotland.

Mitchell reported on 25 March that those arrested had "confessed their audacious plot to sever the Kingdom of Scotland from that of England and restore the ancient Scottish Parliament...

The next day some of them met on Glasgow Green then moved on to Rutherglen where Turner revealed plans to establish a Provisional Government, got those present to resolve to "act accordingly", then gave over a copy of a draft Proclamation to be delivered to a printer.

Rouse from that torpid state in which we have sunk for so many years, we are at length compelled from the extremity of our sufferings, and the contempt heaped upon our petitions for redress, to assert our rights at the hazard of our lives."

"Equality of rights (not of property)... Liberty or Death is our motto, and we have sworn to return home in triumph - or return no more.... we earnestly request all to desist from their labour from and after this day, the first of April [until] in possession of those rights..." It called for a rising "To show the world that we are not that lawless, sanguinary rabble which our oppressors would persuade the higher circles we are but a brave and generous people determined to be free."

Join together and make it one good cause, and the nations of the earth shall hail the day when the Standard of Liberty shall be raised on its native soil."

Reports came in that men were carrying out military drill at points round Glasgow, foundries and forges had been raided, and iron files and dyer's poles taken to make pikes.

Pikes, gunpowder and weapons called "wasps" (a sort of javelin) and "clegs" (a barbed shuttlecock to throw at horses) were offered for sale.

In Glasgow, John Craig led around 30 men to make for the Carron Company ironworks in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, telling them that weapons would be there for the taking, but the group scattered when intercepted by a police patrol.

Some shots were then fired by the soldiers in return, and after some time the cavalry got through an opening in the wall and attacked the party who resisted till overpowered by the troops who succeeded in taking nineteen of them prisoners, who are lodged in Stirling Castle.

[2] The Port Glasgow Volunteers served in Paisley during the strike, and when returning home on Saturday 8 April escorted five prisoners to be taken on to Greenock jail in a cart.

On the way through Port Glasgow, their commanders responded to rumours by increasing the escort from 30 to 80 men, and they met with minor hostility while marching through the town of Crawfurdsdyke.

A large group set off to burn down Port Glasgow, but were halted at that town's boundary by armed townsfolk who had barricaded the Devol's Glen Bridge.

"[6] In April 1820, hundreds of young Radicals fled by ship to Canada from Greenock, escaping persecution from Lord Sidmouth's spy network.

At Stirling Tolbooth on 4 August, the judge advised "To you Andrew Hardie and John Baird I can hold out little or no hope of mercy" since "as you were the leaders, I am afraid that example must be given by you.

Baird concluded his brief speech by saying "Although this day we die an ignominious death by unjust laws our blood, which in a very few minutes shall flow on this scaffold, will cry to heaven for vengeance, and may it be the means of our afflicted Countrymen’s speedy redemption."

Peter Mackenzie, a Glasgow journalist, campaigned unsuccessfully to have them pardoned, and published a small book: The Spy System, including the exploits of Mr Alex.

The event, largely organised by Sir Walter Scott, succeeded brilliantly and brought a new-found Scottish national identity creating widespread enthusiasm for the tartan "plaided pageantry" that Sheriff Ranald MacDonald of Stirling was already enthusiastically engaged in as a Clan chieftain at Ulva and member of various "Highland societies".

[9] At the suggestion of Walter Scott, unemployed weavers from the west of Scotland were put to work on paving a track round Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park adjoining Arthur's Seat.

[11] James Kelman's play, Hardie and Baird: The Last Days, was produced at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, under the direction of Ian Brown, between 30 June and 22 July 1990.