Robert Cunninghame Graham | |
|---|---|
 Cunninghame Graham, c. 1890. | |
| 1stPresident of the Scottish National Party | |
| In office 7 April 1934 – 20 March 1936 | |
| Preceded by | Position created |
| Succeeded by | Roland Muirhead |
| President of the Scottish Labour Party | |
| In office 25 August 1888 – 1895 | |
| Preceded by | Position created |
| Succeeded by | Party Disestablished |
| MP forNorth West Lanarkshire | |
| In office 1886–1892 | |
| Preceded by | John Baird |
| Succeeded by | Graeme Alexander Lockhart Whitelaw |
| Majority | 332 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 24 May 1852 |
| Died | 20 March 1936 (aged 83) |
| Resting place | Inchmahome Priory |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Political party | Scottish National Party |
| Other political affiliations | National Party of Scotland Scottish Labour Party Liberal Party |
| Alma mater | Harrow School |
| Laid to rest at Lake of Menteith. On the island of Inchmahome | |
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham[1] (24 May 1852 – 20 March 1936) was a Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer. He was aLiberal Party Member of Parliament (MP); the first ever socialist member of theParliament of the United Kingdom; a founder, and the first president, of theScottish Labour Party; a founder of theNational Party of Scotland in 1928; and the first president of theScottish National Party in 1934.
Cunninghame Graham was the eldest son of Major William Bontine[2] of the Renfrew Militia and formerly aCornet in theScots Greys with whom he served in Ireland. His mother was the Hon. Anne Elizabeth Elphinstone-Fleeming, daughter ofAdmiralCharles Elphinstone-Fleeming of Cumbernauld[3] and a Spanishnoblewoman, Doña Catalina Paulina Alessandro de Jiménez, who reputedly, along with her second husband, Admiral James Katon, heavily influenced Cunninghame Graham's upbringing. Thus the first language Cunninghame Graham learned was his mother's maternal tongue, Spanish.
He spent most of his childhood on the familyestate ofFinlaystone inRenfrewshire and Ardoch inDunbartonshire, Scotland, with his younger brothers Charles and Malise.[4]
After being educated atHarrowpublic school in England, Robert finished his education inBrussels,Belgium, before moving toArgentina to make his fortunecattle ranching. He became known as a great adventurer andgaucho there, and was affectionately known asDon Roberto. He also travelled inMorocco disguised as aTurkishsheikh to find the "forbidden" city ofTaroudant but was captured by a Caid (Si Taieb ben Si Ahmed El Hassan El Kintafi),[5] prospected for gold in Spain, befriendedBuffalo Bill inTexas, and taughtfencing inMexico City, having travelled there bywagon train fromSan Antonio de Bexar with his young bridesic "Gabrielle Marie de la Balmondiere", a supposed half-French, half-Chilean poet.[6]
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After the death of his father in 1883 he reverted to the Cunninghame Graham surname. He returned to the UK and became interested in politics. He attended socialist meetings where he heard and metWilliam Morris,George Bernard Shaw,H. M. Hyndman,Keir Hardie andJohn Burns. Despite his wealthy origins, Graham was converted to socialism and he began to speak at public meetings. He was an impressive orator and was especially good at dealing with hecklers.
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Although a socialist, in the1886 general election he stood as aLiberal Party candidate atNorth West Lanarkshire. His election programme was extremely radical and called for:
Supported by liberals and socialists, Graham defeated theUnionist candidate by 322 votes. He had stood against the same candidate at the1885 general election, in which he was defeated by over 1100 votes.
Robert Cunninghame Graham refused to accept the conventions of theBritish House of Commons. On 12 September 1887 he was suspended from parliament for making what was called a "disrespectful reference" to theHouse of Lords. He was the first MP ever to be suspended from the House of Commons forswearing; the word wasdamn.[dubious –discuss][7]
Graham's main concerns in the House of Commons were the plight of the unemployed and the preservation ofcivil liberties. He complained about attempts in 1886 and 1887 by the police to prevent public meetings andfree speech. He attended the protest demonstration inTrafalgar Square on 13 November 1887 that was broken up by the police and became known asBloody Sunday. Graham was badly beaten during his arrest and taken toBow Street Police Station, where his uncle,Col William Hope VC, attempted to post bail. Both Cunninghame Graham, who was defended byH. H. Asquith, andJohn Burns were found guilty for their involvement in the demonstration and sentenced to six weeks imprisonment.
When Graham was released fromPentonville prison he continued his campaign to improve the rights of working people and to curb their economic exploitation. He was suspended from the House of Commons in December 1888 for protesting about the working conditions of the chain makers ofCradley Heath. His response to the Speaker of the House, "I never withdraw", was later used byGeorge Bernard Shaw inArms and the Man.[8]
Graham was a strong supporter ofScottish independence. In 1886, he helped establish the Scottish Home Rule Association (SHRA), and while in theHouse of Commons, he made several attempts to persuade fellow MPs of the desirability of aScottish parliament. On one occasion, Graham joked that he wanted a "national parliament with the pleasure of knowing that the taxes were wasted inEdinburgh instead ofLondon."
In 1888, Graham attended the SHRA Conference at the Anderton's Hotel in Fleet Street and passed a motion "That in the opinion of this Conference the interests of Scotland demand the establishment of a Scotch national Parliament and an Executive Government having control over exclusively Scotch affairs, with a due regard to the integrity of the Empire". The motion was supported by Mr Cuninghame Graham (as name spelt in article), who said he "wanted a Scotch Parliament to do justice to their crofters and keep them at home, to pass an Eight Hours' Bill for their miners, to settle the liquor laws, and to nationalise the land."Peter Esslemont MP attended. Dr G.B Clark Chaired conference MP for Caithness-shire.
While in the House of Commons, Graham became increasingly more radical and went on to found theScottish Labour Party withKeir Hardie. Graham left the Liberal Party in 1892 to contest the general election in a new constituency as a Labour candidate.
He supported workers in their industrial disputes and was involved withAnnie Besant and theMatchgirls Strike and the1889 Dockers' Strike. In July 1889, he attended theMarxist Congress of theSecond International inParis with James Keir Hardie, William Morris,Eleanor Marx andEdward Aveling. The following year he made a speech inCalais that was considered by the authorities to be so revolutionary that he was arrested and expelled from France.
Graham was a supporter of theeight-hour day and made several attempts to introduce a Bill on the subject. He made some progress with this in the summer of 1892, but he was unable to persuade theConservative government, headed byLord Salisbury, to allocate time for the Bill to be fully debated.
At the1892 general election Graham stood as the Scottish Labour Party candidate forGlasgow Camlachie. He was defeated, bringing his parliamentary career to an end. He remained active in political circles, though, helping his colleague Keir Hardie establish the Independent Labour Party and enter parliament as the MP forWest Ham. However, he became disillusioned by the pettiness and dissent of those he called "piss-pot socialists" and increasingly turned to a nascentScottish nationalism as a means of achieving social justice and cultural revival.
Graham retained a strong belief in Scottish home rule. He played an active part in the establishment of theNational Party of Scotland (NPS) in 1928 and was elected the Honorary President of the newScottish National Party in 1934. He was several times theGlasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association candidate for theLord Rectorship of theUniversity of Glasgow, which he lost by only sixty-six votes in 1928 toStanley Baldwin, theConservativePrime Minister at the time. This event was pivotal in the founding of the National Party, and the eventual creation of theScottish National Party in the 1930s.
Because of his Scottish nationalism, and criticism of what he saw as the Labour Party's timidity and lack of socialist zeal, Graham has been effectively written out of Labour Party history, and the belief has been circulated that after his electoral defeat in 1892, he retired from politics until the late 1920s. This is entirely incorrect; in fact, between 1905 and 1914, Graham, while retaining the position of elder statesman, social commentator, and renowned world-traveller, became more militant, involving himself in many left-wing causes and protests. There is evidence to suggest that he joined the hard-left British Socialist Party, and he was an associate of anarchists and a political assassin. Graham was also a vociferous anti-imperialist at the height of Britishjingoism as well as a high-profile supporter of thewomen's suffrage movement and Home Rule for Ireland and India.
Between 1888 and 1892, Graham was a prolific contributor to small-circulation socialist journals, but his literary career took off when he was recruited byFrank Harris to write for theSaturday Review in 1895, and he continued writing for theSaturday until 1926, as well as other journals. His main form was the 'sketch', or sketch-tale', mostly descriptive, atmospheric works on South America and Scotland, which gave his work a unique aesthetic, which carried a subtext of anti-colonialism, nostalgia, and loss.T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) described his Scottish sketches as "the rain-in-the-air-and-on-the-roof mournfulness of Scotch music in his time-past style [. . .] snap-shots – the best verbal snapshots ever taken I believe." His many works were collected into anthologies. Subject matter included history, biography, poetry, essays, politics, travel and seventeen collections of short stories or literary sketches. Titles includeFather Archangel of Scotland (1896 in conjunction with his wife Gabriela),Thirteen Stories (1900),Success (1902),Hope (1910),Scottish Stories (1914),Brought Forward (1916) andMirages (1936). Biographies included:Hernando de Soto (1903),Doughty Deeds (1925), a biography of his great-great-grandfather,Robert Graham of Gartmore and Portrait of a Dictator (1933). His great-niece and biographer, Jean, Lady Polwarth,[9] published a collection of his short stories (or sketches) entitledBeattock for Moffatt and the Best of Cunninghame Graham (1979) and Alexander Maitland added his selection under the titleTales of Horsemen (1981). Professor John Walker published collections of Cunninghame Graham's South American Sketches (1978), Scottish Sketches (1982) and North American Sketches (1986) and Kennedy & Boyd republished the stories and sketches in five volumes (2011 – 2012). In 1988 The Century Travellers reprinted hisMogreb-el-Acksa (1898) andA Vanished Arcadia (1901). The former was the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's playCaptain Brassbound's Conversion. The latter helped inspire the award-winning filmThe Mission. More recently The Long Riders Guild Press have reprinted his equestrian travel works in their Cunninghame Graham Collection.
He helped his close friendJoseph Conrad, whom he had introduced to his publisherEdward Garnett atDuckworth, with research for his novelNostromo.[10] Other literary friends includedFord Madox Ford,John Galsworthy,W. H. Hudson,George Bernard Shaw (who openly admits his debt to Graham for "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" as well as a key line inArms and the Man) andG. K. Chesterton, who proclaimed him "The Prince of Preface Writers" and famously declared in his autobiography that while Cunninghame Graham would never be allowed to be Prime Minister, he instead "achieved the adventure of being Cunninghame Graham", which Shaw described as "an achievement so fantastic that it would never be believed in a romance."
There is a seat dedicated to Cunninghame Graham in theScottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh with the inscription:"R B 'Don Roberto' Cunninghame Graham of Gartmore and Ardoch, 1852–1936, A great storyteller".
Graham remained sprightly and rode daily even in his eighties. He continued to write, and held the office of President of the Scottish Branch of theP.E.N. Club,[11] and involve himself in politics. He died from pneumonia on 20 March 1936 at the Plaza Hotel inBuenos Aires,Argentina, following a visit to the birthplace of his friendWilliam Hudson. He lay in state in the Casa del Teatro[12] and received a countrywide tribute led by the President of the Republic[13] before his body was shipped home to be buried beside his wife on 18 April 1936, in the ruinedAugustinianPriory on the island ofInchmahome,Lake of Menteith,Stirling.[14]
The following year (June 1937), a monument, theCunninghame Graham Memorial, was unveiled atCastlehill, Dumbarton, near the family home at Ardoch. Despite the monument being removed toGartmore in 1981, closer to the principal Graham estate, which he had been forced to sell in 1901 to the shipping magnate and founder of theClan Line,Sir Charles Cayzer, Bt, the Cunninghame Graham Memorial Park (which is managed by theNational Trust for Scotland) is still affectionately locally known as "the Mony".[15]
His estates at Ardoch and feudal barony of Gartmore passed to his nephew, Captain (later Admiral Sir)Angus Cunninghame Graham, the only son of his brother Cdr. Charles Elphinstone-Fleeming Cunninghame Graham,MVO.[citation needed]
Cunninghame Graham was a staunch supporter of the artists of his day and a popular subject. He sat for artists such as SirWilliam Rothenstein, who painted Don Roberto asThe Fencer;[16] SirJohn Lavery, whose famousDon Roberto: Commander for the King of Aragon in the Two Sicilies was on the cover of thePenguin Books edition of Conrad'sNostromo for many years[17] and who painted the equestrian portrait of Don Roberto on his favourite horse,Pampa;[18] andG. P. Jacomb-Hood, who painted his official portrait on entering parliament,[19] with whom, along withWhistler, he was personal friends.George Washington Lambert painted him in oil with his horse Pinto andJames McBey portrayed him in old age. There are also busts by Weiss andJacob Epstein. The Dumbarton born artist,William Strang, used Cunninghame Graham as the model for his series of etchings ofDon Quixote. It is unsurprising that he was at the mercy of cartoonists such asTom Merry, who portrayed him in prison garb, and caricaturists such asMax andSpy.
Cedric Watts claims that Cunninghame Grahame appears as 'Mr. X' in Conrad'sThe Informer, asMr. Courtier in Galsworthy'sThe Patrician, and as 'Mr. Graham' in Wells'sWhen the Sleeper Wakes.[20] Anne Taylor and James Jauncey have argued that his travels in Morocco were one of the inspirations for the characterSandy Arbuthnot, hero ofJohn Buchan's novelGreenmantle (1916).[21]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forNorth West Lanarkshire 1886–1892 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by New position | President of the Scottish Labour Party 1888–1895 | Succeeded by Party disestablished |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by New position | President of the Scottish National Party 1934–1936 joint withJames Graham, 6th Duke of Montrose | Succeeded by |
