Interviewing Gary Stewart of The Society of William Wallace

700 years on, do we know enough about the very people
who fought for Scotland's nationhood?

This weekend celebrations have been taking place in Bannockburn to mark the 700th anniversary of one of the most important battles in Scottish history where Robert the Bruce defeated the army led by Edward II to secure Scotland's place as a nation.

The timing of this anniversary has come at a point in Scotland's current history where the country within just a matter of weeks will be voting to decide whether it becomes an independent country. Could we be on the brink of freedom from the union in just the space of a couple of years? History may feel like it's repeating itself in a different and, arguably, a more amicable kind of way to an extent, but the whole timing of the celebration of this anniversary with the referendum in September is notable.

The history of Scotland is enough to fascinate anyone who holds a curiosity behind how Scotland has travelled through time. There is even much debate over whether enough is taught in schools to generations of new Scots about their own country's history.

Earlier on this week, I picked up the phone and had an enjoyable and engaging conversation with Gary Stewart who is part of a group named The Society of William Wallace. I wanted to know a bit more about the group and what they do.

"Basically The Society of William Wallace is there to promote Wallace," states Gary succinctly. And he went on to give a range of examples of where the group goes and what the group talks about in order to enlighten people about William Wallace's life and what he did for Scotland.

In recent times, the group have been pushing to get a memorial for the Battle Of The Bell O' The Brae built in Glasgow, "We are trying to build a monument in Glasgow to a little known battle that Wallace was involved with in 1297 in Glasgow just off Duke Street and that has taken us six years and planning permission has now been passed and we are just trying to get the authority from Glasgow [City Council] to allow us to build the monument there.", Gary explains.

But it isn't just Glasgow where they are seeking to have a memorial built as Gary went on to explain, "One of the things that we do in conjunction with that is we also built the monument in Falkirk for the Battle of Falkirk. We obviously look after that and we obviously funded that within ourselves. We are also involved with the Stirling Trust which are looking to try to build a monument in Stirling."

Gary also took me back to 2005 which was the 700th anniversary of the death of William Wallace. He also enlightened me about the Wallace Letter and there is an excellent section about it on this page from The Society of William Wallace website.

As the interview went on, I wanted to explore the broader picture with Gary. The rest of the interview was an opportunity for him to personally express how he felt about how much (or little) we know about our own country's history and what the referendum means for Scotland's future. It is worth noting that Gary's opinions are his own and not that of any organisation or group he represents.

"Do you think we as a Scottish nation do enough to celebrate William Wallace's life, his legacy and our history in general, particularly with regard to that period of time when Scotland was very much fighting for it's status as a nation?", I ask him with curiosity. He responded without ambiguity, "No I don't think we do."

He rues the fact that Scotland as a country doesn't do enough to embrace it's own heritage and culture. He also states that the country is gifted with a lot of things such as the country's history, it's heroes such as William Wallace, shortbread, kilts and tartan and that these are things that Scots shouldn't run away from, "Every other country in the world would die for that," said Gary with passion.

"No matter where you go whether its Moldova, Macedonia or Slovenia, they know you are Scottish because you've got a kilt on. And that to me is something that we should be embracing. We shouldn't be trying to get away from that. We should be embracing that and incorporating that into the marketing campaign from a tourism point of view." continued Gary.

Forgive us both for going into other areas which some may argue isn't directly related to the whole work of The Society of William Wallace, but there was a reason for doing so. The whole purpose of the group was to raise awareness of the life of one of Scotland's most notable heroes.

"If I am speaking to somebody that is willing to help us achieve what we want to achieve and you can see that same passion as what we've got then I think that makes a massive difference," states Gary. He also said to me that the group he is part of is a non-political group and does not participate within politics.

Gary and his group have had to work extraordinarily hard in order to secure the memorial in Glasgow and in other places and he expressed to me some of the frustrations in terms of making substantial progress in a swift period of time, "It has taken us six years to get a monument built in Glasgow to William Wallace," he told me. Six years is not a small amount of time by anybody's standards.

We ended our conversation taking about the legacy of a particular Hollywood movie which has arguably raised awareness about the man that Gary and his group work hard to make people aware of. Braveheart, which starred Mel Gibson, is much talked about to this day for bringing light on his life and for altering Scots' own perceptions on identity. Surely everyone, regardless of their identity or politics was affected by the success of the movie?

"When that film came out, I would say 20% of the population in Scotland knew who William Wallace  was. I would probably hazard a guess that wouldn't be far off it. After Braveheart came out, you are probably looking at 99.9% of Scottish people who knew about William Wallace.", quite a transformation some would say and this was Gary's analysis of how Braveheart impacted upon the awareness of Wallace. There is no doubt that the movie had a major impact. Despite this however, there seems to be still much work to do, although the movie's success has played a major role.

For the purpose of this article, I wanted to specifically focus on William Wallace and Scotland's fight for independence in the early 14th century. As far as my own opinion is concerned, we as a country need to do far more to appreciate and know about our ancestors who fought for our nationhood and the work Gary and his team do is crucial in many ways and worth knowing about.

And we should also ask ourselves as to why we don't know enough about William Wallace and the history of Scotland during those crucial years when the whole existence of the country was on the line. It was a defining moment for Scotland and it's a part of the country's history that must never be forgotten.