Terror Within

We live in an age of terrorism and like to think that the United Kingdom is a reasonably peaceful place, largely untroubled by the latest atrocity committed by foreign fanatics. Yet we too have a hidden tradition of terrorism that official history has chosen to ignore. Since the 1790s, almost 23,000 British subjects have fought and died on British soil for the ideals of revolutionary republicanism. As well as the three bloody civil wars in Ireland, and the bombing campaigns by the IRA in English cities, there have been two Welsh uprisings, one Lowland Scottish civil war, one crofters' rebellion, one uprising in Derbyshire and another in Kent. There have also been five attempts to assassinate the entire cabinet and seize London, numerous attempts to murder the royal family and an almost continuous history of terrorism from the Fenians of the 1860s to the Tartan Army of the 1970s. Clive Bloom's new book tells for the first time the full story of attempts to set up a British republic. Colourful and revealing, it throws light on the links between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh republicanism and shows how the anti-terror state was born not in 2001 but in the 1790s.