Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction 1

1. The politics of the 1880s 17 2. Social developments, 1880-1914 59 3. Edwardian Politics 96 4. The Great War 130 5. Inter-war politics 163 6. The economy, 1880-1939 199 7. Society in the depression 245 8. The Second World War 286 9. A social revolution 322 10. Economic problems and opportunities since 1945. 381 11. Politics in the age of unionism, 1945-1970 413 12. A decade of Scottish politics, the 1970s 447 13. Mothering devolution, politics 1979-1997 487 14. Devolved politics, 1997-2007 520

Bibliography 560

Abbreviations

A.P.R.S. Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland A.S.E. Amalgamated Society of Engineers B.L. British Library C.B.H. Contemporary British History C.P.G.B. Communist Party of Great Britain C.S.A. Campaign for a Scottish Assembly C.W.C. Clyde Workers Committee D.S.B.B. A. Slaven & S. Checkland (eds), Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography, 1860- 1960 , 2 vols (Aberdeen, 1986-90) E.C.B.C. Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company Econ. H.R. Economic History Review Eng. H.R. English Historical Review H.J. Historical Journal H.R. Historical Research H.L.R.O. House of Lords Record Office I.L.P. Independent Labour Party I.M.R. Infant Mortality Rate I.R. Innes Review J.B.S. Journal of British Studies J.S.H.S. Journal of Scottish Historical Studies J.S.L.H.S Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society L.R.C. Labour Representation Committee M.O.H. Medical Officer of Health N.A.S. National Archives of Scotland N.A.V.S.R. National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights N.L.S. National Library of Scotland N.P.S. National Party of Scotland N.S.H.E.B North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board N.S.S National Shipbuilders’ Security Ltd N.T.S. National Trust for Scotland N.U.W.M. National Unemployed Workers’ Movement O.B.L. Oxford, Bodleian Library O.C.S.H. M. Lynch (ed.), Oxford companion to Scottish history (Oxford, 2001) O.D.N.B. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography P.D. Parliamentary Debates P.P. Parliamentary Papers R.S.C.H.S Records of the Scottish Church History Society S.A. Scottish Affairs S.C.U.A. Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association S.D.F. Social Democratic Federation S.D.P. Social Democratic Party (1981) S.E.C. Scottish Economic Committee S.E.D. Scottish Education Department S.E.R. Scottish Educational Review S.E.S.H. Scottish Economic and Social History S.G.M. Scottish Geographical Magazine S.G.Y. Scottish Government Yearbook S.H.R. Scottish Historical Review S.H.R.A. Scottish Home Rule Association S.L.L. W. Knox (ed.), Scottish labour leaders, 1918-39: a biographical dictionary S.J.A. Scottish Journal of Agriculture S.N.D.C. Scottish National Development Council S.N.P. Scottish National Party S.N.W.M. Scottish National War Memorial S.S.H.A. Scottish Special Housing Association S.W.R.C. Scottish Workers’ Representation Committee T.C.B.H. Twentieth Century British History T.H.A.S.S. Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland T.N.A.: P.R.O. The National Archives: Public Records Office U.F.C. United Free Church of Scotland

Introduction

A Scottish poet maun assume

The burden o’ his people’s doom,

And dee to brak’ their livin tomb.

Mony ha’e tried, but a’ ha’e failed.

Their sacrifice has nocht availed

Upon the thistle they’re impaled 1

The reflections of Hugh MacDiarmid’s protagonist in his epic ‘A Drunk Man Looks

at the Thistle’ on the difficulties posed by cultural contradictions are relevant to the

historian of modern Scotland. The modern Scottish historian—a relatively new

species, since in the nineteenth and part of the twentieth century it was assumed that

Scottish history stopped in 1707 2—should avoid merely asserting that Scottish history is exclusively represented by Scottish distinctiveness. Equally, however, one should not lurch to the opposite extreme and attempt to fit Scotland into an artificial ‘British’ framework. It has been suggested that there have been few Scottish events which

‘mattered vitally to the history of mainland Britain during the last hundred years or so’. 3 It is not the intention of this book to indulge in the parlour game of refuting this suggestion by locating events which meet this false, even contradictory, test.

Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that it makes a contribution to the notion that the

‘history of mainland Britain’, itself a problematic phrase, includes the history of

1 Taken from the text in Grieve and Aitken, Complete poems of Hugh MacDiarmid , i, 165 2 A notion only finally consigned to the dustbin of history in the late 1960s by Ferguson, Scotland since 1689 and Smout, History of the Scottish people. 3 Stevenson, ‘Writing Scotland’s history’, 111. Scotland, and not only when Scottish history seems to take a different turn from

England, whether in the rent strikes of the Great War, the demand for devolution or opposition to the ‘poll tax in the 1980s. A monoculture of thistles is as problematic as a savage eradication of their persistent growth.

Interestingly, compared to writing about the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, there does not seem to be an extensive explicit or self conscious ‘British’ history, or even an especially prominent discussion of the theme of Britishness, in the tradition of

Conrad Russell or Linda Colley, despite the attempts of Scottish historian turned

Prime Minister Dr Gordon Brown. 1 Equally, it is too simplistic to write off all historians writing from a mainly English perspective as ‘Anglocentric’—a word mostly used in a pejorative way by Scottish historians—and offering nothing to the historian of Scotland since 1880. It has been one of the most interesting and rewarding features of the reading undertaken in the course of writing this book that there is much to be gained by the Scottish historian from works which have England as their primary focus.

Further, in this historiographical context, it seems surprising that there has been a recent trend by modern Scottish historians to virtually deny the existence, or at least the vibrancy, of a historiography of twentieth century Scotland. In the introduction to his recent accessible survey of Scotland since 1914 Professor Richard Finlay implied that gaps in the literature meant that it was impossible to write a ‘synoptic’ history of modern Scotland. 2 Even more authoritative was the opinion of Professor T.M.

Devine, who, in a recent interview, damned research and writing on twentieth century

1 Colley, Britons; although Ward, Britishness and Weight, Patriots should be noted in this context. 2 Finlay, Modern Scotland , vii Scotland with faint praise. 1 If this book is not quite the ‘synoptic’ history of which

Professor Finlay wrote, neither can it be claimed that it is entirely, or even mainly, based on primary sources. The traditional sources of the political historian of the nineteenth and early twentieth century—personal correspondence and newspapers— do not exist in the same bulk or, in the case of newspapers, offer such voluminous data, in the period after 1945. Political communication is undertaken on the telephone or, more recently, conducted by email and this presents huge problems for the task of archiving and for historical research. 2 Although it provides an attractive prop in the

absence, or failing vitality, of other sources the government archive contains hidden,

or perhaps obvious, dangers. Since 1945 the expansion of government, both in

Whitehall and on Calton Hill, has been very rapid and has produced a voluminous and

many-sided archive that is difficult to make much sense of beyond the scope of highly

specialised studies. Although recent freedom of information legislation and the

wonderful electronic efficiency of The National Archives [of the United Kingdom],

not yet matched by the National Archives of Scotland, have made this material more

accessible than ever before, the historian needs to guard against dependency.

Although the government archive, like all archives, contains many voices it can also

envelop the unwary researcher with the agenda of civil servants. A variant of the same

problem arises from the blizzard of information and publication which is contained on

the website of the Scottish Executive (or self-styled ‘Government’ since 2007). 3 This vast outpouring cannot hide Scottish statistical deficiency in many areas, especially in matters relating to the economy. Although Scottish Economic Statistics provides a

great deal of contemporary information, it is difficult for the historian to use since it

1 In History Scotland , May/June, 2006, 50 2 This point is dicussed by Finlay, ‘Scotland in the twentieth century’, 103-12; Hutchison, ‘Response’, 113-16; see also Moss, ‘Hutton inquiry’, 577-92. 3 Scotland.gov.uk seems to eschew presentation of long runs of data. This may be partly responsible for the relative paucity of Scottish economic history in recent years, and a real dearth of writing based on an econometric approach.1 One exception to this problem is the

wonderful information available on Scottish demography over the past century and a

half since the foundation of the Office of the Registrar General for Scotland. The

150 th edition of the Registrar General’s annual review of demographic trends contained an excellent overview of these trends over the period since the mid- nineteenth century. 2

If the value of a wider British historiography has been one of the main pillars of this account, another has been the extraordinary outpouring of scholarly literature on modern Scotland which has appeared in the last twenty years or so. Not all of this is traditional ‘historiography’, much of it has been produced by social scientists, especially that which relates to the period since 1945 and, to an even greater extent, the years since 1980. Practitioners of these disciplines may well feel that their work has been used in a particularly simplistic way in this account, but no historian of modern Scotland can afford to ignore it. Even if, at times, this corpus tends towards the ahistorical, this literature is the principal source for the final third of this book, and without reference to it meaningful discussion of recent years would not be possible.

Indeed, the existence of this body of work almost makes the study of Scottish history since 1945 an entirely different discipline from research on the period prior to the

1 Smout, ‘Scottish History in the Universities’, 50; whatever the strengths of Devine et. al. , The transformation of Scotland it is relatively ‘lite’ economic history, the chapter on agriculture since 1918 being an especially egregious example. 2 Scotland’s population, 2004 , esp. 42-95; see also Cameron, ‘Establishment of civil registration’, 377- 95 Second World War. 1 Perhaps in an ideal world where publishers had unlimited resources, a separate volume might have been devoted to it. This period is also remarkable for the pace of social and economic change in Scotland. One would have to return to the years between 1760 and 1830 to find a time of such revolutionary change. Although it might be possible to find continuities hidden beneath the veneer of apparent change in the political sphere, this is not mirrored in recent social and economic history. The final chapters of this book attempt to make some sense of this maelstrom, but it is difficult to see much of the social structure of 1945, 1970 or even later, still standing today. The long-term consequences of these changes in both public and everyday life are likely to cast a much important shadow over Scottish history than that of constitutional change. If the consequences of recent political change seem to have emphasised the distinctiveness of Scotland, the social and economic upheavals have had the opposite effect and have left Scotland with a society whose features tend towards the generic. This is not to predict the ‘death’ or the ‘end’ of

Scotland, in the manner of soothsayers of many political hues in the inter-war period.

Sociologists report that expressions of Scottish identity have become stronger in the past generation, although the religious and institutional bases of former versions of that identity are unrecognisable today.

The principal objective of this book, and of the New Edinburgh History of Scotland as a whole, is to place politics at the centre of analysis of Scottish historical development. This is perhaps uncontroversial for the middle ages or the early-modern period, but it does represent a modest counter-current to recent syntheses of modern

1 See the useful remarks in Finlay, ‘Does history matter?’, 243-50; McGarvey, ‘New Scottish politics’, 427-44 Scotland. 1 Historians emerging from the tradition of economic and social history which took root in Scottish universities in the late 1950s and 1960s have dominated the field, with William Ferguson’s Scotland since 1689 standing as an attempt to

survey modern Scotland from a political perspective. 2 Ferguson’s work, remarkable in many ways, not least in the elegant acerbity of his prose, is also notable for its attempt to cover the twentieth century. This was a bold undertaking at a time when the scholarly literature at his disposal was so limited. This political emphasis brings its own dangers though, especially since the historiography has developed to such a great extent since the first publication of Dr Ferguson’s book. There is now a risk of becoming sucked into the relatively narrow interests of modern Scottish political historians. An even worse fate would be to respond simplistically to a media agenda—and Scottish journalism has not been weaker at any time since 1880 than it is now—which was responsible for elevating devolution from the 1970s to the 1990s, only to become obsessed with cynical criticism of the Scottish parliament since 1999.

It is also regrettable that Scottish historians, although ready plunderers of information from the columns of Scottish newspapers, have been so remiss in considering its historical development. 3 Not only are there such substantial gaps in the historical literature, as Richard Finlay correctly points out, but there are also virtual obsessions.

Two stand out. The seemingly never-ending stream of work on the development of the Labour party in Scotland is one. This splendid body of work gives a red hue to the shelves of anyone with a collection of books on modern Scottish history. It is a literature stimulated by a number of factors. Critics might suggest that one is a

1 I am thinking of such important works as Devine, Scottish nation and the three volumes of the People and Society series and Devine et. al. The transformation of Scotland , the last of which I contributed to, so one should not think of Scottish historians as drawn up into fixed camps. 2 Scottish historiography was surveyed from a variety of perspectives in two special issues of the Scottish Historical Review in 1994 and 1997. 3 A point made recently, and correctly, by a distinguished Scottish journalist, see Reid, Deadline , x generally left of centre consensus among the body of scholars working on the topic, but this is not a sufficient explanation. Scotland seemed to represent a classic case study of the decline of the Liberal party and its replacement on the progressive wing of political debate by Labour. Alongside areas like Wales and the north east and south west extremities of England, Scotland was a Liberal culture in the nineteenth century.

By 1945 election statistics suggest that this had been obliterated. In contrast to Wales, however, Scotland was not immediately dominated by the Labour party. It seems odd, therefore, that there are so few works on the history of the Unionist politics which were such a powerful feature of Scotland in the period from the 1920s to the mid-

1950s. In 1955 the Scottish Unionist Party achieved 50.1 per cent of the popular vote, a level of support only matched by the Liberal before the Great War in a period when the franchise was restricted to around 60 per cent of adult males. No doubt these politics did not provide the vivid characterisation and powerful oratory of the Labour movement, but they placed an important mark on twentieth century Scotland and they deserve greater consideration. In another sense, however, there are strong continuities.

Labour did not so much overtake or replace Liberalism on the left of Scottish politics as absorb some of its outstanding features. A Liberal tradition, tangibly embodied by the Liberal Nationals, can also be found in Scottish Conservatism, an organisation not as consistently opposed to that traditional Liberal idea of home rule as is suggested by its approach in the 1980s. The Scottish National Party, whose political identity and objectives have been singularly elusive during its history, also has an element in its make up which owes much to Liberalism, and there have been periods where the parties have attempted to cooperate. In some ways it might be thought proper that when devolution was implemented in 1999 the Liberal Democrats, although the most unpopular of the four major parties, should have had a hand in the government of Scotland from 1999 to 2007. Although this point should not be over-emphasised, and a critic would note the Liberal Democrats’ reluctance to join the SNP in coalition after

2007, it is a point worth bearing in mind as one considers the twists and turns of modern Scottish political history.

This leads naturally to comment on the second obsession evident in the literature: the rise of nationalism in the period since the late 1960s. This was fascinating to historians and political scientists because it represented such a novel departure from what had gone before. The rise of the SNP seemed to be taking Scottish politics,

Scottish history and Scotland itself in a new direction. The security of the union of

1707, which had been little commented upon precisely because it was largely taken for granted, seemed to be under threat and new themes demanded attention. The precipitate decline of the Conservative vote in Scotland in the 1980s established a further theme which has loomed large in the literature: the ‘road to home rule’. 1 The creation of the Scottish parliament in 1999, welcomed by a broad consensus of

Scottish opinion, presents some dangers for the historian interested in the broad period since 1880. We should not be misled by this recent history. Just as the period between 1603 and 1707 should not be read as an inevitable march from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Parliaments, the twentieth century should not be subjected to a tartan version of the whig interpretation of history which sees devolution, or even independence, as the inevitable culmination of this period of

Scottish history. Political debate in the period covered by this book was diverse, encompassing important issues such as housing, the land question, disestablishment,

Presbyterian reunion, free trade and protection, welfare politics, nationalisation and

1 See the book of that name by Harvie and Jones; also Clements et. al. , Restless nation centralisation, industrialisation and de-industrialisation and a host of other essentially generic questions. Home rulers, of course, have argued that these issues should not be divorced from devolution: a Scottish parliament was required to ensure that these questions were debated and legislated upon with due deference to Scottish opinion and distinctiveness. Only in very recent times, however, has this positive association been achieved. The contrast with the 1970s, when home rule came to be seen as a fairly squalid political tactic designed to get the Labour party out of a hole of its own making, could not be clearer and ought to be welcomed. At times it is difficult to break free from the tramlines imposed by the dominant themes in the literature and if the account which follows does not entirely succeed in doing so, this brief discussion of their existence is all the more important.

There has been much discussion in recent years on the forces which seem to be pulling Britain apart and an emphasis on the forces which divide Scotland and

England. 1 An equally important issue for the Scottish historian of the twentieth century is to understand why the Union has survived. 2 This survival has not been

without crises, especially in the 1970s, but it cannot be gainsaid. The predictive

abilities of historians should mostly be discounted, and the emphasis on the strength

of the union which underlies this book does not mean that its future is either

guaranteed or necessarily desirable. Its strength, mostly due to its adaptability, should

not be underestimated; as its survival in a century of global conflict and massive

social and economic change, more rapid in the period since c. 1960 as at any time in

Scottish history, seems to indicate. Historians ought properly to be concerned with the past, however, and the period from 1880 to 2007 seems to be as much a long

1 For example, Nairn, Break-up of Britain ;, Nairn, After Britain ; Osmond, Divided kingdom 2 Devine, ‘Break-up of Britain?’ begins to tackle this question. twentieth century of the union as the period from 1832 to 1880 is a short nineteenth century. Even this period, generally thought of as one of supreme unionism, was not without its extreme crises. The Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 must have seemed as cataclysmic as anything which has occurred in the public history of

Scottish institutions in the twentieth century, devolution notwithstanding.

The union does not only concern Scotland and England, of course. At the start of the period covered here it was a union between Britain and Ireland and Scottish historians have devoted a great deal of scholarly attention to comparisons between Scotland and

Ireland. This comparison is less compelling in the twentieth century than it is for the social and economic developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth century which prompted it, but it relevant in this matter of the history of the union. Scotland has always seemed more comfortable in its unionist clothes than was Ireland between

1801 and 1922. Aside from events in 1746, the Anglo-Scottish union has not involved outright coercion. Scotland has not had to be extensively policed in order to impose quiescence. Even when the west highlands seemed to be in rebellion in the 1880s in a manner which suggested to the political establishment worrying parallels with Ireland, the tactics and strategies used to deal with outstanding grievances were, by comparison, largely consensual and resort to extraordinary legal innovations was unnecessary. Not for nothing were Irish nationalists such as John Mitchel or Charles

Stuart Parnell scornful of Scotland’s integration with England. The comparison with

Ireland has not been matched with comparisons with Wales despite the fact that the heavy industrialisation of south Wales and the cultural distinctiveness of the rural hinterlands of the north and the west suggest many possibilities.

What abut England? It is after all Scotland’s closest neighbour, as well as its ‘auld enemy, not only in terms of geographical contiguity, but also in language, culture and, as sociologists have recently pointed out, even social structure. 1 These features

led to a substantial exchange of population, although the English in Scotland have

been studied in greater depth than the Scots in England. 2 The Anglo-Scottish

relationship has been little studied and what comment there has been has emphasised

the differences between the lands on either side of the Tweed: religion, education,

recent psephology, attitudes to Europe and the relative friendliness of its football

supporters. Once again in contrast to Anglo-Irish relations, the recent history of the

Anglo-Scottish relationship has been relatively benign. 3 The Anglo-Scottish

relationship, however, is a difficult one to disentangle since England has been, until

recently, very difficult to identify. This was the conclusion of Winston Churchill in

1911 as he sought to construct a framework for ‘home rule all round’ in the United

Kingdom, and it has dogged historians as well. 4 The principal difficulty has been the

separation of England and the British state, a problem evident in a recent collection of

essays on this topic. 5 Indeed, the United Kingdom, throughout its history and its

frequent mutations, has been characterised by the existence of relationships between

its constituent parts and its political core at Westminster, rather then strong

institutional links between those constituent parts, including Scotland and England.

As in the eighteenth century, the structures of union have provided a ‘gravy train’ for

ambitious Scottish politicians, and in the period before 1945 this was augmented by

1 McCrone, Sociology of a nation, 78-103 2 Notably in Watson, Being English in Scotland 3 Devine, ‘In bed with an elephant’, 1-18. This was Professor Devine’s inaugural lecture in the Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography in the University of Edinburgh and stands in marked contrast to the lecture of his predecessor but one, see Barrow, Extinction of Scotland 4 Although see Colls, Identity of England , esp. 42-9, 281-3 5 Miller (ed.), Anglo-Scottish relations imperial opportunities. 1 Scottish politicians have often been prominent at Westminster and, for a time at least, prominent English politicians often sought, or were forced to seek, Scottish seats. 2 This relationship has not been entirely unproblematic and has

been characterised by occasional bouts of Scotophobia, such as may be evident

currently. Indeed, it might plausibly be suggested that if the Union does founder in the

near future, the impetus might come from England rather than Scotland. Gordon

Brown may not be directly comparable to the third earl of Bute in many respects, but

his ascent to the premiership has, like that of Bute, stimulated an unpleasant bout of

Scotophobia in the metropolitan media. 3 As yet there is no one to play the role of John

Wilkes, the English populist rabble rouser who whipped up to Bute in the early 1760s.

Although, amongst others, the likes of the Conservative MP Boris Johnson and the

former editor of the Sun Kelvin MacKenzie aspire to the part. 4 No doubt there are substantial issues to be dealt with in the asymmetrical politics occasioned by devolution to Scotland in 2007, but the discussion is suffused by intolerance and prejudice. The different regimes of financial support for English and Scottish domiciled students was the occasion of one outburst from Johnson and other issues such as the Barnett formula and the West Lothian question prompt similar indignation.. MacKenzie, appearing on the BBC television programme Question Time in October 2007 repeated the line that the Scots were dependent on largesse from

England and lacked business skills. 5 This feeling is not confined to the Conservative

party, however. It is evident in English regional identity, not least in the north east,

and in the Labour party there remains a very strong centralist tendency which is

1 Simpson, ‘Who steered the gravy train’, 47-72. 2 Quinault, ‘Scots on top’, 30-6; Harvie, ‘Golden age’, 82-90 3 Colley, Britons , 105-17; Murdoch, ‘Lord Bute’, 117-46 4 This theme was the subject of comment by Colin Kidd and Neal Ascherson in the London Review of Books in the run-up to the Scottish election of May 2007, see 5 Apr. 2007, 38-9 and 26 Apr. 2007, 6-8. 5 Boris Johnson, ‘Are we all equally British? Not if Brown has his way’, Guardian , 12 Jun. 2007, 32; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/12/nkelv112.xml. suspicious of devolution and detects within it unfair advantages for Scotland over other traditional Labour areas in England. The long-term effects of these tensions have yet to work themselves out and are beyond the scope of this book. Thus devolution might be the slippery slope to the break-up of the Union but not quite in the way envisaged by the SNP or feared by unionists in Scotland. Thus for all the rapid change in the social and economic history covered in this book, there is a continuity at the heart of its political narrative. In 1880s there was a unionist consensus in Scottish politics and that remains in 2007. There is not yet the evidence that the advent of a minority SNP government betokens a fundamental shift in this .

Whether it will continue for much longer is another matter and the subject for a future volume eleven of this series, or even a Newer Edinburgh History of Scotland. Chapter One: the politics of the 1880s

The Midlothian Campaign

On 24 November 1879 a semi-retired septuagenarian left Liverpool to make the eight hour journey to Edinburgh which he would later describe as a ‘triumphal procession’.

William Gladstone was seeking to become the Liberal Member of Parliament for

Edinburghshire, or Midlothian, currently held for the Conservatives by Lord Dalkeith, the eldest son of the Duke of Buccleuch. When the result was declared in Edinburgh on 5 April 1880, he had a majority over Dalkeith of 211 from a total of 2947 votes. 1

During two visits Gladstone gave a series of wide-ranging speeches in the constituency, in Edinburgh—where 20,000 people heard him at Waverley market—in

Glasgow (while delivering his Rectorial address at the University) and also at Perth and Aberfeldy. The events between Gladstone’s departure from Liverpool and the announcement of his victory a little over four months later reveals a moment from which we can learn much about Scottish politics in the 1880s. Although Gladstone’s oratory in Midlothian was not devoid of Scottish content, with notable emphases on the church, land and temperance issues, his primary purpose was to address public opinion on the issue of how they should be governed and on the morality of the foreign and imperial policy conducted by Lord Beaconsfield’s Conservative government. 2 Nineteenth century Liberalism had traditionally been based on peace,

retrenchment and reform, and Gladstone emphasised these issues but argued that ‘still

greater questions’ involving the ‘faith and honour of the country’ were at stake.

Conservative foreign policy had been bellicose, and had permitted the expansion of

Russian power in Asia and Turkish power in Europe, the former presenting ‘a positive

1 Morley, Gladstone, ii, 160-7 2 Shannon, Heroic Minister, 236-7 danger to India’. Taken together, Gladstone declared in a letter to a leading Liberal in

Midlothian, they ‘resolve themselves into one comprehensive question, the question whether this is or is not the way in which the country wishes to be governed.’ 1

Although there was much that was novel about Gladstone’s Midlothian campaigns they are as redolent of continuity as of change. Indeed, the speeches were an attack on novelties. The first continuity is represented by the candidate himself: Gladstone had extraordinary longevity as a politician, first entering the House of Commons as a Tory in 1832. He was a figure who stimulated extreme reactions: many Liberals reserved a unique level of adulation for him, while his Conservative political opponents purchased chamber pots adorned with his image to make clear their own feelings for a man perceived to have endangered the Empire. 2 His opponents condemned Gladstone

as a ‘demagogue’ and the Midlothian campaigns as ‘rhetorical inebriation and

‘exuberant verbosity’ which masked the articulation of a dangerous philosophy likely

to lead to national ‘humiliation and shame’. 3 Gladstone’s reputation is not only to be

understood in partisan terms, however. Although he had Scottish family connections

his relationship with the nation was complex. His religious outlook was predicated

upon High Anglicanism, although he attended Presbyterian Churches during the

Midlothian campaign. 4 This was an important consideration in an age when issues of ecclesiastical governance and the relationship between Church and State were prominent. James Begg, the ubiquitous and vituperative Free Church minister who held to the traditional view of that Church which venerated the principle of

Established Churches, felt that Gladstone’s purpose in seeking out a prominent

1 B.L., Add. MS 44137, fo. 389, Gladstone to Sir John Cowan, 30 Jun. 1879 2 Matthew, Gladstone, 1875-1898 , illustration 5(c) 3 Anon, ‘Mr Gladstone’s Pilgrimage’, 138; Times, 29 Nov. 1879, 9 4 Ferguson, Scotland, 325; Matthew, Gladstone, 1875 to 1898, 42 Scottish constituency was to provide a base to dis-establish the Scottish Church, as he had done to its Irish counterpart in 1869. Begg also reminded his readers that

Gladstone had been a member of Peel’s government in 1842 when the Claim of Right of the Scottish Church was rejected and the Disruption was precipitated. 1 Gladstone

did not advocate the idea of Scottish dis-establishment strongly; probably from a

mixture of worry that it might encourage those who wished to challenge the position

of the Church of England and its divisive potential for the Liberal party. The latter

point is supported by the fact that his defence of the Church of Scotland was

insufficiently robust for some Scottish Liberal tastes. 2 This raises the question why

Gladstone chose to contest Midlothian. He had turned down an offer from the St

Andrews burghs, a small seat lacking the prestige of Midlothian, the Scottish

metropolitan county. The result was by no means a foregone conclusion: certainly,

Scotland was safe ground for Liberalism, they had won a majority of Scottish seats at

every general election since 1832 and, with the exception of the ‘Khaki election’ of

1900, would continue to do so up to and including that of December 1910. On the

other hand Midlothian was one of the few Scottish county seats which could be

described as ‘safe’ for the Conservatives, although a recent Liberal canvass greatly

reassured Gladstone. It had the further advantage of coming with a financial

guarantee from local Liberals that they would bear the expenses of the contest. The

relative smallness of the electorate would ensure that these would not be too onerous

and there would not be a heavy workload compared to a large urban seat. 3 It would, nevertheless, scarcely have suited a crusader in the cause of moral and political righteousness to take a comfortable sinecure: a challenge had to be surmounted for his message to have the greatest effect.

1 Begg, Scottish Public Affairs, 26-7 2 Stratheden and Campbell, Mr Gladstone and Midlothian, 27 3 Brooks, ‘Gladstone and Midlothian’, 42-8

A second continuity was the nature of the political system within which the contest took place. At the Union of 1707 Scottish representation at Westminster was set at forty-five seats, a particular pattern of political representation was established, many elements of which remained current in 1880. Although Scottish representation had been increased to fifty-three in 1832 and to fifty-eight in 1868, this distinction between counties and burghs remained. 1 The burgh franchise had been extended to all

male householders in 1868; the county franchise, however, would remain unreformed

until 1884 and county seats had relatively small electorates with a franchise based on

landholding. Midlothian had over 3000 voters but in Sutherland, where landholding

was concentrated, there were only 326! In Scotland there were only 290,000 voters

and just over 3 million in the United Kingdom. There was still the whiff of

management of the electorate, not so much through bribery and corruption, but

through the creation of fictitious or ‘faggot’ votes. Midlothian had only 3260 voters in

1880 and the seat was perceived as having been in the pocket of the Buccleuch

interest. This control had been made more difficult with the introduction of the secret

ballot in 1872. Other notable features of the political system in 1880s included the

right of wealthy individuals to vote in more than one constituency. Since the franchise

was connected to property holding if a voter held domestic property in one

constituency and business property elsewhere, he was entitled to vote more than once;

the creation of the Scottish universities seats in 1868 provided another opportunity for

the graduate voter. The fact that constituencies polled on different days over a two or

three week period during a general election made multiple voting possible.

1 Mclean, ‘Are Scotland and Wales over-represented in the House of Commons?’, 250-9 The aristocracy was prominent in the Midlothian seat, and not only on the

Conservative side; during his campaigns Gladstone stayed at Dalmeny with the young aristocrat Lord Rosebery. Rosebery used his influence in the constituency in an acute manner: awarding rent remissions to his tenants, entertaining local Liberals at

Dalmeny and, unknown to Gladstone, matching the Duke of Buccleuch, faggot for faggot. 1 It is possible then, by emphasising the length of Gladstone’s political career,

the nature of the seat which was being fought and the prominence of traditional

landowning families, to interpret the Midlothian campaign as an event which

demonstrates the continuities of Scottish political life in the nineteenth century.

Equally, however, the evidence for the changes represented by the Midlothian

campaign can be heralded. Gladstone began his campaign before the General Election

was called and issued authoritative statements without formally being leader of the

Liberal Party. It was the first time this style of political campaigning had been seen in

the United Kingdom, although there had been single issue campaigns on moral

issues. 2 Rosebery’s American experience may have been influential, as this style of

campaigning was more familiar on the other side of the Atlantic. Gladstone reached

an audience much wider than those who listened directly to him in Dalkeith and the

other places in which he spoke. This was facilitated by technology: the train in which

Gladstone made his initial northerly journey was not simply a method of transport; his

colleague and biographer, John Morley, remarked ‘Over what a space had democracy

travelled’:

1 Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 88-9; Foot, ‘Introduction’, 15-16 2 Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 89; Biagini, Gladstone, 66 On this journey of a bleak winter day, it seemed as if the whole

countryside was up. The stations where the train stopped were crowded,

thousands flocked from neighbouring towns and villages to main centres

on the line of route, and even at wayside spots hundreds assembled merely

to catch a glimpse of the express as it dashed through.

Addresses and gifts were presented to Gladstone en route , for example at Galashiels and Hawick, and he was induced, not unwillingly, to make speeches. 1 As Gladstone travelled north his words travelled south to the offices of the newspapers which would report, verbatim, his lengthy orations. Print was the information technology of the

Victorian age and ‘Midlothian’ was largely conducted on the printed page. His words reached their audience through a process which began with the shorthand notes of the reporter, passed through national and local newspapers on to publication in pamphlet and book form. The speeches were reprinted in weekly or bi-weekly ‘local’ newspapers all over Scotland, thus ensuring a speech given in Dalkeith could reach a nationwide audience in a remarkably short time. 2 This would not have been possible

without the extensive railway network of the late Victorian period, the equally

extensive telegraph system—largely comprehensive by the 1850s and state owned

since 1870—and the possibility of cheap newspapers, of which there had been a

threefold increase since the 1850s. 3 The last was a decisive new development which

facilitated political communication in the late nineteenth century. Prior to the early

1860s taxation made newspapers expensive and infrequent. The reduction of these

‘taxes on knowledge’, partly by Gladstone as Chancellor, put newspapers within

reach of most pockets and stimulated local elites all over the country to develop a

1 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform , 406-9; Harvie, ‘Gladstonianism’, 160 2 Matthew, Gladstone, 1875 to 1898, 48; Kinnear, ‘Trade in great men’s speeches’, 439-44 3 Meisel, Public Speech, 270 local press. 1 These titles reported and editorialised on national and international issues

and gave extensive space to parliamentary proceedings and political speeches. In

addition to Scotland’s ‘national’ newspapers, the Scotsman of Edinburgh, and the

Glasgow Herald , the vibrant local press, such as the Aberdeen Free Press , edited by

William Alexander, provided a distinctive element of Scottish civil society as well as

a powerful buttress to Liberalism.

Elections, although formally participated in by only a small proportion of the

population, were vivid occasions witnessed by a wide section of the community.

During the Midlothian campaigns there were torchlight processions in Glasgow,

fireworks at Dalmeny and enthusiastic crowds pursued Gladstone’s carriage and

crowded his meetings. It was also a common practice for the horses of a victorious

candidate’s carriage to be unhitched and for it to be pulled along by energetic

supporters. This accolade was offered to Gladstone in Midlothian long before his

actual victory.

The Midlothian campaign establishes a number of themes for the consideration of

Scotland in the late Victorian period. Gladstone, despite his metropolitan status,

became one of fifty-two Liberal MPs for Scotland. Indeed, his presence in Midlothian

provided an ‘unrivalled opportunity …of seeing ourselves as other see us’. 2 He had engaged with the county electoral system whose reform would profoundly alter the political landscape by the time of the next general election in late 1885. He had raised

Scottish issues which would resonate throughout the rest of the decade: ecclesiastical politics, land reform, temperance. Above all, however, he had used a Scottish

1 Jones, Powers of the Press , 4; Lee, Origins of the Popular Press , 155, Donaldson, Popular Literature , 1-34 2 Scotsman, 26 Nov. 1879, 6 constituency to raise profound questions about governance and the conduct of foreign and imperial policy. Rosebery referred to Scotland as both the ‘tripod’ and the ‘pivot’ of the campaign and remarked to Gladstone that the ‘intensity required was only to be found in Scotland and yourself.’ 1 Although some London editorials professed mystification at Scots enthusiasm for the wildness and excesses of the campaigns, the culture of Liberalism seemed, for their Edinburgh counterparts at least, to provide the clear answer: the Scottish electorate had

shown at bye-elections, and by every constitutional means in their power,

that their opinions are even more unflinchingly Liberal than the state of

their representation indicates. They have chosen Liberal and they rejected

Tory candidates, not on account of bad or game-eaten crops, or collapsed

banking concerns, or from devouring disestablishment zeal, nor even

because they are a ‘peculiar people’ subject to bewildering influences

from ‘feudal towers’ or the secret effects of the disuse of the kilt; but

simply because the conviction that the domestic and foreign interests of

the country are safest in the hands of a Liberal ministry has been

strengthened and confirmed by the disastrous proof of six years of Tory

rule …and it is quite needless in the circumstances to take a dark lantern

and pry into the souls for hidden objects and motives. 2

1 B.L. Add. MS 44288, Rosebery to Gladstone, 9 Apr. 1880 2 Scotsman, 26 Nov. 1879, 6 Midlothian demonstrates the distinctiveness of the issues around which Scottish domestic politics revolved, but it also reminds us that the tribesmen of Afghanistan could be a central part of Scottish political discourse in the Imperial age. 1

Liberal and Tory

Gladstone’s speeches at Midlothian represented his attempt to emphasise a profound clash between Liberal and Tory in the political system; although his campaigns were intensely personal, they were also highly partisan. County politics had not altered much since 1832, but by the 1880s changes in the way political parties appealed to the electorate were evident. This was more obvious in the burghs, where the electorate had been expanded in 1868, but during the 1870s and 1880s more general attempts were made to solidify organisational structures. For the Liberals the motivation was a disappointing result in 1874. More central direction, although it was tentative at first, was given with the formation in 1877 of two regional Liberal Associations which were merged to form the Scottish Liberal Association in 1881. 2 This was an attempt

by Whig leaders of the party, such as Lord Rosebery, to control the divisive potential

of issues like disestablishment and the land question. Given the enthusiasm generated

by Gladstone in Midlothian and the results of the 1880 general election this appeared

to be a successful enterprise.

The Conservative Party in the late 1870s and early 1880s was in a parlous state,

especially in urban areas where it showed few signs of being able to comprehend its

task. In contrast to later periods it faced severe handicaps in the nature of Scottish

society, especially the absence of newspaper support and the overwhelming

1 Quinault, ‘Afghanistan’, 31-2 2 Hutchison, Political history, 141-9 Liberalism of the Presbyterian Churches. Despite the presence of a large number of aristocrats as leading symbols of Scottish Conservatism, the party was not wealthy, especially after the death of the generous industrialist James Baird. It took a renewal of the personnel of Conservatism in the early 1880s to convince the party of the need to engage with the electorate. The National Union of Conservative Associations of

Scotland was formed in 1882, but even then Scottish organisation was much less sophisticated than its English counterpart. Attempts were made to improve the position with regard to the press, with the establishment of newspapers in Glasgow,

Aberdeen and Inverness. Innovations, such as the use of leaflets to appeal directly to the electorate, were used to get around some of the inherent weaknesses of Scottish

Conservatism. 1 It would take more than organisational change to improve the

prospects for the Tories in Scotland: the memory of the disruption, the fault of

neglectful and ignorant Tory government in the popular view, counted strongly

against the Tories. The aristocratic hauteur of the party did not help, and even those

who believed that there was a strong vein of inherent Conservatism among the

Scottish people—based on their industry, enterprise and religiosity—were forced to

admit that the prospects for the party north of the border were not good and that ‘in

Scotland Mr Gladstone’s monarchy is practically absolute’. 2 The protectionist

instincts of the party also handicapped the party north of the border, Scottish

industrialists and farmers were strong supporters of free trade and this drew them into

the orbit of the Liberal party. This issue would become particularly important in the

Edwardian era. Neither could the Tories rely on tenant farmers to tug their forelocks.

Much resentment was caused by the harsh operation of the game laws which, on pain

of eviction and prosecution, prevented farmers from protecting their crops by shooting

1 Fraser, ‘The Press’, 456; Hutchison, Political history, 113-25, 193-9; N.A.S., GD296/156, Innes and Mackay MSS, James Baird to Donald Cameron of Lochiel, 11 Jul. 1875 2 Hodgson, ‘Why Conservatism fails in Scotland’, 235 rabbits and birds. 1 This weakness was borne out by the results of the general elections of 1880 and 1885 where they won only a handful of seats. Nevertheless, these organisational gains placed both parties in better positions to cope with the demands of the nation-wide mass politics which came with the expansion of the electorate and the redistribution of seats in 1884.

The Government of Scotland

Before 1885 Scotland sent fifty-eight MPs to the Westminster parliament, leading to claims that the nation with its rising population was under-represented, especially compared to Ireland with its falling population and 100 Members. This would be fully debated, if not resolved, in 1884, but an associated issue was the representation and administration of Scotland. For the greater part of the nineteenth century, the administration of Scottish matters had been divided between the Home Secretary and the Lord Advocate, the latter from outside the Cabinet. Neither were deemed to be particularly satisfactory arrangements: the Home Office had other calls on its time and

‘Parliament House Rule’, as the regime of the Lord Advocate was derided, was compromised by the fact that he was heavily burdened by legal duties. These points are not merely matters of arcane administrative history, they had a real impact on the lives of the Scottish people. Although there had been some forceful Lord Advocates, there was a widespread perception that the pre-1885 system engendered a neglect of

Scottish affairs at Westminster and Whitehall. The editor of the Scotsman , Charles

Cooper, felt that Scotland was ‘discontented’ and ‘badly used’, and this was in 1881 after the Liberal victory inspired by Gladstone at Midlothian. 2 It was, for example, increasingly evident in the aftermath of the Disruption in 1843 that the administration

1 Hutchison, Political history , 105-6; Carter, Farm life , 165-6 2 N.L.S., Rosebery Papers, MS 10010, fos. 20-1, Cooper to Rosebery, 11 Mar. 1881 of the education system by the Church of Scotland was anomalous, but it was 1872 before reform could be secured; although sectarian squabbles among presbyterians contributed as much as Whitehall neglect. In the 1850s administrative reform with the objective of the better government of Scotland was one of the grievances voiced by the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights; this organisation did not endure, but the issue resurfaced during Gladstone’s first administration and a committee was appointed to investigate the problem.1 Naturally, this led to further

delay and when Gladstone returned to power in 1880 the problem remained. The fact

that things began to move more quickly in this period can be related to the themes

raised by Gladstone at Midlothian. He dealt with the under-representation of Scotland

at Westminster and hinted at the possibility of altering the relationships between the

three kingdoms, not in the interests of self-determination, but with the objective of

more efficient conduct of parliamentary business. 2 Gladstone’s Dalmeny fixer, Lord

Rosebery, was a prime mover in the development of this question. In 1881 he was appointed to a junior ministerial position at the Home Office with the task of reforming Scottish administration, but progress was slow and he became frustrated. 3

There was probably a mixture of ambition and sincerity in Rosebery’s efforts and it is important to appreciate the extreme regard with which Rosebery was held in

Scotland. 4 This question genuinely excited Scottish public opinion. A mass meeting was held in Edinburgh in January 1884 at which leading figures, including Liberals like Rosebery and Conservatives like the Marquis of Lothian (a future holder of the office) advocated a Scottish Secretary. 5 The creation of the post in 1885 took place

1 Hanham, ‘ Mid-Century Scottish Nationalism’; Morton, ‘Scottish Rights’. 2 Gladstone, Midlothian, 1879, 67-9, 86-90 3 Hanham, ‘Scottish Office’, 208; B.L. Add. MS. 44288 fos. 85-176; 44197, fos. 158-76; 44198, fos, 53-6; 44199, fos. 46-55, 121-7 4 Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 244 5 Hanham, ‘Scottish Office’, 206; Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 257 after the fall of Gladstone’s government and its replacement by that of the Marquis of

Salisbury. The first Scottish Secretary was the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who thought the post ‘unnecessary’ and accepted it on the assurance that the aim was merely to keep Scottish public opinion sweet; Salisbury told him ‘work is not very heavy’ and it ‘really is a matter where the effulgence of two Dukedoms and the best salmon river in Scotland will go a long way.’ 1 Scotland was now equipped with a

poorly staffed government department, with no real premises in Edinburgh and a

minister whose status and extent of responsibility was uncertain. The Home Office

conducted a rearguard action to reserve powers and important areas of Scottish

administration, such as education, were under the control of autonomous boards who

were reluctant to be associated with the fledgling Scottish Office. Although more

power did accrue to the Scottish Office early in its life, partly by virtue of the need to

deal with the problems of the Highlands and Islands in the 1880s, it was not until the

reforms of the inter-war years that its position was properly secured.

Despite the evident weakness of the position of the Scottish Office the controversy

surrounding its establishment is useful in telling us a number of things about

Scotland’s position within the Union. For much of the nineteenth century

administration in Scotland had been carried out with minimal central direction;

although there was, from 1845, a Board of Supervision to oversee the social welfare

system, or ‘Poor Law’; the Scottish Education Board dated from 1872, but most day

to day tasks were carried out at the parish level by ‘Parochial Boards’ and elected

‘School Boards’. This structure chimed with the prevailing ideology of the mid-

nineteenth century which emphasised the demoralising effect of an interventionist

1 West Sussex Record Office, Goodwood MS 871, Salisbury to Gordon, 7 Aug. 1885; Gordon to Salisbury, 9 Aug. 1885. state; although this idea was less stridently appealed to in the 1880s the minimal state remained an important aspiration. Until the establishment of elected County Councils in 1889 rural Scotland had few structures of local government. Local landowners periodically convened as ‘Commissioners of Supply’ whose main ambition was to minimise activity, and hence expenditure, since they were the main providers of revenue through local taxes based on landownership. The poor quality of land in most of rural Scotland meant that the tax base was extremely low; this, combined with landlord self interest, meant that the provision of services in rural Scotland certainly matched the minimalist ideal.

The position in urban Scotland was more structured: the burgh reform act of 1833 had given Scottish towns a proper structure of government and this was the base upon which the increasingly sophisticated systems of the late nineteenth century were built.

The Scottish wide pattern of elected town councils hid great diversity in the extent to which these bodies interpreted the boundaries of their activity. Even among the four main cities – Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow – the contrasts were marked. The most active urban government in Scotland, perhaps even in the United

Kingdom, was Glasgow, although by the 1880s and certainly by the early 1900s, its most expansionist phase was past. 1 This was the Scottish local state at its most active

and its work can be idealised as an altruistic project, but the theme of social control

should not be neglected. 2 Thus, taking the example of Glasgow, elected urban government was active and interventionist with the objective of extending, rather than limiting, those who owed taxes to it and using the revenue to provide services for its citizens: all of which was in marked contrast to the situation in county areas.

1 Maver, ‘Glasgow’s Civic Government’, 441- 85 2 Fraser, ‘From Civic Gospel to Municipal Socialism’, 65; see also Fraser, ‘Municipal Socialism and Social Policy’, 262; Hart, ‘Urban Growth and Municipal Government’, 197-8

These factors can also be combined to explain the absence of any real demand for

Scottish Home Rule in the period before 1886 when the Irish issue changed the agenda and altered a perceived consensus around what has been called ‘Unionist-

Nationalism’. 1 Organisations like the Scottish Rights Association and even the

Scottish Home Rule Association, formed in 1886, campaigned for a reformed and

more efficient union rather than Scottish legislative autonomy. The developing

administrative structures were staffed by Scots—this was true of most of the Boards

and especially of the Scottish Office after 1885—this meant that what was perceived

by some as neglect could be reinterpreted as a form of administrative autonomy. As

Ian Levitt has argued:

The real work of the managing Scotland remained as before with the

Edinburgh Boards. Board members, although appointed and answerable to the

Scottish Secretary, in fact, tended to be representative of Scottish interests, the

land, the law, local government and by 1900, the medical profession. On the

whole, board membership came from outside the British civil service and,

being composed of Scotsmen sitting in Edinburgh, was identifiably Scottish. 2

Combined with the independence of the legal, ecclesiastical and education systems, the perception of the central state as a remote influence persuaded many late Victorian

Scots that the Union was central to continuing Scottish distinctiveness.

Scotland and the United Kingdom

1 Morton, Unionist-Nationalism 2 Levitt , Scottish sentiment’, 35. Scotland’s position within the United Kingdom at the opening of our period can usefully be compared with that of Ireland and Wales. The British-Irish Union of 1801 contrasted with the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, although their roots in English wishes to stem the activities of assertive parliaments and secure her borders against potential French attack were similar. The principal contrasts were in the economic provisions, which were much less advantageous to Ireland than Scotland, and in the political structures. Although Ireland continued to send one hundred MPs to

Westminster, in other respects her relationship with London was more akin to that of a colony. Few matters were devolved to the local level and administration was controlled by a largely non-Irish body of officials, headed by a ‘Viceroy’, at Dublin

Castle. These conditions, along with the myriad grievances which arose from the famine of the late 1840s, proved a much more fertile breeding ground for nationalism than Scottish conditions. There were also clear religious differences between those who held political power and the mass of the Catholic nation. Some heat was taken out of this problem with the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, but this did not deal fully with the fundamental inequalities at the heart of the British-Irish relationship. The perceived violence of Irish popular politics on the land question and the Home Rule issue meant that governments spent disproportionate time addressing

Irish problems compared with the neglect of relatively peaceable Scotland. 1

The position of Wales was different again: the principality had no modern history of

independence from England, having been conquered in the 1530s and the

consequence was a total absence of the institutions of civil society upon which

Scottish identity was constructed. Wales, as a separate entity, was almost invisible in

1 N.L.S., Rosebery Papers, MS 10010, fo. 5, Cooper to Rosebery, 7 Jul. 1880 the political system of the United Kingdom; Welsh identity was entirely based on cultural, linguistic and religious bases but these flickered into political life in the

1880s. Welsh grievances centred on the iniquity of the position of the Anglican established Church to which a largely dissenting population were required to support through ‘tithes’. During the elections of the 1860s there had been politically motivated evictions of dissenting farm tenants by Anglican landlords. The 1880s saw a nascent movement to draw more attention to Welsh matters and this manifested itself in campaigns for disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, the protection of the Welsh language and the development of a higher education system.

The movement was evident in organisations such as Cymru Fydd , or ‘Young Wales’, and a ‘Welsh party’ composed of Welsh Liberal MPs led by Thomas Ellis. 1

Presbyterianism and Politics

The Scottish presbyterian establishment was a long standing feature of the institutional identity of Scotland stretching back to the restoration of Presbyterianism in 1690 and ultimately to 1560. The traditions and memory of the Scottish church were constantly appealed to by Scots of different political traditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The presbyterian tradition was far from being a united one, there had been secessions from the established Church in 1733 and 1761, but nothing before or since would compare with the ‘Disruption’ in the Church of

Scotland in 1843 which saw the sundering of the national church and the creation of a new Free Church of Scotland which argued that established churches should be

‘spiritually independent’ from the state. This made it more difficult for the Church of

Scotland to argue that it was a pre-eminent national institution fit for civil

1 Cragoe, ‘Conscience or coercion’, 140-69; Morgan, Wales in British politics , 76-119 responsibility for poor relief and education. By 1851, when the census revealed that

Scots attended church much less frequently than was assumed, there were three large

Presbyterian denominations: the Church of Scotland; the Free Church; and, from

1847, the United Presbyterian Church. The last was an amalgamation of the more theologically liberal ‘voluntary’ churches; it was the closest to the English and Welsh dissenting chapel tradition, and deprecated the connection between Church and State.

It is a gross over-simplification to argue that the Church of Scotland was

Conservative, the Free Church Whig, and the United Presbyterians Radical, but there were important political dimensions to this ecclesiastical structure. 1 There were

lengthy negotiations between the Free Church and the United Presbyterians in the

1870s as the Free Church, or at least the lowland portion of it, moved away from its

strict adherence to the establishment principle and edged closer to the Voluntary

position of the United Presbyterians who believed in the separation of Church and

State. These moves came to nothing, however, despite the best efforts of the leader of

the Free Church in this period, the Principal of New College, Professor Robert Rainy.

The most important ecclesiastical issue which penetrated the Scottish political agenda

was the question of ‘disestablishment’: this was the suggestion that the Church of

Scotland was privileged by virtue of its connection with the state and that it should be

put on an equal footing with the other churches. This was a ‘British’ issue with the

claims of the disestablishers having been boosted by the disestablishment of the

Church of Ireland in 1869 and ongoing campaigns in England and Wales. 2 The clergy of the Church of Scotland had no special status and there were no inherent disabilities involved in adhering to another Presbyterian Church. It was a decentralised church

1 Fry, Patronage and Principle, 94 2 Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and Reunion’, 221-2 with most of its power and authority being exercised at a local level and its national institutions were relatively weak. 1

This was an issue which generated a considerable amount of heat in Scotland in the

1880s, peaking at the general election of 1885. 2 Defenders of the principle of

Establishment, including some in the Free Church, denounced Disestablishment in the strongest terms: ‘both unwise and sinful’ and ‘the offspring of the infidel French

Revolution’, according to the Rev John Kennedy of Dingwall. 3 Its proponents, in both the Free and United Presbyterian Churches objected to the exalting of the Established

Church and the implication that it was The Church of Scotland, and deplored national support for such an institution when only a minority of the population, and even a minority of presbyterians, adhered to it. Their language could be equally strident involving condemnations of the Established Church as ‘a corruption of Christian polity’ and ‘destructive of spiritual interests’. 4 The positions of the political parties on this question were divergent, with the Conservatives being strong advocates of continued establishment, a position known as ‘Church Defence’. The Liberal party, however, was deeply divided on the question: the party was led by a man who venerated the Church of England, which could be perceived to be threatened by

Scottish disestablishment, but largely supported by dissenting voters who deprecated the status of established Churches. In Scotland, although there was a growing radical

Liberal strength which advocated disestablishment there was also a strong Whig group which sought to defend the Church and some of the leading defenders of the established Church—such as Principal Tulloch of St Mary’s College, St Andrews—

1 Tulloch, ‘Disestablishment’, 766; Hutton, Case for Disestablishment, 12-13; Brown, ‘Myth of the established Church’, 48-74 2 Simon. ‘Church disestablishment’, 791-820 3 Kennedy, Disestablishment Movement in the Free Church, 7, 17-18 4 Hutton, Case for Disestablishment, 5 were Liberals. 1 These factors help to explain the tergiversation of the leading Liberals during this period. In parliamentary terms disestablishment remained on the fringes, despite the best efforts of enthusiasts like Dr Charles Cameron, a Glasgow Liberal MP and proprietor of the North British Daily Mail .2 The Conservatives had a more straightforward task: there were few Tories who supported the cause and the rhetoric of party leaders, such as Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the foremost Church defender in the party, was forthright in its condemnation of the threat to social stability if a national institution such as the Church was spoliated. The Conservatives arranged the compilation of huge petitions to protest against the threat of disestablishment; one of which, in 1882, was signed by nearly 700,000 people. 3

As the argument developed it was clear that there was more to the question of the

position of the Church than sensitivities over the history and status of the established

Church, there was also a debate about resources. The proposal to disestablish the

Church was always advanced alongside the notion of ‘disendowment’; advocates of

this position argued that the resources of the Church could be released and used for

more socially progressive purposes, especially the development of free education,

which would benefit the working classes and reduce taxation. 4 Church defenders argued that disendowment was tantamount to robbery and part of a general threat to property. 5 The Church was an enormously wealthy institution with long held wealth in the form of ‘teinds’, or heritable property, which could be defended as part of its heritage and scarcely an imposition on society. There were, however, more recently accrued forms of wealth which could not be so easily defended; considerable sums

1 Cheyne, ‘Church Reform and Church Defence’, 139-64 2 Kellas, ‘Liberal party and Scottish Church Disestablishment’, 31-8 3 Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and Reunion’, 224 4 Anon, Disestablishment and Free Education , 7-8; Rainy, ‘Disestablishment’, 435 5 cited in Cheyne, ‘Church Reform and Church Defence’, 155. had been invested in the purchase of feudal superiorities in expanding urban areas, especially Edinburgh, a safe from of investment in an era when money held its value over the long term. Thus even in this ecclesiastical issue there was an undercurrent of the debate about property rights and social progress which characterised so many other aspects of political discourse in the 1880s.

Popular Politics

At the beginning of our period it would seem that Scotland was the most comfortable of the three ‘Celtic’ nations in its relationship with the United Kingdom. Scottish grievances did not match those which disfigured Ireland’s relations with Britain or led to simmering tensions in Wales. Even if only a minority of Scots communicated with the national church then at least that church was Presbyterian. There was no substantial body of opinion in Scotland which seriously advocated fundamental change in the political relationship which had been established in 1707.

If these were the issues around which ‘high’ politics were conducted we should also investigate the political culture of those who were outside the formal political system, although non-electors participated in the spectacle of political campaigns such as that in Midlothian in 1880. To what extent was there a tradition of popular politics emphasising different issues from those identified by the dominant Liberal party in the 1880s? Despite a bright and early start, the development of the Labour movement in Scotland was a long and slow process. Part of the reason was the dominance of

Liberalism and its evolution, especially after 1886, into a party which made a successful radical appeal to working class voters. The values of traditional Liberalism appealed strongly to the new urban voters of 1868 and their rural counterparts from 1885. Gladstone was revered and the values of order and respectability underpinned by craft skill, literacy and sobriety brought many working men into the Liberal community in Scotland. 1 Although there had been great changes in the life and culture

of the working class, especially a diminution in the riotousness which surrounded

events such as the King’s Birthday in the middle of the century, it would be wrong to

interpret the greater sense of respectability and order evident in the 1880s as either an

entirely new phenomenon or something imposed on the working class by middle-class

reforming effort, although there was a prodigious amount of that. The continuities can

be seen by comparing the Liberalism of the 1880s with earlier traditions. The absence

of overt nationalism of the European type was very much in common with the

Democratic movement of the 1790s; the preference for reform rather than revolution

was also a characteristic of that movement and was evident in the predominantly

‘moral force’ outlook of Scottish Chartism in the 1830s and 1840s. A further

continuity with the Chartist movement and with the emergent Labour radicalism of

the 1850s and 1860s, represented by men like Alexander McDonald, leader of the

early miners’ trade unionism, was a militant respectability and teetotalism. 2 A third element in this Scottish radical tradition was a profound belief that social injustices were rooted in the mal-distribution of land in society. These perceptions were capped with a distrust of state action and a belief in individuality and independence built on awareness of the ideas of Thomas Chalmers, Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Smiles.

These were an important currency for working class men, and it was a largely male culture, to gain and retain good jobs and to ensure the maintenance of good housing conditions for their families. Word of mouth and reputation was crucial in these social transactions, especially in the very fluid rented housing market: a man who was

1 Fraser, Scottish Popular Politics, 91-106; Knox, Industrial Nation, 94-103, 122-6, 163-83 2 Wilson, Chartist Movement, ?? known as a drinker or an unreliable worker was unlikely to be favoured by the powerful foremen and factors who controlled employment and housing opportunities.

In a society where the social welfare system afforded no rights to able bodied men this was an important consideration. 1 The ideas of reform, respectability, independence and radicalism on the land question were not fundamentally challenging to the Liberal party in the 1880s. Although there was a considerable amount of activity among socialists in the 1880s, they found it difficult to build a mass movement among the working class or to develop a political appeal distinct from

Liberalism.

A series of small socialist sects were active in Scotland in the early 1880s, they largely followed developments in London, although they added Scottish flavour in certain respects. Most activity took place in towns and was carried out by activists of extraordinary commitment. The principal organisations were the branches of London based organisations such as the Social Democratic Federation, formed in 1883, and the Socialist League which split from the SDF in 1884; significantly, the latter was known in Scotland as the Scottish Land and Labour League. Representative of the rather rarefied atmosphere of the movement was the personnel of the Scottish Land and Labour League which was mostly concentrated in Edinburgh. The Socialist

League was the creation of the thinker and designer William Morris and many of the

Scottish activists were his disciples; none more so than John Bruce Glasier, a craftsman specialising in wrought iron designs, who later became a leading figure in the politics and journalism of the Independent Labour Party and a biographer of

Morris. He was joined by a number of European emigres such as the Austrian

1 Smout, Century, 248-9 Andreas Scheu and Leo Millet from France, but by very few workers, in an organisation which aimed to be non-hierarchical. 1

Although the SDF and the Land and Labour League were outside the continuum of

Liberalism in their rejection of parliamentary democracy, many of their ideas sprang

from the same roots. The best example of this was the importance of the land question

in Liberal, Radical and Socialist politics in the 1880s. There were three contexts in

which the centrality of the land question can be demonstrated: the highlands, urban

radicalism and mining communities. In the highlands of Scotland there was a large

body of small tenants, or crofters, who were exposed to the threat of capricious

eviction. This threat remained potent in the 1880s, despite the fact that large scale

evictions had ceased in the 1850s and relative economic prosperity had followed in

the 1860s and 1870s, precisely because the memory of these events was embedded in

the mind of the crofting community. 2 Their vulnerability crippled their political

confidence and it took the work of an extraordinary retired exciseman, John Murdoch,

and his newspaper, The Highlander, to begin the process of rousing the crofters. 3

Incidents of protest in Lewis, Sutherland and Wester Ross in the 1870s and 1880s and the publicity they generated led to further protests in Skye in 1882 and 1883 which drew the attention of Gladstone’s government to the problems of the Highlands. 4 The

demands of the crofters were essentially moderate, they did not wish for the

expropriation of landlordism, but for the restoration of ancestral lands and the grant of

security from eviction, some of which was granted with the Crofters Holdings

1 University of Liverpool, Glasier MSS, GP/1/1/17, Andreas Scheu to J.B. Glasier, 29 Dec. 1884; Knox, Industrial Nation, 164 2 Devine, Great Highland Famine; Hunter, C rofting Community; MacPhail, Crofters War. 3 Hunter, For the People’s Cause; University of Liverpool, Glasier MSS, GP/1/1/19, John Murdoch to J. B. Glasier, 17 Mar. 1885 4 Cameron, Land for the People? , 16-28 (Scotland) Act of 1886. They had, however, been exposed to more radical ideas

during the early 1880s and in the wider land reform community, Scotland, especially

the Highlands, was viewed as a practical laboratory where the iniquities were glaring

and the need for reform most urgent. The problems of the Highlands were linked to

the remaining contexts of the land question in the 1880s. In 1882 an Irishman, Edward

McHugh, had toured the island of Skye to spread the gospel of a scheme of land

reform known as the ‘single tax’. 1 This was the brainchild of Henry George, the

‘Prophet of San Francisco’, who believed that all forms of taxation could be replaced

by a land tax which would erode the attraction of private landownership and release

revenue for social reform. This was not particularly attractive to the crofters of Skye

but it did appeal to urban Scots, most of whom rented their houses from private

owners, exposed to the power of landlords and factors as much as their Highland

counterparts, and could see the relevance of George’s message, contained in his best

selling book Progress and Poverty . McHugh, Henry George himself, and Michael

Davitt, the Irish land reformer, were well known figures in Radical and Irish

nationalist circles in the West of Scotland. A specific organisation, the Scottish Land

Restoration League, was established to spread the Georgite message, and other

organisations, such as the Land and Labour League, were influenced by his ideas. The

idea of land values taxation, although not at the level suggested by Henry George,

also influenced Liberal thinking on the land question in the Edwardian period and was

the source of a deep controversy in the years immediately before the Great War.

In mining communities, often situated on the fringes of urban settlements or even in

semi-rural conditions, the direct authority of landlords and gamekeepers was a source

1 Newby, ‘Edward McHugh’, 74-91 of resentment and fuelled a tradition of anti-landlordism. The collective memory and identity of miners was also relevant: the tradition of the independent collier could be sustained by the possession of a smallholding, as had been traditional in some parts of

Lanarkshire as late as the mid-nineteenth century. The most striking element of the miners’ conception of the land question was the vexed question of mineral royalties; these payments to proprietors under whose land miners toiled were especially high in the West of Scotland. A miners’ leader, referring to the Duke of Hamilton, encapsulated the issue neatly at a mass meeting near Motherwell in 1882:

This honourable gentleman – (laughter) – had 12,000 miners working

under the soil owned by him, and received on average 1s per ton from the

produce of each miner … and if his Grace could not live on that, how in

the name of Providence could the miner …live on a paltry 3s 9d or 4s per

day.

This issue became important in the developing labour movement in Scotland which conducted much of its early activity in mining communities. Outsiders such as the

Land Restoration League and Michael Davitt raised the question at meetings of miners, but activists from within the community, such as William Small or James

Keir Hardie also drew attention to it in their rhetoric. 1

The land question exposed a series of social injustices, such as those explored above

and it demonstrated that Liberal political culture which ranged from Whig Liberals,

such as Rosebery, to early Labour activists such as Keir Hardie, was a continuum

1 Campbell, Scottish miners , ii, 82-6, quote at 86. rather than a series of warring parties. We should not, however, identify an entirely comfortable consensus here. Gladstone may have wished to claim this in 1880 by rallying the troops round the standard of opposition to ‘Beaconsfieldism’, but this did not endure. There were a series of issues which worked throughout the 1880s to weaken, although not entirely break, this continuum. Although, as we have seen, there was a distinct Scottish political agenda in the 1880s, these challenges to Liberalism were not unique to Scotland and reflect the wider tensions which saw the Liberals consigned to opposition for most of the twenty years from 1886.

Many of these themes came together at the General Election of 1885, the first to be held under the extended franchise. The roots of the reforms of 1885 lay in the growing awareness that the granting of the franchise to all householders in the burghs in 1868 was increasingly anomalous. Thus the first part of the changes introduced as part of a deal between the Liberal and Conservative leaders, designed to neutralise the Lords on the one hand and the Radicals on the other, was to extend the householder franchise to the counties. 1 This increased the Scottish electorate from 270,000 to

560,000, most of whom qualified under the householder franchise; although non-

householders, such as lodgers, could qualify, it was very difficult to do so. Thus the

reforms created an electorate which was largely composed of men who owned or

rented property, there was no sense of the vote as an inalienable right. The second

element of the 1884/5 reforms was the redistribution of seats. Although this aspect

was not taken as far as many wished it to be, and it certainly did not lead to an entirely

fair representation of population in parliament, nevertheless, the legislation increased

the number of Scottish seats to seventy. A further problem was the over-

1 Matthew, Gladstone, 1875-1898, 173-82 representation of small urban areas. 1 This was dealt with to a degree in 1884/5: the

large cities were given extra seats, and with the exception of Dundee, which remained

a single two-member constituency, were divided into discrete geographical

constituencies: two for Aberdeen, four for Edinburgh and seven for Glasgow. Large

populous counties such as Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Ayrshire were divided and

this helped the move towards a representative system. The process and the overall

results were not entirely logical, however, and the division of less populous counties

such as Perth and Fife meant that the new system retained a bias towards the east of

Scotland and rural areas. There were considerable inequalities in the size of

constituencies; the Wick District of Burghs (2015 electors) and South Ayrshire

(15,109) lay at the extremes. 2

Although this geographical bias towards the east and the remaining over

representation of small town and rural Scotland was an important means by which

their political power was retained over industrial and working class seats, there were

still more important caveats hidden in the small print of the legislation of 1884/5. The

combination of the householder, lodger and other franchises ensured that around 57

per cent of the adult male population was able to vote in parliamentary elections. The

process by which over 40% of adult males remained outside the system says a great

deal about the assumptions which underpinned the new system. There remained a

sense that the right to vote had a moral dimension in that those who were in arrears of

local taxation, or in receipt of poor relief were not entitled to vote. Further, because of

the vagaries of the system of registration further potential voters were

1 Dyer, ‘Burgh districts’, 300-1 2 Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885-1918, 521, 529; Dyer, Capable Citizens, 27-30 disenfranchised. 1 The system militated against the enfranchisement of the mobile population. This encompassed, but was not restricted to, many of the poorest sections of society who moved in search of employment or housing opportunities and may have been a particular factor in the disproportionate disenfranchisement of the Irish community in urban areas. 2 It could be suggested that the combination of these factors worked to sustain the electoral base of the Liberal and Conservative parties, especially the former in Scotland, by keeping working class electors, likely Labour voters, off the electoral rolls. This is not a sufficient explanation for the slow development of

Labour voting in Scotland. The householder franchise worked against younger men who had not yet formed their own households, including many middle-class men— unlikely to be Labour voters—who remained in the parental home to a relatively late age. The overall effect of the small print of electoral reform was not exactly neutral in class and party terms, neither was it overwhelmingly discriminatory against the working class and the Labour movement. 3

What were the political results of the changes? Did the newly enfranchised behave, as anti-reformers feared, in ways which would destabilise the political process? New voters seem to have regarded their status as an important mark of respectability and status rather than as a weapon with which to change the political landscape. The first reformed election, in 1885, was characterised by extremely high turnout at 82 per cent, and a more highly contested atmosphere, but the results showed continuity with earlier periods. With the realignment over Irish home rule following on so quickly from the extension of the franchise it is difficult to isolate the influence of the new voters. Ironically, the first generation of modernised politics was difficult for the

1 Blewett, ‘Franchise in the United Kingdom’, 27-56 2 McCaffrey, ‘Irish vote in Glasgow’, 30-7 3 Matthew, McKibbin and Kay, ‘Franchise factor’, 723-52 Liberal party, and the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists made some inroads during the 1890s. In some ways, such as registration work and the exploitation of the new franchises, the Conservatives proved more adept in the new system than the Liberals, whose organisation was seriously damaged by the defections in 1886.

The results of the 1885 election, which saw only eight Conservatives elected from seventy Scottish constituencies, seemed to bear out the value of Gladstone’s reluctance to give any ground to those who were demanding disestablishment of the

Scottish Church. 1 If the Liberals had made a virtue out of their new approach to foreign and imperial policy in 1880 it must have been deeply disappointing for the

Conservatives to be unable to make any capital out of the disastrous events in South

Africa, Egypt and Sudan during Gladstone’s administration. The Conservatives won a lower share of the vote in Scotland (34%) than in England (48%) or Wales (39%).

The true extent of the Liberal vote is difficult to measure, and is probably greater than the 240,000 (53.3%) which the standard reference work suggests; there were a number of double Liberal candidatures, mostly over the Church question, and in the

Highland constituencies a number of ‘Crofter candidates’ contested seats against

Liberals. Indeed, the crofters were almost unique in the United Kingdom in being new voters who used the franchise to advance a cause directly related to their own welfare by electing four MPs on land reform tickets in 1885. 2 The Liberal triumph in urban

Scotland was virtually complete, the Kilmarnock group of burghs being the only

burgh seat which fell to the Conservatives and that victory was a consequence of the

intervention of Viscount Dalrymple as a Church defence candidate, allowing the Tory

to triumph on a minority vote: ‘the stain upon our Scotch returns’ according to

1 Hutchison, Political History, 159-60 2 Dunbabin, ‘Electoral reforms’, 314-15 Gladstone’s agent in Midlothian. 1 Heavily urbanised county seats such as Govan and

North West Lanark also fell to the Tories and their remaining victories were in county seats in West Central and South West Scotland. 2 The politics of Scotland’s capital city

in 1885 were interesting in that there were four double Liberal candidatures, a source

of concern among leading Liberals, out of the five seats (including Leith) and in three

of those Independent Liberals were victorious, one of whom was an advocate of

Disestablishment. 3 Liberal strength was not confined to any particular part of

Scotland, geographically or socially, and continuing Liberal domination hid a considerable turnover of members and evidence of men from new backgrounds representing Scottish constituencies. Only half of the seventy members elected in

1885 had served in the previous parliament and the landowners, lawyers and military men who predominated were replaced by merchants, manufacturers and men from the professional middle classes. 4 Another notable trend in Scottish representation was the

tradition of English and Welsh Liberals finding safe seats in Scottish constituencies.

Gladstone could be said to have led this trend and he was followed by prominent

Liberals like Herbert Asquith, Winston Churchill, in 1908, and many others not so

prominent but grateful for the security provided by the Liberal electorate North of the

border.

In the years before the Great War that Liberal security was not disturbed by Labour

politics, although these have are important in Scottish political history because of the

initial steps towards the creation of what became the Labour party in 1906 were taken

north of the border and some of the leading personalities were Scots. The first

1 B.L. Add MSS 44116, fo. 61, P.W.Campbell to Gladstone, 2 Dec. 1885 2 Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885-1918 , 491-563, 575 3 B.L. Add MSS, 44335, fo. 190, G.O.Trevelyan to Gladstone, 23 Nov. 1885 4 Dyer, Capable Citizens, 82-3 decisive step was taken at the Mid-Lanark by election of 1888, at which Keir Hardie stood as an independent (that is from the Liberal party) Labour candidate, and in the aftermath of which the Scottish Labour party was formed. Hardie’s candidature was important for its pioneering qualities rather than its success, after all he only achieved

617 votes and came bottom of a poll which was topped by a carpet bagging Welsh lawyer. Hardie had chosen to take this bold step after the Liberal party refused to countenance a working-class candidature. In the aftermath of the election the Scottish

Labour party was founded. It has been described as ‘a broad and loose collection of trade unionists (especially miners), socialists, assorted radicals and land reformers,

Irish nationalists and various disaffected Liberals.’ 1 In addition to Hardie, these

included the Crofter MP for Caithness, G.B. Clark, an advanced radical; the Liberal

MP for North West Lanark, R.B. Cunningham Graham, an even more advanced

radical, writer, horseman and Hispanophile; and John Ferguson, the Georgite leader of

the Irish nationalist movement in Glasgow. The SLP merged with the Independent

Labour Party in 1894 and formed the basis of that party’s Scottish infrastructure. The

importance of the party and its immediate successor lay not in parliamentary

elections—forays into this territory in 1892 and 1895 were disastrous—but in local

politics, especially in Glasgow. The most important success came in the local election

of 1896, when all the seats on the Council were contested, and at which ‘Labour’

under various labels won eleven seats and formed a group, including Ferguson who

had been elected in 1893, known as the ‘Stalwarts’.2 Both in this specific context and

amongst the Labour movement as a whole in Scotland there was too much crossover

with radical Liberalism for the party to forge a clear political identity and develop a

distinctive appeal to the electorate. Land reform, temperance, Irish home rule, even

1 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow , 6; see also Kellas, ‘The Mid-Lanark by-election’, 318-29 2 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow , 41-9 the eight-hour day—the key elements of the Labour message in the 1880s and

1890s—were all part of the Liberal agenda which dominated Scottish politics. It was not until the death of John Ferguson in 1906 and the rise to prominence of John

Wheatley, who deprecated Georgite ideas as a distraction and developed an appeal based on socialist ideas related to questions, like housing, which were neglected by the Liberals, that Labour began to emerge from the Gladstonian shadow.

Mention of John Wheatley in a labour context prompts the consideration of another political culture which had the potential to disrupt Liberal domination of Scotland:

Irish nationalism. In the event this too was successfully absorbed within Liberalism, especially after that party’s commitment to Irish home rule in 1886, and there were few clashes. Prior to the Edwardian prominence of John Wheatley the leader of Irish nationalism in the West of Scotland was John Ferguson. Ferguson, an Ulster protestant, had come to Scotland in the early 1860s and had had, as Wheatley would, a successful business career, as a printer and publisher in Ferguson’s case. 1 Ferguson became active in nationalist politics after welcoming the Irish home rule leader Isaac

Butt to Glasgow in 1871. This confirmed a trend, extending back to the Scottish appearances of Daniel O’Connell in the 1830s and 1840s, of Irish leaders assiduously cultivating the Irish community in the west of Scotland. Irish nationalist politics became increasingly organised in the 1880s and 1890s with the formation of the Irish

National League in 1882. Although there was significant interest among some Irish leaders—Ferguson and Michael Davitt, for example—in labour questions and the land issue, the primary focus was the achievement of Irish home rule. This became abundantly clear after the rise to the leadership of Irish nationalism of Charles Stewart

1 McFarland, John Ferguson , 1-73 deals with his early years. Parnell, an Irish protestant landowner. Parnell subordinated everything to the campaign to achieve home rule. The clearest example of his extraordinary focus came at the general election of 1885. In this election Parnell attempted, largely successfully, to discipline the Irish community to vote Conservative as it seemed that the best hope of home rule came from that quarter. This produced odd results. In some Glasgow seats, notably Partick and Blackfriars, this meant the Irish community voting against radicals like John Murdoch and James Shaw Maxwell who were very popular in Irish circles through their ideas on the land question. 1 This, tactic was very short-lived as

Gladstone’s espousal of Irish home rule became known in late 1885 and the Irish nationalists supported the Liberal administration in parliament in 1886. Nevertheless, although Irish politics in Scotland were generally supportive of the Liberal party this does seem to have been conditional on the support of their candidates for Irish home rule. For example, in 1900 the United Irish League (successor to the I.N.L.) encouraged Irish voters in Glasgow Blackfriars to vote for Andrew Bonar Law rather than a Liberal candidate thought to be apostate on home rule and Irish educational questions, so much so that he had the support of the strongly Unionist Glasgow

Herald .2 As politics increasingly divided around the division between Gladstonianism

and Unionism the Irish, along with much of the Scottish working class, were firmly

part of the dominant Liberal political culture. Liberalism was the vehicle for Irish

home rule, obviously the priority, and other radical reforms on land, temperance and

industrial issues. Another aspect of the activities of the Irish community in Scotland

was their development of newspapers. This was first evident in this period with the

short-lived Exile in 1884 and 1885 but a more lasting impression was made by the

Glasgow Observer , first published in May 1885. Although its audience was the Irish

1 Wood, ‘Irish immigrants’, 71-2; McCaffrey, ‘Political reactions’, 2 Hutchison, Political history , 262; Wood, ‘Irish immigrants’, 81. in the west of Scotland its content was largely Irish, although on issues like the land question there was a great crossover of activists and themes. The Observer came under the influence, and from 1894 the ownership of Charles Diamond who steadily absorbed the title into his ‘might news and features syndicate’ with a consequent diminution of its ‘Scottish identity’. 1 It is tempting to see this as evidence of the roots of the sectarian politics which were sometimes evident in the inter-war period, but this would be going too far. This can be seen by contrasting Liberal Scotland with sectarian Liverpool where the working class was firmly Conservative and the concentrations of Irish voters were such that the Scotland division of the city was the only British constituency to elect an Irish nationalist MP, T.P. O’Connor. 2 Nothing

like this took place in Scotland. It is worth emphasising the strength of this Liberal

culture because it exemplifies the massive task of John Wheatley and others to build

up the Labour movement among the working class, Irish and others, in Scotland in the

years before the Great War.

Unionist politics

The most serious challenge to Liberal domination of Scottish politics came from

Ireland. Disagreements over the question of Irish Home Rule would introduce a new

political alignment which had profound effects in areas of Liberal strength, such as

Scotland, and introduced a new idea—Unionism—into Scottish politics. Gladstone

had paid relatively little attention to Ireland in 1880, rather complacently assuming

that he had solved the ‘Irish Problem’. Three factors disrupted this complacency:

renewed agrarian crisis in Ireland, replicated in parts of Scotland; the consequent land

agitation, also replicated in Scotland; and the return of a large body of Irish MPs

1 Edwards, ‘Catholic press in Scotland’, 164-74, quote at 171 2 Gallagher, ‘Tale of two cities’, 106-29; Smith, ‘Class, skill and sectarianism’, 157-215 committed to Home Rule. The debate over Irish home rule raised the question of

Scottish home rule in a serious way for the first time. There is further, and more long- term, significance to this debate: when Gladstone came to draft legislation for a

Dublin parliament he established the basic blueprint for ‘devolution’ and subordinate parliaments within the Union which would be returned to in the twentieth century.

The result in 1886, however, was failure and seeming disaster for the Liberal party: one aristocratic MP predicted (quite accurately) that if the leadership pursued Irish home rule ‘the Liberal party may resign all hope of governing the country for the next quarter of a century … and will richly deserve such a fate.’ 1 Gladstone’s proposals were voted down by a combination of Tory opponents and dissident Liberals resulting in the loss of office by the government in June. The division on Irish home rule was carried over into the 1886 general election as opposition to Irish home rule was represented by a new grouping who styled themselves as Liberal Unionists. The results of the 1886 election, when the Liberals won only forty-three seats, compared to sixty-two in 1885 from a comparable share of the vote, seemed to provide evidence that simmering tensions within Liberalism had finally boiled over on the Irish question. Although the years from 1886 to the outbreak of the Great War does not show the same Liberal domination of Scottish politics as the period from 1868 to

1885, neither does it see the realisation of the most pessimistic predictions made in

1886. The division in the Liberal party was not straightforward: this was true at a UK level with the leading radical, Joseph Chamberlain, joining prominent Whigs, such as the duke of Devonshire, in the leadership of the Liberal Unionists; it was also the case in Scotland with J. Boyd Kinnear, the most radical MP in Scotland, dissenting from

Irish home rule, alongside Whigs and aristocrats like Argyll. These complications

1 N.L.S., A.R.D. Elliot Papers, MS 19487, fo 153, Elliot to A.C. Sellar, 18 Dec. 1885 were also evident at a local level—the MP for Banffshire was informed by his agent that that it was ‘most difficult to gauge the feeling of the county on the Irish question’. 1 Those who remained loyal to Gladstone were also a diverse group, ranging from Dr Clark, the radical Crofter MP for Caithness, to aristocrats like Rosebery and leading figures with business links, like Sir Charles Tennant, the chemical magnate and MP for Peebles and Selkirk. Nevertheless, the overall effect was to radicalise the

Liberal party and make its appeal a more sectional one. 2 It would be 1906 before the

Liberal party could build a nationwide parliamentary majority again, and even this victory owed something to divisions amongst the Unionists on economic and imperial policy.

The second principal result of the debate on Irish home rule was to transform

Conservative politics. For most of the century the Conservatives had been a marginal force in Scotland, but with the addition of a ‘Unionist’ dimension to their appeal after

1886 their social, economic and geographical base was apparently transformed. At the general election of 1886, where Conservatives and Liberal Unionists tended not to oppose each other, Scotland provided seventeen of the seventy-seven Liberal

Unionists elected in the U.K., eight for West of Scotland constituencies. Indeed, with the addition of six of the ten Scottish Conservative MPs from this region a distinct message seemed to be emerging from the West of Scotland. Unionism had a broad base but was especially strong among the business and commercial classes and the academic community, exemplified by the views of Sir William Thompson (later Lord

Kelvin).There was a certain level of base anti-Irish and anti-Catholic views at the foundation of unionism in Scotland—and even worries about the military threat to the

1 N.A.S., Feteresso MSS, GD105/635/18, Wm Allan to R.W. Duff, 25 May 1886 2 Burness, ‘Strange associations’, 46-50; Hutchison, Political history, 163 west of Scotland from an independent Ireland—but there were also wider commercial and constitutional concerns. 1 Nevertheless, the relative success of Liberal Unionism was heavily dependant on Conservative support and their willingness to stand aside in favour of Liberal Unionists, something which was not always easy to arrange. 2 Their

motives were not entirely patriotic: the Prime Minister admitted to the Secretary for

Scotland that support for Liberal Unionists ‘was driving home the wedge which is

rifting the Liberal Party into two.’ 3

It remained the case that the ‘Union’ which these ‘Unionists’ were defending was the

British-Irish Union of 1801 rather than the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. This can be seen in the apparently contradictory attitude of some Unionists to the issue of Scottish home rule. This idea appeared on the political agenda in the mid-1880s on the coat- tails of Irish home rule. A Scottish Home Rule Association was established in 1886 and its literature made the case for Scottish home rule in increasing detail. Many members of the SHRA objected to Ireland being treated in a preferential manner and they argued that it was this singling out of a violent and disloyal place that provided the threat to the U.K.. Furthermore, the proposed exclusion of Irish MPs from the

House of Commons in the 1886 home rule scheme threatened to revive the dangerous spectre of ‘taxation without representation’ and threaten the empire. The idea of

‘Home Rule All Round’, in which a Scottish parliament—and perhaps Welsh and

English regional legislatures—would be created, would, by contrast, strengthen the union. Scottish home rule was advocated as due recognition of Scottish national

‘feeling’ or identity and certainly not as an alternative to the union of 1707. A Scottish

1 McCaffrey, ‘Origins of Liberal Unionism’, 47-71; Burness, ‘ Strange associations’, 44-68 2 N.A.S., Lothian muniments, GD40/16/7/25-34, correspondence between Reginald MacLeod and Lord Lothian, 15, 21, 22 Jul. 1886 3 N.A.S., Lothian muniments, GD40/16/745, Salisbury to Lothian, 14 June 1886 parliament would help to deal with perceived Scottish grievances in education and contributions to the national exchequer but was never thought of as a vehicle for national independence. 1 If the views of the S.H.R.A. are seen in this way it is evident that they have more in common with the romantic ‘nationalists’ of the mid-nineteenth century, with whom there was overlap in personnel, than their more assertive successors of the twentieth. 2 Thus, it was possible for some Liberal Unionists, like

Charles Fraser Mackintosh, to appear as office bearers in the S.H.R.A. This was not a

general rule, however, and other Liberal Unionists were strongly opposed to any

tinkering with the current constitutional arrangements: Arthur Elliot condemned the

idea of a Scottish parliament as an ‘absurdity’ and argued that it would be destructive

of a union which conferred upon Scotland ‘infinitely more power than it could have

under a separate parliamentary system.’ 3 If it is mistaken to say that this debate had

‘created an intensely nationalistic climate of opinion’ 4 in Scotland, even in its first

manifestations the issues surrounding the constitution proved capable of cutting

across party politics in a highly disruptive manner—a trend which would continue in

the remainder of the period covered by this book.

This pattern prevailed until 1906 as the combined strength of Conservatism and

Liberal Unionism was much greater than the pre-1886 strength of Scottish

Conservatism. Even during this period, however, Scottish Liberal strength was still

greater than the average in the UK as a whole and the Conservative strength remained

below the UK figure, although there was a closer match in the 1890s. This decade saw

1Anon., Union of 1707 financially considered ; Anon., Scotland and Home Rule ; Mitchell, Home rule for Scotland ; Mitchell, Home rule all round ; Jacks, Federal home rule ; Mackenzie, Home rule for Scotland ; Napier, Scotland’s demand for home rule ; Romans, Home Rule for Scotland 2 Morton, ‘First home rule movement’, 113-22; Ferguson, Scotland, 317, 329 3 Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh, 167; Hanham, Scottish nationalism, 93; Finlay, Partnership for good, 9; N.L.S., A.R.D. Elliot Papers, MS 19487, fo. 273-4, Elliot to A.C. Sellar, 16 Oct. 1886 4 Cooke, ‘Gladstone’s election for the Leith district of burghs’, 179-80 more stable politics in Scotland than had been the case in the 1880s, many of the issues which had proved so problematic for the Liberal party faded from the scene: disestablishment, the land question, and the Irish question were much less potent than in the 1880s. Salisbury’s Conservative government which held power from 1886 to

1892 was truly conservative in its objectives. Many of the Liberal reforms of the

1880s were not overturned but quietly utilised for their potential to induce calm.

Despite the hostility of the Home Office and its leading minister, R.A. Cross, the administrative competence of the Scottish Office was extended. In the highlands, after continuing violence had been dealt with by a combination of firm authority and rent reductions, the land agitation subsided. The crofters, even if their principal grievance—shortage of land—remained, drifted from the public and political consciousness. Away from government, in the shifting world of party politics, the main task on the right was to build a coalition between the Conservatives and the disparate group of Liberal Unionists. The latter were keen to be involved but wished to retain a separate identity. The task was complicated by the limited nature of the points of contact between the two groups. Although they agreed on the Irish question, this was no longer so pressing in the 1890s. Gladstone had made a final, almost desperate, attempt to force Irish home rule through in 1893 but it was stymied by the

House of Lords, an obstacle which seemed likely to be enduring. His retirement in

1894, the ineffectual nature of Rosebery’s leadership, renewed squabbling in the

Liberal party and divisions in the Irish party pushed the question further from the centre of politics. This reduced the incentive for cementing relationships on the right.

In the absence of a real need to defend the union in the 1890s differences on other issues, such as temperance, as well as ceaseless bickering over the allocation of seats, led to enduring tension. Ironically, by the mid-1890s it was the Conservatives, rather than the Liberal Unionists who seemed the more progressive and modern political force. The Conservatives had improved their organisation and by the mid-1890s had adopted a range of new policies and candidates which went some way to obliterating their reputation as a reactionary and landed party.1 The job of making this transformation convincing was made much easier by the almost total failure of the

Liberal government of 1892-5 to realise its lavish promises. The Conservatives could point to substantial, if rather dull, achievements: the establishment of the Congested

Districts Board to further owner-occupation among the highland crofters; the reform of the universities to make them genuine institutions of higher education with more specialised staff and curricula; the establishment of County Councils. These were classic Conservative policies, designed to create order and spread the benefits of the ownership of property: if this was not exactly the kind of ‘constructive unionism’ which Balfour claimed to be promulgating in Ireland, it was at least ‘constructive’:

‘unionism’ was less relevant in Scotland in the 1890s than it had been in the 1880s. In

1892, with fifty Scottish Liberals elected, seven of eleven Liberal gains were from the

Liberal Unionists. The overall Liberal total of 272 was heavily dependant on the eighty-one members from Scotland and Wales and their parliamentary majority relied on the support of the eighty-one Irish nationalists. By contrast in successful elections for the right, like 1895 and 1900, the Conservatives made the bigger strides, showing a net gain of eight in 1895 and a further two in 1900. By the latter date the Liberal

Unionists had only recovered their 1886 strength, but whereas then they had outnumbered the Conservatives by seven now they were in a minority of two compared to the nineteen Conservatives. Liberal Unionism had been important in seeing off the immediate threat of Irish home rule and imperial disintegration in 1886

1 Hutchison, Political History, 192-212 but it was Conservatism which provided the muscle on the right of Scottish politics in the 1890s. Nevertheless, the 1900 election was significant in Scottish electoral history, being the first election since 1832 at which there was not a Liberal majority.

The roots of this result lie in a new political agenda which followed the debates over reform and Irish home rule which had dominated the 1880s and early 1890s. Chapter two: social developments, 1880-1914

For the century after 1750 Scottish economic and social history was characterised by rapid change: population increased, towns expanded, the countryside was transformed; and heavy industry—textiles, metals and mineral extraction—became the economic driving forces. 1 Although there was regional diversity in this revolution, it was a national process which affected the evicted tenants of Sutherland as much as the iron-workers of Lanarkshire. The population increased from an estimated 1.26 million in 1755 to 2.62 million in 1841and the majority of Scottish counties shared in the growth. Although the pace of growth and change from the 1880s to the outbreak of the First World War remained vigorous, it did not amount to a continuation of the revolution of the years from 1750 to the middle of the nineteenth century. Although profound changes took place in the structure of the economy after 1850 important thresholds of population expansion, urbanisation and industrialisation had been crossed by that date. The subsequent period was one of consolidation, deeply affected by the social and political challenges of coping with, even mitigating, the consequences of the revolution: crowded cities, polluted industrial landscapes, and a countryside with an agricultural system efficient in economic terms but whose human requirements—in both the highlands and the lowlands—were minimal. Many of the new themes in the political history of Scotland—the extension of the franchise, labour politics, land reform, demands for Irish home rule—were consequences of the massive social and economic changes which had coursed through the period before

1850.

1 See the essays in Devine and Mitchison, People and Society. Population growth

The processes of living and dying, marrying and procreating, migrating and emigrating have a reciprocal relationship with wider economic and social changes.

The most obvious characteristics of the Scottish population in this period were its growth and concentration in the central belt. The population grew from 2.89 million in 1841 to 4.76 million in 1911, but the rate of growth was less than it had been in the early nineteenth century. 1 By 1861 it was no longer a national process but a regional one: nearly one fifth of the Scottish population in 1801 lived in the seven most northerly counties, and a further quarter lived in the North East and the Borders. By

1911 these regions together accounted for just over one fifth of the much-larger

population, in the highlands this represented an absolute decline. The industrial areas

of central Scotland were the main ‘beneficiaries’ of this restructuring, holding around

a fifth of the population in 1801 (333,000 people) but 45.6 per cent (around 2.17

million) in 1911, a sixfold increase in absolute numbers over a period in which the

Scottish population had grown by a factor of only three. The industrial areas of the

western lowlands were becoming the dynamic centre of the nation in the mid- and

late-nineteenth century. The traditional focus of power and wealth had been in the

eastern lowlands, especially Edinburgh. This area had held over a third of the

population in the early nineteenth century and although it retained over 30 per cent of

Scots in 1911 and its population had almost tripled, in comparison to the

industrialised west it was demographically stagnant. This was indicative of a wider

change in the basic orientation of the Scottish economy, a process which had been

proceeding since the Union, from the east and a European perspective to the west, the

Atlantic and the Empire. These relative figures tell the story well enough but the

1 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 302 motive forces behind these changes have to be considered. Clearly migration was a central feature of the western expansion: northern and border counties which were losing population showed an excess of births over deaths from 1861 to 1911, but this was cancelled out by migration and emigration. The western lowlands were growing through the funnelling of migrants from rural Scotland and Ireland, they were also a powerful engine of natural growth: births exceeded deaths by 15 to 20 per cent in this

region in the late nineteenth century. 1

Demographic transition

Crudely paraphrased, the population expansion of the years from 1755 to around 1861

was characterised by high death rates (mortality) being compensated for by very high

birth rates (fertility). According to one historian ‘nothing more clearly demarcates late

Victorian from early Victorian Britain than attitudes to the procreation of children’ 2.

In a process—known as the ‘demographic transition’—evident throughout Western

Europe, growth was sustained in a period of falling fertility by a parallel decline in

mortality. 3 The death rate among the Scottish population fell from 22.5 (per thousand of the population) in 1861-70 to 15.3 in 1911-20; the birth rate fell from 35.0 to 24.0 over the same period. 4 Society was no longer marred by the horrific outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as typhus and cholera, which had swept through urban areas in the 1830s and 1840s, the latter reappearing with less virulence and morbidity in the

1860s; smallpox had been eradicated by vaccination, compulsory after 1863; a host of other conditions —measles, scarlet fever, diptheria, whooping cough—became markedly less dangerous by the early twentieth century. Improved medical

1 Anderson, ‘Population patterns since 1770’, 489; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 306 2 Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit , 45 3 see Teitelbaum, British Fertility Decline 4 Anderson and Morse, ‘Scotland’s demographic experience, part I’, 8 knowledge, treatment and infrastructure contributed to this process, but not decisively so: a concerted assault on the insanitary urban environment by burgh and city councils was the crucial force for improvement. The picture was not entirely positive, however. Late nineteenth century Scotland was a polluted and unhealthy place with persistently high death rates from bronchitis and pneumonia, clear evidence of the costs of industrialisation and products of forces which even the interventionist burgh authorities were reluctant or powerless to control. Tuberculosis remained a fearful presence in Scotland, both rural and urban, highland and lowland. 1 In death, as in life,

Scotland was diverse: the crude death rate in Orkney was 13.8 in 1861, compared to

28.7 in Renfrewshire, by 1915 the picture had become more homogenous with

Orkney’s death rate higher—at 17.0—than Renfrew’s at 15.7. 2

The decline in fertility, however, is much more difficult to explain: it is very closely related to patterns of marriage in society, since in Scotland the rate of illegitimacy was quite low, with the exception of distinct regional exceptions, such as in the North

East. Marriage patterns, in turn, were closely related to economic opportunities and, in rural society, land. Men and women required the confidence of economic or tenurial security to consider the formation and expansion of new family units. A detailed study of the Scottish data has revealed that the decline in marital fertility in Scotland was crucial and was augmented by substantial sections of the population never marrying and a surplus of females in the population, perhaps due to large numbers of young men emigrating. In a European context Scotland was almost at the lowest end of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century spectrum in respect of the marriage rate of its potentially fertile population. This generalisation is complicated by regional

1 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 387-420. 2 Flinn, Scottish Population History , 381. differences between the central lowlands—where rates of marriage and marital fertility were almost as high as in the faster growing English population—and parts of the west highlands where they were extremely low as landlords controlled access to land. In some crofting areas the situation was similar to the pattern which had prevailed in Ireland since the famine. 1 This pattern, and the variations within it, was closely related to individual adjustments in family attitudes made for economic reasons rather than through deep cultural changes. Lowland and urban areas had much higher percentages of married women than rural, highland or northern regions: less than 70 per cent of women around the age of 50 in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland were married according to the censuses of the late nineteenth century, compared to figures of around 80 per cent for the Western Lowlands, all towns and cities and

Scotland as a whole. This was due to an acute shortage of potential marriage partners due to the high levels of migration and emigration from these counties. The most heavily industrialised areas of Scotland had relatively low ages of first marriage for women (23.5 in West Lothian, compared to 28.7 in Sutherland in 1911 and a Scottish mean of 26.0), a more balanced ratio of men to women and a correspondingly higher level of fertility. These economically dynamic areas, with high incidence of employment in heavy industry, especially coal-mining and metal-working, could provide sufficient economic opportunity to absorb increased levels of population through natural increase as well as migration. 2 The industrial areas of Scotland

remained the growth points of the Scottish population even at the lower levels of

fertility and mortality that prevailed after 1861.

1 Anderson and Morse, ‘Scotland’s demographic experience, part I, 5-25 2 Anderson and Morse, ‘Scotland’s demographic experience, part II’, 319-43; Flinn, Scottish population history , 326-7 Demographic historians have been hesitant to ascribe reasons for this change which occurred as a result of decisions taken in the marital bed. Factors influencing these decisions included the numbers of married women in employment, which tended to be associated with low marital fertility, suggesting a relationship between female independence, networks where information about contraception could be shared, and a willingness to control fertility. Textile centres, such as Dundee, which had high levels of married female employment, tended to have lower marital fertility. This was also true of cities like Edinburgh with a high number of female domestic servants in the homes of middle-class professionals, themselves pioneers of lower fertility. By contrast, mining communities, with low levels of female employment, tended to have higher rates of marital fertility. 1 Information about contraception—more widely diffused in the late nineteenth century—may also have contributed, but expense, controversy and the reluctance of the medical profession to provide information may have been inhibitions. 2 For the families of middle class professionals, where the

decline in fertility was first evident, religious and ideological attitudes which

repressed sexual expression within marriage encouraged abstinence—an effective

method of birth control. 3 Complex questions of status and the perceived necessity for

the middle class to spend heavily on education of children, especially boys, may also

have been a motivation for reduced fertility, or delayed marriage, although this

pressure may have been less evident in Scotland with a more open and cheaper higher

education system. 4

1 Teitelbaum, British Fertility Decline, 160-1, 214-15; Morse, ‘The decline of fertility in Scotland’, 96- 7, 120 2 Seccombe, ‘Starting to stop’, 165 3 Kemmer, ‘Marital fertility of Edinburgh professionals’, 82-117 4 Walker, ‘Occupational expansion, fertility decline and recruitment to the professions in Scotland’, 243-313 Emigration

Although much of the Scottish demographic experience was distinctive in a British context, the process of emigration was especially so. The movement of people, perhaps amounting to 50 million, from Europe to the New World between 1815 and

1939 was one of the defining characteristics of the period. Scottish participation in this exodus extended to around 2 million people, a very considerable contribution for a small nation. This does not include the unrecorded movement of people to England, estimated at around 600,000. At points in the late nineteenth century there were nearly

300,000 Scots residing in England, especially the north and London. 1 The extent of

return-emigration perhaps amounted to between a quarter and a third of all overseas

emigrants—it is difficult to enumerate those who returned from England. The Scottish

experience was between the extremes of Southern Italy, to which many emigrants

returned, and Ireland, to which very few did. If we include those who went to England

and make some allowance for returnees, Scottish emigration in the period from 1853

to 1939 amounted to around half of the natural increase of the population, with

particular peaks of emigration in the 1880s, 1900s and especially the 1920s. 2 The

traumatic emigrations of the 1840s and 1850s from the famine-afflicted highlands and

the flight from the depressed economy of the 1920s are well known, but from 1860 to

1914 net emigration from Scotland amounted to some 900,000 people, probably more

than had left before 1860. 3 This pattern gives some clues as to the place of emigration in Scottish society and some of the forces which stimulated it. Scotland was at the heart of a transatlantic industrial economy where there were substantial flows of labour and which was sensitive to differentials in economic prosperity. Scottish emigrants were seeking new opportunities, they were not fleeing desperate economic

1 Cage, ‘Scots in England’, 34; Flinn, Scottish Population History , 442 2 Flinn, Scottish population history , 449 3 Murdoch, British emigration, 111-12; Baines, Migration in a mature economy, 60-1 conditions, although the difficult years of the 1880s and 1900s saw substantial emigration, and there was an element of conscious choice involved in the process.

The most obvious contrast would be with Ireland where emigration was embedded in the rural social structure and young people regarded emigration as an inevitable prospect. 1

The distinctiveness of Scottish emigration, however, lies not only in its scale but also in the nature of the society which produced it: compared to other European societies with high levels of emigration—Ireland, Scandinavia and parts of southern Europe—

Scotland was an urban industrial society. Further, the majority of Scottish emigrants came not from the demographic stagnation of the highlands or the borders, but the dynamic areas of central Scotland which were also capable of attracting internal migrants. There may, however, be a tendency to exaggerate the number of emigrants from urban areas as it is possible that people migrated to towns prior to emigration.

Nevertheless, neither the proportion of Scotland’s population in rural or highland areas, nor even the losses from those areas, was sufficient to dominate the outflow after 1880. 2 That Scotland was also able to attract immigrants, mostly from Ireland, is

also part of this ‘paradox’, but given the scale of Irish emigration, the centrality of the

expectation of emigration in Irish society, the contiguity of Scotland, the established

links with Ireland and levels of information about Scotland in Irish society, it may be

that movement of people from Ireland was not conditional on anything in particular

that Scotland had to offer. In any case, migration from Ireland was much reduced in

1 Guinnane, ‘Coming of age in rural Ireland’, 443-72 2 Baines, Migration in a mature economy, 82-4; Erickson, ‘Who were the English and Scots emigrants, 101-2; Flinn, Scottish Population History , 454. the period after 1861 and the flow of people from Scotland accelerated after that date. 1

Although Canada remained a constant presence in the history of Scottish emigration, after 1850 the United States of America became the dominant destination, including many who made initial landfall in Canada. In some periods, such as the late 1880s and early 1890s, nearly three-quarters of all emigrants from Scotland went to the United

States. Canada reasserted itself in the early twentieth century, taking over half of all emigrants from Scotland in the years before the Great War (although some of these people will subsequently have gone to the United States). Australia (and New

Zealand) were popular destinations in the 1850s and 1860s (taking 40-50 per cent of emigrants), with the prospect of gold and the availability of financial assistance for the long and expensive voyage. 2 It was a source of regret, even fear, that so many

Scots were deserting the Empire and contributing to the economy of its most important competitor. This was part of a wider feeling of imperial vulnerability in the late nineteenth century and influenced the government to develop incentives for imperial emigration.

By the late nineteenth century emigration had been a profitable business for over a century. The Atlantic trade originated in the desire of those importing wood from

America to fill their boats with cargo for the return journey and humans were as profitable and plentiful as any of the alternatives. One reason why emigration increased so dramatically in the later nineteenth century was the vastly expanded carrying capacity of the shipping lines and the development of railways in Europe and

1 Devine, ‘Paradox of Scottish emigration’, 1-15 2 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 451 America. 1 Due to its western location and the importance of its marine commerce,

Glasgow was a centre of activity for important shipping lines such as the Allan,

Anchor and Donaldson Lines, each with up to forty vessels and capable of moving

15,000 to 20,000 emigrants per annum. Scottish influence was wider than this though:

Scottish capital and entrepreneurship contributed to companies such as Cunard and

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. 2 Sailing vessels gave way in the 1860s to steam ships which could carry more emigrants, make quicker voyages

(ten days to cross the Atlantic compared to six to eight weeks) and more trips per annum . The emigration voyage become more comfortable and less dangerous but it was scarcely luxurious. 3 Increased volume and keen competition helped to drive down the cost of passages; the price of a transatlantic voyage fell from over £8 in the 1860s to around £5 in the 1890s and during the mass movement of the 1880s tickets could be bought for £4 4s; unassisted voyages to Australia or New Zealand cost from £12 to

£16. 4

It is too simple to argue that emigration was influenced by ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, but ‘information’ was central to the process. 5 Sources were manifold: publicity from shipping lines and emigration agents employed by colonial governments; private letters from former neighbours, friends, relatives and co-religionists; published propaganda, in Gaelic and English; newspaper advertisements and editorials. The influence of these sources of information was not all in one direction, but few Scots could have been ignorant of the opportunities. Scotland, as a relatively low-wage economy with the facilities for emigration, a long-standing tradition of migration and

1 Baines, Emigration from Europe, 44-5 2 Campbell, ‘Scotland’ 20-1; Jackson and Munn, ‘Trade, commerce and finance’, 65, 72-7 3 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 197, 211 4 Baines, Migration in a mature economy , 77-80, 86 5 Baines, ‘European emigration, 1815-1930’, 526-33 extensive links with the dominions was fertile ground for the cultivation of emigrants, as the statistics indicate. Although Scottish emigration seems to have contained higher proportions of skilled workers than that from England or southern and eastern Europe, the largest proportion of emigrants to the USA were general labourers. The largest groups of skilled workers were from trades which were easily transferable, or prone to cyclical fluctuations, such as mining and building.1

The history of Scottish emigration could be used as evidence for the outward looking and dynamic nature of the Scottish population, willing to sacrifice familiarity and security for a new and—despite the information and links—uncertain environment.

On the other hand, emigration ‘indicates an obvious lack of opportunity at home’ and implies that the industrial economy of lowland Scotland was characterised by a surplus of labour. 2 These perspectives are not mutually exclusive and imply that there

was a substantial element, especially in urban Scotland, for whom emigration was the

only outlet for their ambition. The high rate of return, which can even be characterised

as seasonal emigration, among emigrants such as building workers is further evidence

that there was a coherent transatlantic labour market in which Scots were well placed

to participate and that emigration did not always represent an unambiguous or

irreversible desertion of Scotland.

Urbanisation

In his famous study of cities published in 1915 Patrick Geddes remarked: ‘Though

from historic tradition and from present holiday associations, most people, even in

Scotland, still think of the Scots as in the main a nation of hardy rustics, no population

1 Erickson, ‘Who were the English and Scots emigrants’, 105-11 2 Lee, ‘Scotland 1860-1939’, 434-5 in the world is now so predominantly urban, and, as sanitary reformers know, none so ill-housed at that.’ 1 By 1911 almost 50 per cent of Scots lived in urban areas with

populations of more than 20,000: Scotland was one of the most urbanised societies in

Europe. 2 Industrial cities were the engine-room of demographic change in the nineteenth century, but they were only one example of the astonishing diversity of

Scottish urbanisation. There were seventy-five burghs with populations greater than

5000 in 1901 and a number of other smaller urban areas whose regional importance in otherwise rural areas outweighed their small populations. 3 Despite the emphasis on diversity, however, there was a Scottish—both in the sense of nation-wide and distinctive— urban experience. Scotland had a tradition of urban government which promoted a sense of local independence augmented, literally, by parochialism when the parish structure of the established church was an important agency in social welfare prior to the mid-nineteenth century. 4 The legal regime helped to shape the

built environment of Scottish towns and cities and produce a townscape of tenements

rather than terraces. 5 This was a characteristic of working class housing in the major cities but was also evident in the smaller towns and villages. It also stretched across the social spectrum, with new middle-class suburbs—Marchmont or Comely Bank in

Edinburgh—being laid out in massive blocks of tenements. 6 Feudal tenure—whereby

the seller of land had no right of reversion, as in the English leasehold system, but

retained an interest through a perpetual feu duty paid by the purchaser—was also

critical. Despite later idealisation of the ‘democratic’ tenement, the combination of

highly priced land and the demands of feudal duties meant that Scottish builders in

1 Geddes, Cities in evolution, 39 2 Weber, Growth of cities, 58-64, 144-5, 450 3 Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 73-83 4 Best, ‘Scottish Victorian city’, 329-58; Best, ‘Another part of the island’, 389-411 5 Daunton, ‘Urban Britain’, 58-60 6 Gordon, ‘Status areas’, 172; Rodger, Transformation of Edinburgh, 305 search of profit maximised the number of households in each building. 1 Although, the character of Scottish towns and cities cannot be explained deterministically by the legal framework— demography played a part—the ‘impersonal forces of markets in land and capital’ predominated. 2 The rate of growth in Scottish industrial cities, even

the more restrained growth of the late nineteenth century, placed pressure on the

economy to provide housing for its citizens. As the middle classes moved west to

their new suburbs with wider streets, cleaner air, new churches, parks, cultural

institutions and sophisticated transport infrastructure, they left behind housing which

could readily be ‘made down’. 3

Scottish houses were small with poor levels of sanitation, ventilation and lighting.

This was not due to the fecklessness of the working class, as some contemporaries

implied, but to a complex set of pressures on the budgets of working class families,

resulting in the inability of the rental market to sustain larger numbers of better

houses. In the early twentieth century the typical rent for a two-roomed house was

between three and five shillings, a premium of about 10-20 per cent on English rents

for comparable properties, partly arising from the ‘inflationary’ influences of the

feudal system of tenure. 4 The Scottish economy was characterised by relatively low

wages and there was an important element in the urban economy which was cyclical

(not least the building trade itself) and which made heavy use of casual labour who

could not afford better housing. The relatively high price of provisions further

pressurised the incomes of those at the margins and eroded the resources available for

expenditure on housing. Most leases were entered into for a year, and a commitment

1 Rodger, ‘Speculative builders’, 226-46 2 Daunton, ‘Public place and private space’, 214; see also Rodger, ‘The invisible hand’, 190-211 3 Simpson, ‘West end of Glasgow’, 44-85; Simpson, ‘Urban transport’, 146-60; Hume, ‘Transport and towns’, 202-10; Maver, ‘Glasgow’s public parks’, 323-47 4 Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 84 had to be made four months before the beginning of the term, further stretching working class budgets as the income of a working class family fluctuated markedly as—in most cases—the father gained or lost work over this sixteen month period.

This was a Scottish peculiarity, English working-class tenants, participants in a more stable economy, could escape from their lease at a month’s notice. 1 The vast majority

of working class townspeople rented their houses from private owners. The landlord

and his factors—who collected the rent and organised evictions in cases of non-

payment—were objects of fear and dread for urban tenants as much as for their rural

counterparts. This was one reason why the debates on the politics of property

traversed the boundary between the countryside and the town.

Overcrowding was a particular and enduring problem in Scotland. The statistics are

horrific: in 1861 26.2 per cent of all Scottish dwellings were of one room and a

further 38.6 per cent had only two rooms. Although the proportion of single room

dwellings had declined to 9 per cent of the housing stock by the eve of the Great War

the number of two room houses had risen slightly to 39.2 per cent. In 1901 the

mortality rate among the 450,000 Glaswegians who lived in one and two room houses

was three times higher than those who had the luxury of four rooms. Over ninety per

cent of those living in one room in Edinburgh and Glasgow had to share water closets.

This was not an experience which was shared across the United Kingdom: in 1911

only 7.1 per cent of the English population lived in houses of one or two rooms, in

Scotland the figure was 47.7 per cent. 2

1 Rodger, ‘Crisis and confrontation’, 31-5 2 Rodger, Victorian building industry, 152-3, 165-9 Pessimism, then, seems inescapable in this aspect of Scottish history; as one historian has argued,

The building of the Scottish industrial city had been far from successful. Civil

and social engineering had jointly failed, generating as a by-product

conditions more extreme than in the remainder of the United Kingdom. 1

One element of social engineering, and also a response to mounting squalor, were slum clearance schemes. Beginning in the late 1860s in both Edinburgh and Glasgow and evident in other areas as well, town councils sought to use their powers, as well as the resources of taxpayers, to demolish the worst urban ‘slums’, leading to a healthful

‘opening out’, and their replacement by new streets and better quality housing. The overly simplistic ambition was to excise slums, like ‘plague spots’, from the urban landscape. 2 There was a problem though: what happened to the people whose houses

had been demolished? In conception such schemes included provision for the cleared

population, but in implementation the economics were insurmountable. Although

town councils directed the schemes, they were carried through by private enterprise.

Put bluntly, there was no profit in building houses which could be afforded by the

population cleared from the slums. Although there may have been a modest filtering

up process, there was also a relocation of the congestion as tenements were ‘made-

down’ to accommodate the new population. In Edinburgh’s first major slum clearance

scheme —which ran from the mid-1860s to the late 1880s—around 2700 houses were

demolished, 340 new ones were built and the most enduring symbol of the scheme

was the construction of Chambers Street, an eighty-foot wide thoroughfare replete

1 Rodger, ‘Victorian building industry’, 153 2 Daunton, ‘Urban Britain’, 54 with public buildings. It is perhaps inappropriate to judge the work of the Edinburgh

Improvement Trust in these terms as its primary objective had not been the amelioration of working class conditions through housing improvements, as critics like James Begg had lamented, but the improvement of the environment of the city of

Edinburgh and the protection of its society against ‘disease and vice’. 1 A similar

pattern was evident in Aberdeen with the failure of the private sector to provide cheap

houses. For this it was publicly criticised by the Medical Officer of Health, Matthew

Hay, inducing the Council to become a landlord for the first time in the 1890s. 2 City improvement schemes were not immune from the vagaries of the economic cycle, as was evident in Glasgow during the depression induced by the failure of the City of

Glasgow Bank in 1878. Difficulties in disposing of land during this period, as well as criticism that the objective was ‘social and not merely stone-and-lime improvement’, induced the Trust to construct nearly 1200 houses, some with rents as low as £4, by the turn of the century. In contrast to Edinburgh, the Glasgow Improvement Trust oversaw the construction of houses for over 18,000 people, a third of the population that had been affected by the demolitions, although it is far from clear that those cleared from the inner city found accommodation in these new houses. 3 Although

Glasgow may have been more active in the provision of houses, its improvement scheme had the result of obliterating the medieval old town, another contrast with

Edinburgh. 4 Perhaps the most significant overall result of these grandiose schemes

was the cautious appearance of the municipalities as landlord of rented properties,

around 1 per cent of Scottish families were so accommodated on the eve of the Great

1 Smith ‘Planning as environmental improvement’, 123; see also Smith ‘Rehousing/relocation’, 109; Begg, Happy Homes, 19-22 2 Williams, ‘Housing’, 303-8; Withrington, ‘Aberdeen’, 10. 3 Fraser & Maver, ‘Tackling the problems’ 421; Allan, ‘Genesis of British urban redevelopment’, 598- 613 4 Edwards, ‘Glasgow improvements’, 101-3 War, a figure which would become much greater after the Great War. 1 This development, however, was an accidental by-product and it had little impact on housing conditions. The principal reason for this was the expense of house-building and the impact it would have on the rate of local taxation. To spend a large sum of money on housing the working class risked alienating middle-class ratepayers who could, and did, take revenge at the ballot box. This fate had befallen Provost John

Blackie in 1866 and recurred in 1902 when the victim was Provost Samuel Chisholm.

He had been elected with the support of the ‘Stalwart’ group of Labour councillors, but the Glasgow Herald identified excessive municipal expenditure as the reason for his defeat. 2

Slum clearance schemes was not the only response to the problems of urbanisation.

The increasing sophistication and diversity of civic government and municipal trading was another. In Glasgow the famous example of trying to regulate overcrowding by the ‘ticketing’ of houses and subsequent raids to enforce the regulations was one approach. Lamentation about the moral, physical and environmental costs of overcrowding, coupled with a fatalistic appeal to ‘practical Christianity’ was another.

The Medical Officer of Health for the city of Glasgow concluded a lecture of 1888 in which he had laid out the statistics of the city’s exceptional density:

These one and two-roomed houses are filled with restless, uncomfortable

souls, wakening up to the contrast between their misery and the luxury of their

neighbours, and ready to grasp at any theory or project however wild, which

promises material relief—Nihilism, Communism, Socialism, Mr George,

1 Rodger, ‘Victorian building industry’, 183 2 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow , 51-3, 66; Maver, Glasgow , 159-61, 172-4 Bradlaugh, even Cunninghame Grahame—any sort of “Morrison’s Pill” will

be eagerly swallowed. That is the future before us if the Church does not carry

soothing and sanity to the physical discomforts of the people. 1

Even for someone aware of the realities of urban Scotland the slum-dweller was an object of fear and dread as much as a target for social reform. The Glasgow

Workmen’s Dwellings Company sought to create model tenements and populate them with carefully chosen model tenants—respectable, educated, solvent—supervised by caretakers to prevent backsliding. 2 Under the inspiration of the leading Free Kirk minister, Rev. James Begg, the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company began construction of houses in 1861. Their aim was twofold: to provide dwellings with more space and higher amenity than the traditional tenement; and to provide cheap mortgages for working men. The first objective was sought through the ‘colonies’ flats which the ECBC built, these were two-floored buildings with a flat on each level, each with a separate entrance, multiple rooms and garden space. Over the next fifty years the ECBC built over 2000 houses, 5 per cent of all new houses in the city, and created a unique group of working class owner-occupiers. Begg’s ambition was to create spaces for wholesome family life, providing a ‘true antidote to the public house’. Whilst he was successful to a degree, the ECBC was not immune from the peaks and troughs of activity in the building industry and pockets of overcrowding did arise in its developments. The houses built were beyond the pockets of most workingmen and the mortgage system, with its long-term commitment, was not attractive to those in irregular employment. For these reasons this remarkable

1 Russell, Life in one room, 29 2 Butt, ‘Working-class housing’, 79 experiment was not widely emulated and no great dent was put in the hold of the private landlord over the Scottish working class. 1

If the work of Russell and Begg was at one end of a spectrum of responses to Scottish urbanisation, the extraordinary ideas of Patrick Geddes were at the opposite extreme, although he shared with them a deep concern with the deleterious effects of urban congestion. Geddesian notions are notoriously difficult to distil, but two essential themes emerge from his work. He was not interested in tearing down the historic fabric of the Scottish town, but in making improvements which were rooted in the history of a town’s development. Further, he saw the urban area not as an isolated scar on the landscape, but as a social organism embedded in its regional context. Much of his early thinking was drawn from his observation of the regression, as he saw it, of

Edinburgh’s old town. In the 1880s and 1890s, stimulated by the tercentenary of the

University in 1884 and his idealisation of David Hume, he concentrated on finding ways in which the environment of the old town could be improved, population attracted to it and to restore its position as a centre for intellectual endeavour. 2 The

significance of Geddes’s ideas lies not in their immediate impact on the Scottish

urban landscape. Geddes was not feted in his own land. He was, it is true, appointed

to the Chair of Botany at the new University College at Dundee in 1889, but this came

through personal patronage and followed failure, like Hume, to gain a position at

Edinburgh. His contempt for the increasing boundaries between academic disciplines

and his incapacity to trim his views for political convenience did him no favours. 3 He

received only one town planning commission in Scotland and that, from the Carnegie

Dunfermline Trust, was not acted upon. It did bequeath a classic exposition of his

1 Begg, Happy Homes, 7-64; Rodger, Transformation of Edinburgh, 353-414 2 Meller, Patrick Geddes, 68-84, 102-113; Geddes, ‘Edinburgh and its region’, 302-12 3 MacDonald, ‘The patron, the professor and the painter, 135-50; Meller, Patrick Geddes , 6 ideas and a document of great beauty. Geddes had to travel to India and Palestine to implement his ideas, his Indian work being partly facilitated by the Scottish governor of Madras, Lord Pentland. 1 Nevertheless, Geddes is important in Scottish history for two reasons. His influential book, Cities in evolution attempts to discover universally applicable alternatives to Scottish urbanisation and tenement living. 2 Further, his

thinking was influential for the planners engaged with reconstruction during and after

the Second World War.

Responses

Fertility decline, emigration and urbanisation were linked in the fear and insecurity

which they engendered in contemporary society. They seemed to combine to sap

national vitality: the middle and upper classes were not replenishing their stock and

the lower classes were breeding indiscriminately. 3 Contemporaries also believed that

the best of the nation was emigrating and, worse still, augmenting the economy of the

United States. The overcrowded housing and polluted environment of urban and

industrial Scotland were producing a population lacking the strength and vigour

necessary for national prosperity and imperial defence. The consequences of this

insecurity were manifold and highly contested. Positive reactions included advocacy

of social reform, evident in agencies such as the presbyterian churches, secular

charities and pressure groups, which emphasised environmental factors rather than

individual sins. This was not the only response, however; others argued that these

problems were neither social issues nor individual vices, but immutable, pathological

characteristics and evidence of racial distinctions within society. Certain ‘races’—the

Irish, for example— were perceived as inferior, although this was often overlaid with

1 Geddes, City development, esp 215-16; Meller, Patrick Geddes, 161-9, 201-84 2 Geddes, Cities in evolution, 38-41; 104-5, 132-41, 151, 158, 203, 206-7, 212-13, 225-6 3 Searle, Eugenics and Politics , 26-7 political and religious prejudice. In this framework the Scots, or at least lowlanders, saw themselves as part of the Anglo-Saxon group alongside the English. 1 A strand of eugenicist thought was also evident, which ascribed inherited and inherent strengths and weaknesses to social groups, extremists arguing for selective breeding and sterilisation. This was evident in the debate on social reform in the early twentieth century as a perception arose that the physical strength of the urban working class was declining. These problems were also becoming more visible and better documented: late Victorian Britain was heavily populated by social investigators, driven to record and analyse social problems. Governments established Royal Commissions which gathered vast amounts of information on the housing of the working class or the condition of the crofters of the west highlands, the proceedings of which were open to the public and reported in the newspapers. That the same governments ignored the recommendations of these bodies does not negate the way in which they publicised the details of social problems.

The response of the presbyterian churches to social problems changed markedly over the second half of the nineteenth century. During the 1830s and 1840s under the influence of Thomas Chalmers, the emphasis had been on a reversion to the

Reformation principle of the ‘Godly Commonwealth’ as a counterpoint to state action. 2 Secular reformers, such as the Edinburgh surgeon William Pulteney Alison, disparaged this approach and argued that the task was so big that the state was the only agency capable of dealing with it. These ideas were sucked into the debate about church-state relations which led to the Disruption of 1843. In the generation following the disruption there was a period of introspection in Scottish presbyterianism, but also

1 Kidd, ‘Race, empire and the limits of nineteenth-century Scottish nationhood’, 873-92 2 Brown, ‘Reform, Reconstruction, Reaction’, 489-517 and Cheyne, Transforming of the Kirk, 18-28, 110-53 review the shifts in emphasis. shifting emphases in the vigour of the denominations: the initial energy of the Free

Church, generated by the Disruption and the mission of establishing the new church and its education system, was not sustained and, indeed, led to a introverted view. 1

There was also a more general problem within Scottish presbyterianism which

restrained innovative thinking on social question: tremendous energy had been spent,

some would say dissipated, on theological liberalisation, sectarian competition and

discussion of disestablishment. With the conclusion of the theological debates in the

1890s, especially in the Free Church—where the opponents of liberalisation left to

form the Free Presbyterian Church in 1893—a more settled period was in prospect.

Further, with the demise of the Liberal government in 1886 disestablishment slipped

down the political agenda. This prompted a growing awareness in the late 1880s and

the 1890s that the presbyterian churches could face eclipse if they did not engage with

social problems of society. One Aberdeen minister observed in 1892: ‘It is practical

religion, not theological disquisitions, that can fill the churches or keep them full.’

Another went as far as to say that the purpose of Christianity was ‘not merely to save

individuals, but to regenerate society.’ 2 Leading figures in the Kirk developed a

‘practical christianity’ in the 1890s. In Glasgow, Donald Macleod and John Marshall

Lang campaigned vigorously on the housing question, recognising that poor housing conditions were an obstacle to evangelical activity, as well as a moral outrage. Among the solutions proposed was action by the state complemented and supplemented by the Church. 3 Evangelicalism was no longer secure in an age which the churches perceived to be secular and sceptical. They faced strong rivals for the attention of the unchurched working classes in the shape of the labour movement and mass leisure,

1 Cheyne , Transforming of the Kirk, 138-40 2 Withrington, ‘The churches in Scotland’, 162; Brown ‘Reform, reconstruction, reaction’, 500 3 Lang, The Church and its social mission, 162; Cheyne, The transforming of the Kirk, 142-3; Withrington, ‘Non-church going’, 200; Withrington, ‘From Godly commonwealth to Christian state’, 103-24 both of which exhibited ‘religious’ characteristics. 1 Throughout Scottish public life

there was widespread apprehension about the effects of such developments: one pro-

Church of Scotland newspaper in the course of taking the Free Church to task for

wasting time campaigning on the disestablishment question noted: ‘Not only does

irreligion prevail among the lower classes, but there is a formidable faction

developing …whose aim is the destruction of all religion.’ 2

There are ironies here, however: theological reform especially in the Free Church, contributed to this scepticism; further, in some of their attempts to retain a grip on the working classes the new alternatives to evangelical activity attempted to borrow from the attractions of mass leisure without a great deal of success. The biggest irony, however, was that the churches were not in so weak a position in urban areas, nor among the working classes, as they thought. The skilled working class, who became so important to the development of the Scottish economy in the late nineteenth century, showed no signs of being lapsed in their religion. Urbanisation and secularisation were not parallel processes, many urban congregations were largely working class and working-class enthusiasm for religion remained evident. 3 Why did

the perception of a crisis, which was central to the drive towards ‘practical

christianity’, arise? The lingering perception that the churches were losing contact

with the urban working class was partly created by mis-interpretation of the religious

census of 1851. That the churches invested much effort in statistical research was,

oddly, one factor; rather than devoting attention to composition of their

congregations, the statistical battle was partisan and sectarian competition—who, and

how many, were attending each denomination? Perceptions were altered, also, in the

1 Brown, Religion and society , 124-32 2 Edinburgh Courant , 24 May 1882 3 Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 92; Brown, ‘Did urbanization secularize Britain?’, 1-14 late nineteenth century by the religious manifestation of a much wider social trend: the separation of the classes. Middle-class professionals deserted the inner cities and moved to the new suburbs which began to encircle Scottish cities in the late-Victorian period. The increasingly self-contained nature of life in these suburbs included church activities, and, although considerable attention was given to evangelicalism aimed at the working class, this became much more complicated when so few experiences were shared and the labour movement was offering new materialist messages. 1

A further change in the churches’ social role in this period is the emasculation of their disciplinary activity. A traditional function of Kirk Sessions—the local court associated with each congregation, composed of the minister and his elders—was to maintain discipline in the local community. This element of

Presbyterianism had its roots in the Reformation and in the drive to create and maintain the ‘Godly Commonwealth’. By the late nineteenth century, with the increasing police and judicial infrastructure of the civilian state, the Kirk Session was largely concerned with matters of sexual morality, intemperance and observation of the Sabbath. It became clear in the 1890s that Kirk discipline had no impact on the wider community and was confined to the membership of the

Church. It was also clear that there was a widespread feeling that the former practice of requiring offenders to undergo public penance before the congregation was no longer appropriate. In 1902 procedures were reformed by the General Assembly and discipline was dispensed in private and took the form of ‘counselling’ rather than overt punishment. 2 This important change can be taken as symbolic of a number of the themes we have been exploring above. It

1 Gray, ‘Religion, culture and social class’, 134-58; Brown, ‘Religion, class and church growth’, 326-9 2 Brown, ‘No more “standing the session”’, 447-60 was, firstly, redolent of the loss of status of the Church of Scotland in the wider community, it no longer had the reach to influence those who did not volunteer to participate in its activities. Further, it was more evidence of a reconciliation of the Kirk to the weakness of its attempts to deal with social problems at the level of the individual. More positively, it might be adduced as further evidence that the Church of Scotland was capable of reforming its practices to respond to social pressures, and that this was an important element of its late nineteenth century revival. Finally, given that the vast majority of those subjected to Kirk discipline in the late nineteenth century were young women who had borne, or were about to bear, illegitimate children, the reforms were evidence of a recognition that this could be regarded as victimisation on a gender basis.

Similar challenges faced Scotland’s 340,000 Catholics and their 350 priests. There was a sizeable infrastructure of Churches, schools and missions. The hierarchy of the

Church had been restored in Scotland in 1878, with comparatively little fuss compared to the excitement which had been generated in 1851 when the English hierarchy was restored. The anti-Catholicism which had characterised elements of presbyterianism, led by such as James Begg, was on the wane by the 1870s. Debates over disestablishment of the Church of Scotland, union between the UPC and the Free

Church and debates over theological liberalisation absorbed energies which might have been directed towards anti-Catholicism. The identity of the church in Scotland was complex. The clergy, especially senior figures, were drawn from traditional areas of Scottish Catholicism in the North East and the West Highlands with a sprinkling of

European priests. The lay population was predominantly of Irish origin, often poor and unskilled and their almost constant mobility created enormous difficulties for the organisation of the Church. Nevertheless, one historian has noted that in the 1890s the

‘organised life’ of the Church was ‘humming like a well-oiled machine’. 1 The Roman

Catholic Church was more confident than the presbyterian churches about the

advance of secularisation although deeply worried about the political challenge of

socialism The Catholic hierarchy may have been more relaxed about state

intervention and social welfare reforms. Just as the restoration of the hierarchy had

passed off without much critical comment so did the celebrations, including a

pilgrimage to Iona (on the estate of the presbyterian duke of Argyll), of the

anniversary of Columba’s death, events which firmly included him in a Catholic

tradition. 2 Catholic political activists, including many clergymen, were to the fore in

elections for Parochial Boards and School Boards and the laity were in the

mainstream of the political culture of Liberal Scotland. There was little sign of the

public and almost institutional sectarianism which would break out in the inter-war

period.

To some extent the Churches were in competition for the attention of the mass of the

population with Socialism. Throughout Europe there was great tension between

churches and the developing socialist movement which was tinged with anti-

clericalism. This was less evident in Scotland, but there was suspicion that socialism

narrowed ‘the vision of the life to a jealous observation of, and fruitless sighing after,

unattainable conditions’, to say nothing of its criticisms of the Church. 3 Robert Flint,

the Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh produced a huge volume in

1894 attacking the theoretical basis of socialism but his criticisms had little relevance

1 McCaffrey, ‘The Roman Catholic Church in the 1890s’, 430 2 McCaffrey, ‘The Roman Catholic Church in the 1880s’, 435-6 3 Lang, The Church and its social mission, 268, 275 to the way in which the movement was developing in Scotland at the time. 1 This theme was most evident during the decade before the outbreak of the Great War, a period which saw two serious economic depressions, in 1904-5 and again in 1908.

These difficult circumstances placed many in the Christian progressive wing of the presbyterian churches in a difficult position—whether to support the nascent labour movement or not. Nevertheless, the churches in this period responded to the economic crises and social reform debates of that period with creativity and vigour. Through assiduous activity and voluminous publication leading churchmen such as Lang,

David Watson of St Clements, Glasgow and William Muir of the United Free Church, attempted to put their stamp on debates about unemployment, child welfare and old age pensions. 2

Education

Growing awareness that the ‘parochial’ system, whereby single institutions attempted to provide all levels of education, was coming under increasing strain in both urban and rural areas, led to increased scrutiny of Scottish schools. The system had its roots in the late seventeenth century and two hundred years later it was more important as an ideological construct than a rational system of education. Different forms of idealisation of the Scottish education system were evident: some took the view, following Thomas Chalmers, that the relationship between Church and School in the local community was central to the celebrated ‘godly commonwealth’ as opposed to the troublesome alternative of state provision funded from taxation. For others the ideal of social classes mingling in educational establishments, overseen by graduate masters, providing instruction ranging from basic literacy to the Latin tuition

1 Flint, Socialism, 425-98; Smith, Passive obedience and prophetic protest, 290-313 2 Stewart, ‘“Christ’s kingdom in Scotland”, 1-22 necessary for University entrance, was central to a Scottish myth of the ‘lad o’ pairts’.

As one history of Scottish education published in 1912 put it

Other countries may have shown a finer flower of scholarship, but in none has

the attitude towards education been so democratic, so thoroughly imbued with

the belief that learning is for the whole people, so socialised as to afford the

spectacle of the sons of the laird, the minister and the ploughman, seated on

the same bench, taught the same lessons, and disciplined by the same strip of

leather. 1

It is not difficult to contrast ‘myth’ with ‘reality’, by pointing out its patriarchal nature or its uneven geographical coverage for example 2, but a more interesting question is

to ponder why such a belief was prevalent. Within the small elite of educational

policy makers the view was quite different by the early twentieth century, an official

report published in 1903 commented: ‘the tendency … to make one and the same

school with one and the same staff serve many different functions is the weak point of

educational organisation in Scotland as compared with that of other countries’. 3 There was no aspect of society over which Scots were so prone to preen themselves as the education system. Scottish education was held to be progressive and meritocratic, access was generous and its results, especially in popular literacy and university entrance, were pointed to as impressive. The implicit comparison here was with

England, whose system was held to be elitist and its curriculum narrow. By the late nineteenth century grounds for Scottish self-congratulation were insecure. The ideal

1 W. J Gibson, Education in Scotland: a sketch of the past and the present (London, 1912) quoted by Anderson, ‘In search of the “lad of parts”’, 82 2 Corr, ‘Where is the lass o’ pairts?’, 220; Gordon, Women’s spheres’, 213. 3 Report of the Committee of Council on Education in Scotland, 1902-3 quoted in Anderson, Education and opportunity, 229 of the parochial system harked back to a time when Scotland was a rural society yet to undergo the traumatic processes of industrialisation, urbanisation and rural transformation. The rapidity and intensity of these experiences led to a profound dislocation between the new society and the archaic education system. When a Royal

Commission, chaired by the duke of Argyll, investigated the education system in the

1860s considerable dismay was engendered by the image of a mass of urban children who seemed to be outside the civilising influences of the schoolroom. This investigation revealed with stark clarity the way in which the parochial schools were a small minority of the total provision. 1 Urban industrial Scotland seemed to be less inclusive than English cities like Liverpool or Newcastle. Nevertheless, the Scottish system was quite efficient in providing a large number of places for elementary education and in the Universities where, with around 1.7 students per 1000 of the population, Scottish provision seemed impressive compared to the English and even the European average. 2 The Disruption was another factor: although the creation of the Free Church—which threw much energy and money into its education system— increased provision, it also placed the educational role of the Kirk under scrutiny and drew many of its teachers away to populate the clergy of the new Church. The parochial system was creaking by the middle of the century and the need for reform was widely recognised. The competing claims of the presbyterian churches, and the difficulties of finding enough parliamentary time to deal with such an important

Scottish issue, as well as the fear of the knock-on effects on the English system and the Church of England itself, meant that reform did not take place until 1872, two years after the English Act. This important piece of Scottish legislation introduced compulsory attendance at school for children between the ages of five and thirteen. It

1 Cruickshank, ‘The Argyll Commission report, 1865-8’, 133-47 2 Anderson, ‘Education and society in modern Scotland’, 462-9 also established a new administrative structure with the creation of a ‘Scotch

Education Department’ (based in London) and a local system of ‘School Boards’, elected on a wide franchise which included women, adding yet another dimension to the ‘parish state’ which controlled so many aspects of Scottish life. 1 Thus by a

combination of social change and legislation the defining principles of the traditional

system had been eroded. This was a difficult issue for Scots to come to terms with

given its centrality to the national identity; a mythic history was necessary to mask the

failure and marginality of the parochial system in modern conditions.

Despite the seeming rupture of 1872, there were many continuities with the traditional

ethos of Scottish education: local control, the continued influence of the churches

through the election of clergymen, including Catholic priests (sometimes

unwelcome), to the School Boards was another. Church influence also continued

through expansion of the role of the presbyterian churches in teacher-training. The

role of the presbyterian churches survived in the matter of religious instruction, on

which the 1872 act was extremely vague. In most schools in the public sector

religious instruction had a strong presbyterian hue as it was based not only on the

bible but on the Calvinist standard of the Shorter Catechism. This was defended by

the ministers on the School Boards and was used for the inculcation of literacy as well

as religious education. If 1872 made education compulsory it did not make it free.

Although much of the funding for Scottish schools after 1872 came from a local

rate—or property tax—fees paid by scholars were also important, encouraging a sense

that schooling was not to be taken for granted and that attendance should be regular. 2

1 Withrington, ‘Towards a national system’, 107-24; Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 50- 72, 165-75 2 Anderson, Education and the Scottish people, 181-2, 188-91. The demand for free education became a staple of the series of demands voiced by radical Liberals in the 1880s and was achieved for most Scottish pupils by 1890. 1

Despite the antipathy to hierarchical education in the parochial tradition there was a history of ‘secondary’ schools in Scotland prior to 1872, most of them in urban areas, some under the control of town councils and others, such as Edinburgh Academy, private institutions. Secondary education after 1872 was dominated by three themes: the steady encroachment of the supervision of the state; the increasing domination of these schools, intellectually and numerically, by the middle classes; and their increasing concentration in towns. Within the post-1872 public system a variety of different institutions for secondary education were developed by the early twentieth century: the most academically inclined attended ‘higher class’ schools, mostly urban institutions of long standing; ‘higher grade’ schools offered a less rarefied, although more modern and commercial, curriculum from which University entry was still possible; the least academic route were the basic forms of secondary education grafted onto parochial schools. 2 Problems of funding and access overlaid this structure and stifled the ambition to recreate the democratic effect of the parochial school by another means. True secondary education was expensive and until the early 1890s fees were high; although state supported secondary education developed, there was still, for the poorest families, the difficulty of foregoing the wage-earning potential of a fourteen year old and there was no rational or meritocratic system of scholarships to ensure that the brightest children, no matter how straitened their circumstances, got access to the best secondary schools. 3 Prior to the Great War secondary education was, dominated by middle-class intellectual concerns and social aspirations.

1 Simon, ‘Joseph Chamberlain and free education’, 56-78 2 Anderson, Education and opportunity , 226-8. 3 Anderson Education and the Scottish people, 263 Nevertheless, and in contrast to England, there was only a very small tradition of

‘public schools’, institutions like Glenalmond, Fettes College and Loretto. If the much criticised Scottish aristocracy did not patronise the Scottish education system—school or university 1—the middle classes did not follow this pattern, partly because the private day schools and, more particularly, the public system of secondary education developed from the 1880s catered for their needs. 2 Fee-paying schools, especially in

Edinburgh with Heriots and the Merchant Company institutions, developed from the

1870s, but they were mostly attended by day-pupils and had an ethos quite different from the ‘Public Schools’. Their development was intensely controversial as many radicals argued that endowments originally designed for the education of the poor had been hijacked for middle-class purposes. 3 The aspirations of the growing middle class drove this modernisation of the Scottish education system, the expanding economy was offering a variety of occupations in commerce and management which required secondary education. The movement of the middle classes towards new suburbs involved changes in the geography of the Scottish education system and many of the

‘higher class’ schools of the late nineteenth century were in these new middle class areas, such as the west-end of Glasgow.

The universities were themselves undergoing reform in the late 1880s and early

1890s, a formal entrance examination and a series of more specialised curricula, such as in history or the sciences, meant that the direct link from the parish school was impractical. The former practice of universities offering a form of surrogate secondary education by recruiting young students was ended. This was an ambition of university reformers like John Stuart Blackie, the professor of Greek at the University of

1 Union of 1707 viewed financially, 18 2 Anderson, ‘Secondary schools’, 192 3 Anderson, Education and opportunity, 172-201 Edinburgh. His experience of German universities and their fruitful relationship between research and teaching was his inspiration. This could not be realised in

Scotland because of the teaching burden imposed on the small professoriate (103 in

Scotland in 1876) and the practice, in Blackie’s words, of ‘allowing any raw ploughman’s son, or blinking watchmaker’s apprentice … to march from the lowest and most ill-taught parish school in the country, freely, and without question, into the

Latin and Greek classes of the first University of the land.’ The 1889 reforms abolished the old rigid arts curriculum in Scotland and extended the range of specialised honours curricula available to students. New staff were recruited, including lecturers and assistants, who numbered 526 by 1919, to support the

Professors, and the range of chairs was extended. 1 This was the era in which, for example, history began to be studied in a systematic way in the Scottish universities.

The influence was partly the German ‘scientific’ approach to the subject but also the constitutional history developed at Oxford and Cambridge. The new Professors, such as Richard Lodge who held chairs at Glasgow and Edinburgh, and Charles Sanford

Terry at Aberdeen, came from this tradition. The professoriate as a whole was becoming less Scottish in this period as men from Oxbridge, Europe and North

America took chairs in Scotland. Terry was unusual, however, in developing an interest in modern Scottish history. 2 Chairs of Scottish history were also established, at Edinburgh in 1903 and Glasgow in 1911, but they came from a different process and the subject developed at a tangent from ‘history’. The Edinburgh chair came from the munificence of the will of Sir William Fraser, a nineteenth century advocate and record scholar; the Glasgow chair came after a long controversy within the university and was funded by the proceeds of an exhibition in Kelvingrove park in 1911. Despite

1 Wallace, John Stuart Blackie , 223; Anderson, ‘Scottish university professors’, 32, 38. 2 Lodge, ‘History in the Scottish universities’, 97-109; Terry, History of Scotland ; Anderson, ‘Scottish university professors’, 32, 38. its popular roots the first Glasgow Professor was Robert Sangster Rait, a patrician figure and future Principal, whose bone-dry constitutional history poured scorn on the pre-Union Scottish parliament. 1 The new structure also facilitated developments in modern languages, economics, and commercial and scientific subjects over the next generation. Student numbers were at best stagnant in this period, especially after the introduction of greater control of entrance through examination or the leaving certificate from schools from the early 1890s. A boost to student numbers was provided in the same decade by the, much delayed, entrance of women to the Scottish universities, mostly in the arts faculties. The delay was not the only problem: if women were allowed to matriculate and graduate they were not fully integrated members of the university, teaching and social activities were segregated. At

Glasgow, for example, there was a separate college, Queen Margaret, for female students. The prevailing attitude towards women in the workplace meant that employment opportunities for female graduates, outside the teaching and social work professions, was rather limited. The financial health of the Scottish universities, which lacked the endowments and property of Oxford and Cambridge was also precarious.

There was still much reliance on the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland which had been established in 1901 with $10 million in US steel bonds. The proceeds were to assist able but indigent students, modernise the infrastructure and provide funds for research. It was not until the creation of the University Grants Committee in

1919 that the state provided more than about a third of the total income of the Scottish

Universities. 2

1 Fraser (1816-1898), ODNB ; Donaldson, Fraser ; Campbell, ‘Foundation of a chair’, 16-20; Rait, Parliaments of Scotland 2 Krass, Carnegie , 423-6; Anderson et . al ., University of Edinburgh , 142, 173; Moss et. al. , University, city and state , 76-8, 86-7. Although some articulations of the myth of Scottish education extended to female pupils, the reality was rather different. Exclusion from the Scottish universities until the 1890s meant that the curriculum followed by girls in Scottish schools was quite different from their male counterparts. This was controversial, however, with much opposition from parents who regarded such activities as sewing and domestic economy, as a waste of time. Counter-intuitively some feminist activists, such as

Flora Stevenson who was a member of the Edinburgh School Board, were in favour of it, albeit if taught by properly trained teachers. 1 Nevertheless, only a tiny proportion of girls had access to Latin, less than 1% in the middle of the century compared to around 6% of boys. 2 The curriculum followed by girls revolved around the expectation that their lives would be dominated by marriage and domesticity. This pattern was upheld by the domination of the teaching profession by male graduates.

This domination was one of status and authority rather than numbers, as by 1911 70 per cent of the Scottish teaching profession was female. Women were confined to particular areas of the system, notably the teaching of infants, deemed to be part of the

‘woman’s sphere’ and an extension of her natural domestic and maternal roles. With their limited range of experience and qualifications they were condemned to much lower salaries than their male colleagues (an average of £65 compared to £135 in

1885) or their English counterparts and access to promoted posts was virtually non- existent. 3 These unequal power relations within the Scottish school contributed further

to a need for a mythic history of education to emphasise a progressive and inclusive

ethos.

1 Moore, ‘Educating for the “women’s sphere”’, 10-41; Corr, ‘“Home-rule” in Scotland’, 38-53. 2 Corr, ‘Exploration into Scottish education’, 304. 3 Corr, ‘Sexual division of labour’, 137-50; Corr, ‘Politics of the sexes’, 186-205. The diverse topics in the social history of late nineteenth century Scotland which have been considered in this chapter are linked by a number of themes. The most obvious is the notion of a society attempting to come to terms with mature urban and industrial conditions; the rapid change of the early nineteenth century had receded and a series of responses to the new conditions were evident. These responses were driven by the expanding middle classes who were central to the dynamism of the new society. This was a strongly aspirant group whose desire for new space and facilities was an important force for change in Scottish society. Their demand for new space drove the development of the suburbs which surrounded Scottish cities by the late nineteenth century. This was not only a product of desire for better living conditions in terms of space and amenity but also for more homogenous conditions away from the central areas of the city with their mix of social classes.1 They were also an important group of consumers as they established new households, with a greater variety of rooms for different purposes, all of which had to be furnished and, in the style of the age, cluttered with objects. These domestic arrangements resulted in the middle-classes developing a role as employers, as even lower-middle class families had servants, often living-in. 2 The economic and social dynamism of these groups is evident in their growing wealth and status in late nineteenth century Scottish society and their aspirations drove many progressive changes in housing and religion, as we have seen, but there was also an insecurity in their strong desire to protect their newly won status. Evidence for this insecurity can be seen in motives for the control of fertility which was evident among professional and petit-bourgeois families in late- Victorian

Scotland. It can also be seen in their reactions to the extremes of poverty which were evident in Scottish cities, it impelled their involvement in philanthropic endeavour

1 Hutchison, ‘Elite society’ 380-2. 2 Nenadic, ‘Victorian middle classes’, 283-7; for clutter see the illustration in Fraser and Morris (eds), People and society, 225 and helped to create pressure for educational reform which created enclaves of middle-class pupils in suburban institutions. 1 The dynamism, desire for an enclosed

world and the vulnerability came together in the creation of a culture of societies,

clubs and set-piece public occasions designed to project, even inflate, their identity:

activities which were perhaps evidence of ‘a sense of fragile identity, of insecurity, of

much gained, but much more to lose.’ 2

1 Withrington, ‘Aberdeen’, 10 2 Nenadic, Victorian middle classes’, 295. Chapter three: Edwardian politics

If the politics of the 1880s and the 1890s had been dominated by Gladstonian enthusiasms, especially Irish home rule, then the period from the late 1890s to 1914 was concerned with a different agenda. The political agenda of this period contained both traditional issues—tariff reform, empire, land reform, temperance—and others with a shorter pedigree—old age pensions, housing, health and unemployment insurance—which were driven by the impetus towards social reform which the

Liberal government developed after 1908. There was not, of course, a clear dividing line between these ‘old’ and ‘new’ issues: the advocates of land reform, temperance, tariff reform and free trade linked their specific causes to wider social reform. For example, many tariff reformers argued that the revenue which would be raised by taxing imports would provide funds for pensions; land reformers, especially those who advocated taxation of land values, believed their cause to be a panacea.

The retiral of Gladstone ushered in a new generation of Liberal leaders—Rosebery,

Harcourt, Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith—who did not share his enthusiasm for Irish home rule. Unionist governments from 1895 to 1905 also ensured that the issue was dormant and when the Liberals returned to power they had an outright parliamentary majority. Concomitantly, Ireland was revived as an issue when the parliamentary arithmetic changed after the elections of 1910 and the Irish returned to their position as power brokers. As in the 1880s the trajectory of the Irish home rule issue had profound consequences for the question of Scottish home rule. The issue had remained on the fringes of parliamentary debate in the 1890s, it was not until the formulation of the third Irish Home Rule bill in the years from 1910 to 1912 that it was given serious attention by the government.

The political volatility of this period can be seen in the results of the four general elections which were held between 1900 and December 1910. The 1900 election was held at the height of the Boer War in the autumn of 1900, a moment at which a favourable resolution seemed to be in sight. At one level the contest revolved around different interpretations of war aims. Unionists gave the impression that the war, far from being an attempt to conquer the Boer Republics, as their critics alleged, was being fought to secure political rights for the Uitlanders , the settlers, many of them

British, who had been attracted to South Africa since the mid-1880s by the prospect of wealth. Conservatives and Liberal Unionists polarised the contest by drawing attention to the perceived lack of patriotism on the Liberal, side where a small number of candidates and newspapers had openly expressed opposition to the war. To this group was attached the abusive label ‘Pro-Boer’: the leading figures were G.B. Clark, the MP for Caithness, whose unpatriotic extremity made him a hate figure. Hector

MacPherson, the editor of the Edinburgh Evening News , although embarrassed by

Clark’s excesses, provided a platform for those opposed to the war. A slightly wider group, including Henry Campbell Bannerman, had voiced unease about the conduct of the war, especially the treatment of the civilian population in South Africa:

‘methods of barbarism’ according to Campbell Bannerman. A third faction of ‘Liberal

Imperialists’ was led by the nakedly opportunistic earl of Rosebery whose ambitions related more closely to the reconstruction of the party than the empire. 1 The formation of the Liberal League and the appearance of Rosebery—an iconic figure in

1 Auld, ‘Liberal pro-Boers’, 78-101; Readman, ‘Conservative party, patriotism, and British politics’, 118 for a Liberal Unionist poster demonising Clark; Bernstein, ‘Campbell-Bannerman and the Liberal imperialists’, 105-24; Jacobson, ‘Rosebery and Liberal imperialism’, 83-107 Scotland—at its head, provided a counterpoint to the Scottish Liberal Association which was treated with condescension and hostility by the imperialists. Many of the leading imperialists had Scottish bases—H.H. Asquith (East Fife), R.B. Haldane (East

Lothian) and R.C. Munro Ferguson (Leith)—and there was considerable Liberal imperialist activity north of the Border. 1 This ‘manifest difference of opinion … among the more prominent and trusted leaders of the party’ caused great anxiety among local activists. 2 The Liberal party was, with some justification, compared to ‘a dog with the head of Lord Rosebery, an inside of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, and a tail of Labouchere and Dr Clark [noted radicals, the latter MP for Caithness,

1885 to 1900]. The whole body would be wagged by the tail, and they would have a mongrel of the very vilest description.’ 3 This febrile atmosphere favoured the right and the combined popular vote of the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, although slightly less than that for the Liberals, gave them a majority of Scottish seats, their first since 1832. This distinctive result was not simply due to patriotic fervour in

Scotland, however; the Liberals were divided over the war and were beset with internal bickering over the leadership of the party, divisions clearly apparent to the electorate.

Some of the seats which changed hands in 1900 saw vigorous debate over the war, notably Caithness where G. B. Clark was defeated by another Liberal, R.L.

Harmsworth, brother of Lord Northcliffe, the founder of the imperialist Daily Mail .4

Recent work has concluded that the issue of the war, and the attempt by the Unionists to colour their rhetoric with the language of patriotism, was evident not only in seats

1 Matthew, Liberal imperialists, 98-9 2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, James Bryce MSS, 178, f. 19, G.B. Esslemont to James Bryce, 9 Mar. 1900 3 Quoted by Readman, ‘Conservative party, patriotism, and British politics’, 116 4 Brown, ‘“Echoes of Midlothian’”, 171; Boyle, ‘Liberal imperialists’, 56-7 contested by ‘pro-Boers’, such as Caithness or Aberdeen, but throughout the country.

South Africa was mentioned in nearly all Unionist election addresses and accorded primacy in nearly 90 per cent. It was also the principal issue in the addresses of

Liberal candidates, not merely those of the ‘pro-Boer’ variety. This is not conclusive evidence that this was the issue which motivated voters to the greatest extent, but it indicates the content of the ‘noise’ which they heard in the run-up to polling. 1 On the other hand, the 1900 election can be seen as part of the trend of Conservative and

Liberal Unionist recovery which had been going on through the 1890s. Some would argue that this was because of a profound alteration in ideology in that party:

That Glasgow should give a solid vote for Lord Salisbury, that the Scotch

burghs should return as many Unionists as Liberals to the House of Commons,

that Scotland as a whole should show no majority for the ‘Liberal Party,’ must

convince the most bigoted of old-fashioned Scottish radicals that the policy of

modern Unionist statesmen is something different from the ‘Toryism’ of their

younger days, however fondly they as Radicals may cling to the old

denunciatory word. 2

Although there is clear evidence from the 1890s of the Unionists developing a wider appeal, the 1900 general election provides evidence of a more base politics of patriotism. The Glasgow Herald saw the contest as one for the ‘consolidation of the

Empire’ and Glasgow Unionists polarised the contest as one between ‘Boers’ and

‘Britons’. 3 The language of patriotism was deployed by the right, which claimed a

1 Readman, ‘Conservative party, patriotism, and British politics’, 109-116, disagreeing with Price, An imperial war, 97-131 2 Anon. ‘The general election’, 539 3 Burness, ‘ Strange associations ’,151-2 monopoly on expressions of national loyalty, sentiments which the Liberals had lost the right to voice through their ambiguous attitude to the fight in South Africa.

Liberals, Radicals and, indeed, Labour, attempted to find ways of countering this without appearing unpatriotic, but they found it enormously difficult. 1

The Unionist majority in Scotland is significant, but other features of the election are

also notable: the poll in Scotland was higher than it had been in 1895, in contrast to

the picture in England and Wales. In this, and the relatively few cases of Unionists

being accorded walkovers in Scottish seats, there is little evidence of the ‘voter

apathy’ which has been suggested as a characteristic of the election in England and

adduced in support of the case that the election was not dominated by a ‘khaki’

appeal. For this reason, although the Liberals polled more votes than they had in

1895, their share of the vote was down; their Scottish share of the vote was 5.2 per

cent greater than their UK share, the lowest figure of any election in the period from

1885 to 1910. The contrast with Wales, another area of traditional Liberal strength, is

remarkable: in the Principality the Liberal share of the vote went up, although on a

much lower poll and they gained two seats from the Unionists, in addition to a Labour

gain, Keir Hardie in Merthyr. The differential between the Welsh Liberal share of the

vote and their UK share was, at 11.1 per cent, nearly twice the Scottish figure.

Clearly, this was a very bad result for the Liberals in Scotland and was exemplified by

the result in Glasgow where the Unionists made a clean sweep in emulation of the

Liberal result in 1885. 2 The Unionist cause in the west was assisted by Irish support

over the question of a Catholic University in Ireland and hostility to some Liberal

candidates who were insufficiently enthusiastic about home rule. The ineffectual

1 Cunningham, ‘Language of patriotism’, 8-33; Thompson, ‘Language of imperialism’, 147-77 2 Burness, ‘ Strange associations ’, 159; Price, An imperial war , 101-5 Scottish Whip, an Imperialist, also felt that the quality of the candidates had been poor and muttered darkly that ‘employers put on the screw everywhere’; his tautological conclusion was that ‘the west has proved again that it is not always Liberal like the east.’ 1 In the east and north of Scotland Liberalism proved to be more durable, the party registered one gain from the Unionists, in Inverness, and maintained their position in Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. Contemporaries were clear in their view that it was the divisions and confusion over the leadership which had compromised the Liberal case so profoundly in Scotland. These divisions continued after the election and can be seen most clearly at a by-election in North East

Lanarkshire, a solid Liberal seat, in 1901. The Liberal candidate, C.B. Harmsworth, was from the imperialist wing and was treated with ill-disguised contempt by

Campbell Bannerman. The presence of a well known Labour candidate, Robert

Smillie of the miners’ union, gave radical Liberals another option and the strong

Labour vote (22 per cent) allowed the Liberal Unionist to win on a minority vote. The seat was recaptured at another by-election in 1904.2

The greater success of the Liberal Imperialist wing compared to those who were

excoriated as ‘pro-Boers’ makes it tempting to argue that the 1900 election was a

political manifestation of Scottish imperial identity. 3 This case rests on a momentary alignment of circumstances, however. The Boer war was not unpopular in the autumn of 1900 when it seemed as if it was nearly over and the worst memories of ‘Black

Week’ (a series of reverses in December 1899) were receding. This optimism was misplaced and the conflict entered a protracted guerilla phase which lasted until 1902.

1 B.L., Henry Campbell Bannerman Papers, Add. MS 41222, f. 331, R.C. Munro-Ferguson to Campbell Bannerman, 24 Oct. 1900 2 B.L., Viscount Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 45995, ff. 16-21, John Sinclair to Gladstone, 28 Aug. 1901; Hutchison, Political history, 177, 229 3 Boyle, ‘Liberal imperialists’, 61-2 It was in this period that allegations of inhumane treatment of Boer women and children were publicised and the ultimate ‘victory’ was highly tarnished. The difficulty and expense of the war was an embarrassment, especially to imperialists, and there was no repeat of the aggressive rhetoric in subsequent elections prior to the

Great War. A swing in opinion is evident from the post 1900 by-elections; indeed, by the time of the next general election in January 1906 the Liberals had recovered their majority of Scottish seats. Additionally, this Liberal fightback was based on a rallying of the party around traditional values, especially free trade and land reform, rather than the agenda favoured by the imperialists. Thus, although the results of the 1900 election appear to provide evidence for an imperialist triumph in Scotland the position is not so straightforward. Although the result of the election is significant in that it broke a seemingly established pattern it did so only fleetingly and ought not to be seen as a portent of later Unionist strength in Scotland.

If the 1900 general election and its aftermath was characterised by division in the

Liberal party, then the period after 1903 was marked by Liberal recovery and Unionist factionalism over tariff reform. The roots of this crisis can be found in a growing debate with the Unionist cabinet over the best way to raise revenue to pay the astronomical cost of the Boer war. Some options sailed dangerously close to breaking the sixty year consensus over free trade. This was brought into the open in May 1903 when Joseph Chamberlain launched a tariff reform campaign. The primary effect was to galvanise the Liberals around free trade. Herbert Asquith, one of the most divisive of the Liberal Imperialists, was given the task of responding to Chamberlain. The methods of political communication in the Edwardian period were initially very similar to those deployed by Gladstone in the 1880s, but stimulated by the energy of the debate over tariff reform they embraced novel techniques.

In a very direct way this issue dominated British political life between 1903

and 1906, perhaps stimulating the most extensive popular debate in the history

of British politics, with an unstoppable torrent of political information

available to the electorate in meetings, speeches, tracts, leaflets, cartoons, and

early political propaganda films. 1

To amplify the message to an audience wider than those who heard the speeches they were widely reported in the press and published in cheap editions with mass circulations. 2 Pressure groups published prolifically and academic economists were

conscripted by the rival causes. The debate, however, was less divisive in Scotland

than in other parts of the country.

That the Conservatives should have squandered a strong position by raising such a

divisive issue seems perverse, but it seemed a good idea at the time. By suggesting

that tariffs could be used to encourage trade with the empire, through ‘imperial

preference’—the idea of taxing imports from the empire at a lower level or exempting

them entirely—the task of promoting imperial unity could be furthered. That this was

required was clear to Edwardians, whether they accepted this justification for tariff

reform or not. Confidence in the strength of the empire was weak as competition from

Germany and the USA increased. This was evident, also, in fears about the weakness

of the British economy in the face of such rivals. The Boer war had tarnished the

1 Howe, Free trade and Liberal England, 231 2 Chamberlain, Imperial union and tariff reform ; Asquith, Trade and the empire public perception of the empire: tariff reform offered an antidote. It also offered something to the hard-pressed agricultural sector in its protection of the home market against cheap imports, this would stimulate production at home, help maintain the population of rural areas and hence contribute to social stability. Although

Chamberlain did not prioritise it, there was also the possibility that the revenue raised by tariffs could fund social reforms, such as old age pensions. This was a response to the Liberal argument that tariffs would raise food prices and disproportionately affect the working class. Tariffs would also help to defend British manufacturers against the dumping of foreign products and create an economic nationalism to rival those of markets from which British goods had been excluded to the national detriment. 1 The proponents of tariff reform came to dominate the Conservative party and the Unionist electoral appeal, culminating in its pre-eminence at the general elections of 1910. This masked considerable underlying factionalism between ‘whole hoggers’—strident tariff reformers—and ‘free fooders—those who did not want to disrupt the consensus on free trade and who deprecated the radicalism which lay behind Chamberlain’s proposals. Both groups were represented in Scotland: Andrew Bonar Law, a Glasgow businessman and MP for Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, was an unrepentant ‘whole hogger’; while an older, more consensual, form of Conservatism was represented by

Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a leading ‘free fooder’ who resigned from his position as

Secretary for Scotland in 1903. 2 The divisions were very significant in ideological terms, tariff reformers, presented the idea as a solution for the party’s difficulties and asserted that ‘the little Englander’s Free Trade is simply slow suicide’; others pointed

1 Green, Crisis of Conservatism , 184-263; Fforde, Conservatism and collectivism, 88-96; Thompson, ‘Tariff reform’, 1033-1054 2 Blewett, ‘Free fooders, Balfourites, whole hoggers’, 95-124 out the electoral dangers of alienating the working class through the ‘dear loaf’. 1

Looking at the impact of tariff reform on Scottish politics it is striking that, despite the

industrial base in the west of Scotland, and the fact that Chamberlain gave the first

detailed account of the policy in Glasgow in October 1903, there was very little

support for it. The principal newspapers—especially the Glasgow Herald , widely read

by businessmen—were hostile, in contrast to Fleet Street’s general support for tariff

reform. Scottish farmers, who did not grow much wheat, regarded tariff reform as an

irrelevance and, in any case, they had not been so stricken by economic depression.

Indeed, such was the unpopularity of tariff reform in Scotland that it has been

described as ‘the crucial destroyer of the recently cemented Unionist strength ...’. 2

Above all, Scottish industrial interests, from western shipbuilders to eastern textile mill owners, were opposed: the importance of export markets for the products of the

Scottish economy—ships, textiles, the output of eastern coalfields—rendered it vulnerable to increased economic nationalism. The Liberal campaign was not merely a regressive celebration of a nineteenth-century orthodoxy, but an attempt to counter

Unionist pessimism about the economy and the empire, arguing that tariff reform would do little for either and suggesting that free trade could be made the centrepiece of a new progressive politics. Free traders were not ‘old’ Liberals to be contrasted with the ‘new’ Liberals who forced an agenda of social reform onto the Liberal government elected in 1906. Many of the leading ‘new’ Liberals—Leonard

Hobhouse, J.A.Hobson—were active in the free trade campaign, and in Scotland it was a prominent issue for the Young Scots. Free trade was presented as the vehicle for the creation of a modern confident society and the state intervention evident after

1 B.L., A.J. Balfour Papers, Add. MSS 49859, ff. 131-6, Parker Smith to Balfour, 28 Jan. 1907; Add. MSS 49860, ff. 44-51, Stirling Maxwell to Grant, 18 Jan. 1909; H.L.R.O., Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 21/1, W.A. Arrol to Bonar Law, 19 Jan. 1906 2 Hutchison, Political history, 218 1906 was trailed in the campaigns. Liberals responded to the revenue implications of free trade, not by emphasising indirect taxation, as Gladstonian tradition might have impelled them to do, but by refashioning another Liberal shibboleth—land reform— for new purposes. There were several strands to this policy including the creation of new small-holdings to stimulate the growth of a healthy rural population, but also the taxation of land values. If the large group of Liberals elected in 1906 in support of this policy were not fully-fledged Georgeite single-taxers, they were nevertheless evidence that Liberalism favoured raising revenue through the taxation of the landlords’ ‘unearned increment’ rather than the breakfast table of the working class.

1906 election

Exhausted by internal divisions over of tariff reform and education, and bruised by the vehemence of attacks from an increasingly confident Liberal party, Balfour’s Unionist government resigned in December 1905, Campbell Bannerman formed a government and called a general election for January 1906. In a UK context the main issue of the election was tariff reform, in Scotland the traditional Liberal agenda was paramount and issues such as land reform invited the electors to choose between privilege and social change. The use of Chinese labour in the South African goldmines, sanctioned by the Unionists in 1904, allowed the Liberals to raise the spectre of ‘slavery’ and provided a sharp and heavy stick with which to beat the government. 1

Although Liberal expectations were high, and the Unionists pessimistic, the scale of the Liberal victory was awesome. The Unionists were reduced from 402 seats to a paltry 157, in Scotland the combined forces of Unionism could only manage ten seats.

1 Scotsman , 26, 29 Jan. 1906 The massed ranks of the Liberal party after the election amounted to 400 and to this should be added a further twenty-nine Labour members, mostly elected in England where an electoral pact with the Liberals had operated, and eighty-three Irish members. In Scotland the Liberals made a net gain of twenty-two seats to take fifty- eight seats. The gains came in all corners of Scotland, in both counties and burghs, from Orkney and Shetland to Dumfries-shire, with notable Liberal recovery in

Glasgow and Lanarkshire. In Scotland this was a Liberal victory: although Labour gained two seats—Glasgow Blackfriars and the second Dundee seat—they did so without the formal pact with the Liberals which operated in England. The absence of a pact in Scotland suggests Liberal confidence and Labour weakness north of the border, the Liberals proved they did not require assistance to decimate the Unionists.

Contemporaries believed the 1906 election to be of immense significance. A senior

Liberal Unionist in the west of Scotland lamented to Andrew Bonar Law—defeated in

Glasgow Blackfriars—that the election was a ‘volcanic upheaval’. A trades unionist in Aberdeen was confident that the ‘old country will get shaken to its very foundations’ by the improved performance of Labour in the election. The Scotsman recognised that it was a ‘tidal wave’ and a ‘phenomenal upheaval’ but warned that its

‘subsidence’ would contain dangers for the Liberal party. 1 This was not evident in

Scotland, even in the two further general elections prior to the Great War. With fifty- eight Scottish seats and over 56 per cent of the vote the Liberal party seemed to have returned to its dominant position in Scottish politics. Despite the evidence for an atavistic interpretation of this phase of Liberalism, apparently borne out by the importance of such traditional issues as land reform, temperance and home rule, the

1 H.L.R.O., Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 21/1, Robert Bird to Bonar Law, 19 Jan. 1906; N.L.S., Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc. 5490(1)/38, Duncan to Mabel, 21 Jan. 1906; Scotsman , 26 Jan. 1910 picture is complicated by the perception that a new form of Liberalism was in evidence.

Labour movement

Moves to secure parliamentary representation for workers in Scotland preceded the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in London, itself founded by a

Scot, Ramsay MacDonald. This precocity was not a harbinger of lasting success, however. The LRC regarded itself as the premier organisation, resented the presence of its Scottish rival and was at the root of considerable cross border tensions.

MacDonald saw Scottish activity as a threat to the LRC’s ability to raise funds, especially through the affiliation of trades unions. The LRC steadily gained the upper hand—both Barnes and Wilkie, the victorious candidates in 1906, were supported by the LRC—and after a bitter dispute over the candidature at the Dundee by-election of

1908, at which Winston Churchill returned to parliament, the Scottish organisation succumbed to the LRC. The Labour movement, however, was a much wider entity than these ‘representation committees’. Judged by the extent of local activity, propaganda and journalism, especially after the foundation of The Forward in 1906,

the Labour movement showed signs of rude health. The LRC, and after 1906 the

Labour Party, was an umbrella organisation to which other parts of the broad labour

movement—trades unions, socialist societies, co-operative organisations—adhered. In

Scotland political muscle was provided by the Independent Labour Party. The ILP

had been formed in 1893 and the following year had absorbed Keir Hardie’s Scottish

Labour Party. The branch structure of the ILP around the country was central to the

spreading of the Labour message, by the eve of the Great War there were 130 branches with over 2000 members throughout Scotland. 1 Thus, despite the plethora of

activities the labour movement had a small committed membership. Judged by

another measure, those who voted for the nine candidates at the 1906 election, those

sympathetic to the movement amounted to nearly 17,000 Although we should be wary

of assuming that all those excluded from the right to vote by the operation of the

franchise system were naturally inclined towards Labour, there was a substantial body

of opinion which did not have the opportunity to express its commitment at the ballot

box. Labour candidates were sponsored, variously, by the Social Democratic

Federation (a Marxist organisation), the LRC and the SWRC. This proved to be a

problem not only at elections but in keen competition for the attention of the Scottish

working class. Joseph Duncan, later to be one of Scotland’s most prominent trades

unionists as founder of the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union, was employed to organise

the east of Scotland for the ILP after the general election of 1906. Among the many

frustrations he encountered in this task—apathy, financial weakness, incompetence,

sectarianism—was the problem of competition from the SDF, whom he felt were

‘trying to poison the wells in advance’, the worst culprit being ‘a teacher, John

Maclean MA of Glasgow’. 2 Nevertheless, there were signs that Labour was making some progress: the establishment of Forward in 1906 was an important moment.

Although the newspaper’s most influential days were to be during the Great War and in the 1920s, it was an important mouthpiece for new thinking. Its pages demonstrated the breadth of the labour church and the overlap between labour and radical liberalism. In other ways this may have been a problem for labour, making the establishment of an identity distinct from its principal rival more difficult, but it gave the pages of Forward great intellectual richness.

1 Fraser, ‘The Labour party’, 38-51; Hutchison, Political history, 246 2 N.L.S., Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc.5490(1)/59, Duncan to Mabel, 2 Jul. 1906; /64-5, same to same, n.d. (but Aug. 1906); see also /94, same to same, 28 Sep. 1906

There is a deterministic and reductionist view of Scottish radical politics which portrays the adherence to the Liberal party of the Irish community in a negative light.

In some versions of this model ‘blame’ is to be attached to the Irish for holding back the ‘advance’ of labour. This is a less than convincing explanation for a problem—

Labour’s slow progress in Scotland compared to other areas with similar social and industrial structures, such as South Wales—which requires discussion. Labour made little sustained advance in parts of the east of Scotland, where the Irish community was smaller than in Glasgow and the west. Further, the operation of the franchise system worked to exclude many Irish men from the voters’ roll. Sectarianism was a convenient argument for ILP activists, such as Joe Duncan, who were faced with daily evidence of the difficulties of proselytising on behalf of the labour movement.

Activists were prone to idealising the skilled worker and demonising the unskilled:

Duncan was less than complimentary about the occupants of mining villages and condemned the workers of Lanarkshire (‘the scrapheap of Scotland’) as ‘a cross between bad Irish and bad Scots … Catholics and Orangemen.’ 1 A similar view was

taken by the editor of Forward Thomas Johnston who was proud that his newspaper was read by skilled workers and did not circulate in the slums. More positively, many in the Labour movement did recognise the importance of reaching out to the Irish community. The principal worker in this endeavour was a man from an Irish background who has a strong claim to being the most distinguished and influential

Scottish labour politician of this period—John Wheatley. His small ‘Catholic Socialist

Society’ did vital work in engaging with a section of the population which otherwise retained a strong commitment to Liberalism. His debates with Roman Catholic clergy,

1 N.L.S., Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc.5490(1)/199, Duncan to Mabel, 5 Aug. 1907; /202, same to same, 11 Aug. 1907. such as the Belgian Fr Leo Puissant, in the pages of the Glasgow Observer , attempted

to reconcile Socialism and Catholicism. Puissant was not a reactionary, but like many

Roman Catholics (and Presbyterians) was deeply concerned about the anti-clerical

strand of continental socialism. This stimulated the Papal Encyclical of 1891, Rerum

Novarum , which condemned ‘socialism’ and commended ‘social reform’. Puissant’s project was the importation to Scotland of European confessional politics, in the shape of a radical Catholic Democratic party. Wheatley argued that this was a distraction and that, far from being irreconcilable on the grounds of materialism and anti-clericalism, Catholicism and socialism, in their mutual collectivism and social concern, were fraternal. These thoughts, influenced by an Italian work on socialism, brought the suspicion of the hierarchy and the outright hostility of some local priests, one of whom was partly responsible for Wheatley being burnt in effigy in 1912. 1

Although the labour movement did encompass figures, like Robert Blatchford or John

Bruce Glasier, who were hostile to religion, they were outnumbered in Scotland by

others who drew their inspiration from the Covenanters rather than the Paris

Commune. 2 The Catholic population of lowland Scotland should not be reduced to a reactionary group, dominated by their clergy and obsessed with Irish home rule.

Wheatley had been influenced by a Dutch priest, Fr Peter Terken, during his childhood in Baillieston; even those clergy with whom Wheatley clashed—Fr

Puissant, Fr O’Brien and Archbishop John Maguire—had a deep concern for the poverty of the population to whom they ministered, despite their moral conservatism.

Socialism was seen as a threat to traditional structures of family, community and education, rather than as inimical to an Irish political agenda which revolved around the land question and home rule.

1 Gilley, Catholics and socialists in Glasgow’, 160-200; Gilley, ‘Catholics and socialists in Scotland’, 218-30; Wood, Wheatley, 29-31 2 Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish labour movement’, 609-30

Although the evidence concerning the progress of the Labour movement in Scotland gives credence to a pessimistic view, there are hints that the Liberal party, even in its dominance of Scottish politics, took the Labour threat seriously. Perhaps the plethora of activities were translated into a perceived electoral challenge. In 1908 officials of the Scottish Liberal Association prepared an analysis of the ‘Socialist and Labour’ movements in Scotland. That such an exercise was felt necessary is significant and it emphasised that although Liberalism and Labour sprang from the same roots, there was a tendency for the latter to be more active than, distinct from and hostile to,

Liberalism. 1 The Liberal chief whip, Arthur Murray of Elibank, became a sounding board for such concerns: Churchill felt that although Labour were ‘an obscure gang of malignant wire-pullers’ they could divide the vote to the advantage of the Unionists.

The editor of the Scotsman was suspicious of the link between Labour and the Liberal

government and deprecated legislative concessions to them, such as the Trades

Disputes Bill. Murray was more impressed by Labour’s readiness in places like

Dundee than were activists like Joseph Duncan, and he regarded the task of

countering Labour propaganda with good Liberal speakers as one of the most

important aspects of his job. 2 At the 1910 general elections the pessimistic view of

insiders like Duncan were borne out. In January Labour’s twelve candidates received

nearly 38,000 votes, a share of over 5 per cent, their best result to date, although their

only two victories came once again in Glasgow Blackfriars and Dundee. In December

Labour’s organisation and finances could muster only five candidates, but they gained

nearly 25,000 votes (3.1 per cent). Wilkie and Barnes were joined in Parliament by a

1 N.L.S., Elibank MSS, MS 8801, ff. 145-51, Memorandum on the Socialist and Labour Movements in Scotland, …[Feb. 1908]. 2 N.L.S., Elibank MSS, MS 8801, f. 92, Winston Churchill to Murray, 29 Sep. 1906; ff. 130-1, J.P. Croal to Murray, 9 Jul. 1907; ff. 99-102, Murray to Lord Knollys, 7 Nov. 1906. third Scottish Labour MP, William Adamson, the victor in a straight fight with a

Conservative in West Fife, a mining constituency. The Liberals, by contrast with their performance in England and Wales, where they lost over 120 seats, emerged from the two general elections with fifty-nine of the seventy Scottish seats and 54 per cent of the vote. The Unionist Scotsman railed against the influence of the unquestioning

battalions of the United Irish League, but this is not a sufficient explanation. 1 To

understand this evidence that Scottish politics were diverging from English, and even

Welsh, patterns we need to examine the issues which dominated Scottish politics

during the Edwardian period. Labour’s Scottish problem was not to be found with the

Irish, or with organisational deficiencies, the weakness of trades unionism in

Scotland, or even with the limited franchise, but with its lack of an identifiable appeal

to the Scottish electorate. Labour did not seem to be offering a distinctive message:

why would voters risk their valuable franchise on an untried political movement—

Labour—when key grievances were being addressed by an established one—

Liberalism.

Land reform: new liberalism and old

If one part of the Liberal appeal which helps to explain their victory in 1906 was the

emphasis on free trade, a nationwide—even imperial—campaign, a more specifically

Scottish crusade was on the land question. Like free trade this was embedded in the

history of the party in Scotland. They had legislated in the 1880s to protect the Irish

small tenants and highland crofters from arbitrary eviction and they had continued to

emphasise the iniquities of Scottish land-holding, despite the fact that this reflected

poorly upon their own record in government, throughout the 1890s. Land reform,

1 Scotsman , 20 Dec. 1912 although it had an atavistic element, especially in the highlands, could be adapted to meet modern political conditions. There was a widespread perception that urban industrial society was unhealthy and inefficient. Land reformers drew on this rhetoric in support of a policy of creating small holdings and allotments which would stimulate a healthful ‘back to the land’ movement. Radical Liberal voices on the land question continued to excoriate landowners rural and urban; to these were added the new voice of the labour movement, Thomas Johnston’s Forward attacked landlords as much as capitalists, not least in his Our Scots noble families. Johnston also attempted

to recreate the Highland Land League as a potent force at the general elections of

1910, but this came to little and the policy of land nationalisation proved too

unrealistic to outflank the Liberals. 1 One continuity with the 1880s was the reappearance of land agitation in the Hebrides in the early 1900s. Although these protests were not on the same scale as those of the 1880s, and neither were they as organised or politicised, they pointed to continuing deficiencies land law. 2

Liberal plans were, first, to extend the provisions of the legislation of 1886 to lowland

Scotland, a direct reversal of Conservative policy in the 1890s which had been to buy

out landlords and vest property rights in the former small tenants. This enraged

landowners and agricultural interests who felt that the riches of lowland Scottish

farming were to be spoliated by a policy derived for feckless crofters. Landlords were

also apoplectic about intrusions on their rights and stimulated to action by the

prospect of land values taxation, the second strand of Liberal policy. If one of the

features of the Victorian debate on the land question had been the supine and

atomised response of landlords this was put right in 1906 by the formation of the

1 Forward, 4 Sep. 1909; Walker, Johnston, 10-13; Hunter, ‘Gaelic connection’, 195 2 N.A.S, AF43/6/1, Memo to Captain Sinclair, by Sheriff David Brand, Edinburgh, 25 Aug. 1903. Scottish Land and Property Federation, a pressure group in favour of landlord interests. Despite their apparent mandate for land reform in 1906 the Liberals were not to have it all their own way. After an abortive attempt to pass a land bill in 1906 two further bills were rejected by the House of Lords as part of what appeared to be a targeted strategy of attacking weak points in the Liberal programme. This weakness arose from the lack of support within the cabinet for the Scottish land proposals; although they were strongly supported by the secretary for Scotland, John Sinclair, there was a lack of enthusiasm, even hostility, towards them, from Cabinet colleagues led by Asquith, who had replaced Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in 1908. 1

Nevertheless, the difficulties with the House of Lords was a propaganda gift for the

Liberals in the general elections of 1910, presenting the issue as one of ‘peers versus

people’ and the upper house as a ‘House of Landlords’. This may help to explain the

stronger Liberal performance in Scotland in 1910, leading Unionists certainly thought

so. Although the land question was important in England it was less emotive and the

government were successful in passing a bill which gave County Councils

responsibility for creating new small holdings, this was not possible in Scotland

because of the continuing influence of the landlord class in rural local government.

This episode ends with an anti-climax: the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act was

passed in 1911 after the reduction of the powers of the House of Lords and

concessions to lowland farming interests, its impact on the landscape of rural Scotland

was minimal. 2 This meant that the land question remained a potent issue in Scottish politics during and after the Great War.

Social reform

1 Cameron, Land for the people?, 124-43 2 Leneman, Fit for heroes? , 5-9; Blewett, Peers, parties and people, 380-3, 400-3; Brown, ‘Scottish and English land legislation’, 72-85; Cameron, Land for the people? , 144-65 The actions of the Liberal government between 1908 and 1912 are often bracketed with those of the Labour government between 1945 and 1951 as providing the foundations of the welfare state. That the former was a significant social reforming government is beyond doubt; the wider claim, however, is ahistorical. The Liberals did not enter government with a detailed blueprint for social reform; there was no equivalent of the Beveridge Report, although its author was active in the development of policy in the Edwardian period. Although new Liberal thinkers helped to create the conditions where a more active and interventionist state could be contemplated, the

Liberal party did not embrace the idea of welfare as a universal right—unthinkable in

Edwardian Britain—as Labour did after 1945. They looked back to the nineteenth century poor law and their reforms complemented, rather than replaced it. The

Scottish poor law differed from that in England and Ireland in a number of respects, and this impinged on the impact of the Liberal reforms north of the border. First, there was no automatic right of relief for the able-bodied; in practice the able-bodied were relieved in times of distress, but there was no protection against ‘unemployment’. In these terms the Liberal reforms were an undoubted boon to a vulnerable group.

Second, the vast bulk of relief in Scotland took place ‘outdoors’—in the community—only a very small majority were provided for ‘indoors’—in a poorhouse, and the ‘workhouse’ was unknown in Scotland. A third feature of the poor law system—common across the United Kingdom—was that it was funded by local authorities from local taxation, or ‘rates’. The Liberal reforms, even those National

Insurance schemes which required a financial contribution from the potential recipient, were funded by central government from general taxation. This represented a profound shift in the way social welfare was organised. The Liberal governments were influenced by the debates of the early Edwardian period about the state of health amongst the urban population which had been revealed by the poor physical condition of urban males who volunteered for the army. In the hands of imperialists, like Lord

Rosebery, the deleterious effects of slum living contributed to a sense of crisis about the empire. For radical Liberals, like the new Prime Minister Henry Campbell

Bannerman, a Glaswegian, this was a motivation for social and land reform. As he put it when receiving the freedom of his home city in 1907:

Little by little we have come to face the fact that the concentration of human

beings in dense masses is a state of things which is contrary to nature, and

that, unless powerful counter-attractive agencies are introduced, the issue is

bound to be the suffering and gradual destruction of the mass of the

population. …Here and elsewhere today you have the spectacle of countless

thousands of our fellow-men, and a still larger number of children, who are

starved of air and space and sunshine, and of the very elements which make a

happy life possible. This is a view of city life which is gradually coming home

to the heart and understanding and conscience of our people. The view of it is

so terrible that it cannot be put away. What is all our wealth and learning … if

the men and women on whose labour the whole social fabric is maintained are

doomed to live and die in darkness and misery in the areas of our great cities. 1

The reforms passed by the Liberal government fell into four areas: legislation concerning the labour market; National Insurance; old age pensions; and educational reform. In the immediate aftermath of the election a series of measures were passed which altered relationships in the workplace. The Trades Disputes Act and the

1 Glasgow Herald , 25 Jan. 1907 Workmen’s Compensation Act protected the funds of trades unions from litigious employers seeking recompense following strikes, and gave a larger group of workers greater rights to claim damages in cases of industrial injury. The years 1908 and 1909 saw further intervention with the guarantee of the eight hour day for coal miners and wage regulation in sweated industries. The former was of ambiguous benefit and popularity since some miners already worked for less than eight hours per day, and it provided employers with an excuse to change shift patterns to the workers’ detriment. 1 These changes, some of which were instituted in close co-operation with

Labour members, suggest that the Labour MPs elected in 1906 could have some

influence and that, despite their massive majority, the Liberals continued to take

Labour seriously as an electoral threat at a UK level. More positively, it might be said

that they demonstrated a greater degree of sympathy for the interests of the working

class than had been displayed by the Liberal governments of the 1880s and 1890s. It

is also evidence of the fruitful nature of the relationship between Labour and the

Liberals which had been constructed since the inauguration of the electoral pact (not

operative in Scotland) in 1903. That these were Liberal reforms and that Labour

remained in a subordinate position, however, can be seen from the disappointment in

the ILP at their moderate nature and in the general conduct of the government. This

was especially evident in Scotland where New Liberalism did not have strong roots

and where there had been little of the mutual back scratching evident in Lib-Lab

relations elsewhere. 2

There had been a long-running campaign in favour of the introduction of Old Age

Pensions throughout the 1890s and they lurked in the gloomier corners of

1 Reid, United we stand , 262-3; Searle, A new England , 369-70 2 Smith, ‘Leadership’, 64-5 Chamberlain’s tariff reform campaigns. Although the Liberals were not formally committed to the introduction of pensions it was one of the most prominent topics in the election addresses of their candidates in 1906. Legislation of 1908 introduced a 5 shilling weekly pension for those over the age of seventy with an annual income of less than £21; smaller pensions were available for those with incomes between £21 and £31. The pension became available to a wider group of pensioners as initial disqualifications—for those receiving poor relief, not considered thrifty, or with criminal records—were dropped because they were impractical or impolitic. These subtle changes began the process of the cleansing of the pension of the smell of the poor law, with its traditional distinctions between deserving and undeserving poor.

The pension proved to be much more expensive for the government than first projected, as a far wider proportion of the aged population availed themselves of its benefits. There were interesting distinctions across the UK: in England and Wales some 41 per cent of those over seventy qualified; the figure in Scotland was higher, at

50 per cent, but both were outstripped by Ireland where 90 per cent of those over seventy qualified. 1 These differences arose from a combination of bureaucratic complications and demographic influences—the skewed age structure of Ireland as a result of emigration, for example. In Scotland there were some difficulties in assessing claims for pensions in some cases as compulsory civil registration of births had been introduced only in 1855—fifty-three years before the introduction of the pension. Prior to that date registration of births had been poor in scattered rural parishes in the highlands, amongst the dense and mobile populations of the most heavily industrialised areas, and in districts where religious dissent was prominent and the population less inclined to seek out the services of the minister of the Kirk for this

1 Thane, Old age, 228-9 purpose. Although it was well known that the aged, especially women, were among the most frequent recipients of poor relief the fact that half of this age group qualified for the pension revealed a deep seam of poverty untouched by the parsimonious Scots poor law. The pension also brought many of its recipients into contact with the state for the first time, mostly in the form of the Post Office, which provided and received application forms and disbursed the money. A new bureaucratic structure of local pensions committees took the decisions on the individual claims, a reminder that although this was a central government initiative it was not undertaken by a fully central ised government. The localism—even parochialism—of Scottish life marched alongside the advance of the state into the lives of Scots in the early twentieth century.

One school of thought argues that social welfare was a construct which middle-class politicians condescendingly imposed on the working class. Suspicion of the intervention of the state has been a theme of studies of the reception of welfare reform among its direct recipients. Some on the left were suspicious of social welfare reform, characterising it as capitalist trick to permit the perpetuation of low wages. The counter argument stresses the positive reactions of the poor as they received their first pension payments and the fact that this money, far from eroding self-reliance, provided resources to pursue an independent life free from the fear and stigma of the poor-law. 1 There were, nevertheless, weaknesses in the pensions scheme. 2 Some

critics felt the qualifying age of seventy to be too high, leaving a gap between the end

of an active working life and the award of the pension, years in which poverty could

take hold. The pension provided less than a full subsistence for ‘the very old, the very

poor and the very respectable.’ Other critics, especially Lord Rosebery, argued that it

1 The debate can be followed in Pelling , ‘Working class’, 1-18; Thane, ‘Working class’, 877-900; Pugh ‘Working-class experience’, 775-96 2 N.L.S., Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc.5490(1)/149, Duncan to Mabel, 21 Apr. 1907 was ‘socialism pure and simple’ and that it eroded family life in that it absolved relatives of caring for the elderly. 1 In fact, there is plenty of evidence that it facilitated

the strengthening of these family links by bring more money into the household.

Despite its limitations the pension was the closest the Liberals came to introducing an

element of social welfare which was received as a right; above all it was non-

contributory, being paid to a group of non-taxpayers from the proceeds of general

taxation. Although the introduction of old age pensions was not a politically

disinterested act, and the Liberals assiduously courted popularity over the pension in

the elections of 1910, it was the case that most recipients of the pension were non-

voters, especially since a majority of pensioners were women. The pension did not

tread on the toes of the friendly societies or the insurance industry, neither of whom

were able to provide this kind of benefit for those who would qualify for the pension.

This provides a marked contrast with the schemes of national insurance which were

the final measure of social welfare introduced by the Liberal government and the most

controversial among the working class. These schemes—to which workers, employers

and the state contributed—provided benefits for those unable to work through

sickness and unemployment. In the case of the latter only workers in a defined list of

industries susceptible to cyclical unemployment—building, for example—could

benefit. The schemes were administered through ‘approved societies’—friendly

societies, trade unions, insurance companies—thus retaining an element of nineteenth

century practice alongside state intervention. These measures were more

unambiguously part of a ‘New Liberal’ programme, being the brainchildren of Lloyd

George and Churchill. They threatened a series of vested interests—notably the

1 Thane, Old age , 225 medical profession and the insurance industry—who had to be co-opted in order to make them work. 1 Amongst the working class the most controversial aspect of

National Insurance was the requirement to contribute from their own limited

resources. Labour leaders argued that this was unfair and some, like Keir Hardie,

argued that it should be non-contributory.

Amongst employers the scheme was unpopular, the most famous manifestation of this was the strange tale of ‘the Turra coo’. The North East of Scotland had seen strong opposition to the National Insurance Bill, with effigies of Lloyd George and the local

Liberal MP being burnt in Inverurie. The incident was initiated when a Unionist farmer, Robert Paterson, informed his workers that he would not contribute to the scheme. Despite a court case he continued to refuse to pay and a poinding and warrant sale was organised to recover the sums he owed. Amongst the goods poinded was a white cow which was ordered to be sold in the main square at Turriff. Before the unfortunate beast could be taken there Paterson daubed her with sarcastic references to Lloyd George and the National Insurance scheme. At the sale the cow escaped and the hostile crowd threw missiles at the auctioneer; criminal charges of deforcement against Paterson and others were found ‘not proven’, a popular verdict with the

‘crowd’ in the district, and Paterson was hailed as a hero. This demonstrates that farmers in the north east of Scotland—like employers of servants in the west end of

London—were resistant to contributing to their employees’ welfare. Less convincing is Fenton’s suggestion that it pointed to ‘the close community of interest between farm workers and farmers’ in the north east. The fact that Paterson’s men made no objection to their employer’s refusal to make his insurance contributions is evidence

1 Searle, New England , 367-8; Thane, Foundations, 84-7 not of their fellow feeling with him, but their weakness, even in one interpretation their lack of class consciousness. 1 Further evidence for a more critical perspective is to be found in the contemporaneous foundation of the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union in Turiff, with Joe Duncan as a leading light. Principally, however, it demonstrates that, whereas a consensus about the efficacy of the pension quickly developed, the introduction of national insurance was much less consensual.

In his 1907 speech Campbell Bannerman had specifically referred to children, and they were the target for another set of Liberal reforms. The Royal Commission on

Physical Training, which had been stimulated by Boer War revelations of apparent physical deterioration, investigated the health of children in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Based on the results, which appeared to show that Scottish children were shorter and lighter than the British average, the Commission reported that ‘there exists in

Scotland an undeniable degeneration of individuals’ and recommended a regime of physical training in Scottish Schools. This was difficult to implement because of a shortage of facilities and qualified teachers, but it did help to create a climate of opinion which conscripted the school into the cause of social reform. 2 This was by not a straightforward process as the debate over medical inspection and free school meals demonstrated. The first attempt to introduce statutory provision of free meals in

Scottish schools came in 1906 in a Bill sponsored by the newly elected Labour MP

George Barnes. This, like the Scottish land bills, was rejected by the House of Lords.

Although the Liberals painted this as another case of reaction by the peers there was a vigorous debate in Scotland over the measure. Its opponents argued that the voluntary sector was doing enough; state subsidised feeding would be, variously: demoralising,

1 Fenton, ‘Popular culture and the Turra Coo’, 76-86, quote at 78; Carter, Farm life , 172-3 2 Velek, ‘Industrial and commercial efficiency’, 242-83 an encouragement to mothers to go out to work, and contrary to the notion that parents, rather than the state, ought to be responsible for the welfare of their children.

By 1908, however, a more confident Liberal government was able to push through an

Education Bill which contained a provision permitting free meals for poor children.

This was not a decisive break with the past since some school boards worked in co- operation with the charities and the bill had a clause enabling costs to be recovered from parents deemed guilty of neglect or irresponsibility. 1 This was a reform which was pressed for by the labour movement and which owed much to changing views in the medical profession. The medical member of the Local Government Board, a remarkable progressive doctor called W. Leslie Mackenzie, had undertaken work for the Physical Training Commission and throughout the Edwardian and Great War period was indefatigable in arguing that poverty and environment were central to the health of the working-class population, especially women and children. This view was important in shifting the intellectual climate away from deterministic attitudes based on race and eugenics and its development over the inter-war period helped to create the landscape for post-war welfare and housing reform. 2

Unfinished business: politics after 1910

The results of the 1910 general elections changed the focus of politics at both a UK

and a Scottish level. The principal driver of change was the altered parliamentary

arithmetic: the elections had eroded the Liberal majority, but such was the Labour and

Irish presence in the House of Commons it was inconceivable that they would lose

office. The price of continued power, however, was less control over the political

agenda, principally the revival of the Irish question.

1 Stewart, ‘“This injurious measure”’, 76-94; Anderson, Education and the Scottish people , 204-5; Levitt, Poverty and social welfare , 56-9 2 Levitt, ‘The state, the family and the Scottish health problem’, 55-72

A third Irish home rule bill was introduced to the House of Commons in 1912 after considerable, but inconclusive, debate in cabinet about its implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. The cabinet committee in which this debate took place gave serious consideration to ‘Home-rule all round’ as a possibility of avoiding the problems encountered by earlier (and later) home rule bills. The difficulty, according to Winston Churchill, was not how to accommodate Scotland, Wales or Ireland in this structure, but to find a way of distinguishing between Imperial and English affairs. He produced a complex scheme for dividing the United Kingdom into ten regions, each with its own ‘legislative and administrative body, separately elected’; in Scotland and

Wales these would be ‘clothed with parliamentary form’, but the imperial parliament would ‘remain unaltered’. Such plans were dissected by the Principal Clerk of the

House of Commons and found wanting on two grounds: the demand for home rule in

Scotland was faint and could be met by administrative functions; the English provinces were not workable because ‘there is no homogeneity in any group of

English counties corresponding to the homogeneity of Scotland or Wales’. Ultimately the Irish home-rule bill was presented to parliament on much the same lines adopted by Gladstone in 1893 and innovations such as federalism and ‘home-rule all round’ were sidelined. 1 With the power of the House of Lords reduced, this bill had a greater

chance of reaching the statute book than its ill-starred predecessors of 1886 and 1893.

New problems were encountered, however; principally that of finding a way of

accommodating Ulster and the implementation of the Act was overtaken by the

outbreak of the Great War.

1 TNA:PRO, CAB37/105/16, Devolution, 24 Feb. 1911 [Winston S. Churchill]; CAB37/105/18, Devolution, 1 Mar. 1911 [Churchill]; CAB37/105/23, Devolution, 9 Mar. 1911 [Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert]. One of the arguments for home rule had been to clear the parliamentary timetable of

Irish issues in favour of social reform and imperial questions, and politics after 1910 were a reminder of the need for this. For many New Liberals the optimism of having reduced the obstructive power of the House of Lords was matched by the pessimism of seeing the revival of the Irish question, a Gladstonian hangover. Perhaps there was more appetite for such headaches in Scotland as one feature of political activity in the years immediately before the Great War was a revival of debate about Scottish home rule, a traditional fleck on the coat-tails of the Irish question. 1 Although most Liberals

could agree that there was a logical case for considering the questions in tandem, it

was a different matter to persuade the government to take action. Asquith seemed

uninterested when a deputation of his fellow Scottish MPs visited him in May 1912 to

press the subject. They emphasised that there were differences with Ireland—Scotland

was ‘neglected’ rather than ‘wounded’ by the existing constitutional arrangements—

but they were unable to secure the promise of a Scottish home rule bill in 1913,

despite the Prime Minister’s comments on the subject during the second reading of

the Irish Home Rule Bill in April. 2 These events demonstrated not only the weakness

of the political, as opposed to the practical, case for Scottish home rule: debate on the

Irish question raised hopes but direct comparisons exposed the muted nature of the

demand for a Scottish parliament. The call for Scottish home rule had no credibility, it

was seen—even by Liberal governments—as a faddist concern of the ‘usual suspects’

among Scottish radicals. Scotland’s general unionism, as well as its strong Liberalism,

meant that there was nothing to be gained from the creation of a Scottish parliament

which would raise the problematic question of the place of Scottish MPs at

1 Liberal MP, The constitutional crisis , 5, 9-10, 23; Searle, A New England?, 429; Jalland, ‘U.K.devolution, 1910-14’, 762-75 2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Asquith MSS, 89, ff.1-12, Deputation from Scottish Liberal M.P.s, 6 May 1912. Westminster, as had been the case with the putative Irish schemes. The politics of constitutional reform were complicated, especially with Ulster seemingly on the brink of civil war in 1913, Unionist leaders calling for civil disobedience and the loyalty of army units in question. In this context, because Scottish home rule was not being considered by the government on its own merits, it had little chance of being taken seriously.

Although the Glaswegian businessman Andrew Bonar Law, by now leader of the

Unionist party, took up the cause of the land of his forbears with vehemence, the

Ulster question was not an important a factor in Scottish politics. This may seem odd given the strength of Liberal Unionism in the west of Scotland in 1886, but the evidence is fairly clear. Edward Carson, the leader of Ulster Unionism, held monster meetings—perhaps attended by 100,000 people—in Liverpool and was able to rouse the protestant workers of that city to support the defence of Ulster: he was not able to perform the same trick in the west of Scotland. Less than 10,000 people came to hear him in Glasgow and the Scottish presbyterian churches, then exploring the extent of their social conscience, were not willing to become involved in a protestant campaign to defend Ulster. 1 Further meetings in Scotland, including those planned for Inverness and Aberdeen, were either cancelled or greeted with a similar lack of enthusiasm, to the irritation of the Unionist leadership. 2 The sectarian overtones of Carson’s rhetoric may not have appealed to the Liberal skilled working class of the west of Scotland.

The political and workplace culture of the city was entirely different to that of

Liverpool, where unskilled work and sectarian local politics prevailed. The general elections of 1906 and January and December 1910 had seen a revival of Liberalism in

1 Smith, ‘Taking the leadership’, 77; Smith ‘Commonsense thought’, 401, 431-2. 2 H.L.R.O., Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 30/3/59 and/73, George Younger to Bonar Law, 27 and 30 Oct. 1913 Glasgow and the Unionist domination of 1900, not in itself motivated by sectarianism, was eclipsed. The nascent Labour movement, with its strong Liberal background was also supportive of Irish home rule and opposed to the intrusion of the politics of

Ulster into the west of Scotland. The growth and stability of the economy after the depression of 1908 probably also contributed to the absence of sectarian politics. 1

Despite Bonar Law’s prominence in the Unionist defence of Ulster there is no

evidence that his party in Scotland were exercised by the question. Indeed, in a

confidential memorandum to candidates in 1914 the Unionists professed to be

relatively unconcerned about the threat of Scottish home rule but were keen to find

ways of turning the presence of the issue to their advantage. Although there was some

negativity about this—arguing that home rule would compromise national defence,

prosperity and prestige—there was also a positive message that Unionists should

‘show a full appreciation of the fine worth and patriotic importance of Scottish

national sentiment when directed into legitimate channels’. On a more practical level

they argued for relieving the Westminster parliament by the creation of an Imperial

Council and delegation of matters of local concern to a strengthened Scottish Office. 2

Whilst the years between 1910 and 1914 saw more attention being paid to Scottish

home rule than had been the case in 1886 or 1893 it was still no nearer to being

recognised as an important question in Scottish politics, far less implemented.

Given the breakthrough of the Labour party in 1922 much attention has been given to

detecting signs of this change in pre-war politics. This is one of the clearest examples

of Scottish politics following its own course. In England and Wales there is much

evidence to point to the conclusion that Labour was poised to, at least, mount a

1 Smith, ‘Commonsense thought’, 183, 186 2 H.L.R.O., Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 32/3/30, Confidential memorandum to Candidates: Scottish Home Rule, c. May 1914 serious challenge to the Liberals. As we have seen Labour was not especially well organised in Scotland in this period; trades unionism was weak; the identity of the movement was uncertain. The agenda of politics was still dominated by issues on which the Liberal party made the running: the land question, temperance, and especially Irish home rule. 1 The Liberal party could point to substantial achievements and for a time it seemed that even the logjam on Irish home rule could be broken now that the Lords was no longer an insurmountable obstacle. The longstanding Liberal political culture of Scotland seemed to have been confirmed at the general elections of

1910. Labour only contested five of the fourteen Scottish by elections in this period and its mean vote was lower than that which was achieved in English contests. This does not mean that Labour was entirely impotent, but its impact on progressive politics was negative. There were three by elections—Lanarkshire South, Leith and

Midlothian—between 1910 and 1914 at which Labour acted as a spoiler and allowed the Unionists to triumph over the Liberals. Their best performance, 24.5 per cent of the vote, came at Leith in February 1914 but the Unionist triumphed with only 38 per cent. None of the three Labour MPs elected for Scottish constituencies before 1914 was distinguishable from There is no evidence that a 1915 general election would have been approached with a great deal of confidence by Labour and we must look to events during and immediately after the war to explain the Labour breakthrough of

1922. 2

1 Fraser, ‘The Labour party’, 59 2 Hutchison, Political history , 256-65 Chapter four: the Great War

The epic scale and tragic sense of loss pulls the historian towards the conclusion that the Great War was a unique watershed. Industrialisation and technological advance created lethal weapons and population growth provided innumerable victims for them.

The colonial conflicts of the late nineteenth century provided no preparation, and even the Crimean and Boer Wars, although the cost of the latter caused political convulsions, paled into insignificance compared with the human and financial costs of the Great War. It was the first conflict for which Britain had raised a mass army for over a century. The war cut through recent debates about the state, increasing its role in ways unimaginable even to Edwardian New Liberals: the number of income-tax payers in the UK increased from 1.2 million to 6.8 million, for example. Despite this, expenditure vastly outstripped income during the war years. From 1915 the state became increasingly interventionist to ensure munitions supply; conscription operated from 1916; and, by the middle of 1918, nearly five million workers were employed on government work for the war effort. 1 In politics the war coincided with the eclipse of the Liberals, an event of especial significance in Scotland which entered the war dominated by that party. In demography the war was sandwiched between two periods of very high emigration, and the net movement of people during the conflict may well have been in Scotland’s favour. It may be going too far to say that this cancelled out the statistical effects of war-related mortality, but given the extent of emigration since 1880 and what would occur in the 1920s, it is an important discontinuity. In other senses too the paradoxical effect of the war can be seen: improvements in the mortality rate, especially for women and for older men and

1 Lee, ‘Scottish economy’, 29-30, 34, Rubin, War, law and labour , 17 notable improvements in infant mortality, an indicator especially sensitive to changes in social welfare. 1

A martial tradition

Scotland’s wartime experience overlaid a martial tradition stretching back to the Wars of Independence and including such diverse exemplars as the Covenanters, the

Jacobites and the service of Scots in British units in the eighteenth century with

France. If these events were antique, recent military experiences of Scots were problematic. The eighteenth century army, including its officer class, was disproportionately Scottish, but by the Boer War this was a memory, although a potent one. By then Scots were under-represented in the British armed forces in contrast to the earlier period and to the Irish. 2 The Crimean War, despite the birth of

the myth of the ‘Thin Red Line’, was scarcely a glorious theatre and it clearly

demonstrated the difficulties of recruiting in Scotland. Highland depopulation had

reduced the fertility of one former breeding ground for soldiery: as The Times

commented sentimentally in 1855, ‘If we want men for our armies …we must go to

Manchester or Birmingham, to the streets of the metropolis … but not to the

highlands of Scotland.’ Imperial ventures proved more useful to the maintenance of a

Scottish martial tradition. The Indian rebellion of 1857 was the site of a renewed

emphasis on the tradition of the highlanders as a martial race and the little wars of the

new empire in Africa provided further opportunities to triumph over unsophisticated

enemies. 3 The Boer War saw a number of these themes come together. The recruiting

process was difficult due to the shocking physical condition of many urban recruits, a

1 Young, ‘Voluntary recruiting’, 392; Winter, Great War , 103-53 2 Hanham, ‘Religion and nationality’, 162-7 3 The Times , 21 Sept. 1855; for an unsentimental rebuttal see Scotsman , 24 Sept. 1855; Streets, Martial races , 55-62, 69-75, 173-85 revelation which induced anxiety about the future of the empire and stimulated social reform, as has been explored in an earlier chapter. The Boers were more difficult to subdue than had been expected, and Scottish regiments figured prominently in the reverses of ‘Black Week’ in December 1899. Even the kilt, pre-eminent symbol of

Scottish military identity, proved problematic: ‘when kilted soldiers were pinned to the ground … for many hours under a blazing sun, the backs of their knees became so burnt and blistered that many were rendered hors de combat for several days’. 1 One positive development during the Boer War was the raising by Lord Lovat of his

‘Scouts’, a unit recruited from highland sporting estates, men skilled in the fieldcraft and rifle-shooting required to match the Boer farmers. It is ironic that these skills were developed in an industry which had contributed to highland depopulation.

Considerable literary and cultural effort had to be expended to maintain the myths of the Scottish educational tradition, similar energy was required to bolster its martial equivalent. The raw materials existed in the distinctive Scottish, and more especially highland, regiments. The ‘Highlandism’ of these regiments resided in the symbols of their uniforms and their histories rather than their personnel, which were diverse. The difficulties of recruiting men for these regiments, especially from their local areas, led to proposals for their amalgamation. 2 Even the modest proposals of 1881 for

regimental reform caused howls of protest and the amalgamations and suppression of

highland regimental identities were headed off. The highland regiments had more

vocal support and obvious symbols—especially the kilt and regimental tartan—to

defend. Lowland regiments were less favourably treated, four were amalgamated to

form the Cameronians and the Highland Light Infantry, which recruited in Glasgow

and Lanarkshire. The Secretary of State for War commented sardonically of this

1 Spiers, ‘Scottish soldier in the Boer war’, 158 2 Spiers, Late Victorian army , 127 tartan ‘controversy’ that his department was ‘neglecting the Transvaal and the Ashanti for the sake of well weighing the merits of a few more threads of red, green or white.’

This indicated the importance of military symbols, especially those with highland dimension, to Scottish national identity. In the longer term the survival of these local regimental identities was crucial for the success of the recruiting drive at the beginning of the Great War in 1914. 1

The visibility of Scottish regiments meant that the Scottish element of the army was

far more prominent than the numbers of Scots in its ranks would suggest, and

provided another institution to celebrate the identifiable activities of Scots within

British institutions. Despite variations at the margins, however, the Scottish

experience of the Great War was not particularly distinctive. Although a relatively

large number of Scots—around 688,000—enlisted in the forces during the conflict,

their overall experience had much in common with soldiers from other parts of the

United Kingdom. 2 Despite this the war was interpreted through a Scottish lens by contemporaries and in the aftermath of the conflict the notion of a profound Scottish sacrifice became prominent. This was evident among socialists and nationalists, and by the establishment figures, led by the Duke of Atholl, who campaigned for a

Scottish National War Memorial. The latter felt that the losses had been in a glorious cause—the defence of Scotland, Britain and the Empire; whereas elements of the former group felt that those who had served and died had been betrayed by inter-war unemployment and emigration.

A rush to the colours?

1 Strachan, Politics of the British army , 204-5; Spiers, Late Victorian army , 126-7 2 Royle, Flowers of the forest, 35; Spiers, ‘Scottish soldier at war’, 314-55 The outbreak of the war has been interpreted as a period of naïve optimism about the length and nature of the conflict. There were also tensions and concerns which expressed themselves in a variety of ways, often mundane. The outbreak of war during the harvest season led to concerns that food supply would be interrupted if large numbers of agricultural labourers joined up. In the event this did not prove to be a problem, but it was a source of anxiety in August and September 1914. Further anxiety was evident in the spy scares which were reported in local newspapers around

Scotland: in Elgin a ‘supposed German spy’ was alleged to be asking questions and taking notes on troop movements, further investigations revealed him to be deaf and dumb! Other scares involved stories of soldiers being drugged after being offered smokes by strangers. 1 This was evidence of a feverish atmosphere induced by novel

circumstances, as there had not been a national mobilisation for over a century.

The Presbyterian clergy indulged in strident rhetoric at the outbreak of the war despite strong intellectual links with German protestantism. Many ministers had studied at

German universities and for some this made wartime bellicosity difficult to reconcile with their academic experiences. 2 For others there were no such problems: one minister lauded Belgium as an ‘inherently religious country’ which ‘has encountered the onslaught of Prussian atheism thinly varnished over with blasphemous appeals to the almighty’. 3 This bloodthirstiness did not impress everybody: ‘A Territorial’s mother’ from Orkney lambasted ministers for not enlisting in greater numbers, concluding that they would be ‘less missed than farmers’. 4 Although ministers and

1 Elgin Courant & Courier , 7 Aug. 1914; Perthshire Constitutional & Journal , 23 Sept. 1914; see Strachan, First World War , 106-7; Royle, Flowers of the forest, 24, 35-6 2Strachan, First Word War , 1119; Brown, ‘“A solemn purification by fire”’, 84; Newlands, John and Donald Baillie , 36-9, 50-4 3 Elgin Courant & Courier , 21 Aug. 1914; Nairnshire Telegraph & General Advertiser , 11 Aug. 1914 4 Orcadian , 26 Dec. 1914 sons of the manse enlisted in relatively large numbers, the war induced a deep sense of crisis in the Scottish churches. Initially it was hoped that the war would encourage spirituality and religious observance. This optimism, evident in war sermons which proclaimed the justice of British war aims, gave way to more troubling points of view.

When losses began to mount simplistic hopes for religious revival were dashed in the face of declining church attendance. Fears deepened as the war seemed to be in a stalemate and evidence of the irreligion and immorality of the troops appeared.

Investigations revealed that only a small minority of the troops retained a church connection and many regarded the church and its teachings as irrelevant to the horrors of the trenches. Douglas Haig’s close relationship with a Scottish chaplain, Rev

George Duncan, whose sermons he quarried for justification of his actions, was not matched by those under his command. Although the pre-war period had seen the development of social concern in Scottish presbyterianism, the war weakened this. In the face of the advance of the state and the role of socialist organisations the churches found their ideas on social questions, like housing, were marginalised. The drive towards union between the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church—begun in

1908—posed difficulties; many of the leading advocates of unity, such as Rev John

White (himself a chaplain), were unimpressed by Christian progressivism. Anti- catholicism, suppressed in the pro-Belgian rhetoric of 1914, came to fore and the

Churches retreated into a narrow patriotism. 1

At the outbreak of the war there was an instinctive consensus that the crisis had to be faced with a volunteer army. It made little sense to demonise German militarism only to confront it with a conscript army. An appeal was made by the Secretary of State for

1 Brown, ‘“A solemn purification by fire”’, 82-104; Brown, ‘Piety, gender and war’, 170-91; De Groot, ‘“We are safe whatever happens”’, 193-211 War, Lord Kitchener, for new recruits to be organised into new battalions of existing regiments. Although the number of infantry battalions increased from 161 to over

1700 the number of regiments remained the same. 1 This meant that their identities,

histories and traditions could be used in appealing for volunteers. The vestigial

traditions of clanship, for example, were used in the appeals for recruits to highland

regiments.

If an islesman enlists, depend upon it, he will follow Lord Lovat or Lochiel,

for they are the militant representatives of the two great highland families to

whom highlanders and islesmen ever looked to for leadership … The call has

gone forth to these straths and glens from whence were drawn the warriors

who fought under Wellington on the Peninsula, who stood by the gallant

Moore on the ramparts of Corunna, and took a notable part in upholding their

country’s honour on a Belgian plain a few years later. 2

The echoes of Jacobitism as well as the martial exploits of highlanders in the service of the British state might be seen as contradictory, but taken together they are evidence of the wide range of reference which was used to appeal for recruits in 1914.

This passage contains a reference to a third tradition, the leadership of the traditional landowning families. Although both the Lovat and Cameron of Lochiel families had

Jacobite traditions, by 1914 they were firmly established in the political and social establishments at local and national levels. In fact, the outbreak of war provided an opportunity for landowners, whose power and status had been challenged since the

1880s, to reassert their claims to primacy.

1 Strachan, Politics of the British army, 208 2 Inverness Courier, 12 Mar. 1915; Cameron & Robertson, ‘“Fighting and bleeding for the land”’, 81- 102

Although locality was important in this kind of appeal it was by no means exclusive; a regiments like the QOCH recruited in its home territory of Inverness-shire, but also in

Glasgow and even in Canada. Indeed, as the period of voluntary recruiting proceeded through 1914 and 1915 these wider territories became much more important for a regiment like the QOCH which became less dependant on its locality as recruits were dispersed through the army rather than concentrated them in local regiments. Thus, although the armed forces were a British institution they were also capable of contributing to Scottish and local identities: the early part of the Great War was something more than an outburst of British patriotism.

Recruitment, like emigration, was an accumulation of individual decisions and information and opportunity were crucial determinants. In Glasgow and Edinburgh municipal tramcars were bedecked in posters and used as mobile recruiting stations.

Further, civic institutions which helped to appeal for recruits, were numerous and conveniently located. In rural areas these were not present to the same degree and impulsive enlistment was less likely, although once local political associations were properly constituted as recruiting offices the network of opportunity was extended.

The role of employers was also important: promises of jobs kept open for recruits and other incentives, such as bonuses, were quite common in 1914 when the economic impact of the war was uncertain; once trade picked up in 1915 there was much less enthusiasm for recruiting from employers. In contrast to atavistic, emotional appeals were examples of coercion: landowners, for example, who threatened to dismiss estate workers who remained as civilians. Voluntary recruiting was, from both a military and economic point of view, haphazard and even irrational. There was no reliable system in place to ensure that industries important for the war effort, such as coal-mining, were not denuded of men, nor to direct the recruits into the military units which most urgently required them. 1

There were three ways in which the diversity of the recruiting experience can be identified: time, place and occupation. The number of voluntary recruits who came forward prior to the Military Service Act in January 1916 and the full implementation of conscription in the middle of that year fluctuated on a monthly, weekly, even daily basis. The first few weeks of the war saw large number of recruits, nearly half a million in September, but this was not sustained. The haphazard nature of recruiting was not encouraging to potential volunteers and numbers fell to less than 120,000 in

December 1914. The following year saw similar peaks and troughs—over 130,000 recruits in May, less than 60,000 in December—and problems were compounded when those who had been recruited in the early months of the war completed their training and reached the front lines in the late summer of 1915. Losses began to mount and replacements had to be found. The combination of maintaining the flow of recruits and preventing disruption to the economy impelled the introduction of conscription in 1916. 2 At a Scottish level these fluctuations were evident, as the

following table demonstrates:

Scottish recruitment, August 1914 to December 1915 3

Monthly recruitment Cumulative monthly Monthly percentage

recruitment increase

1 Simkins, Kitchener’s army, 63, 72-3, 127; Young, ‘Voluntary recruiting’, 144, 218-19, 222-3, 240, 247 2 Winter, Great War, 41 3 Young, ‘Voluntary recruiting’, 368-9 August 40138

September 58255 98393 145.13

October 19748 118141 20.07

November 25106 143247 21.25

December 18635 161882 13.0

January 17853 179735 11.02

February 8492 188232 4.72

March 11439 199671 6.07

April 10738 210409 5.37

May 15779 226188 7.49

June 14387 240575 6.36

July 10959 251534 4.55

August 12020 263554 4.77

September 8218 271772 3.11

October 9909 281681 3.64

November 13090 294771 4.64

December 6988 301754 2.36

Thus, 54 per cent of all the Scottish volunteers of 1914 and 1915 had enlisted by the end of 1914. A combination of reasons explain this pattern, some relate to the way in which different sectors of the economy were affected by the outbreak of war. This was also the period in which influential institutions and social groups were most enthusiastic about the war; including employers, church leaders and landowners, who craved a leadership role in the process. It was also the period in which local identities were at their most potent as a component of the recruiting process.

The geography of recruitment was highly variable at a UK and at a Scottish level. In

Scotland just over 41 per cent of the male population aged between 15 and 49 in 1911 served in the Great War. This was less than the figure for England and Wales (46 per cent) but more than that for Ireland which was only 12 per cent. Due to emigration and migration Irish society was deficient in numbers of young men, it was also a rural society; these features, added to nationalist suspicion of Britain, held down recruiting levels in Ireland outside Ulster. The young men of Irish communities in urban

Scotland, however, signed up in large numbers and their pattern of enlistment followed much the same pattern as the male population as a whole. They were encouraged to join up by the Roman Catholic church and their newspapers such as the

Glasgow Observer . The distinctiveness of the Scottish pattern lies in the fact that

nearly 65 per cent of Scottish recruits were volunteers, compared to 52 per cent for

England and Wales. There was also a distinct geography of recruiting in Scotland,

although this was a result of economic and social structure rather than inherent levels

of martial enthusiasm. The industrial counties of Lanark and Ayr, for example,

produced 57 per cent of recruits in the voluntary period despite having only 37 per

cent of the population. Predictably, Glasgow was the location where most recruits

enlisted, about a third of this group, in fact. In some short periods the statistics are

remarkable: during the week of 18 to 24 October 1914 the 3284 recruits who enlisted

in the city represented nearly three quarters of the Scottish total for that week and

over 17 per cent of all recruits in Britain. Not all of these recruits would have been

from Glasgow, although there were striking local successes such as the activities of

James Dalrymple, the manager of the municipal tramways service, who persuaded 29

per cent of his male employees to enlist. A non-industrial city like Aberdeen, by contrast, processed a far lower number of recruits—around 2 per cent of the Scottish total. It was not a simple industrial/non-industrial contrast, however; Dundee, an important textile centre, processed only 1.5 per cent of Scottish recruits in 1914. 1

Historians agree that the major determinant in this diversity is economic structure, but they disagree on the precise nature of the relationship between occupation and recruiting. It has been suggested that the initial surge of recruits in Scotland in 1914 can be explained by the impact of the war on particular sectors of the economy. Thus the east-coast coalfield, and parts of the industrial economy were deleteriously affected by the outbreak of the war, either because of dislocation from their markets and suppliers, or, in building or fishing, a virtual cessation of activity. There was a pool of potential recruits from these industries because of the threat or reality of unemployment (an important recruiting agent). Other industries, such as jute, were stimulated by the war and produced few recruits, helping to explain the low level of enlistment in Dundee. This general explanation should not be neglected, but additional factors have to be contemplated: the age and gender structure of industries varied— for example, there was a relative dearth of young male agricultural or textile workers. Although the physical standard for enlistment was relaxed over the voluntary recruiting period, many men were rejected. There is a shortage of information on this point and the evidence points in different directions. Industries which were perceived to produce very fit recruits, such as coal-mining, sometimes had low enlistment rates,

1 Statistics from Winter, Great War , 28; McFarland, ‘“How the Irish paid their debt”, 261-84; and the tables in Young, ‘Voluntary recruiting’, 407-37 compared to other sectors, such as the metal industries, which had high levels of enlistment despite a poor health record. 1

In Hawick there was extensive debate in the local press about the seeming lack of

martial enthusiasm in rural communities. One correspondent concluded

It is well known now, as in times past, it is the young men of the towns of the

mills, factories, workshops, of the desk and the learned professions, of our

middle-classes – yes, and of our old nobility (and I am a Liberal) who are

upholding and have upheld our flag by land and sea. The farm worker does not

seem to trouble much about the defence of our native land. He is more

interested in the price of cattle or sheep or lambs or the prices paid at the fairs.

Yes, and after fighting their battles as well as our own, we have to keep up the

roads and streets for them and their cars, and carts, and cattle, and sheep, and

lambs, and droves of dogs which they get licence free. 2

This is obviously impressionistic, even prejudiced, but does it reflect the reality of the pattern of recruiting in Scotland in the early part of the war? Throughout the United

Kingdom there is very strong evidence that rural communities provided fewer recruits than industrial areas. Similarly, there is evidence for a high rate of recruitment from men working in commercial, service and professional occupations: over 40 per cent of the pre-war labour force in these sectors had joined up by the middle of 1916, compared to only 22 per cent of the male agricultural workforce. This does not imply

1 Compare Dewey, ‘Military recruiting’, with Young, ‘Voluntary recruiting’; while the former considers a wider range of factors, the latter marshals impressive evidence for the link between recruiting and the economy in 1914. 2 Hawick News , 16 Oct. 1914 that the rural population, or agricultural labourers, were less patriotic than their urban counterparts, as the Hawick correspondent suggests. Although farm labour was an occupation populated by young men and women the structure of employment may have worked against enlistment: long contracts and tied houses raised the possibility of loss of income for the recruit and of domestic security for his family. 1 Farmers did

not encourage recruiting in the same way as many commercial employers; although

few, surely, went so far as the Perthshire farmer who sued a labourer for breach of

contract when he enlisted! 2 Nevertheless, one officer in a regiment which recruited from rural east Fife felt ‘very miserable about the regiment … it has really failed to recognise the urgency of the situation by the very bad response it has made to the call for service.’ 3

What was the fate of the recruits who signed up in the first few months of the war?

Because Kitchener, had preferred the idea of a new army of raw recruits to the

Territorials, it took some time—nearly a year in fact—before these men were ready for the front line. It would be too much to say that the period until the late summer of

1915 was a ‘phoney war’, but during that period when the brunt of the conflict was borne by the professionals and the reserves, the full impact of the losses did not strike home in Scotland. All that was to change with the Battle of Loos in late September

1915. Loos of course, was not an exclusively Scottish experience; because the profile of the peaks and troughs of voluntary recruiting were so similar across the country, the first batch of new army soldiers to be sent to the front line represented a fair cross- section of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, two Scottish divisions, the 9 th and the

1 Carter, Farmlife , 108-9; Anthony, Herds and hinds , 66-7 2 Dewey, ‘Military recruiting’, 204-5; Young, ‘Voluntary recruiting’, 137 3 N.A.S., Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/13/4, Diary [of John Gilmour], 11 Aug. 1914 15 th , composed of highland and lowland regiments, featured prominently. 1 Two themes are striking: the celebration of the Scottish contribution and the implications of the involvement of the new recruits. Both are evident in contemporary comment and in post-war accounts which add to the mythology of the Scottish martial tradition. 2 The heroism of pipers, even that of an officer who declined to carry a

firearm, preferring an axe, which he allegedly put to deadly use, were celebrated. 3 In

Inverness, whose local regiment had figured prominently, the newspaper account of

the battle was in such demand that it was published separately as a pamphlet. Losses

began to afflict every community which had sent recruits in the autumn of 1914 and,

because men served and died with their neighbours and workmates, the losses

devastated civilian society and regimental cameraderie. One soldier, sent as

replacement to the 7 th battalion of the QOCH which had for a time held ‘Hill 70’, a

key objective, recalled his introduction to the unit:

Soon after I got there … there was mail come in. All the boys in my company

were crowded round to see what there was for them and the Post Corporal was

calling out the names and dishing out the letters and parcels. Half the names

that were called out there was nobody to answer them. Then a voice would

call out ‘Ower the hill’. Then one or two more, then another name—and there

would be silence, then his chum would call out ‘Ower the hill’. That was all

you could hear. ‘Ower the hill’. ‘Ower the hill’. ‘Ower the hill’. 4

1 Warner, Battle of Loos , 226, 230; Royle, Flowers of the forest , 83 2 Scotsman , 30 Sept., 9 Oct. 1915; Buchan, History of the Great War , ii, 313-28 3 Historical records of the Q.O.C.H. , iv, 79; Inverness Courier , 1, 5 Oct. 1915; Cameron Highlanders 4 Pte. C. Stewart quoted by MacDonald, 1915 , 559 This was a shocking experience and Loos was a turning point in the interaction between military action and society at home. Loos was also the last occasion on which Scotland provided a majority of the soldiers for a major assault. The impact of conscription and the organisation of replacements for soldiers killed or wounded meant that the close links between particular regiments and localities was no longer so clear after 1916. Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that the battles of the

Somme in 1916 and Arras in 1917, the latter being ‘the largest concentration of Scots ever to have fought together’. 1 At the opening of the Somme in July 1916 massive

losses were suffered by many Scottish regiments but particularly by the Royal Scots,

the Edinburgh regiment. There was particular carnage in the 16 th battalion of the

Royal Scots which had been raised in 1914 by Sir George McCrae, a wealthy

businessman and former MP for Edinburgh East. It was notable for the fact that a

large number of professional footballers from Heart of Midlothian FC had enlisted in

the battalion in November 1915. The Hearts players and officials sought to counter

the perception of football and footballers as unpatriotic by enlisting in ‘McCrae’s

battalion’. 2

Battles on the home front

The men stopped work, in spite of the offer of their employers to refer the

matter to arbitration, in spite of the remonstrances of their own officials, and

in direct violation of their own agreements, at a time when they were

employed in the manufacture of munitions absolutely necessary to carry on the

war, and when every hours’ work was of supreme importance to the successful

1 Royle, Flowers of the forest , 96 2 Alexander, McCrae’s Battalion , 155-80 describes the action on the first day of the Somme. prosecution of operations in the field. Thousands of other men have left

remunerative employment at the call of their country’s peril, and have been

content with the wages of an ordinary soldier, risking their lives for the

common cause, whereas these Clyde engineers earning high wages cared so

little for the interests of their Empire that they chucked up their work for an

additional farthing or so an hour. 1

This quotation contains an explicit contrast between the dominant images of Scotland in the Great War: the fearless and selfless recruit and the venal and unpatriotic trades unionist. The crisis in Scotland’s industrial relations during the Great War cannot be reduced to the handy simplicities of ‘Red Clydeside’, however. That there were problems cannot be denied, that they were linked to the intervention of the state in the organisation of wartime production is clear, but the objectives of those involved were complex and diverse. The connection between these events and the general strike over the issue of the forty-hour week in January 1919 and even the Labour breakthrough at the general election of 1922 are strongly disputed by historians. 2 There were several strands to the events on Clydeside; engineering strikes over ‘dilution’—the use of unskilled labour, often women, to perform processes formerly the exclusive preserve of time-served men—and the status and independence of skilled workers are prominent in the image. Further, there were strikes in industries, such as shipbuilding, where few women were employed and dilution was not an important grievance. 3

Additional problems arose from the shortage of housing stock and high rents which

prevailed in districts like Govan, Partick and Clydebank, where well-paid munitions

1 Nairnshire Telegraph and General Advertiser , 2 Mar. 1915 2 Contrast McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside with Foster, ‘Strike action and working-class politics’, 33-70; and is robustly summarised by Brotherstone, ‘Does Red Clydeside really matter any more?’, 52-80 and OCSH , 499-500 3 Reid, ‘Dilution’, 46-74 workers pushed up the price of the available housing, causing resentment which was deepened by increases in food prices (rationing was not introduced until 1917). 1 None of these events, perhaps especially the last, were taken lightly by the government.

The industrial conflicts in the shipyards and the engineering works were the first battle ground of ‘Red Clydeside’ and were initiated by perceived attacks on the status and independence of skilled workers. This was skilfully exploited by trade unionists such as William Gallacher and Harry McShane who spotted an opportunity to politicise this situation. There was, however, a division between the Marxists of the

British Socialist party and the Socialist Labour party and the older ethical and radical tradition of the Scottish labour movement. The complexities do not stop here. There was also a difference, even among the Marxists, between those who saw the anti-war cause as the most important, and others who gave primacy to the industrial disputes.

Harry McShane was utterly contemptuous of the latter group. Others opposed the war, but from outside the Marxist tradition, James Maxton was imprisoned after taking up this position. John Wheatley, a masterly figure who sought to extend his influence and that of the I.L.P. into every corner of wartime politics on the Clyde, was distrusted by many but was impossible to ignore. 2

The popular memory of left-wing politics on the Clyde celebrates the role of John

Maclean (1879-1923). This arose through the publication of multiple biographies— both popular and pious—prior to the subject becoming the preserve of academic labour historians. The continuing tradition of a Scottish Marxist left, especially in the

Scottish Socialist Party, represented in the Scotish parliament, has also kept his ideas

1 For lucid overviews see Knox, Industrial nation , 216-20 & Reid, United we stand , 177-85 2 McShane, No mean fighter , 72-86; McLean, Legend of red Clydeside , 97-110 alive. John Maclean’s name has also echoed through popular culture, notably in

Hamish Henderson’s ‘The ballad of John Maclean’ or Mat McGinn’s ‘The John

Maclean March’. Maclean’s fame has been boosted by the fact that he is claimed by several strands in modern Scottish politics—Labour, Marxist and nationalist. The last element is based on his activities towards the establishment of a Scottish Communist party in 1920 and a Scottish Workers’ Republican party in 1923. The experience of his parents, as victims of the clearances was an aspect of his heritage which influenced his criticisms of the ineffectual nature of Liberal land reform and disappointment at the continued Liberalism of the crofters. There is also an element of isolation and martyrdom in Maclean’s history. Although he was not the only Marxist opponent of the war on Clydeside, he was the most vociferous in his commitment to international proletarian revolution. Public awareness of his ideas had been generated by his pre-war activity on behalf of the SDF and his famous Marxist economics classes (recently identified as an early example of a Scottish tradition of adult education). It was, however, his trials for sedition, especially his famous speech from the dock at the second of those in May 1918, which secured his place in the popular memory of wartime politics. He famously declared that he was ‘the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot’. This did him no good, and he was sentenced to five years hard labour, much of it served in the harsh regime at Peterhead prison, where he had been after his first trial in April 1916. During his time there he came to believe that his food was being doctored. Both the government and his opponents in the sectarian world of Scottish Marxist politics, especially William

Gallacher, tried to argue that Maclean’s conspiracy theories were evidence of mental imbalance. Medical examination found this to be untrue. Maclean’s forays into electoral politics were, not surprisingly for someone who rejected the parliamentary route to socialism, unsuccessful. At the general elections of 1918 and 1922 he stood in

Glasgow Gorbals; winning over a third of the vote as a Labour candidate in a straight contest with George Barnes on the first occasion, but gaining only 13 per cent in a four sided contest in 1922. His death in 1923 prevented a third candidature and was followed by a vast turnout for his funeral in Glasgow. The considerable affection in which he was held by the Glasgow working-class, generated by his passionate and intense sincerity, did not extend to widespread belief in his Marxist politics. 1

The intervention of the state in the industrial relations field took three general forms: regulation, investigation, and punitive action. The background was the need to maintain munitions production when skilled engineers could enlist despite their centrality to the war economy. In order to obviate such difficulties the state was forced to reach compromises with the trades unions, enshrined in the ‘Treasury

Agreement’ of March 1915 and the Munitions of War Act of July 1915. The engineering unions promised to forego strike action and accept dilution while the government undertook to work through the unions, restore pre-war practices at the end of the conflict and to limit war profits. Although there was an element of reciprocity, with employers accepting government control and limitations of profits, aspects of this compromise were strongly resented on the shopfloor. Prime among them was the ‘leaving certificate’ which was required by munitions workers to move jobs, without it they could not be employed for six weeks. This was deemed to be an attack on the independence of the skilled tradesman, the essence of his status.

Nevertheless, some trades unionists welcomed the limitations on employers’ freedom of action and in parts of Scotland where levels of unionisation had been low the new

1 ODNB ; Howell, Lives of the left , 157-225; McShane, No mean fighter , esp. 102-4, 123-5, 150-2; Brotherstone, ‘John Maclean’, 15-29 structure actually assisted the formal recognition of trades unions. 1 Far from inducing

peaceable industrial relations the formalisation of dilution and restrictions on the

movement of skilled workers exacerbated existing tension between employers and

workforces and introduced new areas of disagreement. The compromises had been

introduced in the wake of strikes at the Cathcart works of William Weir in February

1915. Weir was an extreme figure among Clydeside employers, keen to grasp the

opportunities offered by the war to import working practices from the United States,

and to break the power of the unions. Weir’s influence was not merely as an employer

as he became an official of the Ministry of Munitions in July 1915, assuming

responsibility for munitions procurement in the West of Scotland. Employers in

munitions and engineering accrued considerable power and influence during the war,

their industries were crucial to the war effort, government was prepared to intervene

to ensure continued output and they continued to make massive profits. Other

industries—often no less crucial to the war effort—had a more difficult task. Textile

employers continued to make huge profits, not least from war contracts to make

uniforms, but a traditionally low wage industry with a large female workforce

struggled to retain its employees in the face of the attraction of high wages and better

conditions in the engineering industry. It is fashionable to point out the divisions in

the working class movement in Scotland during the stressful conditions of the Great

War, but it also worth remembering that the employers were similarly divided. 2 A

further series of strikes occurred after the Munitions Act and demonstrate the variety

of responses from the government. A strike in the shipyards in late 1915 over the

issue of leaving certificates (dilution was a less contentious issue in the shipbuilding

industry), occasioned the despatch of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, former Unionist

1 McLean, Legend of red Clydeside , 10-11, 28-37; Rubin, War, law and labour , 20-9, 38; Rubin, ‘Law as a bargaining weapon’, 925-45; Holford, Reshaping labour , 105 2 Melling, ‘Scottish industrialists’, 119-25 Secretary for Scotland, and an Ulster born lawyer and former engineer, Lynden

Macassey, to report on the background to the strike. 1 They found that the issues arose from localised friction over minor matters and misunderstandings about the operation of the leaving certificates. They recommended some alterations to the Munitions Act, but most importantly they suggested the creation of a new state body to mediate between employers and the workforce. The body which became known as the

Dilution Commission was appointed in 1916, with Macassey as its leading figure, and was representative of another form of state intervention—attempts to manage industrial relations. The operation of this commission in 1916 coincided with what some historians have identified as the pacification of the Clyde, allegedly achieved by the middle of 1916. Indeed, as early as February Lloyd George felt that ‘the Clyde opposition has already collapsed.’ 2 It is unclear whether the occasionally disorganised and fractious activity of the commission had much to do with this. The introduction of conscription in early 1916 convinced some workers’ representatives that the state was becoming more authoritarian and would soon directly conscript munitions workers.

Further, the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin came as a profound shock and the mishandling of its aftermath produced a level of paranoia in some elements of the

British government about the levels of threat which it faced. In Glasgow, however, there is evidence that exaggerated and perverse interpretations of the industrial disputes coloured reactions. The perceptions of the dilution commission, mirrored the views of governments in the 1880s towards the rebellious crofters, the last coherent group from Scotland to challenge the authority of the state. There was the same initial unwillingness to reconcile engrained views of the respectability and patriotism of the protestant working class with actions which seemed to be designed to frustrate the

1 For Weir see DSBB, i, 197-200; see ODNB for Macassey (1876-1963) 2 N.L.S., Elibank MSS, MS 8804, f. 8, Lloyd George to Murray of Elibank, 14 Feb. 1916 war effort. This troubled Lord Balfour of Burleigh after his interactions with the striking shipwrights at the end of 1915, he witnessed them singing psalms in Duke

Street prison and was impressed by their conscientious sense of principle rather than their revolutionary potential. Even Lynden Macassey, strident in his denunciations of

Clydeside workers and sometimes extreme in his interpretations of their motivations, remarked that the ‘vast majority of workers’ were ‘loyal men’. 1

These perceptions existed alongside much more punitive government intervention.

Three examples demonstrate this point. In late December 1915 Lloyd George visited

Glasgow believing that his irresistible personality would motivate munitions workers.

Unfortunately, he was unable to make himself heard to a fractious audience of workers at the St Andrews Hall on Christmas day. Among his reactions was to suppress the I.L.P. newspaper Forward as a punishment for its unexpurgated account

of the meeting. Interpretations of this event vary from cock-up to conspiracy, but it

was certainly not a conciliatory gesture. 2 In March and April 1916 there was a series

of strikes at Beardmore’s vast factory at Parkhead in the East End of Glasgow, and at

other works on the Clyde. These revolved around the precise arrangements for

dilution, the introduction of women and the role, highly exalted in his own view, of

the leading A.S.E. shop steward at Parkhead, David Kirkwood. He was unusual

among the leading shop stewards in his affiliation to the I.L.P. rather than the Marxist

British Socialist Party or Socialist Labour Party which dominated the Clyde Workers

Committee. Kirkwood felt slighted by the management and sympathy for him was an

additional element in the strike which began on 17 March. The government’s

response was to deport a number of leading shop stewards, including Kirkwood, from

1 Balfour, Memoir of Lord Balfour , 209; O.B.L., MS Addison dep. c. 87, f. 62, Memorandum by Lynden Macassey K.C. on industrial situation on the Clyde, n.d. but c. 10 Feb. 1916. 2 Brotherstone, ‘Suppression of the “Forward”’, 5-23; McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside , 49-62 the Clyde munitions area under the Defence of the Realm Act. This allowed

Kirkwood to indulge his taste for martyrdom, although by 1917 he was foreman at

Beardmore’s shell factory at Mile-End and strident in his exhortations to heroic productivity. 1 The final example of punitive state action, closely related to the paranoia mentioned earlier, was the growth of an intelligence network which gathered information on the leading figures in the Clydeside labour movement. Much of this stemmed from the vivid imagination of Lynden Macassey who began to see German spies lurking behind every lathe. 2

The multifarious government response to the situation on Clydeside arose from the range of ministries involved (Board of Trade, War Office, Scottish Office, Ministry of

Munitions, Local Government Board), as well differences in personality among the leading figures. Within the Ministry of Munitions, for example, consensual figures like Christopher Addison, worked alongside aggressive, autocratic individuals like

Weir, Macassey and William Beveridge. 3 Macassey wished to expand the role of the state and cut out private employers. Working for men like Weir and Beardmore encouraged the retention of ‘traditional prejudices’:

With the state as the common employer the greater part of the present labour

unrest would disappear. Those who have practical experience in handling

labour troubles know how frequently labour unrest has no real economic or

industrial foundation but is purely the product of sentimental and unsubstantial

grievances. The fact that the workman was in truth and fact working for the

1 McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside , 78-85; Hume & Moss, Beardmore , 103, 110-11, 118-23 2 O.B.L., MS Addison dep. c. 87, ff. 180-1, Macassey to Hubert Llewellyn Smith, Ministry of Munitions, 20 Feb. 1916; H.L.R.O, ABL MSS, 108/2/3, Macassey to Davidson, 2 Nov. 1922; /7 Macassey to Geoffrey Fry (10 Downing St.), 9 Nov. 1922; McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside , 83-4 3 Morgan & Morgan, Portrait of a progressive , 39-41; Harris, William Beveridge , 212-23 state and not for the private employer would infuse fresh vigour and

enthusiasm into his efforts. 1

Although the state expanded its role considerably it did not make this massive leap.

This helps us to understand why its retreat in the aftermath of the war, in contrast to

1945, was so quick and complete. This is a more important theme for understanding

the inter-war period, when the extreme politics of both left and right were marginal,

than the arid debate over whether a ‘revolutionary situation’ existed on the Clyde in

1916 or 1919. 2 One area where the advance of the state was more difficult to roll back and the event which produced the most significant results of the domestic history of the Great War in Scotland, were the rent strikes of 1915.

The rent strikes originated from the cessation of house-building at the outbreak of war and the influx of workers into areas like Govan and Partick where good wages could be earned. This pushed up rents and caused difficulties for those not earning inflated wages, or the families of servicemen surviving on army wages (never generous) and separation allowances. The structure of the Scottish urban housing market also contributed to the combustible situation. Tenants could be readily ‘evicted’ and were subject to the attentions of ‘factors’ who managed portfolios of tenement properties on a commission basis for ‘landlords’. This area of property relations was subject to the same emotive language as the processes of dislocation in rural Scotland. The dispute culminated in a concerted action on 17 November 1915 when a large number of rent strikers were threatened with legal action in the Sheriff Court, an action which

1 O.B.L., MS Addison dep. c. 87, ff. 244, 247, Memorandum on proposed scheme for establishment of efficient relationship between the government and controlled establishments by Lynden Macassey, 1 May 1916 2 Knox, Industrial nation , 218 is more critical precipitated industrial action in shipyards and munitions works, and threatened to turn this property dispute into a general crisis. 1 There are a number of points of view from

which these events can be analysed: gender, labour politics, patriotism and state

intervention.

The rent strikes were a movement in which women were prominent (yet another

possible comparison with the rural protests of the 1880s)—although it is more

debatable whether they were truly led by women—Helen Crawfurd remarked that the rent strike was ‘essentially a woman’s fight’. 2 It has been suggested that because the territory being fought over was the domestic space, the campaign became one in which women inevitably took a leading part: ‘the home was their point of production and the struggle waged over housing had, for them, much more direct resonance than industrial struggles or campaigns for formal political rights.’ 3 Although slightly patronising this reflects the gender divisions in urban society in the early twentieth century. Arthur Woodburn later remarked that ‘the most revolutionary thing that ever happened in Scotland at that time was when J.S. Clarke’s wife made Davy Kirkwood wash the dishes—which he’d never done before.’ 4 A decreasing proportion of women retained a foothold in the workplace by the 1910s and the notion of the female domestic space had taken hold amongst the families of skilled workers (including

Kirkwood’s evidently). The women who participated in the campaigns, however, were not an unvariegated mass. Alongside ‘housewives’ without much experience of political activity such as Mary Barbour, who remained active until at least the 1940s,

1 Morgan & Daunton, ‘Landlords in Glasgow’, 264-86 analyses the structure; Cameron, ‘Civil society, protest and parliament’, 123-32 pursues the rural comparison; Melling, Rent strikes is the best overall account. 2 Quoted by Melling, Rent strikes , 92 3 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow , 175 4 McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside , 239; Clarke (1885-1959) was an SLP activist and later MP for Glasgow Maryhill, 1929-31, see SLL , 78-81 Mary Laird and ‘Mrs Ferguson’, were women already active in labour politics, such as Helen Crawfurd and Agnes Dollan. 1 Many demonstrations, such as that of 17

November 1915, were largely composed of women and children, men were liminal figures referred to in placards carried by their wives or children. Meetings were held in the middle of the afternoon, making it impossible for people, men or women, who were in formal employment to attend. While this gendered interpretation of the rent strikes is important, it is not sufficient to provide complete understanding. Wider questions of labour politics have to be considered, a task which does not preclude issues of gender, as the housing question was one of a series—ranging from suffrage to pacifism—which drew women into the labour movement. That movement had, at best, an ambivalent attitude to female political activism and ‘women’s’ issues, such as suffrage, which were viewed as distractions. Nevertheless, Labour was deeply interested in the housing question and the rent strikes were part of an ongoing campaign which stretched back to the Edwardian period. The way in which the strikes occurred in widely differing areas and were seen to cut across divisions of skill, religion and gender marks them out for some scholars as an exemplar of class solidarity. 2 The wartime housing ‘famine’ and its consequences, including the rent strikes, allowed Labour, and especially the I.L.P., to move firmly onto this territory, important in their displacement of the Liberals as the dominant progressive force in

Scottish politics. Indeed, despite the prominence of women in the rent strikes

Wheatley’s rotund figure lurked in the background. More than anyone else he captured this ground for the I.L.P. One of his most important contributions was to ensure that accusations of unpatriotic behaviour could not be levelled against the rent

1 See SLL , 81-6 & 89-92 for Crawfurd (1877-1954) & Dollan (1887-1966); for Barbour see Melling, Rent strikes , 110; 2 Photograph in Melling, Rent strikes , 84-5; Smyth, ‘Rents, peace, votes’, 174-96; Damer, ‘State, class and housing’, 73-112 strikers. He accused landlords and factors as being unpatriotic war profiteers; families whose menfolk were serving with the armed forces were portrayed as being exploited by the ‘Huns at home’. In a dramatic gesture in June 1915 Wheatley intervened in the attempt to evict the family of one Michael McHugh, a wounded soldier from

Shettleston. A large crowd prevented the eviction from taking place, the factor was burnt in effigy outside his home (just as had been done to Wheatley in 1912) and, in an act of potent symbolism, a Union Jack was nailed across the mouth of the close, thereby forcing the factor, or Sheriff’s Officers engaged by him, to tear it down if the eviction was to be attempted. 1

What were the results of the rent strikes? One was the further intervention of the state

to attempt to resolve the situation and prevent disruption to munitions production. A

judge and a local academic were despatched to investigate the situation and to gather

information. 2 Their report and the escalation of the dispute encouraged the government to restrict rent increases for the duration of the war. This act received royal assent in December 1915, just as Lloyd George was engaged in his unsuccessful attempt to charm the engineers. This was significant in three ways. First, it was one of the few examples of an act which was based on Scottish conditions but extended to

England and Wales. 3 The Scottishness of its origins is less important than the fact that

the rent strikes took place in a munitions area, similar events in Sheffield or Belfast

may well have had similar results. Both publicly and privately the Government were

clear that it was the need to maintain munitions production which was behind this

unusual intervention in relations between urban landlords and tenants, although some

1 Wood, Wheatley , 54-7; Melling, Rent strikes, 66-7; Cooper, ‘John Wheatley’, 80-1 2 Melling, Rent strikes, 77 3 This has led to the suggestion that it was one of the few cases where Scottish events ‘mattered vitally to the history of mainland Britain during the last hundred years.’ Stevenson, ‘Writing Scotland’s history’, 111 rural rents had been controlled in Ireland and the north of Scotland since the 1880s. 1

Rent restriction proved difficult to withdraw in the post-war period, especially when economic conditions were not propitious. This was a problem for governments in the

1920s, when the scale of housebuilding did not accelerate as the electorate had been led to expect in 1918. The legislation, however, did nothing to alter fundamental housing problems: conditions remained dreadful, landlords and factors powerful, tenants insecure and houses in short supply. Many of the problems which John

Wheatley had sought to publicise prior to the war remained. 2

Loss, death and mourning

During the Great War Scottish society had to reacquaint itself with mass mortality.

The census of 1921 suggested a figure of 74,000 for war related mortality, nearly 11

per cent of the Scots who enlisted; the SNWM lists 85,000 names, 12.3 per cent of

enlisted Scots. 3 These, possibly conservative, estimates, are similar to other combatant nations whose territory was not fought over (11.8 per cent for Britain and Ireland but

14.5 per cent for Australia). A much higher figure, 26.4 per cent, has been suggested, and sometimes accepted, for Scots deaths as a proportion of those mobilised. This may reflect casualties in Scots regiments, which included many non-Scots, or accept uncritically Wood’s figure of 147,000, which is based on deaths among those ‘with a claim to be Scots’, an anomalous definition not extended to other nations for comparative purposes. 4 Population loss can also be seen in the restricted fertility of

the war years, it has been argued that the deficit in the number of births, at 70,000 in

1 See the Cabinet papers on the subject at TNA:PRO, CAB37/137/29 & CAB37/138/3, both from Nov. 1915, the former by the Secretary for Scotland, the latter by the President of the Local Government Board; see also the latter’s speech introducing the bill in the Commons, P.D., lxxxvi, 42, 25 Nov. 1915 2 Melling, ‘Clydeside housing’, 151-60; Melling, Rent strikes , 102-3; Wheatley, Eight pound cottages 3 Census of Scotland, 1921, preliminary report , v; Royle, Flowers of the forest , 35 4 Ferguson, Pity of war, 298-9, suggests 26.4% but provides no clue as to a source; Wood, Scottish soldier , 88; it is accepted by Devine, Scottish nation, 309; see also Winter, Great War , 75 Scotland during the war years, almost matched the estimate of war related mortality in the 1921 census. Fertility had been falling in the generation prior to the Great War but the fall in the birth rate during the war was exceptionally rapid and may have been linked to the falling marriage rate in 1916 and 1917. 1

The war seemed to have an innate resourcefulness in the matter of killing; not only

were men slaughtered on the battlefield, but the processes of mobilisation produced

tragic accidents such as the horrific train crash near Gretna in May 1915 which

resulted in the deaths of some 200 men of the Royal Scots. Even demobilisation was

no guarantee of safety; heartbreakingly demonstrated on the island of Lewis where

over 200 returning servicemen went down with the Iolaire in sight of Stornoway harbour on 1 January 1919. The year after the end of the war brought an influenza pandemic resulting in the deaths of possibly as many as 34,000, according to the most recent research. Even the contemporary official estimate of 18,000 deaths is horrific.

Not since the major epidemics of the mid-nineteenth century had mortality on this scale been experienced in Scotland. 2

The loss of a relative in battle was not a common experience for most Scottish

families but mounting losses from the enlarged volunteer army brought the experience

of death in battle to the forefront of Scottish public and private life. New rhetorical

strategies had to be devised to interpret this. The churches presented the losses as a

glorious sacrifice, but also reassured those at home that their loved ones died

vicariously and achieved salvation, a significant finessing of presbyterian doctrine.

Some Scottish ministers even compared the sacrifice of the war dead to that of

1 Winter, Great War , 253-4; Sixty-fourth report of the Registrar General for Scotland, 1918 , xv 2 Wood, ‘“Be strong and of good courage”’, 110; Macleod, ‘Sea of sorrow’, 7-10; Johnson, ‘Scottish ‘flu’, 216-26; Royle, Flowers of the forest , 133, 279-82 Christ. 1 These messages demonstrated the difficulties of rationalising large scale

mortality during the conflict and this became pronounced in more tangible ways at its

end. The Scottish landscape is littered with war memorials, in towns and villages, in

places where the number of names on the memorial outnumbers the current

population, and in a variety of sites—workplaces, educational institutions, places of

worship—in Scotland’s cities. Although the end of the Great War saw a greater effort

in this direction than previous conflicts, there was a tradition to build on from the

nineteenth century conflicts and the Boer War, although one with an inglorious origin

in the shape of the incomplete national memorial from the end of the Napoleonic

Wars on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. There was a crucial difference, however; the

nineteenth century conflicts had been fought in an age when the profession of arms

was held in low esteem. The dead of the Great War came to be seen as a group drawn

voluntarily from all corners of society, especially in Scotland where volunteers

outnumbered conscripts. So, perceived ‘in the long history of martial virtue’, they

were exalted and idealised by the culture of remembrance which grew up around the

symbols upon which they were enumerated. 2

Sir Robert Lorimer’s Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle, opened in

July 1927. 3 This was an attempt to record the names of all the Scottish war dead, adopting a broad definition of that sad category and realising a figure higher than the

1921 census. The moving force behind the creation of a national symbol of Scotland’s sacrifice in the Great War was a committee of establishment figures headed by the

1 MacLeod, ‘“Greater love hath no man than this”’, 70-89 2 Spiers, Late Victorian army, 132-3; Bushaway, ‘Name upon name’, 137, 139-40 makes the general point; Winter, Sites of memory , 82 3 Lorimer (1864-1929), ODNB; McFarland, ‘Introduction’, 1; Royle, Flowers of the forest , 288-91; Weaver, Scottish National War Memorial , is celebratory; research on this topic is required Duke of Atholl 1 who began work at the end of 1917. By 1922 there was enough money for the project to commence, a single donation of £50,000 was supplemented by a host of smaller donations from around and beyond Scotland. 2 The realisation of

this project was far from straightforward, however; the Committee had been subject to

attacks from Lord Rosebery and other critics who objected to the use of Edinburgh

Castle—and the alteration of its skyline—for this purpose; who felt that local

projects—of which a multitude were under way—were more appropriate; who

deprecated large expenditure at a time of economic difficulty; and others who

resented the fact that Scottish artists and craftsmen were not being given a sufficient

role in the design of the project. 3 Although the design of the memorial was changed in

response to these voices perhaps the most interesting criticism was that a Scottish

National War Memorial was ‘confronted by kindred movements for local memorials

in every part of Scotland. The keen spirit and deep sentiment which are expressed in

these concurrent efforts cannot but have a reflex influence on the plans of the Duke of

Atholl’s committee.’ 4 Like most war memorials—local, provincial and national—the

SNWM was devoid of triumphalism, it was a shrine to the dead and an attempt to

express a sense of indebtedness, rather than an aggressive proclamation of victory. 5

The opening ceremony was representative of a broad range of Scottish institutions and

the Scotsman commented that the memorial represented ‘a lasting remembrance of an

agonising experience’ and that it brought to life the ‘very soul of the nation’. 6

1 Atholl (1871-1942), ODNB 2 see TNA:PRO, CAB24/96/149-50 & CAB24/139/277, for cabinet papers on the memorial from Jan. 1920 & Sept. 1922 3 Scotsman , 26 Feb. 1920, 7, 14 Oct. 1922, 11; NLS, Dep. 349/53, J. Pittendrigh MacGillivray to Robert Munro, 15 Jun. 1918; Munro to MacGillivray, 19 Jun. 1918; PRO:TNA, CAB24/161/349, Scottish National War Memorial, 245 Jul. 1923 4 Scotsman, 18 Jan. 1919, 6 5 Heffernan, ‘Forever England’, 312; Winter, Sites of memory , 95, 98 6 Scotsman , 14 Jul. 1927, 8 This returns us to the theme with which this chapter began: where can the Scottish experience of the Great War be most readily analysed and understood? The multitude of local contexts, including Clydeside, provided many narratives. Not all contributed to the image suggested by national symbols such as the SNWM which aimed for simplicity, unity and an uncritical reflection on heroic sacrifice. The ‘national’ dimension can be undermined from another direction, however: where can we locate a distinctive ‘Scottish’ experience of the Great War. The totems—recruiting levels, losses, the martial tradition, the highland regiments—cannot bear the weight of interpretation, either because they are insufficiently divergent from wider trends or because they are artificial constructs. Indeed, we might conclude that the Scottish national experience of this global conflict is itself an artificial construct, based on war memoirs, regimental histories, war memorials and symbols such as the kilt and the bagpipes. To leave the analysis there, however, would be inadequate: the inter-war period—its political convulsions, social contrasts and economic problems— contributed powerfully to the way in which the Great War was remembered, and it is to these years which we must now turn.

Chapter five: Inter-war politics

The December 1910 election demonstrated Liberal dominance of Scottish politics, the party’s share of the vote exceeding 50 per cent. By 1945 they had disappeared as an independent force from the Scottish electoral map; the landscape was dominated by the Unionists and Labour, each consistently achieved more than 45 per cent of the vote in the elections of the 1940s and 1950s. The agenda of politics had also changed:

Ireland, land reform, temperance, electoral reform and free trade had been replaced by economic planning, nationalisation, comprehensive welfare, redistribution of wealth and industry and the Cold War. Although the tripartite results of the changes are fairly clear comparing 1945 to 1910—Liberal demise, Labour breakthrough, Unionist consolidation—the nature of the process was complex. 1 The period saw two spells of coalition government, which had divisive implications for the Liberal and Labour parties; the latter would also be compromised by the ‘disaffiliation’ of the

Independent Labour Party in 1932, an event which posed considerable organisational challenges for the Labour movement in Scotland. These vicissitudes lay behind the fluctuations of the Labour and Liberal votes in the inter-war years, but the period was a more positive one for the Labour party, which formed minority administrations in

1924 and 1929, and moved decisively from the political fringes to the centre-ground.

The inter-war period, especially the 1920s, saw Scotland become one of the party’s stronger centres of support. In the process, however, Labour made a less identifiably

Scottish appeal: Scottish home rule was replaced by centralised economic planning; the vividness of the politics of the Red Clyde gave way, with the eclipse of the ILP

1 For overviews see Pugh, The Making of modern British politics, 181-242; Hutchison, Scottish politics , 29-69; Hutchison ‘Scottish Unionism’, 73-99; Brown, ‘The Labour party and political change in Scotland, 1918-29’; Knox and MacKinlay, ‘The re-making of the Scottish Labour’, 174-93. and the death of John Wheatley, to the monochrome corporatism of the 1930s. 1 The major beneficiaries of these changes were the Unionists. Although the false dawn of

1900 was obscured by defeats in 1906 and 1910, the inter-war period saw the

Unionists put down deeper roots. In this they were helped by dominance of the coalitions of 1918 and 1931, and the divisions of their opponents. Their consistent success in the inter-war period was also predicated on clear leadership, sound organisation and favourable movements in Scottish public life.

In the early post war period, 1918-21, a sense of the fragility of social order was part of the mindset of politicians. The years immediately following the Great War can be made to resemble the economic depression and political disorder which followed the

Napoleonic wars. The forty hours strike, which resulted in a riot in George Square in

Glasgow, in January 1919 and the less well known race riot on the Glasgow waterfront in the same year seemed especially threatening. The government over- reacted by mobilising the military. 2 Another element in this worrying cocktail was the

land raids in the Hebrides undertaken by ex-servicemen who constantly referred to

their military background in their rhetoric. In the background was the ongoing conflict

in Ireland; indeed, one official of the Board of Agriculture in Scotland referred to the

land raiders as the ‘Sinn Fein element’. 3 More tangibly, Sinn Fein drilling in the west of Scotland was a worry to coalition politicians. 4 The general fear was that a

generation of men, not only brutalised by the horrors of the Great War but also with

1 Knox, Industrial Nation , 227, 244-6; Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 46-9; although Wood, ‘The ILP and the Scottish national question’, 63-74, argues valiantly for a sustained interest in home rule. 2 H.L.R.O., Lloyd-George MSS, F/1/7/15, Munro to Lloyd George, 20 Feb.1918; /31, Munro to Lloyd George, 8 Jul.1919; Addison, Churchill on the home front , 202-8 3 N.A.S., Crofting Files, AF67/152, John MacDonald to Skene, Edwards and Garson, 27 Jan. 1921; Cameron, Land for the people? , 166-90 4 N.A.S., Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/14/6, Gilmour to Munro, 18 Nov.1920 military training and familiarity with firearms, could provide a threat to social stability. Nevertheless, these fears were not borne out and a pervasive image of

Britain as a peaceable nation characterised the inter-war period. 1 In Scotland the politics of violence never took hold, Communists did not embrace violence and populist bigots, like John Cormack and Alexander Ratcliffe, remained on the margins.

Despite economic problems Fascism was a marginal force: the five New Party candidates at the 1931 election received derisory votes and Mosley attracted only twenty-one votes for his rectorial candidacy at the University of Glasgow in the same year. Fascist activity was stridently countered by the Communist Party of Great

Britain, whose activists disrupted Fascist meetings across Scotland, even in places like Hawick where there was no CPGB presence. It has also been suggested that the development of a Scottish nationalist movement drew off those who might have been attracted by the nationalistic appeal of the Fascists. Although there were very right- wing Scottish nationalists, Professor Andrew Dewar Gibb for example, the movement as a whole was devoid of Fascist characteristics. 2 It might also be argued that those

who might have been attracted by Fascism found the populist appeal of movements

like Protestant Action and the Scottish Protestant League more attractive. These

movements, however, were also marginal, despite the strong performance of

Ratcliffe’s S.P.L at municipal elections in Glasgow in 1932. Neither were they clearly

Fascistic, they lacked a general programme to add to their nativist and anti-catholic

propaganda. Indeed, the SPL was hostile to Fascism on the grounds of the latter’s

support for Catholic education in the 1918 Education Act, even denouncing the

movement as ‘An Instrument of Rome’! 3 Although racism was not entirely absent

1 Lawrence, ‘Forging a peaceable kingdom’, 557-89 2 Milligan, ‘British Union of Fascists’ policy’, 1-17; Maitles, ‘Fascism in the 1930s’, 7-22; Maitles, ‘Blackshirts across the border’, 92-100 3 The Vanguard, 8 Jan. 1936, 7; 22 Jan. 1936, 3; 29 Jan. 1936, 2, 5 from Scotland in the inter-war years—as the dockfront riots of 1919, stimulated by economic vulnerability, demonstrate—it was not pervasive. This was more than likely due to the small and economically insignificant migrant presence—Lithuanians in

Lanarkshire for example— in Scotland in the 1930s. There were larger groups, such as the Irish, who attracted prejudice, of course, but they were a well-established and articulate community which was not an easy target for Fascist bullies. Scottish self- congratulation should be avoided: as the second world war would show, different circumstances could produce hostility towards ethnic groups, especially Italians.

The expansion of the Scottish electorate from 760,000 in 1910 to 2.2 million in in

1918, gave British politics a greater claim to the description ‘democratic’. The increase was greatest in urban industrial areas where the expansion was of the order of

250 per cent. There are two themes here. First, the achievement of full male enfranchisement in 1918, an event which may have had a greater impact on Scotland than some other parts of the United Kingdom since the level of enfranchisement prior to 1918 had been lower. 1 The impact of this development on the elections of the inter-

war period has been hotly debated. Scotland is an interesting case-study in this debate

since the eclipse of the Liberals and the rise of Labour were so marked in the 1920s.

The impact of full male enfranchisement was less evident in the 1918 election than in

later contests due to the low turnout—partly a result of the difficulties encountered by

servicemen in casting their ballots—and poor overall organisation of that election

consequent upon its proximity to the end of the war. Second, the enfranchisement of

some women (around 80 per cent) over the age of thirty added a new factor to

elections. The retention of property qualifications for this class of voters, their

1 Hutchison, A political history, 285 definition in relation to their husbands and discrimination against unmarried women were regressive features and probably favoured the established parties rather than

Labour. These problems were dealt with in 1929 when full female enfranchisement was granted. 1 As well as the extension of the franchise in 1918 and 1929 there were

significant changes to the map of Scottish constituencies in 1918. In geographical

terms the beneficiary was Glasgow—which acquired a further eight seats—and the

central lowlands. These changes disadvantaged the Liberal party, almost all of the

thirteen seats which were abolished had a Liberal history. As far as Labour performed

well from 1922 in the areas which received new seats they were the main

beneficiaries. 2

The eclipse of Liberalism

The dominance of Liberalism in Scotland before 1914 was not merely statistical; they were the ‘significant other’ against whom parties defined themselves; and to a large extent, they dominated the political agenda. Concomitantly, their decline cannot merely be measured in terms of lost votes and defeated candidates: a political culture was undermined. This was related to changes in Scottish public life—the churches, the newspapers, local government and voluntary societies. Liberalism was losing potency at a parliamentary and governmental level, where the wartime division of the party around Asquith or Lloyd George continued into peacetime, alongside the coalition which contested the 1918 election as an entity. At the 1918 election both coalition and independent Liberalism were disadvantaged by electoral arrangements.

Despite their pre-war strength only a minority of candidates endorsed with the coalition ‘coupon’ were Liberals. Further, only four independent Liberal MPs

1 Dyer, Capable citizens , 113-17 2 Hutchison, Scottish politics, 30; Dyer, Capable citizens, 104-12, 118-21 survived the cull at the general election of 1918, whereas only three of the twenty- eight coalition Liberals were defeated. 1 The travails of independent Liberalism were

exemplified by the fate of their leader, Herbert Asquith, MP for East Fife since 1886.

Even by the standards of the day Asquith’s neglect of his constituency was

remarkable and resulted in defeat by a local Unionist. Asquith carried much negative

baggage into the election, especially the perception that his premiership (1908-16) had

been a failure, but his defeat demonstrates the difficult climate faced by independent

Liberals. Asquith returned to parliament in 1920 at a by-election in Paisley, a world

away from his former seat; he did not put down deep roots and it was no surprise

when he lost the seat to Labour in 1924. His Labour opponent, Rosslyn Mitchell, was

a former Liberal who was hardly a class warrior and who chose to emphasise a

philosophical and ethical message, but was able to do so more convincingly than a

senior Liberal like Asquith. 2 The loss of these seats tells us much about Liberalism.

That they could not hold on to East Fife was worrying because the rural fringes of

Scotland were the last bastions of Liberalism. That they could not retain Paisley was

symptomatic of their failure to break into the politics of urban Scotland, where the

major issues of the inter-war period—housing, unemployment, the economy—were

being fought out. Liberalism did not seem to have a message relevant to these

debates; the only evidence to the contrary comes with the slightly improved

performance at the general election of 1923 when the Conservative emphasis on

protection allowed the newly, if unconvincingly, re-unified Liberals to rally round the

free trade flag. Even this was an indication that times had changed: from 1903 to 1906

this propelled the party to their greatest victory; in 1923 it could only induce the

corpse to twitch, and at the general elections of 1924 and 1929 even this level of

1 Brown, ‘The Labour party and political change in Scotland’, 95-6 2 Ball, ‘Asquith’s decline’, 44-61; Kelley, ‘Asquith at Paisley’, 133-59; Macdonald, Radical thread , 254-66 performance could not be sustained. The Liberals were no longer a national party able to place candidates in all corners of Scotland. Coalitions—which Lloyd George was told were popular north of the border—or at least local pacts with the Unionists, evident in 1922 and 1923, were the only hope for the party. 1 There is even a tendency

for the other parties, especially as politics polarised around the appeal, or threat, of

socialism, to ignore the Liberals. A substantial number of their victories in the 1920s

were unopposed or in seats where one of the Unionists or Labour did not stand.

Where they did participate in three-party politics they were squeezed remorselessly.

The Liberals did make some attempt to rethink their policies in the 1920s. Much of

this was driven by Lloyd George after the reunification of the party in 1923 and the

results were the so-called ‘Green Book’ on the land question and the ‘Yellow Book’

on unemployment. The former may have been a little more than an attempt to recreate

the glories of the pre-war land campaign. It was not sufficient to deal with the

problems of the 1920s, even before the slump of 1929, and it was sidelined prior to

the general election of 1929 at which much greater prominence was given to the

‘Yellow Book’. 2

After 1929 the position for the Liberals was even worse: a period of ‘disaster and ultimate despair’ according to one account. 3 After presenting a unified face to the electorate from 1923 to 1929 divisions resurfaced. The party was divided by the formation of the National Government in 1931, with a small group of Liberals declining to follow the leadership into coalition. The problems became even worse in

September 1932 when most of the Liberal ministers, including Archibald Sinclair, the

Secretary of State for Scotland, resigned from the Cabinet in protest at protection. For

1 H.L.R.O., Lloyd George MSS, F/1/7/56, Robert Munro to Lloyd George, 25 Mar. 1922 2 Dawson, ‘The Liberal land policy, 1924-1929’, 272-90 3 Stannage, Baldwin thwarts the opposition , 83 a while they languished—largely ignored—on the government backbenches, meaning that there were three Liberal factions in parliament! This caused immense confusion on the ground and was only partly resolved when Sinclair and some of his colleagues crossed the floor in November 1933. 1 Not surprisingly this division and ineptitude

was viewed negatively by the voters: a massacre of Liberals occurred at the 1935

general election, when the party gained only 7 per cent of the vote—a quarter of their

best inter-war share in 1923—and returned only three members. This induced a deep

pessimism in Sir Archibald Sinclair, the elegant and principled MP for Caithness and

Sutherland: ‘Not only have we lost our most important and trusted and influential

leaders, but we could not make our free trade case. Nobody would listen to it or think

about it.’ 2 The utter desperation of the Liberal party’s position in Scotland was demonstrated at a by-election at Ross and Cromarty in February 1936. Here was a seat in which the Liberals had a long history, but the result (bottom of the poll) was a disaster, causing Sinclair to remark, with understandable hyperbole, that the by- election was ‘about the most melancholy episode in the whole history of the Liberal party.’ 3

These problems indicated that the Liberal party had lost touch with the electorate. For a leading figure to admit that the electorate would not ‘listen’ to their main argument was a startling admission: it was not that the policy was unpopular, but that the electorate did not realise its potential. Herein lies another possible reason for the party’s decline: an intellectual hauteur which was not well-suited to mass politics. In the 1930s free trade was a shibboleth rather than a reasoned policy. Whereas in 1923 its recommendation by the Unionists had revealed a free trade consensus across the

1 De Groot, Liberal crusader , 75-103 provides a clear narrative. 2 Churchill College, Cambridge, Thurso MSS, 71/2/284-90, Sinclair to James Scott, 19 Nov. 1935 3 Churchill College, Cambridge, Thurso MSS,72/2, Sinclair to William Webster, 6 Mar. 1936 political spectrum and including the major newspapers, no such coalition emerged to defend it in the 1930s. 1 Even in rural constituencies, such as Sinclair’s own seat in

Caithness and Sutherland, farmers had abandoned their support for free trade. They were unhappy with the fact that the subsidies granted by the National Government did not extend to the crops and livestock which they produced, but they demanded more relevant protection and support rather than free trade. The equation was even more damaging to the Liberals in the industrial areas of lowland Scotland where the shipbuilding, steel and coal industries were exposed to competition from Germany and the USA, which pursued economically nationalistic policies. The Liberals’ deprecation of this reality was not helpful to their cause. Some Liberals may have deluded themselves that the position was akin to that following the 1900 election and that there would be a magic formula for recovery. There was, however, to be no repeat of 1906 and it would be almost eighty years, and more than one false dawn, before the party recovered even its strength of 1923.

Labour breakthrough

The years before 1914 saw Labour perform relatively poorly in Scotland, and the party seemed to have much in common with radical Liberalism. This picture was profoundly altered in the inter-war years. First, Labour made a breakthrough at the general election of 1922, gaining almost a third of the popular vote and winning twenty-nine seats. Further, Scotland, from being a Labour backwater, became an area of electoral strength. In 1906 Labour’s Scottish percentage share of the vote amounted to only 43 per cent of that in England, by the 1920s this indicator was consistently

1 Baines, ‘The survival of the British Liberal party’, 21 over 100 per cent and remained there until 1951. 1 Finally, it can be argued that there

were ideological shifts as well. The Labour MPs elected in 1910—Barnes, Wilkie and

Adamson—were hardly in the vanguard of socialism; indeed, Barnes served in the

coalition government during the war and was the sole Labour candidate to be

endorsed with the coupon in 1918. When he became Secretary for Scotland Adamson

informed a civil servant, ‘You’ll be surprised to find what a Tory I am’! 2 The

dominant image of Labour from the inter-war period comes from the famous Red

Clydesiders—Maxton, Wheatley, Kirkwood—elected in 1922. Along with less

exalted figures—Campbell Stephen, George Buchanan, Neil Maclean—they formed a

self-regarding phalanx of radical members who saw their mission at Westminster as to

‘settle up rather than settle down’. Aside from John Wheatley’s distinguished

participation—as Minister of Health—in the Labour government of 1924, the

practical achievements of this group were minimal. By the early 1930s, Maxton was

the leader of an ILP rump outside the Labour party, Wheatley was dead, others had

been defeated in 1931, and the climate of politics was not conducive to the

millenarianism of 1922. Even 1922 was not all that it seemed: there was a strong

strand of social conservatism in those elected—temperance, traditional attitudes to

women, marriage, birth control and the family, for example. Neither was the

presbyterianism evident in nineteenth century Liberalism entirely dead: Labour

members elected in the early 1920s included two presbyterian clergymen, Campbell

Stephen and James Barr, and another MP, James Brown, served on two occasions as

Lord High Commissioner at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 3

According to one who knew them well they did not possess ‘homogeneity of outlook

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics, Appendix II, 157 2 MacMillan, A man of law’s tale , 91, quoted by Wood, ‘Hope deferred’, 45; on Adamson’s moderation see Macintyre, Little Moscows 52, 54, 3 Wood, ‘Hope deferred’, 45; Shinwell, Conflict without malice , 80; Bogle, ‘James Barr’, 189-207 and action…’. 1 Further, on the 20 th of November 1922 a service of celebration for the

election victories was held in Glasgow and the St Andrew’s Hall rang with the words

of the 124 th Psalm, a covenanting favourite: 2

Had not the Lord been on our side,

may Israel now say;

Had not the Lord been on our side.

when men rose us to slay;

One MP emerged from this crucible chastened and terrified at the faith which had

been placed in the group. He remarked over thirty years later:

We had been elected because it was believed that we could perform miracles

and miracles were needed to relieve the tragedy of Clydeside in 1922. But

miracles and politics do not mix, and the hopes we had as the train pulled out

that night have since been adjusted, altered, augmented. 3

The remainder of the inter-war period cast doubt on the existence of divine support for Labour and on their capacity to perform miracles. As one historian has remarked

‘the Clyde did not run “red” for long’. 4

What were the reasons for the distinctive Labour performance in Scotland in the inter- war period? This debate encapsulates such questions as: the impact of the war, the

1 Paton, Left turn! , 110 2 Knox, ‘“Ours is not an ordinary Parliamentary movement”’, 154; Knox, ‘Red Clydesiders’, 92-5 3 Shinwell, Conflict without malice, 77; see also Paton, Left turn! , 143-5 4 Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 36 importance of the extension of the franchise, and the fallout from the Irish

‘settlement’ in 1922. The debate on the first two aspects has emphasised the historic connection with radical Liberalism. Greater stress can be placed on the role of Labour during the Great War than on the immediate impact of the 1918 ‘fourth Reform Act’.

The latter certainly created a large number of new working class electors, but they were not predestined to become Labour supporters. It has been estimated that nearly fifty Scottish constituencies were dominated by working class voters, including a dozen mining seats. While Labour did extremely well in these seats in the inter-war period, their total of thirty-six seats in 1929—their best performance in this period— pointed to substantial working class support for other parties. Neither is it certain that all of these voters were enfranchised for the first time in 1918; and, finally, it has been suggested that the residence requirements of the pre-1918 system militated against the enfranchisement of many younger middle-class men, not a natural group of Labour supporters. 1

Those who wish to argue against the deep-rootedness of the Labour breakthrough point to the muted performance of the party at the 1918 election, at which they gained

‘only’ a quarter of the vote and six seats, a far better performance than in 1910 but well short of a ‘breakthrough’. This point also supports the argument that there was no connection between wartime industrial action and the result of the 1922 election. 2

The 1918 general election is probably not a good one on which to place such stress,

however: the turnout—at around 60 per cent—was very low, especially in industrial

areas, partly due to the difficulties encountered by servicemen in recording their

votes. Other chaotic elements hampered the organisation of the election: it was

1 Tanner, ‘Class voting and radical politics’, 114-16; Tanner, Political change , esp., 1-16; McKibben, Evolution of the Labour party 2 especially by McLean, Legend of red Clydeside , 154-201 difficult to find halls for meetings as so much property had been requisitioned by the government; there was a lack of paper for literature; party organisations were atrophied; and it was difficult to find activists to do the necessary mundane tasks.

These problems afflicted all the parties, but Labour, concentrating its appeal in urban areas where the difficulties were greatest, was the most seriously affected. 1 It should

be said, however, that the demise of personal canvassing in the new larger seats and

the introduction of ‘deposits’ for candidates, rather then the pre-1918 system of

contributions to the expenses of the Returning Officer, may have made the costs of

elections more manageable and contributed to Labour’s ability to make a truly

national appeal. 2 Labour were not able to make such an appeal immediately; by the elections of 1929 or 1935, however, they had candidates in most seats, were victorious in the Western Isles in 1935 and produced strong performances in by- elections, even if they did not win many new seats in such contests. Nevertheless, the party remained dependant on its support in the industrial areas of west and found it particularly hard to break into rural and highland areas. 3

One of the major problems faced by Labour in Scotland was the tendency of the other parties to form pacts to resist its advance; this was especially prominent at local elections but was also resorted to on occasion in parliamentary elections, especially in

1924 when Labour faced single opponents in many seats in the west of Scotland and their representation was reduced from thirty-four to twenty-six, despite the fact that their share of the vote went up compared to 1922 or 1923. Three seats were lost in

Glasgow, both Renfrewshire seats and high profile casualties included Thomas

1 H.L.R.O, Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 95/2, Memo by George Younger, 20 Sept. 1918; 21/6/64(93), Robert Stewart to J.C.C. Davidson, 19 Dec. 1918; (98), same to same, 27 Dec. 1918. 2 Dawson, ‘Money and the real impact of the fourth reform act’, 375-81 3 Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 42, 44 Johnston in Clackmannan and West Stirling. This anti-socialist alliance was a greater obstacle to Labour in local elections. Despite parliamentary success in Glasgow it was

1933 before Labour took control of Glasgow City Chambers and they remained in opposition in Edinburgh. Labour was also held back in local government by a more restrictive franchise, but Liberal and Unionist cooperation, manifested in organisations like the Glasgow Good Government League of 1920, suggested a new polarisation of politics. These anti-Labour candidates fought under the Progressive or

Moderate labels; the former, preferred in Edinburgh where the Liberal contribution was greater, was especially misleading. Ironically, the Moderate grip on Glasgow was only relinquished through the intervention of Alexander Ratcliffe’s Scottish Protestant

League in 1933. This split the anti-Labour vote but proved to be a transient force. 1

The politics of housing played a more important part in Labour’s breakthrough, a

point recognised even by hostile contemporaries. 2 The pre-war activities of John

Wheatley and the wartime rent strikes raised the profile of Labour’s distinctive

message. 3 The 1917 Royal Commission on Housing in Scotland, drew yet more

attention to pervasive squalor and argued for a reorientation of housing styles away

from the traditional tenement. Continuing difficulties over the rent question played to

the political advantage of Labour. 4 Intense focus on the housing issue did the

government no favours, as it emphasised the extent to which their rhetoric in 1918

had been followed up with only very paltry results. Unionist officials were fearful that

1 Smyth, ‘Resisting Labour’, 375-401; Miller, ‘Politics in the Scottish city’, 199 2 ‘Socialism on the Clyde’, The Times , 28 Dec. 1922, 9-10 3 Wheatley, Eight-pound cottages . 4 Moorhouse et.al. , ‘Rent strikes’, 136 this issue would help Labour in the west of Scotland; this would not have been possible without a strong tradition of propaganda and activism. 1

Irish politics were also relevant to Labour’s improved performance in the 1920s. The

period between 1918 and 1922 saw not only the ‘resolution’ of the Irish question, but

also a rapprochement between Irish and labour organisations in urban Scotland,

especially in Dundee and Glasgow. Labour had emerged from the final phase of the

Irish question in British politics with its reputation enhanced, having opposed the

irregularities and excesses of government policy in Ireland. Even the archbishop of

Melbourne, visiting Dundee in 1921, lauded Labour for its approach to the Irish

question. 2 Irish suspicion was allayed by diminished emphasis on the temperance question by the ILP and support in the new Education Authorities for state-supported denominational education for Roman Catholics, provided for in the 1918 education act. 3 This is not a sufficient explanation for the improved performance of Labour and

neither were ‘the Irish’, sometimes reduced by historians to an unvariegated bloc

susceptible to clerical influence, ‘responsible’ either for earlier Labour weakness or its

ultimate breakthrough. 4 The perception of the Irish as fodder for a crude machine politics was even evident among Labour MPs such as Emanuel Shinwell, elected for

Linlithgow in 1922. 5 The evidence is not strong enough to support this notion, however. Even in Glasgow the Irish vote was not large enough—at around a quarter of the electorate—to be the sole influence on the outcome of many parliamentary

1 H.L.R.O., Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 110/1/2, P.J. Blair to Malcolm Fraser, 8 Nov. 1922 2 Walker, ‘Dundee’s disenchantment with Churchill’, 99 3 McKinlay, ‘ “Doubtful wisdom and uncertain promise”, 131-2 4 Smout, Century, 270; Fry, Patronage and principle , 166, 228; Walker, ‘Irish immigrants in Scotland’, 663-7; ‘Socialism on the Clyde’, The Times, 28 Dec. 1922, 9-10 5 Shinwell, Conflict without malice, 31 seats, although their impact on local politics may have been greater. 1 Dundonian politics were more complex, the constituency was an oddity in that a single election produced two members and for most of the 1920s although one member was from

Labour the other was Edwin Scrymgeour of the Scottish Prohibition Party. While that party was closely allied with Labour, teetotalism was not a prominent feature of Irish politics. 2 There were other strongholds of the left, especially West Fife or Aberdeen

North, which had only a very small Irish community. Further, the Irish question faded from Scottish politics, and other questions, such as birth control, were capable of producing tension between Labour and the Roman Catholic section of the Irish community. 3 Above all, we should be wary of ascribing motives distinct to ‘Irish’

voters which mark them out from the grievances and aspirations of the working-class

electorate as a whole. Pertinently, John McCaffrey has asked:

Is it not more likely … that Catholic voters were simply sharing with their

fellow citizens in the general rejection of the old, discredited parties and their

leaders in November 1922 and placing their hopes in the promises of general

betterment and social fairness held out by Labour personnel in this locality? 4

Thus while it was certainly the case that the Irish community were strong supporters of the Labour movement in the inter-war period they were not a sufficient bloc to facilitate the breakthrough of the Labour party. Labour had to build a wider coalition of voters, and they were successful in so doing.

1 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow , 148; McCaffrey, ‘Irish issues’, 133, 137. 2 Walker, ‘The Scottish Prohibition Party’, 353-79; Walker, ‘Dundee’s disenchantment with Churchill’, 85-108 3 Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish Labour movement’, 621-2; Gallagher, ‘Scottish Catholics and the British left’, 25-6 4 McCaffrey, ‘Irish issues’, 130

While the labour movement was a broad coalition of organisations, stretching from the trades unions and cooperative societies to the Communist party and other Marxist organisations—some under the umbrella of the Labour Party—the ILP provided the bulk of the activists and its newspaper, Forward , was the intellectual meeting ground

for a host of radical causes. Although it is doubtful whether the detail of ideological

or policy debate had much impact on voters, these exchanges did contribute to a more

general identity which parties used to project themselves to voters. 1 There was a

growing ideological divide between the ILP and the Labour party, although it would

be a mistake to see these as opposing blocs united around particular positions on

unemployment or industrial relations. Throughout the 1920s the ILP presented itself

as the radical conscience of the labour movement; a better point of contact with labour

voters; and capable of articulating and protecting their interests. According to a

leading official the ILP was ‘evoked much of the fervour of a religious order.’ 2 The

ILP, despite its dominance of the Scottish labour movement, was not united; the left adopted increasingly strident positions which put it at odds with the Labour leadership, many of whom—including Ramsay MacDonald—had ILP connections. 3 If the ambition of the Labour leadership, personified by Macdonald, was to make labour electable and respectable, this was at odds with the view of the most prominent MPs in the Scottish contingent. The formation of the first Labour government in 1924 brought these tensions to the fore. Some on the left believed that a minority administration presented traps for the party. Others, such as John Wheatley, saw it as a chance to demonstrate Labour’s appetite for the rapid destruction of vested interests.

1 ‘Socialism on the Clyde’, The Times, 28 Dec. 1922, 9-10 2 Paton, Left Turn!, 84; see also Maxton, Roads to Socialism , 2-3, 5-6, 8; Maxton, Twenty points for Socialism . 3 Howell, ‘Traditions, myths and legacies’, 204-32 and Howell, ‘Beyond the stereotypes’ offer general reflections on the place of the ILP in the labour movement. Others still, such as Thomas Johnston, saw its likely, but glorious, defeat as the prelude to a stronger position in the future. 1 The only real achievement of the government was the housing act, the creation of John Wheatley at the Ministry of

Health. Whilst it did not create the ‘£8 cottages’ which he had envisaged in 1908, it provided for subsidies to local authorities—of which Labour controlled none in

Scotland—to build houses of a higher quality than had been possible under earlier post-war schemes. Wheatley took a non-ideological approach to the problem and involved building trades unions and industry representatives in consultations. 2 This

was a triumph of politics and legislation rather than a practical solution since the very

quality standards which were built into Wheatley’s scheme made the houses rather too

expensive for most working class families to afford to rent.

Despite this achievement the first Labour government created fertile ground for

tension in the movement between those, such as Maxton and others on the ILP left,

who felt that the government should have been bolder; and the leadership, whose

objective was to demonstrate that Labour was capable of governing. The same tension

was evident in even more stark terms in the general strike of 1926 and the associated

miners’ strike. The ILP were active on the ground in supporting the strikers and their

families and deeply critical of the Labour leadership for what they perceived as their

cynical abandonment of those involved in the strike. These two episodes served to

isolate the left in the ILP; further, their influence in Scotland was declining due to

their concentration on parliamentary work in London and the growing influence of the

more centrist, although increasingly authoritarian, figure of Patrick Dollan. The

creation of the National Government in 1931 divided the Labour Party, with a small

1 Walker, Thomas Johnston, 64; Wood, John Wheatley , 118-20 2 Morgan, ‘The problem of the epoch?’, 231-4 group led by MacDonald and Snowden, who advocated retrenchment to deal with the economic crisis, joining a coalition government which, despite MacDonald’s continuation as Prime Minister, was dominated by Conservatives. The Labour Party was decimated at the subsequent general election. In Scotland the party was reduced to only seven seats, despite gaining a slightly higher share of the vote than in 1922.

Further traumas ensued in 1932 when tensions over the ILP’s programmes and role in the party resulted in its disaffiliation. 1 Maxton led the ILP away from the Labour

party while Patrick Dollan sought to create a new organisation, the Scottish Socialist

Party, to accommodate former members of the ILP opposed to the breach with

Labour. 2 Whilst the ruptures of 1931 and 1932 should not be seen as inevitable, they

can be understood more easily by recognition of the distance between ILP

programmes of this period such as ‘Socialism in our time’—with its under-

consumptionist diagnosis of economic ills, and its recommendation that these could

be cured by a living-wage for the working class to raise demand—and the even more

uncompromising Our case for a socialist revival of 1928. 3 Those who opposed the

creation of the National Government, and what they perceived as MacDonald’s

treachery, were a much wider group than the ILP rebels of 1932. Thomas Johnston,

for example, was part of the first group but a vocal critic of the second.

These events paved the way for the two features which would govern the history of

labour politics in the 1930s. The party became more centralised, although the Scottish

Socialist Party was created to try and take the place of the ILP in the day-to-day

activities of the movement. Further, the ideological isolation of the left, not helped by

1 Cohen, ‘The Independent Labour Party’, 200-221 2 NLS, Woodburn MSS, ‘Some recollections’, Acc. 7656/4/1/68-85 3 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 106-20; McKinlay and Smyth, ‘The end of “the agitator workman”’, 177- 203; Wood, Wheatley , 160-8; Knox, Maxton, 71-7; Brown, Maxton , 208-15; Davies, Cook , 149-52; Paton, Left turn! , 296; Cook & Maxton, Our case the loss of Wheatley’s sagacity after his death in 1930, meant that a new consensus emerged on the utility of economic planning as a response to the crisis which had been unleashed in 1929. 1 Whereas in the 1920s there were few expectations for the

Labour movement to be measured against—they could also point to the range of mendacious forces ranged against it, notably in the ‘red scare’ which surrounded the

1924 election—the 1930s was entirely different. Expectations had been ramped up in

1929 only to be dashed in 1931. Although the economic debate of the first half of the decade played to Labour’s agenda, the divisive debates of the late 1920s had been instructive and a more restrained and less radical response to the economic crisis emerged. In some ways the emphasis on economic planning was part of a wider consensus for the revival of the economy. Given the existence of a National

Government, although it was dominated by Conservatives, this is not surprising. A host of bi-partisan and non-partisan groups emerged to propagate the idea; in Scotland the most obvious were the Scottish National Development Council formed in 1931 and the Scottish Economic Committee of 1936, both of which had support from central and local government as well as a number of private organisations. The SNDC had been established by the shipbuilder James Lithgow and there was a substantial business presence in the SEC. Labour’s willingness to engage with such bodies has led to their approach being described as ‘corporatist’, a far cry from the ethical and moralistic socialism of the 1920s and earlier. The reports of the SEC—on the highlands, the development of light industry and the need for government intervention—are particularly good examples of this climate of opinion.

1 Knox and McKinlay, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour’, 175-81 There was another inspiration which was more readily received in the labour movement than on the right: Soviet Russia. The genocidal excesses of Stalin’s regime were unknown in western Europe in the mid-1930s and many in the Labour party viewed the regime as a shining example of a planned economy. This was not confined to those on the left, or members of the Friends of the Soviet Union in the Little

Moscows of the West Fife coalfield or the Vale of Leven. 1 Arthur Woodburn visited

Soviet Russia in the company of Thomas Johnston in 1932 and remarked in his diary that it was ‘a land of hope’. Johnston was less impressed. 2 These influences reflected

wider interest in the Labour party in the Soviet example, this was not an ‘uncritical

admiration’ nor an endorsement of Communism, but part of a search for evidence that

such policies could be made to work. 3 Although the USA provided a less compelling example in the depression, Labour inherited a radical tradition of looking to the republic in the west as an example of progressive government. In the 1930s this was manifested in positive reflections on Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ with its panoply of government agencies for economic regeneration, especially the Tennessee

Valley Authority. When a ‘Highland Development League’ was created in 1936 its slogan was ‘A New Deal for the Highlands’. Labour did not have the opportunity to implement these ideas in the 1930s, but they formed an important strand in the political thought of the movement and were of practical value after 1945.

Nationalisation was another shibboleth of the Labour party’s statist perspective in the

1930s. Although leading figures in the labour movement, such as Thomas Johnston, deprecated its use as a panacea, it was widely canvassed in the 1930s and would have

1 Macintyre, Little Moscows , 184-7 2 Walker, Thomas Johnston, 125; Knox, Industrial nation, 243-4 3 The phrase is Knox and McKinlay’s, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour’, 187; Worley, Labour inside the gate , 155 its day after 1945. In the 1930s it was not seen as a means of conquering the commanding heights of the economy, nor as a quasi-syndicalist take-over of industry by the workers, but, according to the STUC, to ensure ‘a well distributed and properly planned industry’ and to ‘benefit the community’. 1 A notable casualty of this new centralised approach was Labour’s commitment to Scottish Home Rule; indeed,

Labour would remain silent on this issue until the 1970s. Although Ramsay

MacDonald had been secretary of the London branch of the SHRA in the late 1880s as Labour leader and Prime Minister he did little or nothing to advance the cause. This resulted in his ‘stock as a Scotsman to fall heavily’ in the estimation of Roland

Muirhead who took his money and support to the nationalists in the late 1920s. 2

Home Rule may also have been a casualty of the perception, fostered by the rise of

Fascism in Europe, that nationalism was an unhealthy right wing phenomenon.

Unionism

The Unionists had probably the best claim to be a nation-wide party in the early

1920s. Their strongest inter-war performance came in 1924 when they won thirty-six

seats from 41 per cent of the vote. They took seats almost equally from Labour

(twelve) and the Liberals (thirteen) and had strongholds in urban as well as rural

Scotland and in all regions of the country. Some of this strength was lost in 1929 and

the Conservative performance in the elections of the 1930s is difficult to isolate from

the National Government. This picture of strength, even ‘hegemony’ according to one

historian, is repeated at a high political level with Conservative dominance of

government in the inter-war period. 3 By relating Unionist strength in Scotland to

Conservative strength in England we can see that while the former was impressive,

1 Quoted by Knox and McKinlay, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour’, 185 2 Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 47 3 Jarvis, ‘Shaping of the Conservative electoral hegemony’, 131-52 Scotland’s contribution to the overall representation of the party was much less than that evident in the history of the Labour party in this period. At no point in the inter- war period did the Scottish share of the vote exceed that gained in England, the former sank to 60 per cent of the latter in 1922 and was commonly around 80 per cent. 1

Although the war had not caused the same problems as for the divided Liberals and for the Labour party with its pacifist wing, the same could not be said for the peace.

Conservatives were worried about the expanded electorate, the diminished opportunities for plural voting, and the reduced power of the House of Lords. As the

1920s went on, they feared—rightly—that the Irish settlement was the precursor to vexatious debates about the empire, especially India. Above all Conservatives were fearful of deterministic politics based on social class. 2 In Scotland voters were invited to join a coalition to reject the Labour party, or the ‘socialists’ as the Unionists determinedly referred to them. 3 This was evident during the coalitions in 1918, 1931 and 1935, but was also evident in arrangements between the Unionists and the

National Liberals in 1922 and 1923. 4 Local government was another arena in which this strategy was used, even to the extent of the Unionists suppressing their primary political identity with labels such as ‘Progressive’ or ‘Moderate’ in an attempt to keep

Labour at bay. Organisation is another explanation of Unionist success: the party reached out to women and the young, the latter through the Junior Imperial League.

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics, Appendix II, 157 2 Pugh, Tories and the people, 177, 184-8; Jarvis, ‘Conservatism and class politics’, 59-84 3 quoted by Jarvis, ‘Shaping of the Conservative electoral hegemony’, 140 4 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/18/2, J.P.Croal (editor of the Scotsman ) to Sir John Gilmour, 4 Jun. 1923 This is not, however, a sufficient explanation for their increased representation in the inter-war period. 1

Broad movements in Scottish political culture favoured the Unionists. Both the

Glasgow Herald and the Scotsman were Unionist and many local newspapers had

also abandoned Liberalism. The Unionists even considered giving financial support to

local newspapers to bolster the party’s message. 2 The settlement of presbyterian grievances with the church unions of 1900 and 1929 also favoured Unionist politics in that an important series of issues which had energised Liberalism were no longer prominent. The Union of 1929 altered the relationship between church and state, with an explicit recognition of the spiritual independence of the church in order to satisfy lingering voluntary qualms in the United Free Church. Nevertheless, the changes could be presented as a ‘victory’ for the establishment principle to the detriment of a presbyterian Liberal tradition. More important was the unambiguously rightward shift of the leadership of the church in the 1920s. 3 The social conscience evident in the late nineteenth century was abandoned, perhaps to curry favour with right wing governments in the 1920s in order to secure concessions required for the Union project. This is clear in attitudes to such events as the first Labour government, the general strike of 1926 (the conclusion of which represented a ‘victory for God’ according to James Harvey, a leading figure in the UFC), and the expression of racist views towards Scotland’s Irish community. 4 This point should not be taken too far,

however. The campaign against the Irish in Scotland, for it was no less than that, cut

little ice with the Unionist party, which generally eschewed religious politics, nor with

1 Hutchison, Political history, 316-18; Hutchison, Scottish politics, 42-4 2 H.L.R.O., Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 101/4/111, R.D. Waterhouse to George Younger, 8 Dec. 1920; 99/8/10, Younger to Waterhouse, 13 Dec. 1920 3 Hutchison, ‘Scottish Unionism’, 81-3 4 Brown, ‘“A victory for God”’, 596-617; Brown, ‘“Outside the Covenant”’, 19-45 Unionist governments. Sir John Gilmour, Scottish Secretary from 1924 to 1929, and a leading Orangeman, was unimpressed by the arguments presented by the churches. 1

Oddly, it can be argued that the diminution in importance of the Irish question in

British politics, far from eroding the raison d’etre of the party, favoured the

Unionists. The removal of the large cohort of nationalists from the House of

Commons from 1918 favoured the Unionists when other changes, such as mass enfranchisement, were initially feared by the party. The big loser was the Liberal party, who lost a key component of its appeal. Unionism, in its literal sense, remained relevant after 1922. There were still Unions to be defended: that of 1922 with

Northern Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, although the latter did not appear endangered until the 1960s. The enfranchisement of women has also been seen as favourable to the Conservatives. The women enfranchised in 1918 were older, over thirty, and reasonably affluent. Conservatives paid a great deal of attention to wooing this group and were much more fearful of the equal franchise of 1928 with its inclusion of younger unmarried women in the electorate. The so-called ‘flapper vote’, with its suggestions of immature, unpropertied irresponsibility, was feared for its destabilising influence. 2

What these general explanations have in common is their scant regard to the ideas of

the party. While the Labour party was re-formulating its policies after the disasters of

the early 1930s the Unionists were charged with the task, initially through the

National Government, of responding to the very real problems of unemployment and

structural dislocation in the Scottish economy. There was an emerging consensus

1 Walker and Officer, ‘Scottish Unionism and the Ulster question’, 20-2 2 Jarvis, ‘Mrs Maggs and Betty’, 129-52, esp. 140-2 around corporatism. One example was the ‘Special Areas’ legislation of 1934 and

1937, which identified areas of high unemployment for encouragement of industrial development. These policies were not particularly successful in dragging the Scottish economy out of depression, and they may have been aimed at the wrong target— unemployment, rather than industrial structure—but they represented a greater willingness to intervene than in the depression of the early 1920s. The Scottish Office was quite assertive in pressing the Treasury and other Whitehall departments for more resources and a more active policy, while lamenting the ignorance of Scottish conditions evident in London. 1 Further evidence for this willingness to intervene can

be seen in agricultural policy. As well as protection the government introduced price

support, initially for wheat in 1932 but after complaints that this was not particularly

helpful in Scotland it was extended to barley and oats in 1937, livestock products

were also supported. 2 This is indicative of a constructive, if not completely convincing, approach by Conservative dominated governments to these problems. A final example would be the support given to John Brown’s shipyard on the Clyde to finish the Queen Mary.

If the Clydesiders have been seen as the awkward squad of the Labour left, then we might also point to a group of Scottish Unionists who provided a distinctive voice for their party. 3 Even less than the Clydesiders did these politicians see themselves as a coherent group, and they were not identified as such by contemporaries, but they do convey something of Scottish Unionism in this period. By drawing attention to them the progressive nature of Scottish Unionism could be exaggerated; nevertheless, the

Scottish Unionist Party was not the least progressive element of Conservativism. At

1 Campbell, ‘Scottish office and the special areas’, 167-83 2 Anthony , Herds and hinds , 42, 53; Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 196 3 See Fry, Patronage and principle , 181 the Carlton Club meeting of 1922 a majority of the Scottish MPs were in favour of continuing the coalition, there were few diehards among Scottish MPs and in the months prior to the formation of the National Government in 1931 Scottish figures like John Buchan (MP for the Scottish Universities, 1927-35) and Walter Elliot were in the van of tentative explorations of the possibility of all-party government. 1 The

group also includes Noel Skelton, MP for Perth and East Perthshire, Robert Boothby,

the maverick member for East Aberdeenshire, and the Duchess of Atholl (Kinross and

West Perthshire). The differences between these individuals can be seen in Elliot’s

support for appeasement, which ended his ministerial career in 1940, and the

vehement opposition of the Duchess of Atholl who resigned her seat and fought a by-

election as an independent rather than support Chamberlain. 2 Of this group Elliot achieved the greatest political prominence serving in the Cabinet in the 1930s as

Minister for Agriculture and Health as well as Secretary of State for Scotland. His period at the Scottish Office was characterised by attempts to deal with economic problems through the work of the Scottish Economic Committee; the establishment of the Scottish Special Housing Association, a lasting organisation which sought to give central government a role in provision of housing; and the establishment of the

Hillington Industrial Estate, a limited attempt to reorientate the Scottish economy. 3

Elliot’s book, Toryism in the twentieth century (1927), has received more mixed

reviews—‘atavistic’ or ‘scarcely influential’. 4 Certainly he emphasised the search for continuity and tradition at the heart of Conservativism, but he recognised that the

‘main question of domestic politics is that of equity in the production and distribution

1 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/17/18, Gilmour to A. Bartlett Glen (Chairman Pollok Unionist Association), 21 Oct. 1922; /20 George Younger to Gilmour, 23 Oct. 1922; Hutchison, Political history , 314; Hutchison, Scottish politics, 49; Williamson, National crisis , 150-55 2 Ball, ‘Politics of appeasement’, 49-83 3 Overviews of his career are provided by Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom , 19-40 and Harvie, ‘Walter Elliot’, 122-31 4 Fair and Hutchison, ‘British Conservatism’, 557; Harvie, ‘Walter Elliot’, 126 of industrial wealth’. Although his ministerial career occurred in pessimistic times, a genuine attempt to engage with this question can be discerned in his policies. 1 As

Secretary of State for Scotland in the late 1930s Elliot was strongly of the view that, despite administrative devolution, more could be done to deal with housing, health

(especially infant mortality), rural issues and the special problems of the highlands.

He identified these as specifically Scottish problems which demanded special

attention by the government. The price of ignoring them, he argued, was political

dissastisfaction and ‘the continued unwillingness of private enterprise to embark on

new development in Scotland.’ Elliot was particularly aware that public expenditure

and private investment were mutually beneficial rather than mutually exclusive. 2 A more influential Unionist thinker in the long term was Noel Skelton, whose

Constructive Conservatism argued for a ‘property-owning democracy, to bring the industrial and economic status of the wage-earner abreast of his political and educational, to make democracy stable and four-square’. This was not a new idea as

Unionist policies on the land question in the 1890s and 1900s demonstrate, but

Skelton sought to adapt it—through ideas of ‘industrial co-partnery’ and profit sharing—to the demands of the inter-war period. 3 This was evident in Unionist thinking on housing which emphasised the house as a ‘home’ for the family and a source of political and social stability through the ideal of ownership. Government subsidies for housebuilding was reduced in 1932 and support was concentrated in slum clearance. In Scotland there was a recognition that the ideal of owner-occupation was not a realistic prospect for many working class families and the public sector

1 Elliot, Toryism , passim, quote from 1 2 NAS, HH50/189, Walter Elliot, ‘The state of Scotland’, 18 Dec. 1937 3 Skelton, Constructive Conservatism , esp. 24-31 retained a prominent role, not least through Elliot’s SSHA. 1 Thus, Unionism should

not be thought of as a reactionary force, hostile to the interests of the working-class—

they could not afford to be—or unwilling to grapple with the industrial problems of

the inter-war period.

Nationalism

Perhaps the most obvious novelty of the inter-war years was the absence of the Irish

question from Scottish politics. Whatever this meant for Ireland British politicians

were convinced that the Irish problem had been solved, or at least that it was no

longer their problem. It was ironic that the Liberal party, after nearly forty years of

advocacy of Irish home rule, was in no position to take the credit for its messy

realisation. Labour was in a strong position with Irish voters, they had consistently

opposed the government’s excesses and irregularities during the ‘War of

Independence’, 1918-21. Since the 1880s the Irish question had prompted

consideration of Scottish home rule. The demise of the Irish question took an

important constitutional question off the political agenda and demanded that Scottish

home rule merit consideration on the strength of its own case, a difficult task. The

year 1918 saw the re-establishment of the Scottish Home Rule Association and the

revival of its campaign to work among the main parties to raise the profile of the

issue, although increasingly it came to be controlled by the trades unions and the

Labour party. The objective of the SHRA, a form of home-rule within the empire,

encountered the formidable obstacle of increasing suspicion in the Labour party

towards Scottish home rule. The first Labour government was a disappointment to

home-rule activists, Labour leaders damned the idea with faint praise and the short

1 TNA:PRO, CAB24/247/222-4, Housing (Scotland). Memo by the Secretary of State for Scotland, 2 Feb. 1934; Morgan, ‘Conservative party and mass housing’, 58-69 debate on George Buchanan’s private member’s bill for Scottish home rule in May

1924 ended without a vote. A further bill, in the name of Rev James Barr, was killed off in May 1927. 1 These depressing events encouraged activists, notably the wealthy

businessman Roland Muirhead, to turn from the SHRA and the ILP and contemplate

the formation of an independent nationalist party. 2 This was one of the influences which led to the formation of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 and, after its merger with the Scottish Party of 1932, the Scottish National Party in 1934. Although

Scottish nationalism was not important at the polls in the inter-war period—Sir

Alexander MacEwen’s 28 per cent of the vote in the Western Isles in 1935 was by some distance their best performance—this was an important development. Hitherto,

Scottish nationalism had been part of the radical and progressive tradition in Scottish politics; the disappointments of the 1920s saw it forced to make its own way. It would be almost thirty five years, and many vicissitudes, before the SNP would see any political return from the strategy which these events compelled it to adopt.

Inter-war Scottish nationalism faced a number of difficult questions about its strategy and identity. One of the first concerned the electoral process: should it contest elections? The National Party of Scotland’s attempts to do this in 1929 and 1931 were unsuccessful: John MacCormick’s triumphant 14 per cent of the vote in Inverness in

1931 was the best result at these two elections. The SNP performance in 1935—seven seats were contested—was mixed, ranging from 3 per cent in Greenock to 28 per cent in the Western Isles, but persuaded the leadership of the party of the futility of an electoral strategy. The remainder of the decade was spent in attempting to raise the profile of the cause through propaganda, the Scots Independent , for example. This has

1 P.D. , 5 th series, 173, 789-874, 9 May 1924; 206, 865-878, 13 May 1927 2 Finlay, Independent and free, 1-28 been described as a ‘pressure-group strategy’ which made the nationalists’ ‘effect on

Scottish politics more apparent’. 1 Unfortunately, this strategy was as futile as electoral intervention: Scottish home rule was off the political agenda in the late 1930s, important issues such as defence and foreign policy did not obviously possess a

Scottish dimension and on economic policy, which did, the SNP were too small and inept to be heard. The party’s identity was also compromised by the fact that leading members were also members of other political parties; the Liberals in the case of Sir

Alexander MacEwen. It would be wartime—when the exclusion of the SNP from the political truce, further evidence of their marginality—allowed them to make a bigger impact in by-elections.

A second question was even more fundamental: what was their objective?

Independence for Scotland,? Home rule? How would Scotland relate to the United

Kingdom and the empire? These questions were unresolved, giving their opponents the opportunity to attack them as vague and indecisive. The background to this irresolution was factionalism. The National Party of Scotland was an amalgam of smaller nationalist sects, the most important of which was the Scots National League, the ‘intellectual vanguard’ of the nationalist movement. 2 Although the work of

Thomas Gibson in the League did much to modernise the policy outlook of Scottish nationalism, there were a host of other splinters in the nationalist firmament who were more interested in a cultural approach. The Pan-Celtic nationalism of Ruaridh Erskine of Marr, for example, contrasted not only with the more pragmatic approach of John

MacCormick, the young Glasgow solicitor who would become such an important figure in the history of Scottish nationalism, but with the right wing views of people

1 Finlay, ‘Pressure group or political party?’, 275 2 Finlay, Independent and free , 67 like Professor Andrew Dewar Gibb. There were figures, however, who combined pragmatism and a cultural conception of nationalism, the novelist Neil Gunn, for example. A right wing, even imperialist, form of nationalism became more prominent in the early 1930s with the emergence of the Scottish Party, many of whose members had a Unionist background. Their conception of nationalism was also racist. Some argued that Scotland’s imperial identity was under threat from the large and inferior

Irish population in Scotland. This strand of nationalism was less interested in independence for Scotland but aimed vaguely at Scottish participation in imperial confederation. 1 John MacCormick, while not an advocate of the extreme version of

these views, took the NPS in a rightwards direction in an attempt to avoid damaging

conflict with the Scottish Party and ultimately to secure merger with them, shedding

many cultural nationalists who took a more ‘fundamentalist’ approach—including

Christopher Murray Grieve, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid—along the way. 2 None of

this convinced the public that Scottish nationalism was a serious political force. The

politics of Scottish home rule had not been able to flourish without Irish nationalism

to make metropolitan politicians think about the subject in a serious way. Despite the

formation of a nationalist party the politics of unionism were too strong, especially in

the 1930s, for the nationalist voice to be heard. The very existence of the ‘National’

government after 1931 explicitly reinforced a ‘British’ conception of politics and the

economic problems and threatening international atmosphere made a Scottish political

dimension difficult to perceive.

Administrative Devolution

1 Finlay, ‘Nationalism’, 46-67; Finlay, ‘“For or against?”’, 184-206 2 Finlay, Independent and free, 71-161 Whilst the Unionists had no truck with Scottish home rule it should not be assumed that they were anti-Scottish; they could not afford to be. The key figure was Sir John

Gilmour, from a Fife landowning family and the MP for Glasgow Pollok. Gilmour was Scottish secretary from 1924 to 1929 and in 1936 was appointed to preside over a

Committee which investigated the machinery of government in Scotland. His activities in these two phases of his career seem contradictory, but they can be unified by identifying his work as an attempt to bring rational and modern principles to the structure of administration in Scotland; an apparently mundane topic, but one which reveals important details about the government, even the identity, of Scotland.

Gilmour’s first modernising reforms came in 1926 when he raised the status of the office of Secretary of Scotland to that of a full Secretary of State. This brought to an end one strand of complaints, which can be traced back to the activities of the

NAVSR in the 1850s, that Scotland was not fully recognised in the seniority of ‘its’ cabinet minister. A more complex task was the reorganisation of the Scottish Office.

Since its creation in 1885 it had been different from other government departments in several respects. First, it was territorial rather than functional. Second, it had very little presence in Edinburgh. Third, it did not have a monopoly of Scottish administratio; Whitehall ministries, like Transport and Health, retained responsibilities north of the border. Fourth, the Scottish secretary and his senior permanent staff supervised the work of a series of autonomous boards—Health,

Fisheries, Agriculture, for example. These were populated by a miscellaneous group often appointed by patronage, rather than selection. Other important functions, notably education which was administered by the SED—a committee of the Privy

Council and with a superior attitude to the other Scottish Departments—were not within the ambit of the Scottish Office and resented the prospect. 1 These arrangements permitted, first, a relatively narrow elite to control important areas of policy. Second, the Boards occasionally took an independent line, giving the impression to his Cabinet colleagues that the Scottish Secretary was not in complete control. 2 Further, and this was exacerbated by the limited amount of time for Scottish

business at Westminster, it meant that there was inadequate, ministerial oversight and

parliamentary scrutiny of important areas of Scottish administration. It could not be

said that Scotland was well governed in the aftermath of the Great War. While

Unionist governments in the 1920s were not worried about the strength of demands

for Scottish home rule, even after the creation of the N.P.S, they were aware that

administrative arrangements were in need of reform. The Re-organisation of Offices

Act of 1928 replaced the autonomous Boards with Departments—Agriculture and

Fisheries, Home, Health. As far as this excited any public interest it was attacked as

centralisation and an assault on the autonomy, although some was retained, of

Scottish institutions. These developments coincided with two others: the modest

appearance of Nationalism and the Local Government Act of 1929. The latter was

even more mundane in appearance than the reorganisation of the Scottish Office, but

Gilmour discovered that he had disturbed the latent hornet’s nest of Scottish local

chauvinism. His attempt to rationalise local government by sweeping away small

authorities was interpreted as an unwarranted assault on historic entities—especially

Royal Burghs, which had their own ‘Convention’ to voice their grievances.

Developments in the 1930s sought to bring some order to this relative chaos. First, the

to provide a physical presence for the Scottish Office in Edinburgh a new building

was constructed on the site of the old Calton Jail in the centre of Edinburgh, but in the

1 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, Sir George MacDonald to Gilmour, 16 Mar. 1937 2 Levitt, Scottish Office, 12-13 meantime a new Edinburgh branch of the Scottish Office was opened with a small staff. Further, in 1936 a Committee on Scottish administration was established, with

Sir John Gilmour in the chair and a membership which included Thomas Johnston.

This initiative has been described as ‘the culmination of over fifty years of haphazard incrementalism and was an attempt to recognise Scottish distinctiveness and simultaneously professionalise and consolidate the public service.’ 1 It has been held

that the results of Gilmour’s recommendations provided a system of ‘administrative

devolution’—the phrase of a leading Scottish civil servant, Patrick Laird. What did

this amount to? Principally, the legislation of 1939 which implemented Gilmour’s

recommendations provided for a more incorporated Scottish Office with four

functional departments—Agriculture and Fisheries, Education, Health and Home—

although the overall structure has been described as ‘almost federal’ and the

departments as ‘having some measure of autonomy’. 2 The year 1939 also saw the

opening of St Andrews House on Calton Hill. These changes meant that Scotland now

had a professional system of administration, the Scottish Office and its staff now

conformed more closely to the Whitehall model, at a time when the functions and

scope of government were expanding. It has also been argued that ‘home rule’ was a

variable in these calculations. It is difficult to find evidence that the government was

discomfited by demands for this. It saw the reforms as bringing a rational system to

the administrative arrangements of the Union. The Unionist government had carried

off an important change without the negative reaction evident in the 1920s.

Nevertheless, ‘home rule’ is relevant in another context. Although the Scottish Office

was immeasurably strengthened it might now be said that the absence of a Scottish

parliament to scrutinise the work of the various departments was more glaring. This

1 Mitchell, ‘The Gilmour report’, 173 2 See the documents published in Levitt, Scottish Office , 94-100; Mitchell, ‘The Gilmour report’, 186 was not a widely voiced view, nor was the concern widely shared in the late 1930s, although Thomas Johnston did feel that an administrative reform had been implemented in an attempt to deal with a political problem. 1 In any case, the advent of

the Second World War changed the focus of attention, although political events

during that conflict involved the Scottish Office in further administrative innovation.

1 Levitt, Scottish Office, 16-17 Chapter six: The economy, 1880-1939

On 2 October 1878 a crowd congregated outside the offices of the City of Glasgow

Bank which had closed its doors for business the previous afternoon. This event had taken the business community of the west of Scotland by surprise and for a short period there was a worry that it would presage a general economic depression. In the event this did not occur, the bank’s notes were honoured by other Scottish banks and the sense of crisis was contained, as banking failures of this period tended to be. 1 The

collapse of the bank, however, was not without its consequences and few of them

were positive. A number of the bank’s directors, leading figures in the Liberal and

Presbyterian culture of the Glasgow business community, were convicted of fraud. It

was demonstrated that they had concealed the weakness of the bank since the early

1870s. This struck a blow at the confidence and reputation of another middle class

institution, the Free Church of Scotland; one leading Free Kirk businessman

lamented, ‘The Free Church and Sabbath School teaching is sneered at because some

of the managers stood prominent in these matters.’ 2 The bank balances as well as the reputation of this group were diminished by the failure. The unlimited liability upon which the bank was based extended the financial responsibility for its massive debts to its shareholders, many of them small investors, who now faced considerable financial demands, amounting to nearly £3000 for every £100 invested; as a result hundreds of investors and small businesses (two-thirds of Glasgow builders, for example) were bankrupted, business confidence was profoundly shaken and the whole

1 Collins, ‘Banking crisis’, 504-27 2 Michael Connal quoted in Munro, Maritime enterprise and empire , 255 affair was a factor in the trade depression which visited the Scottish economy in the

1880s. 1

If Gladstone’s Midlothian campaigns of 1879-80 can be used to demonstrate the local,

British, Imperial and international inter-connectedness of Scottish politics, then the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank can do the same for Scottish economic and commercial activity. Aside from Glasgow, the principal Scottish locality to feel the ill winds blowing from Virginia Street was Inverness in the North of Scotland. There the

Caledonian Bank was forced to close its doors through its connections with the City of Glasgow Bank, an event which one local worthy described as ‘not excepting the highland clearances, the greatest calamity that ever befell the north of Scotland.’ 2

Moving outwards from Glasgow the imperial dimensions of the bank’s failure are

particularly striking. Indeed, it was a small number of heavily indebted accounts

which were the principal cause of the crash, the accounts of three East India

Merchants and that of James Morton and Co., Australia merchants, accounted for over

£6million, three quarters of the total debt of the bank.3 Indeed, for a period it looked

as if the crisis might ensnare Sir William Mackinnon of the British India Steam

Navigation Company, another zealous Free Kirker. Mackinnon did have connections

with two of the East India merchants who had contributed to the failure of the bank,

but he regarded the attempts by the liquidators to hold him responsible for some of the

debts as malicious and it was only after lengthy litigation that he was able to

disentangle himself from in the affairs of the bank. 4

1 Saville, Bank of Scotland , 421-5; Lenman, Economic history , 190-1; Nenadic, ‘The small family firm’, 107; Rodger, ‘Business failure’, 91; Moss and Hume, ‘Business failure’, 5-7 2 Mackenzie, ‘Caledonian Bank disaster’, 148 3 Munro, Maritime enterprise and empire , 254 4 Munro, Maritime enterprise and empire, 263-77 The failure of the bank arose from injudicious lending rather than shortage of deposits or lack of confidence and, although the expansion of the Scottish banking sector, as well as its ability to issue notes, had been reined in since the mid-1840s, it remained a vigorous section of the Scottish economy and an important source of capital for industrial enterprise. Indeed, despite earlier crises, notably that of 1857 which brought down the Western Bank, a dichotomy had emerged in the Scottish banking sector. The long-established Edinburgh banks adopted a much more cautious approach than the more aggressive western houses. The City of Glasgow was among the most aggressive. Given the questions which have been raised over the level of adventurousness in the Scottish business community in this period it could be argued that ‘the two Glasgow banks did more for economic expansion than did their more staid Edinburgh rivals, and indeed provided facilities where the Edinburgh banks defaulted in this duty to the economy.’ 1 The imperial and American investments of the bank and their general willingness to speculate in a way which the more cautious and stable Edinburgh banks did not have to, was part of the wider process of tying the

Scottish economy into international financial activity. This has to be set against the loss of confidence in this kind of activity resulting from the failure. This affected banks as well as private investors and may have been a limiting feature of Scottish economic development. The crisis also serves to remind of the limited role of the state in economic matters in this period. Despite the publicity generated by the crash and the subsequent trial, there was no public enquiry or direct legislative results.

Reforms were undertaken by the banks themselves, the introduction of a form of

1 Checkland, Scottish banking , 476 limited liability, the commitment to have accounts independently audited and an agreement to desist from trading in their own shares, but the state remained aloof. 1

Industrial expansion

Although there had been headlong industrial expansion in the period from 1760 to

1820 and a further burst of development in the iron industry and coal mining in the thirty or so years after 1830, it cannot be said that the pace of change after c. 1870 matched that of the earlier periods. Indeed, in sectors like iron and textiles there was significant contraction. These were the sectors of the economy which, through favourable natural resource endowment and technical precocity, had driven the initial stages of Scottish industrialisation. It was the dissipation of these advantages in the third quarter of the century which helps to explain their decline. The exhaustion of readily available reserves of ore, for example, hampered the iron industry in the late nineteenth century. Although there were isolated examples of success in the textile sector, most notably in the cotton-thread industry based in Paisley, this was no longer the most active area of the Scottish economy. The most obvious new economic developments in Scotland in the final quarter of the century lay in the connected enterprises of steel-making and shipbuilding and in the further expansion of the coal mining industry. Concentration on these sectors, however, does not tell the whole story of Scottish economic history in this period. Neither does a focus on the large firms in the heavy industrial sector reveal the full diversity of the Scottish economic experience. Although the combinations headed by William Beardmore, William Baird or Charles Tennant employed huge numbers of people and provided dominant landmarks on the unpleasant industrial landscape, they are not fully representative of

1 Checkland, Scottish banking , 477-81 the economy as a whole. It has been estimated that in the urban economy in the middle of the nineteenth century 1 per cent of employers in the largest firms employed around 25 per cent of the work force, but 90 per cent of firms employed fewer than twenty workers. This ‘dualism’ or ‘concentration and fragmentation’ has been described as follows:

At a very early stage, in fact by 1851, Scottish firms were already distributed

around the twin poles of a fragmented, traditional workshop mode of

production, or alternatively, heavily concentrated on factory production based

on labor-intensive unskilled and semiskilled manual inputs. Even in the

‘modern’ branches of the economy, large-scale enterprises coexisted with a

proliferation of small scale producers. 1

Although this picture may have been altered in the late Victorian period by the decline

of the textile sector, which contained many large enterprises in 1851, the essential

point about the diversity of the Scottish economy remains relevant to the later period.

The small family firm remained an important element of the Scottish economy,

especially in the east of Scotland where they dominated industries such as that of

publishing and associated trades. They were also an important arena for female

business activity, not only as underpaid, or unpaid, members of the workforce, but

also as owners of such firms, especially in the garment trade. Women also figured

frequently as widows continued trading in the family business after the death of their

husbands. 2 Thus, although the picture which emerges from many surveys is of a male

dominated heavy industrial economy centred on the bastions of craft activity in the

1 Rodger, ‘Concentration and fragmentation’, 190 2 Nenadic, ‘The small family firm’, 86-114 west, that is not the sole dimension of the Scottish economic experience, although the expansion of heavy industry in the late-Victorian period increased male dominance of the labour market. In the half century before the Great War somewhere between a quarter and a third of women were ‘economically active’ according the imperfect evidence of the census, a source which increasingly tended to under-record female employment. The principal ‘industries’ which employed women included domestic service, textiles, agriculture, and clothing. There were important changes in the place of women in the workforce over the period under consideration in this chapter.

Expansion of female clerical work, for example, can be seen by the fact that there were nearly 30,000 women in such jobs in 1911 compared to less than 200 only a generation earlier. Although this provided important opportunities for income and a certain level of independence it certainly did not offer a career ladder; office work, especially after the invention and dissemination of the typewriter, became a female enclave separate from the male-dominated areas of the business where the decisions were taken. 1 Even the highly adept female compositors who worked in the Edinburgh

printing trade in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, despite their union activity,

occupied a demarcated and gendered space in the workplace, worked for lower pay

and tended to retire on marriage. 2 Female agricultural work underwent a contraction over the same period; the 30,000 workers in this category in 1911 compared to over

125,000 in 1851, although this was an industry which was becoming much less labour intensive for men as well as women and was a sector in which the census particularly under-recorded female work. 3 The large army of female workers who worked at home, taking in washing, garments to be repaired or other sewing work, and those

1 Simonton, ‘Work, trade and commerce’, 218-21 2 Reynolds, Britannica’s typesetters , 50-66 3 Gordon, Women and the labour movement , 25 who looked after the children of their working sisters went unrecorded by the increasingly hierarchical census.

Overlaying these structural changes was a new ideological construction of women’s place in the workforce and in gender relations. Women increasingly came to be perceived as best fitted to operate in a domestic environment carrying out ‘traditional’ female roles of child rearing, housekeeping and providing a stable environment for the male breadwinner. This construct was initially a middle-class ideal, but it also permeated the views of working-class men, especially those with skilled occupations and for whom a non-working wife was an important element of the respectability to which they aspired. The presence of women in the workplace was deprecated in this ideology, and male dominated institutions, such as trades unions, developed patronising attitudes towards female workers in order to emphasise this. The workplace was held to be a degrading environment with a tendency to breed immorality among female workers. The notion of married women continuing to work was condemned as likely to lead to the neglect of family responsibility. Even if the view of the English Registrar who remarked in 1851 ‘that in districts where the women are much employed from home, children and parents perish in great numbers’ was a extreme one, a link was often posited between maternal employment and high levels of infant mortality. This also had political implications. Trades unions and the labour movement encouraged the notion of lower wages for women based on the assumption that the recipients were either single women without family responsibilities, or married women earning a wage which was merely a supplement to that of their husbands. To argue for higher wages for women would, it was felt, compromise the demand for a ‘living wage’ for men. 1 This ideology and the attitudes

which it bred meant that women were concentrated in the lowest-skilled and lowest-

paid sectors of the economy, those jobs which were subject to the greatest levels of

instability, something which was especially evident in the deep depressions of the

Edwardian period. 2 Women were defined by their gender in the workplace, they were not labelled in the apparently gender neutral, but really masculine, term as ‘workers’, they were certainly not ‘skilled workers’ because apprenticeships were not open to them. Even women, such as the compositors in the Edinburgh printing trade, who went through a ‘training’ were not regarded as ‘time-served’ and accepted, even acquiesced in, a subordinate position and lower pay. 3 Even when they did break into professions such as teaching or nursing, they remained in subordinate and relatively poorly paid positions which were extensions of their maternal and domestic roles. 4

Although there has been what one historian has called ‘nostalgia’ for the Victorian

economy, especially in contrast to the perception of the inter-war economy as

endemically depressed, there is a consensus that this should be resisted. 5 The positive features of the period, the rise of the steel industry, the increasing technical sophistication of the products of the shipbuilding industry, are held to be outweighed by the negative features, the failures of iron and steel to integrate production facilities, the perpetuation of an incestuous relationship between the steel and shipbuilding sectors and the failure to develop new high-value, consumer oriented industries. The late-Victorian economic environment was capable of delivering great wealth to

1 quote from Lee, British regional employment statistics , 9; see also Gordon, Women and the labour movement , 79-101; Smyth, Labour in Glasgow , 156-62 2 Treble, ‘Unemployment in Glasgow’, 16, 20 3 Reynolds, Britannica’s typesetters , esp. 136-8 4 Simonton, ‘Work, trade and commerce’, 217-18 5 Devine, ‘Industrialisation’, 64; Devine, Scottish Nation, 249-72 and Lee, ‘Scotland 1860-1939’ successfully resist nostalgia. entrepreneurs like William Mackinnon and Charles Tennant, titanic figures with massive authority in their firms. Tennant’s fellow directors were literally known to bow to his authority at board meetings. His massive wealth, over £3million at his death in 1906, was used to improve his country seat, ‘The Glen’ in Peebleshire, in extensive purchases of pictures and in Liberal (after 1886 Unionist) politics. The

Victorian economy, however, was not successful in creating civilised living conditions for the workforce of the latter and a multitude in similar employment.

Tennant’s St Rollox workers were paid a pittance and working conditions in the chemical industry were hideous. Another chemical manufacturer, the diminutive John

White (Lord Overtoun), another pillar of the Free Kirk, became the target of Keir

Hardie’s vituperation, not only for the exploitation of his workforce but also for his pious hypocrisy. 1 Neither, it has been suggested, was it capable of producing high

levels of continuous employment, and that heavy industries ‘created widespread

unemployment not merely by their collapse but through their normal functioning.’ 2

Indeed, far from being seen as a success to be contrasted with the gloom of the 1920s

and 1930s it can be more plausibly suggested that many late-Victorian developments

directly contributed to the problems of the 1920s and 1930s.

How can the individual successes of firms like Colvilles, the main force in the

development of the steel industry, be squared with the wider failures of the economy?

Economic historians, whatever their other disagreements, have unanimously pointed

to three features which help to resolve this apparent conundrum. First, there is

agreement that the wages of industrial workers in Scotland were low compared to

1 For Tennant see ODNB and DSBB , i, 285-9; Overtoun, DSBB, i, 293-5 2 Southall, ‘Origins of the depressed areas’, 257 their counterparts in other industrial regions of the UK. 1 The differentials varied between sectors and over time but a degree of convergence between Scottish and UK wages had taken place by the inter-war period. At the beginning of our period, in the

1880s, wages in urban areas tended to be higher than in rural areas, a national trend, although one which had an element of Scottish distinctiveness in that the earnings of agricultural workers, especially in the south of Scotland were relatively high compared to their counterparts in other parts of the UK, this was one reason why they were slow to organise and resistant to wage regulation. In older industries, such as coal-mining and iron manufacture, Scottish workers earned relatively high wages, but in the textile sector, where there were many female employees who were paid less than male workers, wages were relatively low. The positive picture suggested by the notion of convergence has to be qualified in two respects. Even the available estimates may be overoptimistic in that the irregularity of employment for unskilled workers and the casual nature of employment for such as dock labourers meant that they may have earned lower rates for broken periods of work. Periods of depression with the consequence of higher rates of ‘unemployment’, a concept of which contemporaries were becoming increasingly aware and worried about, punctuated the period covered by this chapter but were especially noticeable in the mid-1880s, 1904-

5, 1907-8, 1920-2 and from 1929 until the mid-1930s. 2 In looking at the problem over this longer period we can note the changing attitudes of government and society towards the unemployed. Whatever might be said about the inadequacy of policy in the 1930s it represented a substantial change from the assumptions and objectives of the Victorian and Edwardian period which saw the unemployed as a distressed group to be relieved and improved by charity and sometimes to be dispatched to labour

1 Lee, ‘Economic progress’, 142; Devine, ‘Industrialisation’, 66 2 Treble, ‘Unemployment and unemployment policies’, 147-72 colonies to break stones or reclaim peat bogs. 1 Further, the problem was compounded

by the fact that the cost of living, especially rent and food prices, were higher in

Scotland and contributed to endemic poverty and poor housing conditions for many

workers. It has been suggested that low wages might have provided some sectors of

Scottish industry with a comparative advantage in the Victorian period, an advantage

which was eroded over time as wages rose but did not seem to be matched by

increases in productivity. 2 There were also, of course, disadvantages to low wages,

especially in limitations in the spending power of a substantial sector of the

population, making it difficult for higher value consumer orientated industries to

develop, itself a notable feature of the Scottish economy.

The second feature is that the bulk of the products of Scottish heavy industry were

fairly basic and were destined for the export market. Although there were

sophisticated exceptions, such as locomotives and ships, the products of the iron and

jute industries were classic examples. This exposure was not uniform across the board

and certain industries, especially textiles, suffered sorely from the contraction of

foreign markets during the depression. This meant that much of the Scottish economy

was exposed to fluctuations in the international economy and competition from

rapidly growing economies whose industries could emulate the production of these

basic products at cheaper prices. Jute, for example, began to be produced in India at

much lower cost than in Dundee and even the rise of protectionism was of little help

as imperial preference allowed Indian producers to continue to access the ‘home’

market. This export orientation, however, was evident in the UK as a whole and the

1 TNA:PRO, CAB37/93/64, Administration in Scotland of the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905; CAB37/95/123, Report on unemployment in the United Kingdom in September 1908; Johnston, ‘“Charity that heals”’, 77-95 2 Campbell, Rise and fall of Scottish industry , 76-99; Hunt, Regional wage variations , 47-57; Anthony, ‘Scottish agricultural labour market’, 558-74 Scottish economy merely demonstrated a more extreme version of a wider British problem rather than a truly distinctive profile. 1 The fact that the Scottish population

was not growing particularly quickly in the later nineteenth century and the fact that it

was relatively poverty stricken meant that there was little incentive for the production

of higher-value goods for a consumer market. Finally, the limitation of the service and

professional sector in the Scottish economy also restrained the spread of prosperity

beyond a confined group. The deficiency in these sectors was particularly noticeable

in areas of heavy industrialisation like Fife and west central Scotland, this was a

feature of other industrial regions in the UK. Edinburgh and the Lothians, on the other

hand, had more in common with the South East of England in the strength of

employment in the professional and service sectors. Although not all jobs in the

service sector were well paid, domestic service being an obvious example, it has been

suggested that the significant shortfall in these forms of employment in the most

populous areas of Scotland diminished demand in the economy and helped to

suppress the development of consumer oriented industries. A more serious problem

for the Scottish economy, however, was the shortfall in professional employment. It

has been estimated that this represented a loss of about £1.4million to the economy of

the region. The economic experience of the City of Edinburgh and its surrounding

area, where services accounted for 45 per cent of all new jobs in the second half of the

nineteenth century, demonstrates that heavy industry was not the sole model of

economic growth in Victorian Scotland. Augmented by its substantial professional

sector it could even be argued that the east of Scotland provides a model which

1 Flinn, ‘Exports and the Scottish economy’, 279-93; Campbell, ‘North British Locomotive Company’, 201-34 supports the conclusion that ‘for long-run prosperity …the service/consumer economy must be judged clearly superior to the industrial export-orientated economy.’ 1

Steel

One of the principal new developments of the late Victorian period was the

development of the steel industry. Despite the fact that this industry came to be seen

in the twentieth century as a symbol of the archaic nature of Scottish industrial

structure it was regarded as a symbol of modernity in the 1870s when it began to

expand. This image was based partly on the product: steel, an immensely strong and

flexible material based on the processing of iron, was an extremely rare commodity in

the mid-Victorian period. The Scottish iron industry was an industry in decline in the

late nineteenth century: its natural resources were running out leading to increased

reliance on expensive imports, Scottish iron ore output on the eve of the Great War

was only a fifth of its 1870 figure and represented only 6 per cent of British output

compared to 34 per cent in 1875. 2 Further, since most Scottish iron output was in the form of basic pig iron, rather than malleable iron which could be finished in the forge to make more sophisticated products, there was only a narrow margin in the business and it was exposed to emulation and competition. Since the markets for pig iron and steel were so different and because the products of the steel industry, high quality and complex, were so different there was little incentive to invest in steel production. It was with the development of steel as a material for shipbuilding, railway construction and bridge building which eroded the principal markets for Scottish output. In retrospect this seems perverse, but it is more explicable when one considers that the iron producers were able to maintain profitability, despite the disadvantages just

1 Lee, ‘Regional growth’, 452; Lee, ‘Modern economic growth’, 5-35 2 Byres, ‘Entrepreneurship’, 251 outlined, because they were so heavily involved in the coal industry. In the late nineteenth century about a third of all Scottish coal miners worked in mines owned by iron producers such as William Baird and Co. 1

The Siemens-Martin open hearth method of steel production came to be favoured in

scotland. It was fuel efficient and could be fed with scrap iron, readily available in

Scotland; by the mid 1880s Scottish firms were producing around 40 per cent of the

Siemens steel in the UK. 2 This fact, and the Lloyds’ decision to restrict insurance to ships made by Siemens steel, were crucial to the development of the Scottish steel industry since a close link began to develop between steel manufacturers and shipbuilding interests. The initial push to develop an indigenous steel industry in

Scotland came, however, from a quite different source. Charles Tennant’s massive chemical works at St Rollox in the east end of Glasgow produced huge heaps of ‘Blue

Billy’, a by-product in the process of making sulphuric acid which was found to be rich in iron and gave the potential for the direct production of steel. In 1872 the Steel

Company of Scotland was established in an attempt to exploit this apparent good fortune. The experiment proved to be a failure and although the Steel Company remained active in producing steel which was used, inevitably, in shipbuilding, the bulk of its output came from the conventional open hearth method. The principal competitor to the Steel Company, and a name which became synonymous with steel- making in Scotland for nearly a century was David Colville, who was one of the few iron manufacturers to diversify into steel when he began open hearth production at

Dalzell in Lanarkshire in 1880. He had served his apprenticeship with the Steel

Company of Scotland and no doubt exposure to the remarkable manager of that

1 Payne, Colvilles , 45-55 2 Lenman, Economic history, 175-7; Campbell, Scotland since 1707 , 174-7 concern, James Riley, assisted his development. 1 The third major steel producer in

Scotland and by the time of the Great War one of the most important industrial concerns in the UK, was William Beardmore and Co. William Beardmore Junior

(1856-1936), like David Colville the beneficiary of an extensive technical education, expanded the range of the firm’s interests from malleable iron into steel and shipbuilding, the last through his purchase of the yard of Robert Napier and Sons in

1900. His development of capacity to produce armour plate placed him in an ideal position to win naval contracts, not only for the Royal Navy but also for the Dutch,

Italian and Japanese fleets. Although the company endured some difficult times in the

1900s this placed Beardmore in pole position to profit from the wartime conditions which prevailed after 1914 and he did so ruthlessly with his Parkhead works becoming a hive of munitions production and industrial relations conflict. 2 It has been

suggested that the steel sector saw a level of entrepreneurship which was unique in

Scottish industry in this period and a stark contrast to the lamentable levels of

enterprise, technical sophistication and technical educational awareness prevalent in

other areas of Scottish heavy industry. 3 By the mid-1890s the Scottish steel industry was producing over half a million tons compared to only around 85,000 tons in 1880. 4

The development of the Scottish steel industry cannot be divorced from that of

shipbuilding, to which the vast bulk of its output was destined. Along with the

‘failure’ to integrate iron and steel production this was the greatest long term source

of difficulty in the heavy industrial sector in Scotland, although it was not one which

was apparent in the period of expansion in the 1880s; expansion which was able to

1 for biographical details on Colville see ODNB and DSBB , i, 99-100; for Riley see DSSB , i, 136-8 2 Hume and Moss, Beardmore , 31-104; ODNB and DSBB , i, 91-3 3 Byres, ‘Entrepreneurship’, 273-6, 290 4 Payne, Colvilles , 58 proceed, despite the depression in the economy of the west of Scotland. This link can be seen from the very beginnings of the Scottish steel industry. The first ocean-going steamer to be constructed from steel (at William Denny’s Clydeside yard and from steel produced by the Steel Company of Scotland), the Rotomahana provided a good

advert not only for Scottish industry and workmanship but also for the properties of

steel. This was confirmed when the ship struck a rock but remained intact and did not

sink. This incident was extensively publicised by the Steel Company and helped to

create an environment whereby over 97 per cent of Clyde-built ships were made from

steel compared in 1889 compared to 10 per cent a decade earlier. This connection was

sustained throughout the years before the Great War: immediately before the outbreak

of that conflict well over 60 per cent of the output of the main Scottish steel producers

was going to the ship building industry. This did not appear to be a problem in the

Victorian years of expansion, but given the extreme fluctuations in the shipbuilding

environment in the inter-war years and the collapse in the price of steel plates for

ships in the 1920s, it became a serious weakness. 1

A further weakness in the steel industry were the combined problems of location and integration. These were both legacies of the development of the industry in the late

Victorian period but the real difficulties did not emerge until the inter-war period when the international environment became more competitive and the efficiency of the American and continental European industries exposed the backwardness of the

Scottish industry. The weakness of output from the iron industry and the dependence on imports of iron ore and scrap iron meant that the inland location of the Scottish steel industry were major problems. Proximity to the coal fields was no longer the

1 Campbell, Rise and fall of Scottish industry , 121; Payne, Colvilles, 32-6, 115-121, 147-50 advantage it had once been and all these problems were compounded by the fixation with the Clyde shipyards as the principal market. 1 Perhaps it could be argued that

there was a lack of leadership in this industry: the once dominant figures, the brothers

David and Archibald Colville, had died within weeks of each other in 1916 and the

mantle had passed out of the family to John Craig, a former employee who had

worked his way through the hierarchy of the firm and may have been slightly

inhibited in his decision making because of this. 2 Much effort was expended during the 1920s on trying to rationalise capacity in the industry, but the steelmasters were much less successful than the shipbuilders in this task, partly because, as Sir John

Craig later remarked, ‘they all hated each other’! 3 Despite this it is probably fair to say that they faced greater problems, notably the seemingly intractable one of location. A firm of American consulting engineers, H.A. Brassert of Chicago, were commissioned to examine the industry and recommend a site for an integrated plant on a coastal location. The Brassert Report recommended investment in a tidewater plant on the Clyde. The Scottish steel industry faced a turning point. That the thorough and perceptive recommendations of Brassert were not taken up can be adduced as evidence of the narrowness of vision predominant in the leadership of the industry. There were, however, economically rational, although scarcely long-term, reasons for this decision. An arrangement with an Indian firm to deliver massive supplies of cheap scrap iron seemed to undermine the assumptions upon which

Brassert was based. The Labour government supported the idea and may even have been willing to give financial support, but the leap of faith and the scale of investment required were too much to contemplate at a time of severe economic depression,

1 Buxton, ‘Efficiency and organisation’, 107-24 2 see entry on Craig in DSSB , i, 101-3 3 Payne, ‘Rationality and personality’, 180 despite the vigorous support of John Craig for the idea. 1 The lack of decisiveness over

Brassert was overshadowed by two major decisions. The first, the migration of

Stewart and Lloyd’s, manufacturers of steel tubes, to Corby in Northamptonshire, closer to ore supplies and industrial markets in the Midlands and south east of

England, demonstrated the difficulties of profitable steel making in Scotland. This decision provides some evidence that the owners of the Scottish steel industry were not disinclined to make large capital investments, Stewart and Lloyd’s invested over

£3m in the construction of the new plant. The move to Corby also had interesting social results in the form of the expansion of the town of Corby from 1,500 to over

10,000 in 1939 as large numbers of steelworkers and their families moved from

Lanarkshire to Northamptonshire to create a Scottish enclave in the south of

England. 2 The second important development, the creation of Colvilles Ltd from a merger of David Colville and Son with another Scottish firm, James Dunlop and Son, in 1931, did further the cause of rationalisation, although not to the extent which was probably required. Thus, the response of the Scottish steel industry to the problems of the interwar years demonstrates an attempt at ‘self-help’ which was less than successful in overcoming problems inherited from the pre-1914 period.

Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding was undoubtedly a ‘growth point’ in the Scottish economy in the

Victorian period. 3 Despite the connections between the two activities in some ways it contrasted strongly with the steel industry in the sense that it was a long established

1 Payne, Colvilles , 169-83; Campbell, Rise and fall of Scottish industry, 125-6; Warren, ‘Locational problems’, 32-6 2 Denton, ‘Investment and location’, 272-80 3 Campbell, Scotland since 1707 , 174 industry in Scotland, the tradition of building wooden ships stretched back to early modern times and survived into the twentieth century, although the place of Scotland as a major centre of shipbuilding was an innovation of the late nineteenth century.

This highly skilled specialisation, which had reached its apogee with the elegant and fast Aberdonian clippers of the mid-nineteenth century, survived the age of iron and steel, although producing smaller ships for trawling and the coastal trade. 1 By the later

nineteenth century, despite the survival of yards in Aberdeen and Burntisland in Fife,

the shipbuilding industry in Scotland became synonymous with the river Clyde which

became the dominant centre in British and, for a time, international shipbuilding. The

Clyde itself did not have a long tradition as a major centre of shipbuilding. It was the

links which could be provided with the coal and metal industries as well as the huge

pool of labour from the rapidly growing city of Glasgow which was the key

determinant of its growth. As late as 1835 only 5 per cent of new tonnage was being

launched from the Clyde but during the age of steam the Clyde developed rapidly, 60

per cent of steam tonnage was launched from the Clyde in the years between 1812

and 1860 and around half of the UK ship building labour force worked on the Clyde

by 1870. 2 As has been noted in our discussion of the structure of the Scottish economy, shipbuilding was one sector where Scotland diverged to the greatest extent from the UK pattern. Employment expanded rapidly from the 1880s to the 1920s, from less than 20,000 workers to over 120,000 in 1921. The figures for output show a similar picture of expansion: steam ships with a tonnage of just over 300,000 were launched on the Clyde in the mid-1890s and a pre-war peak of just over 750,000 tons was reached in 1913. 3 This was not a straightforward story of expansion, however;

there were many problems along the way, including depressed conditions in the mid

1 Perren, ‘The nineteenth-century economy’, 84-92 2 Lenman, Economic history , 177-81 3 Payne, Colvilles , 82, quoting Cunnison and Gilfillan (eds), Glasgow , 839-40 1880s and the 1900s, as well as considerable investment required to restructure yards to cope with construction of steel ships. 1 Although the long tradition of Scottish shipbuilding can be alluded to, more important reasons for this expansion can be found in more general trends in economic policy and international trade in this period.

Three factors can be identified. First, under the influence of a liberal economic policy, international free trade and a rapidly expanding empire, Britain’s merchant fleet expanded to a position of domination in world shipping, about 42 per cent of world merchant tonnage, and British yards had a virtual monopoly of this construction, shipowners virtually never placed orders in foreign yards before the Great War.

Second, naval expansion in the Edwardian period also contributed to activity in

Scottish yards, especially the yards of John Brown and Co at Clydebank and that of

Beardmore at Dalmuir, although the very biggest ships, the ‘Dreadnoughts’, were not built on the Clyde smaller naval ships were, although the profitability of these

Admiralty contracts may have been much less than that which could be earned on civil construction. Thirdly, substantial foreign naval and merchant work, amounting to about a fifth of the output of British shipbuilding, provided another outlet for the industry and this was fully evident on the Clyde. 2

In another sense shipbuilding shared with steel a new technical sophistication in the late nineteenth century. New methods of construction and propulsion were pioneered in Scottish yards and, unusually, the industry was well integrated with the provision of technical education, especially through the Elder chair of naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of Glasgow from 1883. 3

1 Moss, ‘William Todd Lithgow’, 47-72 2 Peebles, Warshipbuilding , 1-87; Peebles, ‘A study in failure’, 22-48; Johnman and Murphy, British shipbuilding , 1-13 3 Byres, ‘Entrepreneurship’, 260

This raises the question of the contribution of the education system, and the universities in particular, to the Scottish economy. We have already noted the way in which there was an increasing dichotomy in Scottish schools between ‘academic’ and

‘commercial’ or ‘technical’ education, the former having a higher status and being coveted by the aspirant middle classes. Historians disagree on the question of the role of the universities. A pessimistic view argues that the ancient Scottish institutions concentrated on arts subjects rather than science and engineering, although the latter were expanding in the late nineteenth century. Students came to university ill- prepared for scientific study and there was a shortage of the expensive facilities required for teaching such subjects. There may also have been an attitudinal problem among even the most distinguished figures, such as William Thompson (Lord

Kelvin), who doubted that the proper purpose of a university was vocational education. A different view, of course, was taken by staff of the Andersonian

Institution (later to become the Royal Technical College and the University of

Strathclyde) which had since the late eighteenth century provided such training.

Qualified optimism can, however, be introduced into the debate by noting that if the proportion of science and engineering students in the Scottish universities was relatively low then, by virtue of the sheer size of these institutions, the numbers were quite high and certainly at least comparable with the new civic universities in England and Oxbridge. This view, however, does not deal with the qualitative issues raised by academics and industrialists in the late nineteenth century, although the increasing specialisation of the curricula and the resort to more stringent entrance requirements after 1889 probably helped. 1

Despite the fact that shipbuilding and steel shared so many links the roots of their experiences in the inter-war period were very different. Whereas the Scottish steel industry had particular disadvantages which rendered it uncompetitive in the 1920s and 1930s, the Scottish shipbuilding industry shared in the general decline of yards on other British rivers as international competition, changes to the nature of international trade and naval disarmament eroded Britain’s once dominant position in world shipbuilding. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 1930s increasing international tension saw significant rearmament which was the crucial factor in the revival of the

Clyde shipbuilding industry. A number of indicators can be cited to illustrate this point: Britain’s share of world merchant tonnage fell from over 40 per cent in 1914 to only 26.6 per cent in 1938. The shipbuilding industry was a central problem in the difficulties faced by the Scottish economy in the inter-war period. As the volume of

British exports fell during the inter-war period by about 30 per cent the demand for ships fell and this was compounded by the loss of the British merchant fleet’s strong position in non-British trade. Further, few materials or components required in the construction of a ship were imported, most were produced in close proximity to the

Clyde. Shipbuilding’s central location in this network of metal and engineering industries meant that the knock-on effects of fluctuations were particularly significant.

An alternative view is that the ability of Clyde shipbuilders, compared to their rivals in Belfast or the north of England, to source the parts and materials from suppliers in

1 Campbell, Rise and fall of Scottish industry , 41-7; Robertson, ‘Scottish universities and Scottish industry’, 39-54 close proximity to their yards was an advantage. 1 A brief examination of the

shipbuilding industry can also demonstrate that there are various readings of the

economic depression in inter-war Scotland. The statistics on employment present a

horrific picture of extreme fluctuation, from a peak of nearly 100,000 employees in

1920 during the boom induced by the construction needed to replace shipping stock

lost during the war, to a trough of only 11,400 in 1933, prior to a partial rearmament-

induced recovery in the later 1930s. The trough of the early 1930s saw an

unemployment rate of 75 per cent among ship building workers. Indeed, in one yard,

John Browns at Clydebank, the workforce fluctuated from nearly 11,000 in the middle

of the Great War to less than 500 in the depth of the depression in 1932. In other

ways, however, the picture did not look so bleak, Scottish output as a percentage of

the UK total remained above its immediate pre-war level for virtually the whole inter-

war period. The Clyde did not suffer the same degree of contraction as other

shipbuilding areas such as the North East of England. The demand for the high value

cruise liners and warships with their complex engineering and expensive fitting out

which were the staple of the Clyde remained much healthier than that of the smaller

tramp steamers which were the principal output of the of the Tyne, Tees and Wear. It

was even possible for some yards to make a profit, albeit at much lower levels than in

the pre-war period. Although Scottish shipbuilding was relatively strong in a UK

context the same could not be said in international terms. Scottish yards produced

around a fifth of world output in the immediate pre-war period but there were only

four years in the inter-war period when that figure was exceeded and the average for

the 1919 to 1938 period was only 17 per cent. 2

1 Johnman and Murphy, British shipbuilding , 9; Buxton, ‘Scottish shipbuilding industry’, 102-3; Buxton, ‘Economic growth’, 546; Robertson, ‘Clydeside revisited’, 265 2 Buxton, ‘Scottish shipbuilding industry’, appendix I, 119; Slaven, ‘A shipyard in depression’, 192- 217

The overwhelming view in the industry among shipbuilders and trade unionists was one of pessimism and their responses to the perceived crisis are interesting and can be discussed under the twin headings of ‘self help’ and government intervention. From

1930 to 1937 the principal shipbuilders formed and operated National Shipbuilders’

Security Ltd (NSS), an organisation which sought to rationalise the industry by reducing over-capacity by purchasing and mothballing yards which were unproductive. The results of this approach were mixed, the industry became concentrated in the hands of a small number of large firms, it was by no means clear that the most inefficient yards were closed and the human cost in terms of high levels of unemployment were considerable, although much worse in the North East of

England, especially Jarrow, than on the Clyde. Government intervention was also important in attempts to stave off a complete meltdown in the shipbuilding industry.

The government orders for warships which revived the industry in the late 1930s were one form of evidence of this but should be seen in the context of the long tradition of warshipbuilding on the Clyde and of the fact that naval disarmament in the 1920s was one of the reasons for the downturn in the industry in that decade. A more unusual form of intervention, however, came with the government support for the construction of the Cunarder which eventually became the Queen Mary on its launch in 193? The suspension of work on the Cunarder in December 1931 provided a symbol of the depression of the heavy industrial economy of the west of Scotland. The Clydebank

MP, David Kirkwood, conveyed this feeling in his memoirs when he remarked that

‘the great ship …stood mocking us all those weary months, dangling hope before hungry eyes and dashing faith to the pit of despair’. 1 Not only had the government

1 Kirkwood, My life of revolt , 252, quoted by Johnman and Murphy, British shipbuilding , 41 agreed to support the insurance costs of the huge liner in 1930 but in late 1933 when

Cunard and the White Star line merged the government advanced nearly £3million to support the completion of the Queen Mary and the construction of its sister ship the

Queen Elizabeth. As a number of scholars have pointed out, this was a remarkable turn around by both government and industry who had both set their face against such subsidy. The government assuaged their guilt by drawing attention to the strategic importance of the North Atlantic trade but were less willing to admit that the positive impact on the unemployment figures in Clydebank were such an important factor. 1

These decisions were redolent of the greater interest in directing the economy which was a feature of the thinking in both the Labour and Unionist parties in the 1930s, as we have seen. That it represented a fairly wide consensus can be seen from the activities of the leading figure in Scottish shipbuilding in this period, Sir James

Lithgow. In the 1930s Lithgow was not only a leading figure in the NSS but was also involved in the Scottish National Development Council and its offshoot the Scottish

Economic Committee. The SEC produced a number of reports in the 1930s all of which argued for greater government intervention in the economy. This was in stark contrast to Lithgow’s views at earlier points in his career when he supported free trade and deprecated intervention. He recognised, however, by the 1930s that exceptional measures were required to keep the shipbuilding industry alive, and this objective overrode all else. 2 These strategies, however, did nothing to engage with the principal problem of Scottish shipbuilding yards—their very high costs and the centrality of fixed charges in the contracts entered into by shipbuilding firms. This was, of course, justifiable as a failure to cover costs could only lead to disaster. The failure to control costs, however, became a problem which would contribute to the virtual extinction of

1 Slaven, ‘A shipyard in depression’, 200-1; Johnman and Murphy, British shipbuilding , 37-59 2 see entries on Lithgow in ODNB and DSBB , i, 222-7 the industry in the post-1945 period. 1 The one cost which shipbuilders did try to control was wages, there was even a tendency among leading figures like Lithgow to blame to woes of the industry on the exorbitant, as he saw it, wage demands of the workforce. This was far from easy in the face of the strident independence of sections of the workforce, such as the rivetters. 2 This was in contrast to the picture in the per- war period when, despite their authoritarianism and opposition to trades unions, shipbuilding employers paid relatively high wages. Shipbuilding employers frequently acted in concert in an effort to control the activities of unions, notably during disputes in 1902 and 1906 but were at the forefront of trying to control their labour force through the provision of company housing for favoured employees who demonstrated a sufficient degree of loyalty to the firm. 3

Agriculture

The agrarian economy of Scotland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

century was dominated by livestock with a very small arable sector. Regional

diversity reigned in this sector of the economy as well. What arable farming

there was—in East Lothian, Fife and parts of Tayside—was also distinctive in

that the principal cereal was barley rather than wheat. The North East of

Scotland itself contained a wide diversity of conditions and agricultural activity,

its regime of mixed farming was dominated by cattle-breeding, for which it was

justly famous through, for example, the work of the renowned cattle-breeder and

farmers’ activist William McCombie of Tillyfour. The crops which were grown

here—swedes and turnips—were destined for stockfeeding rather than human

1 Campbell, ‘Costs and contracts’, 54-79 2 McKinlay, ‘Inter-war depression' 3 Johnston, Clydeside capital, 183-5; Slaven, ‘Management and shipbuilding’, 41 consumption. The South-West of Scotland displayed different conditions again and much of Scotland’s dairying and pig-breeding activity was located in this region. The physical distinctions between the north and south, between highland and lowland Scotland, between marginal and fertile agricultural regions were not coterminous. There were fertile regions, even some arable farming, in northern regions. The ‘Black Isle’ north of Inverness, was, as its name suggests, extremely good farming country and similar conditions were evident in Easter

Ross. Exceptionally good ‘lowland’ grazing conditions were available for farmers in Caithness and in Orkney, the latter should not be thought of as part of a uniform area called ‘the northern isles’ as its landscape and agriculture was entirely different from the harsh crofting and fishing economy of Shetland.

Orkney was also the site of one of the most extraordinary agricultural experiments in Scotland. On the island of Shapinsay Colonel David Balfour applied a fortune gained by his ancestors in India to a scheme of comprehensive agricultural improvement which he regarded as a model which could solve the problems which he observed on the highland estates of his friends. He was genuinely puzzled when they chose not to emulate him and took refuge in faith in the racial superiority of the Orcadian. 1 In the South of Scotland, close to the

most advanced agriculture in the country, highly marginal conditions were to be

found in the southern uplands, an area which supported an extensive sheep-

farming economy which had more in common with the central highlands than

adjacent lowland areas. Despite these blurred lines it is still possible to argue

that the highland counties—especially Sutherland, Ross, Inverness and parts of

Argyll—were highly distinctive. The extensive grazing economy which had been

1 Barker, ‘Shapinsay’ created by the first phase of the highland clearances in the early nineteenth century gave way in the aftermath of the mid-century famine to structure which saw huge tracts of land given over to the deliberately manufactured solitude desired by sportsmen in pursuit of the deer and grouse which now populated these areas. A bitter political argument developed in the 1880s and 1890s the crofters’ movement of that period argued that these sporting estates were the principal cause of the depopulation and squalid congestion which afflicted the highlands. The defenders of the landowners who profited from the rents of shooting tenants argued that sport did not invade the territory of small tenants, took place only on high-altitude ground which was suitable for little else, and brought substantial investment and employment to the highlands which filtered down to the crofting community. 1 Recent studies have emphasised that these

economic benefits were limited. Deer forests were hardly labour intensive and

the wealthy sportsmen (even as hard-headed an individual as William

Beardmore bought into the fashion), once their lodges had been constructed,

contributed little to the highland economy bringing most of their provisions with

them from Edinburgh or London. 2 This new enterprise had a profound effect on the landscape and fauna of Scottish upland areas. Deer numbers reached absurd levels with devastating effects on young trees and other vegetation. Anything which was likely to disturb the deer stalker—such as inconvenient crofters— were excluded. Any form of life—birds of prey, polecats, pine martens and wild cats—which predated on game birds was massacred, ruthlessly and efficiently, by gamekeepers. The development of commercialised angling was fatal to the otters who could catch fish without the aid of expensive rods and tackle. Over

1 PP 1895 XXXVII-XXXIX, Royal Commission (Highlands and Islands, 1892) 2 Orr, Deer Forests ; Hume and Moss, Beardmore , 53, 243 200 were killed on one west Highland estate alone in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 1 Whatever else can be said about the results of the highland

clearances it is a supreme irony that the system of sheep farming which was the

principal result, and was held to be so superior to what had preceded it,

collapsed within two generations and was replaced by commercialised sport.

A second way in which the highlands were distinctive was the application of a novel

system of land tenure to the seven most northerly counties with the passage of the

Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886. This provided for security of tenure for

small tenants, or crofters, and gave them the right to appeal to a Crofters Commission

to regulate their rent and other aspects of their relations with their landlords. If this

appeared to violate one Liberal principle, the sanctity of private property, it

conformed with another, retrenchment, in that it cost the government virtually

nothing. The economic benefit for the crofters was minimal, however. It would be

1919 before legislation to deal with their principal grievance, shortage of land, would

be passed and even the extensive land settlement of the 1920s, because it created large

number of very small holdings, did little to change the economic structure of the

crofting economy and the crisis which engulfed it in the 1930s was similar in

structure, if not intensity, to that which had swept through the region in the 1840s and

1850s. 2 Throughout the twentieth century there has been a paradox at the heart of the

agrarian history of the highlands. Agriculture remained important in the highlands

long after its centrality to the economic structure of other parts of Scotland had been

eroded. However, the contribution of the highlands to the output of Scottish

agriculture was minimal, the arable acreage was tiny, sheep farming was struggling

1 Smout, Nature contested , 131-8. 2 Cameron, Land for the people? to maintain profitability and large areas of land were devoted to sport which was non- productive. 1

At the end of the Great War the complex structures which had controlled the price of food during that conflict were withdrawn although a commitment to guarantee the price of corn was retained for a short period before being withdrawn as the government realised the financial costs involved in such a policy in an period of falling prices and the political costs of supporting agriculture when other industries were being exposed to market conditions. Scottish farmers seemed not to be too concerned about this change of policy, and can be contrasted with their counterparts in later generations in finding government subsidy to be ‘inimical to enterprise and initiative’. 2 This view had changed markedly by the 1930s as the agricultural lobby pressed government to intervene, especially to restrict imports as farmers felt that their interests were being sacrificed on that altar of cheap food. The principal fact which produced this change of outlook was the prolonged agricultural depression of the inter-war period which saw dramatic falls in the prices of most agricultural products, in both the arable and the livestock sector. If Scottish farmers had been immune from the depression in Victorian agriculture they had a different experience in the 1920s and 1930s. Some sectors, such as the dairy farmers of the south-west, were still able to make a profit, but the contemporary perception was of the tragic woes facing the farming community. The government responded with a volte-face in agricultural policy. The introduction of protection was one part of the general turn away from free-trade in the early 1930s but it was augmented by renewed financial support for the prices of agricultural commodities. Scottish farmers were not

1 Campbell, ‘Too much on the highlands’, 58-75 2 Douglas, ‘Policy of the Agriculture Act’, 1-20; Anthony, Herds and hinds , 40. particularly well served by this new regime. The grew little wheat, the main crop to be subsidised, and support for Scottish agricultural production such as oats, barley and sheep was more modest and belated. 1 This policy of support did not appease Scottish farmers, one berated the Secretary of State in 1939 and referred to the wheat subsidy as ‘giving money for growing hen’s food.’ 2

A Scottish economy?

A further question which might be posed is: to what extend did a ‘Scottish’ economy exist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In terms of statistics it is difficult to discern such an entity as statistical series relating to economic performance in Scotland were not collected in this period. Some evidence relating to the structure of the economy can be gleaned from the information about employment in the decennial census, although caution must be exercised in its use. Aside from statistics the existence of a ‘Scottish’ economy can be examined from two distinct standpoints: first, how does Scottish economic history relate to the wider British picture; and, second, can a national experience be identified in the face of clear evidence for regional economic diversity.

If we examine the structure of employment in Scotland in 1881 and 1921, the pattern does not diverge from the British pattern to a significant degree. There were, however, four important divergences which can be seen from table one. 3 The first comes in the

agricultural sector (I) where Scotland had a higher proportion of workers than the UK

average, despite the fact that Scottish agriculture was much less intensive than the

1 Anthony, Herds and hinds , 42-53; Cameron, ‘Modernisation’, 195-6 2 NAS, AF43/124/70a 3 the following points are based on the statistics in Lee, Regional economic growth , Appendix C, 220- 247 general pattern south of the border. Although this sector of the economy lost over

80,000 workers in the period down to 1921 by the latter date its size was closer to the national average. Another tale of woe can be found in the textile sector, which employed a greater proportion of the Scottish workforce than the national average in

1881 but, consequent upon a loss of nearly 40,000 jobs, was in 1921 closer to, but just under, that national average. The next distinctive area of the Scottish economy lay in shipbuilding. In contrast to agriculture this sector (VII) gained over 100,000 workers in the forty year period to 1921 as Clyde built vessels dominated the world market for shipping. Finally, a slightly more complicated picture emerges if the financial, professional and service sector (XXI-XXIII) is examined. With the exception of the financial sector, largely concentrated in the east of Scotland, the Scottish economy did seem to be ‘deficient’ in this area. The addition of 50,000 jobs in these sectors of the economy brought the Scottish profile closer to that of the UK by 1921. Even if employment in the financial sector fell behind the national average by 1921 it formed a higher proportion of employment in Scotland by that date. Two concluding comments can be made in review of these figures. A distinctive nineteenth century pattern of rapid growth in population and employment was steadily subsiding in the late nineteenth century and the Scottish economic profile was, in terms of employment at least, becoming more like that of the UK. Thus there is more evidence of a distinct Scottish economy in the late nineteenth than in the early twentieth century.

As might be expected given the contrasting demographic experience of the regions of

Scotland, economic diversity was strongly evident at this level, and it was not merely confined to a contrast between the highlands and the lowlands, or even urban and rural Scotland. If one considers the four main cities of Scotland considerable diversity was evident even within this urban economy. Prior to the Great War there was a clear contrast between heavily industrialised cities such as Glasgow and Dundee, where around 70-75 per cent of the total labour force were employed in industrial occupations, and less heavily industrialised cities such as Aberdeen and Edinburgh where the figure was about ten per cent less. These contrasts have important consequences for the social and economic development of these cities. If the occupational structure of Edinburgh is examined a much higher level of professional employment, among both men and women is evident—nearly 10 per cent of women and over 15 per cent of men were employed in professional occupations in 1911.

Further, professions such as law, medicine, dentistry and the civil service were particularly strongly represented in the Scottish capital, these were high prestige and well remunerated occupations and gave Edinburgh a much more stable economic structure than the other Scottish cities, a much smaller proportion of its workforce was susceptible to irregular working. In turn this meant that there was a greater propensity among the Edinburgh middle class to employ domestic servants. The spending and consumption of these middle-class households sustained a rich pattern of consumer trades and the production of expensive high value items such as jewellery, furniture, books and clothes. As the historian of the Edinburgh economy has remarked: ‘Greater stability of demand …meant improved opportunities for regular manual work in the lee of Edinburgh’s professional middle-class expenditure patterns.’ 1 If we should not neglect the professions and service employment of Edinburgh in a stereotype of the industrialised Scottish economy, then neither should the industrial sector of

Scotland’s capital be forgotten. Edinburgh had carefully built its image as a non-

1 figures from Rodger, ‘Employment, wages and poverty’, 25-63, quote from 39 industrial city free from the disfigurements of factories, slum housing and urban squalor. There was, however, a diverse industrial economy in the city, largely based around the railways and the Union canal which entered the city from the west and passed through districts which were dominated by large-scale works such as breweries, distilleries and rubber factories. 1

The most marked contrast to Edinburgh came from Dundee, a city with a remarkably

concentrated economy and one which demonstrates the ways in which gender

divisions overlaid regional diversity in the Scottish economy. The dominance of the

jute industry in Dundee and the importance of female labour in that industry were the

two most notable features of the city’s economy. Around 40 per cent of women were

economically active in Dundee in the half century prior to the Great War, compared to

around 25 to 30 per cent for the other Scottish cities, and this at a time when the

compilation of official statistics tended to underplay the number of women in the

workforce. A much higher proportion (23 per cent compared to a Scottish average of

5 per cent) of married women remained in the workforce in Dundee than in other

urban areas of Scotland, even other textile centres. The distinctiveness of the

Dundonian economy is compounded when it is considered that many of these married

women were, despite the fact that they were paid lower wages than men, the principal

breadwinners for their households. This was an important reason for the endemic

poverty and the abysmal (even by urban Scottish standards) housing conditions which

afflicted the city. 2

1 Gray, Labour aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh , 21, 24-30; Rodger, ‘Landscapes of capital’, 86-100 2 Gordon, Women and the labour movement , 20, 141-6 Another way of identifying a Scottish economy is the rather negative one of noting its deficiences. Looking back from the vantage point of the post war period, and with an awareness of the depression of the 1930s, it is easy to adopt a pessimistic view. We have already noted the problems which may have arisen from the low wages which characterised sections of the Scottish economy. Further consequences can be seen when the figures for income are examined. By this measure Scotland did seem to be lagging behind the rest of Great Britain. Studies of the period from the mid-1920s to the late 1940s indicate that income per head in Scotland was consistently lower (by between 4 and 13%) than the UK average and during the worst years of the depression, 1929-33, it fell much faster than that of the UK as a whole. It was also evident that Scotland had a lower proportion of its work force in salaried employment; by definition more stable in the long term if not necessarily more remunerative over the short term. Although this was perhaps a deficiency shared by most regions of the UK, other than London and the South East with its disproportionate share of government and managerial employment, when placed alongside the existence of relatively high unemployment in Scotland, especially during the depression, it does begin to present mounting evidence of a structural weakness in the Scottish economy. 1 It has been suggested that the problems of the

Scottish economy in the inter-war period did not arise from individual failures in

particular industries, but through a structural weakness: namely, the concentration of

economic activity in a narrow range of declining heavy industries and a failure to

develop the newer high value industries which fuelled growth in the most prosperous

areas of the United Kingdom, even during the depression. Evidence provided by

contemporary indices of business activity, 81 in Scotland in 1932 compared to 96 for

1 Campbell, ‘Changes in Scottish income’, 225-40; Campbell, ‘Income’, 46-64 Great Britain (1924=100); by unemployment rates, 27.7 per cent in 1932 compared to

16.6 per cent for Great Britain; and by figures relating to net output per head, £200 in

1930 compared to £213 for England and Wales and £211 for the UK, augment the evidence of the bald national income evidence. Scotland’s industrial structure was heavily skewed towards ‘traditional’ industries such as coalmining, iron and steel manufacture shipbuilding, engineering and textile manufacture, absorbing 42 per cent of the insured labour force in 1924 and 27 per cent in 1939 (the equivalent figures for the UK were 33.7 per cent and 21.7 per cent). These staple industries contributed around 40 per cent of Scottish output in the inter-war period, compared to around 30 per cent for the UK as a whole; the shortfall in the contribution of ‘new’ industries, such as vehicle manufacturing, electrical engineering, non ferrous metals, synthetic textile production, in Scotland grew from 6 to 10 per cent over the inter-war period. 1

A number of reasons can be identified for the emergence and consolidation of this economic structure. Firstly, given the apparent modernity and cutting edge technology of the steel, shipbuilding and engineering industries in the late Victorian period it was perhaps difficult for the leaders in these sectors to appreciate the speed with which events overtook them in the mid-1920s. Second, the legacy of the Victorian period was compounded by that of the Great War and its immediate aftermath. As we have seen the Scottish economy, and the heavy industrial economy of the west of Scotland in particular, responded with enormous energy to the huge opportunities presented by the demand for munitions and other materials stimulated by the war. This helped to consolidate the pattern of the Victorian period and it was, thirdly, further deepened by the demand for replacement products in the immediate aftermath of the war, a trend which was particularly evident in the shipbuilding industry and its first cousins in

1 Buxton, ‘Economic growth in Scotland’, 541-50 steel manufacture. Most work by Scottish economic historians endorses this rather gloomy picture and has a tendency to imply the inevitability of economic failure in the 1930s. 1 As will be evident from the case studies, however, especially those in steel and shipbuilding, changes in the international economy were also influential in

Scotland’s economic experience in the inter-war period. In most sectors this meant a more competitive environment. Even where there were advantages, such as in the opportunities presented to the export-orientated east of Scotland coalfield by the prostration of that industry in France and Germany in the early 1920s, they were short-lived and rapidly gave way to exceedingly difficult conditions.

Contemporaries—commentators, politicians and government—were aware of the extent of the problems and there was vigorous debate as to means of mitigating the consequences, although the suggestions for providing long-term solutions were inadequate. Government intervention was contemplated much more readily in the

1930s than it had been in the Edwardian period or even in the 1920s. In the 1920s the response to regional unemployment was to create structures, especially the Industrial

Transference Board, which sought to move the workers to the jobs. This did not prove particularly successful and an additional approach, one which was retained in

‘regional policy’ until the 1980s, was tried in the 1930s. The Special Areas legislation of 1934, 1936 and 1937 sought to provide indirect assistance to areas with high levels of unemployment. The area around Glasgow, although not the city itself (a controversial omission) was designated as a ‘Special Area’. The National Government in London had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards these initiatives and, although enthusiasm among Scottish Unionists was probably greater, they made only

1 Campbell, Scotland since 1707 , ; Lenman, Economic history, 206-27; Slaven, Development of the west of Scotland , 183-209 a marginal difference to the unemployment statistics. 1 Probably the most tangible result in Scotland was the creation of the Hillington industrial estate in Renfrewshire which by 1938 was the site of nearly eighty factories with 1500 employees. 2 Running

against this admittedly crude and inadequate attempt to recognise regional economic

diversity were the fact that national economic policy, made in Whitehall often had

complex regional results. Two examples will suffice. Export industries, such as coal

from the east of Scotland, were not helped by the abandonment of free trade and

international retaliation in the early 1930s, the essential reason for its unpopularity in

the early 1900s and at the general election of 1923. There was, however, a clamour

for protection from farming interests and, at least in the short term, the effect was

beneficial. Also it has been suggested that the overvaluation of sterling after the return

to the gold standard in 1925 caused problems for export orientated industries,

especially textiles, by reducing their competitiveness. Any advantage gained by the

devaluation inherent in the abandonment of the gold standard in 1931 was mitigated

by the raising of tariff barriers. 3

The Scottish Economic Committee, an offshoot of the Scottish National Development

Council and largely composed of businessmen and trades unionists supported by academics, published a number of reports which identified the key structural problems and argued for measures to diversify the economy and stimulate the home market for consumer goods through government planning. 4 The starting point for the SEC’s

analyses was the perception that ‘there seems to be little doubt that Scotland is facing,

at the present moment, one of those periods in which the basic future of the nation is

1 Garside, British unemployment , 240-77 2 Campbell, ‘Scottish Office and the Special Areas’, 167-83; Saville, ‘Industrial background’, 1-18 3 Jones, ‘Regional impact of an overvalued pound’, 393-401 4 SEC, Scotland’s industrial future ; SEC, Light industries in Scotland at stake.’ 1 It was this kind of statement which engendered considerable suspicion of the SEC in Whitehall; in reality, however, it was far from being a nationalist sect, although it did see economic recovery and structural change as extending beyond statistical indicators to matters of national vigour and health. This was an economic version of the national crisis in culture and identity which can be identified in much comment about Scotland in the inter-war period. Industrial decline and economic depression was part of this more general crisis, but these features had been part of

Scottish economic history prior to the inter-war period. As we have seen, the depressions of the mid-1880s and the Edwardian period had been particularly severe.

What was it which produced a much more pessimistic reaction in the inter-war period? Three important features can be alluded to here: emigration, anglicisation and unemployment.

The 1920s were the decade of emigration, for the first time in an inter-censal period the years between 1921 and 1931 saw emigration exceed the natural increase of the population. Although it might be argued that in a period of high unemployment, as was the case in the early 1920s when much of this movement took place, emigration could operate as a safety valve and that unemployment may have been higher but for the outflow of people, this was by no means clear at the time. It is not evident that those at most risk from unemployment were the same group as those who emigrated.

The dominions, emigration to which much policy was designed to encourage, were less than enthusiastic about accepting large numbers of unemployed emigrants. As had been the pattern of nineteenth century Scottish emigrants, those most inclined to emigrate were the skilled workers who had a trade which could be transferred to

1 SEC, Scotland’s industrial future, 19 another industrial economy, especially the United States of America which was the dominant emigrant destination in this period. Further, some of this emigration was encouraged and assisted by the government, through the Empire Settlement Act of

1922, and this was aimed at people with a certain amount of capital. In periods of intense emigration the poorest had never been the most numerous emigrants. Finally, although the scale of emigration in the 1920s was novel and it showed up clearly in the census of 1931, emigration was deeply engrained in Scottish history and had been a subject of concern prior to the Great War when its economic effects were a worry to contemporaries. The cessation of emigration in the 1930s, when the net flow of people was in the opposite direction, did not indicate economic health. Many of the returnees were disappointed emigrants from the 1920s fleeing from economic environments, such as that in the industrial regions of the north east of the United

States, which were now themselves in depression. 1 Thus, although there was an

understandable fear that the national life blood was being drained away through the

emigration of skilled and educated groups this does not fully explain the pessimism of

the inter-war period.

The perception that the Scottish economy was becoming less autonomous was also

evident in much comment of the period. There did seem to be plenty of evidence to

support this perception. The creation of Imperial Chemical Industries in 1926 meant

that the chemical industry, once so important in the shape of Charles Tennant’s

empire, was no longer controlled by Scottish capital. The early 1920s had also seen

the National, British Linen, Clydesdale and North of Scotland Banks taken over by

Lloyds, Barclays and the Midland Bank. The Scottish railway companies, once the

1 Garside, British unemployment , 179-200 biggest commercial organisations in Scotland, were merged into the London Midland

Scottish, and London and North Eastern Railway Companies. This was in addition to the anglicisation evident in the move of Stewart and Lloyd’s to Corby and the way in which David Colville and Sons had been sucked into the tentacles of Lord Kylsant’s

Royal Mail group which controlled Harland and Wolff the shipbuilder and hence

Colville’s. This became problematic when the edifice of Kylsant’s empire began to crumble in the late 1920s. 1 If the pace of change accelerated and in the context of other problems these takeovers seemed to emasculate some of the leading symbols of the Scottish economy then it was not an entirely new process, as was demonstrated by the purchase of J and G Thomson the shipbuilders by John Brown, a Sheffield steel company in 1899. 2

The problem which worried contemporaries the most, however, was unemployment.

The concern had several dimensions: not only were employers worried about the loss

of productive capacity and profit but those in local and national authority worried

about the social consequences and even the potential threat to order which stemmed

from large numbers of men (and it was perceived as a male problem) standing idle.

Female unemployment was chronically underestimated by the statistics since many

women worked in casual jobs, were outside the national insurance schemes and were

not registered for unemployment benefit. Economic historians are deeply divided on

most matters relating to the definition, extent and causation of unemployment, but a

number of points can be made with some certainty. 3 The problem varied over time in

the interwar period, with the depressions of 1920-1 and 1929-33 seeing the worst

1 Scott & Hughes, Anatomy of Scottish capital , 54-88; Payne, Colvilles , 184-7; Davies & Bourn, ‘Lord Kylsant’, 103-23 2 Peebles, ‘A study in failure’, 22 3 O’Brien, ‘Britain’s economy between the wars’, 109-10 conditions, at other times the unemployment level may not have been much higher than that evident in the pre-1914 period, although our data for that period is very sketchy. The raw figures do not quite convey the depth of the problem, despite the fact that at its worst in 1932 unemployment in Scotland stood at nearly 28 per cent, compared to only 13.5 per cent in London (but 36.5 per cent in Wales). In particular trades the figures were much higher: coalmining, for example, had an unemployment rate of 34 per cent in 1932, pig-iron 44 per cent, iron and steel 48 per cent and shipbuilding an astonishing level of 62 per cent. 1 These were all industries, which, as we have seen, were heavily represented in the Scottish industrial structure. New industries, such as chemicals, car and aircraft production and electrical engineering, under-represented in Scotland, had much lower unemployment rates, in a range from

11 to 22 per cent. Scotland’s industrial areas were also afflicted by the scourge of long-term unemployment to a greater degree than some other areas of the country.

Nearly 28 per cent of the unemployed in Scotland had been out of work for twelve months or more and the average duration of unemployment was 47 weeks, both indicators were the highest of all regions of the UK, higher even than areas like Wales and the north of England with which the industrial areas of Scotland had much in common. 2 In areas like the north east of England, south Wales and Fife the decline of the coal industry had a negative multiplier effect on transport and shipping and the geographical concentration of declining industries exacerbated the level of unemployment. There was also an age and gender dimension to the problem with younger workers and women probably losing their jobs at a higher rate than male skilled workers, although this did not necessarily show up in the statistics.

1 figures quoted by Booth and Glynn, ‘Unemployment in the interwar period’, 619, 632 and by Dewey, War and progress , 261 2 Garside, British unemployment , 13, 17 Thus by the mid-1930s the Scottish economy seemed to be afflicted by a series of intractable problems. The social consequences of these economic weaknesses were evident in widespread poverty and the shocking housing conditions endured by workers in both urban and rural Scotland. There was extensive concern that these problems were likely to lead either to the eclipse of Scottish national identity or to such social unrest that the prevailing political consensus seemed to be in danger. In the event, however, change came through international political events rather than domestic revolution. The drive towards rearmament in the second half of the 1930s and the economic demand during the Second World War saved the Scottish economy from continued depression. The outbreak of an international conflict can scarcely be the cause of celebration, but its immediate positive contribution to the Scottish economy was unambiguous. The benefits, however, were fairly short lived since they merely enhanced the relevance of the prevailing industrial structure which had been the root cause of the serious consequences of the inter-war depression.

1881 1921 1881 1921 1881 1921 I +4.5 +2.3 IX -0.7 -1.2 XVII +0.3 -0.2 II +0.5 +1.7 X +2.5 -0.1 XVIII = -0.1 III -0.1 +0.6 XI -0.1 -0.1 XIX -0.2 +1.2 IV = -0.3 XII -1.8 -1.3 XX +0.4 +1.0 V +0.6 +2.6 XIII -0.4 -0.5 XXI = -0.3 VI +0.4 +0.8 XIV +0.1 +0.4 XXII -0.6 +0.3 VII +0.5 +3.6 XV +0.4 +0.1 XXIII -5.1 -1.3 VIII -0.3 -1.1 XVI -0.1 -0.1 XXIV -0.5 +0.3

Distribution of employment in Scotland by industrial order compared to UK, 1881 and 1921 (per cent)

1881 1921 1881 1921 1881 1921 I 4 5 IX 6 5= XVII 3= 5 II 6 5 X 4 4 XVIII 1= 4= III 6= 3 XI 7 8 XIX 5 1 IV 2= 5 XII 7 8 XX 2 2 V 5 5 XIII 6= 9 XXI 3= 3 VI 5 3 XIV 2 1 XXII 9 4 VII 2 2 XV 2 2 XXIII 9 4= VIII 10 8= XVI 5= 4 XXIV 3 3

1881 1921 Change 1881 1921 Change I 291.9 208.1 -83.8 XIII 10.8 15.3 +4.5

II 76.9 177.7 +100.8 XIV 24.2 42.1 +17.9

III 15.3 81.8 +66.5 XV 26.0 44.2 +18.2 IV 6.1 18.5 +12.4 XVI 5.7 17.1 +11.4 V 68.9 95.0 +26.1 XVII 111.8 74.4 -37.4 VI 36.1 113.3 +77.2 XVIII 2.7 16.5 +13.8

VII 18.5 123.7 +105.2 XIX 86.3 155.6 +69.3

VIII 3.6 18.2 +14.6 XX 113.8 260.8 +147.0 IX 5.6 12.7 +7.2 XXI 9.9 28.6 +18.7 X 189.9 151.2 -38.7 XXII 46.7 65.8 +19.1 XI 6.0 6.0 — XXIII 194.7 212.1 +17.4 XII 110.6 66.9 -43.7 XXIV 20.2 143.2 +121.0 I-XXIV 1612.7 2191.2 +578.5

1881 1921 1881 1921 1881 1921 I 18.1 9.5 IX 0.3 0.6 XVII 6.9 3.4 II 4.8 8.1 X 11.8 6.9 XVIII 0.2 0.8 III 0.9 3.7 XI 0.4 0.3 XIX 5.4 7.1 IV 0.4 0.8 XII 6.8 3.1 XX 7.1 11.9 V 4.3 4.3 XIII 0.7 0.7 XXI 0.6 1.3 VI 2.2 5.2 XIV 1.5 1.9 XXII 2.9 3.0 VII 1.1 5.7 XV 1.6 2.0 XXIII 12.1 9.7 VIII 0.2 0.8 XVI 0.3 0.8 XXIV 1.3 6.5

Changes in workforce in sectors of Scottish economy, 1881-1921 (000s)

1881 1921 1881 1921 1881 1921

I +4.5 +2.3 IX -0.7 -1.2 XVII +0.3 -0.2

II +0.5 +1.7 X +2.5 -0.1 XVIII = -0.1

III -0.1 +0.6 XI -0.1 -0.1 XIX -0.2 +1.2

IV = -0.3 XII -1.8 -1.3 XX +0.4 +1.0 V +0.6 +2.6 XIII -0.4 -0.5 XXI = -0.3

VI +0.4 +0.8 XIV +0.1 +0.4 XXII -0.6 +0.3

VII +0.5 +3.6 XV +0.4 +0.1 XXIII -5.1 -1.3

VIII -0.3 -1.1 XVI -0.1 -0.1 XXIV -0.5 +0.3

Distribution of employment in Scotland by industrial order compared to UK, 1881

and 1921 (per cent)

1881 1921 1881 1921 1881 1921

I 4 5 IX 6 5= XVII 3= 5

II 6 5 X 4 4 XVIII 1= 4=

III 6= 3 XI 7 8 XIX 5 1

IV 2= 5 XII 7 8 XX 2 2

V 5 5 XIII 6= 9 XXI 3= 3

VI 5 3 XIV 2 1 XXII 9 4

VII 2 2 XV 2 2 XXIII 9 4=

VIII 10 8= XVI 5= 4 XXIV 3 3

Table: Rank order of industrial classifications, 1881 and 1921

1881 1921 Change 1881 1921 Change

I 291.9 208.1 -83.8 XIII 10.8 15.3 +4.5

II 76.9 177.7 +100.8 XIV 24.2 42.1 +17.9

III 15.3 81.8 +66.5 XV 26.0 44.2 +18.2 IV 6.1 18.5 +12.4 XVI 5.7 17.1 +11.4

V 68.9 95.0 +26.1 XVII 111.8 74.4 -37.4

VI 36.1 113.3 +77.2 XVIII 2.7 16.5 +13.8

VII 18.5 123.7 +105.2 XIX 86.3 155.6 +69.3

VIII 3.6 18.2 +14.6 XX 113.8 260.8 +147.0

IX 5.6 12.7 +7.2 XXI 9.9 28.6 +18.7

X 189.9 151.2 -38.7 XXII 46.7 65.8 +19.1

XI 6.0 6.0 — XXIII 194.7 212.1 +17.4

XII 110.6 66.9 -43.7 XXIV 20.2 143.2 +121.0

I-XXIV 1612.7 2191.2 +578.5

Table: Changes in workforce in sectors of Scottish economy, 1881-1921 (000s)

Chapter seven: society in depression

Demography

If Scottish demography before 1914 was characterised by falling fertility and high emigration then the inter-war period saw both intensification of existing trends and new concerns. The 1920s were the first decade since the availability of proper data to show a decline in the population of Scotland. This was due to the excess of net emigration compared to the natural increase of the population: the latter amounted to about 350,000, the former around 390,000. This was a national experience, felt in rural and urban areas, in the highlands and the lowlands. The scale of the outflow was remarkable; total emigration from the UK in the 1920s was about 667,000, 25 per cent of the natural increase; in Scotland the figure was 111 per cent and Scottish emigrants made up 58 per cent of British emigration in the 1920s.1 Further, emigration was not

offset, as in the nineteenth century, by immigration. Emigration to the Dominions was

encouraged by the government, but many Scots went to the United States and it was

primarily an outflow of skilled workers and their families, a historic feature of

Scottish emigration. The bulk of this emigration took place in the early 1920s and the

biggest numbers, 88,500, sailed in 1923; the largest group heading for the USA in an

attempt to beat immigration quotas. 2 The 1930s had an entirely different profile, as

the international depression bit in emigrant destinations as well as Scotland. As such

countries became less welcoming to emigrants, the flow of people was choked off and

ultimately reversed as disappointed emigrants from the 1920s returned home; 77,000

entered Scotland from abroad, compared to only 33,600 who left. 3

1 Richards, Britannia’s children , 236; Harper, Emigration from Scotland, 6-7 2 Evans, ‘The emigration of skilled male workers’, 255-80 3 Harper, Emigration from Scotland , 7 This movement of people has mostly been interpreted negatively, as a haemorrhage, but for the policy makers there were advantages to relieving pressure in urban society, moving people to healthier environments where they would be less likely to encounter dangerous political ideas, and peopling the empty and potentially productive expanses of the empire. Nevertheless, in Scotland in the 1920s there were a range of voices opposed to emigration. Left wing and nationalist politicians deprecated government encouragement as defeatist, hostile to Scottish development and evidence of the deleterious results of London government. The presbyterian churches, worried about the loss of Scottish racial virility, contrasted it with immigration from Ireland, the latter a figment of the racist imaginations of leading clergymen. 1

A number of factors help us to understand the extent of emigration in the 1920s: low wages and economic depression, struggling heavy industries and prostrate farming made Scotland a less than magnetic place. These points cannot, however, bear the entire burden of explanation because of the different pattern in the depression of

1920-2, when emigration was high, and after 1929, when it was not. Government assistance, in the shape of the Empire Settlement Act of 1922, reorientated the flow from the United States to the dominions, especially Canada. 2 The provision of

information and facilities helped emigrants decide where to go rather than whether to

go. The factors weighed up by the individual emigrant included the loss of wages and

expense of the process of emigration; the likelihood of gaining higher wages to offset

this in one among a choice of destinations; and pre-existing links in particular

destinations. Adding these variables to the equation explains why emigration dried up

1 Harper, Emigration from Scotland, 199-210 2 Flinn, Scottish population history , 451 in the 1930s. 1 The depressed economic conditions in the likely destinations undermined emigration as a response to low wages or unemployment. Assistance was not available in the same way as it had been in the 1920s and the United States and the Dominions were not enthusiastic about welcoming destitute emigrants. Finally, return emigration broke up networks which had eased the passage of emigrants in a new environment. Despite the visibility of the emigration of the 1920s—between the

Great War and the 1930s, in which it was limited, and because it was headlined in the census figures—it should not be seen as novel. The movement was large, although perhaps matched in the years immediately prior to the Great War—when nearly

300,000 people emigrated—and the involvement of the government was interesting; but both were evident at earlier points in the long history of Scottish emigration and the outflow of the 1920s should be seen as part of that tradition. 2

Infant mortality rates (IMR) were another depressing Scottish demographic feature.

The IMR measured the number of children per 1000 live births who died before their

first birthday. Contemporaries were aware that this was uniquely sensitive to social

conditions especially housing. There was a growing disparity between the changes in

the IMR in industrial England and comparable Scottish areas. In 1850 the IMR in

Liverpool was nearly 240, in Manchester around 230, Glasgow just under 200. By the

mid-1930s, however, the situation was reversed; Glasgow had an IMR of around

ninety compared to figures of around seventy for the two great northern English

industrial cities. In an international context Scotland was anomalous: its IMR of

seventy-seven in the mid-1930s was higher than all other Western European countries

with the exception of Spain and Portugal, and more than twice as high as the

1 Marr, ‘United Kingdom’s international migration in the inter-war period’, 571-9 2 A tradition explored in Murdoch, British emigration & Harper, Adventurers and exiles Netherlands (thirty-nine) and New Zealand (thirty-two). Although Scottish infant mortality began at a lower level when reliable statistics became available in the mid- nineteenth century, it proved more difficult to conquer. Urban Scotland displayed the worst IMRs and they were very high compared to other large cities in the UK.

Glasgow (ninety-nine) had the worst figure for all British cities with a population greater than 160,000. Even Edinburgh, with an IMR of sixty-six in 1938, was worse off than many of this group of cities and the comparison was no better at an international level. In 1938 Edinburgh’s IMR of sixty-one was around 50 per cent higher than major American cities and nearly twice that of Amsterdam. 1

Why was this distinct pattern evident in Scotland? There have been some attempts to

reduce the explanation of Scottish IMRs to a single factor, especially overcrowded

housing. 2 This was undoubtedly a factor as infectious disease was more likely to spread in such conditions, but infectious disease was not the major killer. Indeed, it halved as a cause of infant mortality; immaturity, diarrhoea, dysentry and respiratory disease were more important, and the nutrition of mother and child was also vital. Of course, overcrowding, like poor nutrition, unemployment and low income, can be seen as proxies for poverty, to which IMRs were especially sensitive. 3 The upward trend in IMRs in the late nineteenth century might be related to decreasing incidence of breast feeding in favour of cheap powdered and tinned milk products. As well as the resultant nutritional deficiency, this increased the risk of diarrhoeal illnesses, a significant killer, through contaminated milk and bottles. The new army of child health professionals of the early twentieth century attempted to bring this under

1 Figures from Department of Health for Scotland, Infant mortality in Scotland , 8-18; Cage, ‘Infant mortality rates and housing’, 81 2 Cage, ‘Infant mortality rates and housing’, 77-92 3 Department of Health for Scotland, Infant mortality in Scotland , 28-33 control through the encouragement of breast feeding, a barrage of advice to working class mothers and frequent home visits. This was palliative in the absence of a serious assault on housing conditions and other problems, and it implied that the child-care techniques of poverty-stricken mothers were a factor in high IMRs. 1 Further, the

Great War represented a distinct improvement in Scottish and British IMRs, despite

the fact that overcrowding was scarcely diminished. This improvement was evident in

some of the most overcrowded areas of Scotland: in Paisley, where nearly two-thirds

of families lived in one- or two-roomed houses, the IMR fell by twenty-eight,

compared to a fall of only four in Edinburgh where less than 40 per cent of families

were overcrowded. This was achieved despite the fact that larger numbers of women

were active in the workplace, undermining nineteenth century assumptions about the

harmful effects of women’s work, further eroded by high IMRs in both textile and

mining areas which were at the opposite extremes of female participation in the

labour force. 2 The fact that the birth rate fell during the war, that large numbers of men were being fed by the army certainly helped, but the most important reason for the improvement in infant mortality during the war was improved nutrition for women and young babies. 3 This evidence helped to confirm the views of progressive doctors, such as W.L. Mackenzie and the Aberdeen M.O.H. Matthew Hay, that these factors were more important than heredity, as some had thought in the nineteenth century.

Nutritional advances were even more evident during the Second World War and the improvement in the IMR between 1941 and 1951 was especially marked.

1 Searle, A new England? , 378-81 2 Kemmer, ‘Investigating infant mortality’, 14-17 3 Winter, Great War , 151, quoting W.L. Mackenzie, Scottish mothers and children (Dunfermline, 1917); Department of Health for Scotland, Infant mortality in Scotland , 47-61 It has also been argued that employment structure is closely correlated with IMRs and

the incidence of concentrations of particular industries, especially mining but heavy

industry in general, helps to explain local and regional contrasts in IMRs. 1 The

persistence of high IMRs was all the more depressing because the pattern of falling

mortality established in the 1860s continued into the 1930s: reductions in mortality

from tuberculosis, bronchitis and pneumonia were all significant. If infancy remained

a dangerous phase of life in Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s, then childhood became

much safer with reductions in mortality between the ages of one and nine years. 2

Major changes in fertility had taken place in the period from 1860 to 1914, in

common with most west European societies, but some subtle variations remained;

especially slightly higher fertility rates among younger women which contributed to a

slower overall decline north of the border. There was also the continuation of the

pronounced regional pattern which we observed in the nineteenth century, with much

lower levels of fertility in the north and west highlands. High levels of migration

among the young, leading to lower rates of marriage contributed to low fertility and

population decline in these areas. 3

Regional inequalities in infant mortality in Scotland, 1861-1971 4

1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971

Strathclyde North 94 103 98 100 104 93 72 73 67 37 27 18

Strathclyde South 125 130 121 119 115 102 92 81 80 38 28 21

Lanarkshire 147 153 136 138 140 121 106 99 93 43 31 23

1 Lee, ‘Regional inequalities in infant mortality in Britain’ 63-4 2 Flinn, Scottish population history , 418 3 Flinn, Scottish population history , 338-41, 346-8 4 Lee, ‘Regional inequalities in infant mortality in Britain’, 58-60 Dumf.&Galloway 95 98 96 107 101 87 82 66 70 38 21 17

Borders 105 109 100 113 101 87 66 59 57 34 20 18

Lothian 131 139 125 134 127 109 89 74 63 30 23 18

Central & Fife 102 112 109 122 113 99 85 73 68 37 24 19

Tayside 124 131 123 136 129 120 97 79 68 34 24 16

Grampian 86 93 105 116 116 105 100 79 68 30 20 14

Highland 86 81 84 87 94 79 66 60 56 32 19 15

Scottish mean 101 115 110 117 114 100 86 74 69 35 24 18

British mean 134 137 125 131 126 95 72 61 55 29 21 17

Housing

Prior to the Great War the vast majority of Scots were tenants of private landlords

and, despite the wartime limitations of the power of the landlord to raise rent, tenants

remained insecure. Local authorities were minor players in the housing market, in

1913 only about 3,500, or 1 per cent, of families in Scotland were council tenants. 1

From the end of the Great War to the late 1970s the public sector became the principal

agency in the provision of Scottish housing and the foundations of this profound

change were laid in the inter-war period. The public sector provided 230,206 houses,

compared to only 105,535 from the private sector and in some areas of urban Scotland

the private landlord became a marginal figure. 2 Despite this most scholars have

damned inter-war housing policy with faint praise. 3 This view has arisen from the

persistence of overcrowding and poor levels of amenity throughout the period.

Although the prevalence of one- and two-roomed houses fell in the inter-war period it

did not do so quickly enough to eradicate Scotland’s extreme disadvantage. The

1 Rodger, ‘Introduction’, 9 2 Figures from Rodger (ed.), Scottish housing , appendix A, 236-7 3 this view is reflected in general texts, Smout, Century , 52-7; Devine, Scottish nation , 322; Ferguson, Scotland , 367-8 Royal Commission on housing which reported in 1917 argued, almost certainly conservatively, that to reach a merely satisfactory level of accommodation 236,000 houses would have to be built immediately. This Commission, which emerged from wartime discontent and the problematic legacy of Scottish housing conditions, recommended the primacy of state action: private enterprise was the problem not the solution. 1 Glasgow, where the need was greatest, estimated in 1919 that nearly 60,000 houses were required to deal with the basic problems faced by its working class. In

Dundee the estimate was 6000 houses, but by the time the housing programme fell victim to cuts in public expenditure in 1921 only 700 had been commenced and the

Town Clerk reported to Winston Churchill (the local MP) that a ‘veritable house famine’ existed. 2 This was not the land fit for heroes which had been promised.

House-building resulted from actions taken by central and local government, with the involvement of private builders: the subsidies required to build the houses came from the Treasury, much of the work was done by private builders and councils became landlords. From 1938, in the shape of the Scottish Special Housing Association established by Walter Elliot to complement the Special Areas legislation, central government was directly involved in the provision of houses. This development resulted in some tension with local authorities and the Labour movement and it would be the post-1945 era before the SSHA made a significant contribution to Scottish housebuilding. 3 The problem faced by the inhabitants of tenements, cottages of farm labourers and miners, or the ‘blackhouses’ of highland crofters was not conditions of tenure, but squalor and overcrowding. The 1915 Rent Act took one weapon away

1 PP 1917-18 XIV, Housing of the industrial population of Scotland 2 TNA: PRO, CAB24/126/380, Dundee and the housing situation, 20 Jul. 1921; Morgan, ‘“£8 cottages for Glasgow citizens”’, 125 3 Rodger & Al-Quaddo, ‘Scottish Special Housing Association’, 186-8 from landlords without altering the imbalance in power faced by tenants. In the highlands, on the other hand, the commission appointed by the Crofters Act of 1886 commented in 1912 that the principal benefit of security of tenure had been a marked improvement in housing conditions in the crofting counties. 1

The ultimate test of the housing reforms of the inter-war period was the extent to which they improved the conditions experienced by those who lived in the new houses. Eradicating the private landlord who had become such a hate figure during the

Great War was not enough. The answer must be, depressingly, that not enough was done. New houses were beyond working-class pockets and were built in estates which quickly became bywords for renewed squalor. Even in quantitative terms the Scottish programme was not particularly impressive; completions north of the border represented only 30 per cent of the total housing stock of 1941, the equivalent figure in England and Wales was 45 per cent. Even worse, during the Second World War after the construction of over 300,000 new houses, 23 per cent of the Scottish housing stock was overcrowded and 44 per cent was of one or two rooms: the figures in

England and Wales were 3.8 per cent and 4.6 per cent. 2 Clearly, the consequences of rapid industrialisation, feudal tenure, low wages, and high cost of living meant that the questions posed fifty years earlier by James Burn Russell about ‘Life in one room’ remained relevant.

The task was not easy, however: land, building materials and skilled labour were all in short supply and prices fluctuated markedly. Although there were attempts to circumvent shortages by exploitation of new materials—famously steel, but more

1 Crofters’ Commission, Annual Report , 1910-12, xxvi 2 PP 1943-4 IV, Report on the distribution of new houses in Scotland , 11 practically concrete—the results were often uninspiring. Some problems resulted from the attempt by the egregious Lord Weir to undermine the building unions through use of non-union labour to assemble steel houses. In the event the cost benefits were unconvincing and, although 2000 steel houses were built, this did not make a significant contribution to a large-scale renewal of Scottish housing. 1 Concrete had utilitarian advantages, but a local authority official reporting after a fact-finding mission to Europe was not exaggerating when he reported that the ‘colourful charm and brightness of the continental schemes’ contrasted with Scotland where ‘[l]ight and colour are the two elements …most lacking.’ 2 Most Scottish local authorities,

including Glasgow, were controlled by anti-socialist coalitions for whom working-

class housing was not the priority. This was marked in Edinburgh where local

authority completions were low in number; local officials, like the shopkeeper and

City Treasurer Sir Will Y. Darling, were more interested in securing ‘public

economy’ and a ‘stable rate’. 3 Edinburgh was distinctive in that over two-thirds of new houses were built by private enterprise. Many were for owner occupation which, by virtue of its middle-class and professional employment structure, was more prevalent than elsewhere. At the other end of the scale was Port Glasgow, where out of nearly 1000 new houses in the same decade, only five were privately built! In

Scotland as a whole just under a third of new houses were built by private enterprise. 4

The nineteenth century pattern of speculative builders erecting tenements for the

private-rented sector was no more by the inter-war period. Old problems were dealt

with, but not quickly enough to prevent new ones.

1 TNA:PRO, CAB24/171/254-7, Weir Houses, 28 Jan. 1925; CAB24/182/89-90, Housing—Scotland, steel houses scheme, 17 Nov. 1926; Morgan ‘Problem of the epoch?’, 239-41; Morgan, ‘Conservative party and mass housing’, 69-73 2 John E. Highton, quoted by Morgan, ‘“£8 cottages for Glasgow citizens”’, 143 3 quoted by Smout, Century , 54 4 PP 1943-4 IV, Report on the distribution of new houses in Scotland , 42-3; O’Carroll, ‘Tenements to bungalows’, 221-41

Housing legislation in the inter-war period was characterised by unfulfilled ideals and plans. The Housing and Town Planning (Scotland) Act of 1919 made provision for local authorities to quantify housing shortages and to provide plans for their eradication. Limited Treasury funding was available, but the act was a failure with only about 25,000 houses constructed, just 2000 of them in Scotland. The Housing

Act of 1923 was a little more successful with its provisions for local authorities to subsidise private building and then to claim compensation from the Treasury. The most important act in this burst of legislation, however, was Labour’s 1924 Housing

Act. Its architect was John Wheatley, who had recognised the importance of the housing question as a Glasgow City Councillor before the Great War. Wheatley’s great achievement was to manage the competing interests of builders, suppliers, local authorities and the clamant labour movement to produce a workable scheme. 1 He

returned the emphasis to the public sector and bound in the question of quality to the

government’s subsidy of house building. One area where the act was deficient,

however, was in the question of slum clearance: it is doubtful whether those who

endured the worst housing conditions received any immediate benefit as they could

not afford the new houses, although they may have been able to inhabit houses

vacated by those who could. 2 In this way a modest filtering process may have taken place. Slum clearance was turned to by the next Labour government when an Act of

1930 paid a subsidy for each person re-housed. Nearly 16,000 houses were built to replace condemned properties in 1933 and 1934, whereas only 20,000 such houses had been constructed during the period 1919 to 1932. Nevertheless, despite this weakness, and the fact that the subsidy was reduced in 1927 and abolished entirely in

1 Wood, John Wheatley , 131-45; Morgan, ‘Problem of the epoch?’, 231-2 2 McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside , 231; Cooper, ‘John Wheatley’, 220-1 1933, a substantial number of houses were built under Wheatley’s provisions. Across the United Kingdom a record 273,000 houses were constructed in 1927, and in

Glasgow alone over 20,000 two and three apartment houses, or 42 per cent of all government subsidised houses in the inter-war period, were constructed under the provisions of the 1924 Act. 1 One indication that the surface of the problem had barely been scratched in the inter-war period was the view of a government committee which reported in the middle of the second world war and suggested that the total housing need was likely to be around 500,000 in 1943. 2

Big changes took place in thinking about the housing question over the inter-war

period, although it is doubtful if this was fully realised in practice in the post-war

period. New houses not only had to be built in great numbers but they had to be in the

right places and have the appropriate supporting facilities such as shops, churches and

open spaces. Although these ideas may have contained a nod to Patrick Geddes, they

were not the primary consideration in the inter-war years, housing was a national

problem which required national planning and integration with redistribution of

industry and population. Although attempts were made in the 1940s to think in these

terms, the needs of local authorities to maintain their financial base by retaining

ratepayers worked against such comprehensiveness.

Unemployment, poverty and hunger

Although the Great War had seen full employment and unemployment was not a new

problem it was formerly seen as a temporary phenomenon diminished by the

movement of the economic cycle. The experience of the depressions of 1904-5 and

1 figures and summary of legislation can be found in Rodger (ed.), Scottish housing , appendix B, 238- 45 2 PP 1943-4 IV, Report on the distribution of new houses in Scotland , 12 1908 had confirmed this. The experience of the inter-war years provided a check to such complacency, but it took some time for realism to dawn. The problem had a variety of manifestations and was exacerbated by the confrontational industrial relations of the 1920s. From the viewpoint of the unemployed worker a sense of hopelessness was engendered by the scale of the problem and the concentration of long-term unemployment in Scotland. This sense of decay was a frequent theme of commentators who wrote about Scotland during the depression, the most famous of whom was Edwin Muir. He noted that ‘…unemployment makes up such a large part of the present life of Scotland there can be no ignoring it …’. 1 It also figures in the political polemics of nationalists like Alexander MacEwen, free trade Liberals like

Ranald Findlay, and more sober assessments such as that of the economist James

Bowie; although the latter was puzzled by the ‘limp attitude of the unemployed themselves’ as well as the ‘complacency’ of the wider community. 2 Individual memories convey the difficulty of coping with long-term unemployment in a depressed industrial economy. Tony Brown, a miner from Ayrshire, migrated to Fife in search of work but was soon unemployed again, he later recalled:

But I didnae get a job at Methil here. I couldnae get intae the Wellesley pit. I

couldn’t get into the Michael. I couldn’t get intae Wells Green. I tried all the

pits, the whole lot. I went to Muiredge pit, and tae the Rosie. I didnae go tae

the Lochead but I went to a’ the other pits and ah couldnae get a job …I was

on the dole. Oh, I went up to the pit gates two or three times a week. I

couldnae get a job. I tried to get a job through the Labour Exchange. It was

Leven exchange I signed on at. I walked doon tae Leven frae Methilhill, a mile

1 Muir, Scottish journey , 134; see also Smout, Century, 115 2 MacEwen, The thistle and the rose , 46-7; Finlay, Scotland at the crossroads , 10-12; Bowie, The future of Scotland , 133 and a quarter, and back, three times a week. And in between times I was aye

walkin’ oot tae the pits as well. Oh, it went on for months and months. I

couldnae get a job. … I was unemployed a’ the time afore I went on the

Hunger March in 1936 – aboot five years. 1

Brown’s reminiscences are not merely illustrative. His reference to the ‘dole’ and the

‘Labour Exchange’ prompts the recognition that this was a problem for the government as well as individuals. Existing structures were ill-equipped to deal with unemployment on the scale experienced in the inter-war years. The national insurance scheme introduced by the Liberal government in 1911 had been augmented in 1920, but remained less than comprehensive and its benefits were limited in value and duration (fifteen weeks). The poor law, which had last been substantially reformed in

1845, and which retained many moralistic assumptions about the right to relief, was funded from local rates, did not have the capacity to fund long-term welfare and did not recognise the right of the able bodied to claim relief, although a more relaxed attitude was taken towards dependants. Despite these obstacles it was forced to bear the principal burden of relief of the poverty caused by unemployment in the 1920s. 2

The later part of the decade saw the extension of the national insurance system with legislation in 1927—although claimants had to be ‘genuinely seeking work’—and a further act in 1934 extended national insurance and catered for the uninsured through an Unemployment Assistance Board. 3 This was part of a growing recognition that unemployment was a serious structural problem. The prevailing ideas of welfare in the 1930s, with an intrusive means test to set levels of benefit, fell short of the comprehensive system in the post-war period, but represented progress from the

1 MacDougall, Voices from the hunger marches , ii, 367 2 Levitt, Poverty and welfare, 107-41 3 Dewey, War and progress , 261-4 period before the Great War. The restoration of benefit levels cut during the crisis of

1931, and the falling cost of living over the inter-war years also meant that benefits were much more generous in the late 1930s than they had been earlier in the decade.

Brown’s final comment about his participation in the hunger march in 1936 provides some evidence contrary to Bowie’s assertion of the ‘limpness’ of the unemployed.

The march of 1936 was sixth in a series of national events organised by the National

Unemployed Workers’ Movement founded in 1921 by Communist activists led by

Wal Hannington and, in Scotland, Harry McShane, although there was also considerable involvement from ILP members. 1 There were also a series of Scottish marches, five to Edinburgh and one to Glasgow. 2 The obvious difficulties of maintaining an organisation of poverty stricken unemployed men and women were compounded by the suspicion of the trades unions and the Labour party towards what was perceived as a Communist inspired body. 3 There was also the wider suspicion of

‘respectable society’ towards these gatherings; a Scottish Office civil servant

remarked that the arrival in Edinburgh of the 1933 marchers ‘was by no means an

edifying sight’ and ‘a very disagreeable reminder of what had taken place during the

General Strike.’ 4 Despite the existence of the NUWM and occasional riots over

specific issues in Dundee in 1921, Port Glasgow and Greenock in 1922 and West

Calder in 1926, unemployment did not lead to public order problems. This reflects the

power of the political mainstream in Scotland in these years, neither the Communist

party (which was not predisposed to random disorder in any case), nor the British

Union of Fascists gained a foothold among the Scottish working class. One exception

1 McShane & Smith, No mean fighter , 172, 188 2 Not to be confused with the smaller and more specific ‘Jarrow march’ of 1936 organised by the Labour MP for that town, Ellen Wilkinson, protesting against shipyard closures 3McShane & Smith, No mean fighter , 169; Knox, Industrial nation , 227-8 4 J.L.Jack, quoted by Levitt, Poverty and welfare, 137 was the success of William Gallagher in the West Fife coalfield, where he served as

MP from 1935 to 1950. The evolving welfare structure in an era of falling prices also have played a part in the preservation of stability. Unemployed workers evolved personal strategies to cope with the difficulties they faced. Personal reminiscences indicate such actions as seeking casual employment in the fruit industry of Perth and

Angus as well as migration to more prosperous areas such as the south east of

England. 1

The first half of the 1920s were, however, characterised by a series of confrontations in the industrial relations arena, posing problems for the labour movement and compounding the pressure on the poor law during a period of high unemployment.

Although the Scottish dimension of these events is limited in its distinctiveness, since the proportion of the Scottish workforce which was unionised was lower than that for

Britain as a whole, although it was growing. Estimates vary, but in 1924 between 33 and 40 per cent of the working population was in a union. About 11 per cent of the population as a whole was unionised compared to the UK figure of 13 per cent in the mid-1920s. There were also overlapping regional and sectoral variations, with the industrialised west of Scotland showing a greater density than the east and northeast, scarcely a surprising pattern as over 70 per cent of coalminers and over 50 per cent of metal workers were unionised compared to less than 30 per cent of textile workers.

The small and fractured nature of Scottish trades unionism had been a problem for the emergent labour movement in Scotland in the late-Victorian and Edwardian period, despite the continued existence of small unions there was a tendency for Scottish

1 MacDougall, Voices from the hunger marches , ii, 239-40, 248, 277, workers to congregate in a smaller number of larger and British unions. 1 The main battlefield in post-war industrial relations moved from the engineering works and shipyards of Red Clydeside to the coalfields. There were two major events, the strike of 1921—which saw the failure of the so-called triple alliance of miners, railwaymen and dockers—and the general strike of May 1926 was called by the TUC in solidarity with the miners. 2 Both strikes ended in painful defeat for the miners and encouraged a sense of abandonment and betrayal as they seemed to be deserted by their comrades.

The defeats induced a reluctance by the miners to contemplate national industrial action, and it would be the early 1970s before such a tactic was repeated. These were hugely significant events for the miners and other workers, but also for the labour movement where the left wing, on which the miners’ leaders was located, deprecated a treacherous rapprochement with the forces of capitalism, further evidence for which was provided by the discussions between Ben Turner of the TUC and Alfred Mond in the aftermath of the 1926 strike. The labour movement, desirous of retaining its credentials as a governing party, felt that it could not support a strike which was perceived to be unconstitutional and which had been the occasion of polarisation between the organised working class and other sections of the community. 3 This

stance was a necessary part of the shift in labour’s approach from class solidarity to a

bureaucratic outlook characterised by corporatism and managerialism. The end of the

strike, although some oral testimony indicates it was greeted with relief, was the

occasion for a hardening of attitudes among employers. Union members found life

much more difficult in the tramways services in Scottish cities, conditions on the

1 Knox, Industrial nation, 220-1; Bell, ‘Trade unions’, 280-96 2 Reid, United we stand , 312-18 3 Knox, Industrial nation , 224-6 railways were less amenable and newspaper publishers in Glasgow and Aberdeen, as well as the paper mills of the north east of Scotland, refused to employ union labour. 1

The strikes also placed additional pressure on the social welfare system. There could,

of course, be no question of relieving men who were out on strike, but there was the

question of their dependants, especially their children, who were severely

disadvantaged. John Wheatley argued that it was ‘a principle of modern civilisation

not to punish women and children’. 2 This question threw up a possible constitutional

problem in that there was from 1926 the possibility that the Scottish courts would

declare such payments to be illegal, in contrast to the position in England. This

eventually did occur in 1927 and forced the government to retrospectively legalise

payments amounting to £650,000. The unpalatable alternatives were to leave the

burden on ratepayers, demand repayment by miners after the strike, or use exchequer

funds to reimburse parochial boards. The last was open to the accusation that English

taxpayers were being asked to pay for a Scottish problem. 3 This was only one of a

series of debates about social policy which were stimulated by the economic crises of

the inter-war period. Although national policies, funded by general taxation, were

beginning to develop it remained the case that National Insurance and Unemployment

Assistance could not cater for large numbers of long-term unemployed. This left a

considerable burden to be shouldered by the locally funded poor law, a system which

harked back to the nineteenth century and retained the capacity to refuse relief to the

‘able-bodied’. In practice this broke down in times of crisis, as had been the case in

the nineteenth century, but there was no universal right of relief. Key differences with

1 See Scottish material in Skelley, General strike, 111-39, 140-59, 315-29; Morris, General strike, 394-410; as well as Kibblewhite and Rigby, Aberdeen in the general strike , 6-8, 14, 23-4 2 quoted by Levitt, Poverty and welfare, 130 3 See three papers by John Gilmour, Secretary of State for Scotland, at TNA: PRO, CAB 24/180/340-1, 501-5, 184/288-90, 6 Jul., 8 Nov. 1926, 1 Feb. 1927; Levitt, Poverty and welfare, 125-32 the pre-1906 period included the greater perceived threat to public order from large numbers of unemployed in an ailing industrial economy and the increased extent of working class political representation at local and national levels. Nevertheless, important principles were decided in complex litigation between local authorities and the civil courts with only minimal political direction from central government. Prior to the Second World War there was no effective or comprehensive safety net for the unemployed, although there was an increasing recognition that they formed a distinct group from those reduced to destitution by drunkenness or dissolution. Strategies were devised within the limitations of the poor law to relief these groups separately lest the respectable unemployed be contaminated by ‘close association …with men of bad character.’ 1 These debates further indicate that there was a huge gulf between the

welfare policies of the Liberal government of 1906 and its inter-war successors, of all

parties, and the Labour government of 1945.

The marginalisation of presbyterianism

Although the number of Scottish churchgoers did not increase rapidly between the

wars, neither did it declining precipitously, as it would from the late 1950s. Further,

church-state relations remained an important political issue in the 1920s, this helped

to maintain the prominence of leading clergymen as they sought comprehensive

presbyterian reunion. A step along this path had been taken in 1900 when the United

Free Church was created from a union of the voluntary United Presbyterian Church

and most of the congregations of the Free Church. A small number of highland

congregations argued that this was an abandonment of the principles of 1843 and

declined to participate in the union. They did not leave the matter there, however;

1 Annual Report of the Department of Health for Scotland, 1929 quoted by Levitt, Poverty and welfare , 135. arguing that they were the true Free Church they launched litigation to secure the property—churches, manses, foreign missions colleges—of the church. Their claims were eventually supported by the House of Lords, ironically a bete noire of the Free

Church from the disruption period. A Royal Commission was appointed to adjudicate on a rational division of property, the situation arising from the House of Lords case being ‘ludicrously disproportionate to the wants of the Free Church’ according to

Robert Rainy, the pre-eminent figure in the UFC. 1 Arthur Woodburn, later Labour

Secretary of State for Scotland, was an office boy to the General Secretary of the Free

Church in 1904 and recalled the bitterness and intensity of ‘the greatest political battle

of the time’. 2 The ultimate ambition of leading figures in the new UFC and the

Church of Scotland, however, was a complete Presbyterian reunion, although the

smaller denominations, the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church, were

contemptuous of the compromises involved. 3 There were, however, competing visions

of presbyterianism which had to be reconciled before this could happen. Some in the

United Free Church were worried that the spiritual independence of their church

would be sacrificed. Others, in the Church of Scotland, jealous of the establishment

principle, were concerned lest a united church resemble a voluntary denomination.

There were also competing visions of the social role of the church as a result of the

debate over Christian progressivism prior to the Great War. These two cleavages did

not map onto each other in a neat fashion: strong Christian progressives, such as Rev.

James Barr, a future Labour MP, were on the extreme voluntary wing of the U.F.C.;

and others, such as Rev. Malcolm MacCallum, land reformer and Labour candidate,

worried that union would lead to disestablishment. 4

1 TNA:PRO, CAB37/73/166, Rainy to Andrew Graham Murray (Secretary for Scotland), 18 Nov. 1904 2 NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc 7656/4/1/12-14, ‘Some recollections’ 3 Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and reunion’, 229-33 4 Bogle, ‘James Barr’, 189-207; Murray, Rebuilding the kirk , 45-6, 249-54

Prior to union the issue of the relationship of the Church of Scotland with the state had to be clarified. The UFC wished to unite with a spiritually independent church and the Church of Scotland required spiritual independence to be able to enter into such a union, and this could not be done without reference to parliament. The culmination of a lengthy debate came in 1921 with a recognition of the spiritual independence of the Church of Scotland. 1 The process was complicated by issues of

Church and state and ecclesiastical politics and by the vexed question of property. In

the late-Victorian period the question of the endowments of the Church of Scotland

were controversial. In particular the teinds, a tax on the produce of land, which were

used to pay the stipends of ministers were at the heart of the argument. The

voluntaries argued that the Church should be relieved of this resource and the money

used for wider purposes. There was a parallel argument with landowners about the

reform of the teind to produce a more reliable income in an age of fluctuating

agricultural prices. These issues were resolved to the satisfaction of the pro-union

group with an agreement for a fixed charge on heritors which would support a

territorial ministry in Scotland. This was confirmed in an parliamentary act of 1925

which effectively granted financial autonomy to the Church of Scotland. This satisfied

the majority in the UFC, although not the voluntary minority led by Barr who

continued to rail against its perceived injustice. 2

The clearance of these obstacles paved the way for the reunion of October 1929; a new church with over 2 million adherents, 2,900 ministers and 3,200 church buildings was created: an apparently powerful agency for national spiritual renewal. If the

1 Murray, Rebuilding the kirk , 63-114 2 Murray, Rebuilding the kirk , 115-42 creation of new infrastructure had been the sole test of the union project then the matter could rest there, but a recent historian has been pessimistic:

The Church union of 1929 did not define a new national ideal or transform

Scotland into a ‘covenanted nation’. An impressive ecclesiastical achievement,

the union none the less failed to define a Christian vision for the nation, a

transcendent ideal which might unite social classes and private interests in a

common pursuit of the kingdom of God. 1

That the reunited church was more right-wing than the pre-war Church of Scotland

and UFC seems beyond doubt. In saying this it is worth recalling some features of

wider political culture. First, Scottish politics were more polarised than in the pre-war

days of Liberal domination. Second, the Labour movement was a credible competitor

for the church in general explanations of life and its challenges. The Scottish labour

movement was not hostile to the church—some of its MPs had deep religious

sensibilities of various kinds, John Wheatley, James Brown, James Barr, for

example—but the church was hostile to the Labour movement. During the general

strike of 1926, and more particularly the miners’ strike, the churches seemed to revert

to a nineteenth century reverence for immutable economic laws. Nevertheless, the

view of Rev James Harvey, moderator of the general assembly of the increasingly

right wing UFC, that the defeat of the general strike was a ‘victory for God’, was

extreme. 2 The personnel of the church in the inter-war years, both in pulpit and pew, was dominated by middle-class groups remote from the lives of urban workers and mining communities, the latter viewed with increasing suspicion as vice-ridden dens

1 Brown, ‘Social vision of Scottish presbyterianism’, 78 2 Brown, ‘ “A victory for God”, 606 of crime and irreligion. The Conservative inclinations of Scottish presbyterianism were exemplified by the warmth of the reception given to Stanley Baldwin at the general assembly of the Church of Scotland compared to the coolness of that afforded to a deputation of miners’ leaders, despite the fact that they included James Brown, a

Church of Scotland elder and former Lord High Commissioner.

The church also expressed hostility towards the labour movement on racial grounds, part of an extraordinary campaign against Scotland’s Irish community. In the words of one minister, ‘this enormous Irish catholic population’ was the principal reason for the Labour breakthrough in 1922. 1 This campaign was a prominent feature of the activities of the Church and Nation committee of the Church of Scotland, but until recently was elided by uncritical historians of the church. Some leaders in the emergent nationalist movement shared this point of view. Right-wing nationalists and highly effective publicists, such as Andrew Dewar Gibb, argued that unemployment and crime, were caused by a racially inferior Irish community, a pollutant in Scottish society. 2 Yet another strand of anti-Irish thinking could be found in the appeals of

demagogic politicians to the urban working class in Edinburgh and Glasgow. John

Cormack’s ‘Protestant Action’ and the ‘Scottish Protestant League’ of Alexander

Ratcliffe found success at local government elections and Cormack was the author of

large-scale anti-Catholic stunts in Edinburgh, especially during the Eucharistic

Congress in 1935. Although it would have been of little comfort to their targets, the

invective of such organisations was motivated by religious bigotry rather than racial

hostility, although the lines were blurred at times. 3 What made the church campaigns

1 William Main quoted by Brown, ‘Social vision of Scottish presbyterianism’, 92 2 Finlay, ‘Nationalism, race, religion’, 46-67 3 Rosie, Sectarian myth 126-43 ,; Wheeler, ‘No popery’, 203-89; Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 194-207; Gallagher, Edinburgh divided . different was that they were not the splenetic rantings of minor populists, but the considered opinions of leading figures in a national institution. The views of clergymen like John White and Duncan Cameron of Kilsyth owed much to nineteenth century views of racial hierarchies, although emigration from Scotland during the

1920s and the depressed conditions of the 1930s lay in the background. They presented themselves as rescuers of Scotland from dissipation and racial contamination. The churches led deputations to the Scottish Office in 1926 and 1928 to press for repatriation of Irish in receipt of poor relief, to complain of examples of

Scots being unable to obtain work due to Irish competition, and to lament the extent of immigration from Ireland. This cut little ice with the Scottish Secretary, John

Gilmour, or the Home Secretary, William Joynson Hicks—neither progressive in their political views. There was little support in the wider political community and sustained hostility from the national newspapers. 1 This episode tells the historian more about the problems within presbyterianism in the inter-war period than about society as a whole. It does not provide evidence that the period was marred by a general air of sectarianism in politics and public life, although there had been reluctance to make Lord Lovat Secretary for Scotland in 1922 lest his Catholicism

‘greatly inflame Scottish feeling’. 2 Indeed, it is evidence of the rightwards drift of the

Church of Scotland, quite distinct from the growth of support for the Labour movement in the same period, but it found little support from the right-wing politicians with whom the church prided itself on being closely connected to.

Although the Church of Scotland continued to recruit well in the inter-war years, 3 the new national church was surely unwise in adopting a sectarian position at odds with

1 Brown, ‘“Outside the Covenant”’, 19-45 2 H.L.R.O., ABL MSS, 109/1/26a, George Younger to ABL, 21 Oct. 1922; see also N.A.S. Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/17/16, Younger to John Gilmour, 20 Oct. 1922 3 Brown, ‘Religion and secularisation’, 48-55 Scottish political culture. The racist thought behind embarrassed the church in the later 1930s as these views were associated with European fascist regimes. Efforts made in the aftermath of the union to re-establish the centrality of the Kirk to Scottish public life—the Forward Movement, a church extension campaign—did not tackle the major problems of the day as had been hoped by more progressive ministers such as

George Macleod, then a minister in Govan. 1 Post-1929 presbyterianism squandered

the political capital and goodwill acquired during the union process. 2

Land, Landowners and the landscape

Away from the difficulties and challenges of urban society there were significant

changes taking place in rural Scotland. We have already seen the way in which the

farming economy was assailed by the depressions of the early 1920s and the changes

in the way government interacted with farmers. The position of landowners was also

pressurised. This was of a different order to the political attacks of pre-war years. The

new force in the 1920s was economic: large-scale land sales eclipsed many leading

landowners—the duke of Fife, the earl of Breadalbane and the earl of Erroll—as over

20 per cent of Scottish land changed hands. 3 The fiscal demands of the pre-war

Liberal government paled into insignificance compared to the rate of death duty and other taxation imposed upon landowners in the 1920s. Many farmers, perhaps a third of the total, profited from the large acreages on the market and became owner occupiers, thus ending a long tradition of subordination to landowners—this did not help them when agricultural prices plummeted in the late 1920s and 1930s. The government were also active: the Board (later Department) of Agriculture had the

1 Brown, ‘Campaign for the Christian commonwealth’, 212-16 2 See the positive views of the Secretary for Scotland in TNA: PRO, CAB24/115/294 prior to the 1921 bill 3 Cannadine, Decline and fall , 107-10; Hutchison, ‘The nobility and politics in Scotland’, 138 power under the legislation of 1919 to purchase estates and rent the land to tenants. 1

In this way extensive areas, mostly in the highlands, were effectively nationalised in

the 1920s. This process has been hailed as a reversal of the clearances and in certain

parts of the highlands, especially Skye and South Uist, there is some evidence for this;

other districts, such as Mull, remained untouched by this process and desolation

persisted. 2 This form of government intervention was not straightforward, however;

popular protest, in the form of land raids (often by ex-servicemen), and emigration

indicated that many applicants for land felt that the process was too slow and the

rewards insufficient. 3 Additional complications resulted from the ownership of the island of Lewis by Lord Leverhulme and his plans, largely unfulfilled, to turn the island into a centre of industrialised fishing in which crofting, elsewhere being bolstered by land settlement, would have no place. 4 Overall, this process was backward-looking, its justification reeked of nineteenth century and Edwardian concerns rather than the issues which faced rural Scotland in the inter-war period, and it did little to mitigate the effects of agricultural depression. The economic and social experience of the highlands in the 1930s was depressingly reminiscent of the 1840s as the population was thrown back on the inadequate resources of small crofts. 5 The

‘freshness, freedom and peace’ of rural life which the Secretary for Scotland had hoped would follow from land settlement was difficult to find in places like Mull in the 1930s. 6

1 Leneman, Fit for heroes? , 20-52 2 Hunter, Crofting Community , 206; Cameron, Land for the people? , 166-90 3 Robertson, ‘Governing the highlands’, 109-24; Harper, Emigration from Scotland , 71-112 4 Nicolson, Lord of the isles 5 S.E.C., Highlands and islands ; Hunter, Claim of crofting , 23-47; Birnie, ‘ “Fair deal or raw deal?”’, 15-29 6 P.D. , 5 th ser. 119, col. 1857, 15 Aug. 1919; Scotsman , 12 Nov. 1919 Landowners found that many of their political causes were lost in the inter-war period. The partition of Ireland in 1922 meant that the remnants of Anglo-Irish landownership which had not been bought out by its tenants were abandoned to

Dublin government. The reform of the House of Lords in 1911 diminished the political power of the aristocracy (which included some landowners). Established

Churches in Ireland and Wales had been disestablished and the Church of Scotland was reformed in the 1920s, as we have seen. The radicalisation of the Liberal party after 1886 which transformed the party from a bastion to a scourge of landowners, curtailed their political influence further. Even the Conservative party had successive leaders—Austen Chamberlain, Andrew Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin and Neville

Chamberlain—from business rather than landed backgrounds. Bonar Law preferred work, chess and golf to hunting, shooting and fishing. Private landownership was a resilient institution, however, and had survived rapid turnover following the

Napoleonic wars. Such was the scale of many Scottish estates that traditional landowners—Sutherland, Buccleuch, Lovat, Cameron of Lochiel—could offload considerable tracts of land and remain considerable lairds. The sales of the inter-war period did not open up the structure of Scottish rural landholding to any great degree.

Landowners retained a strong position in rural local government, uncontaminated by party politics in most parts of the country, and were perceived by the establishment as ideal promoters of national projects like the SNWM. They were capable of acting in concert through the Scottish Land and Property Federation, the forerunner of the

Scottish Landowners Federation, founded in 1906 to counter the threat from the

Liberal government. One result was the hard bargain which they drove in negotiations with the Church of Scotland over teinds in the run-up to the union of 1929. The political dominance of Unionists in the inter-war years meant that leading landowners had continuing access to political influence through such Scottish secretaries as

Ronald Munro Ferguson of Novar and Raith and John Gilmour of Montrave and

Lundin; even the last Liberal to hold the office, Sir Archibald Sinclair of Ulbster, was a landowner. New government organisations, such as the Forestry Commission, where Lord Lovat presided, and the new institutions of Scottish public life found space for landowners; even the new National Library of Scotland had landowners on its board, although it would be hard to find a tradition of scholarship among Scottish lairds. 1

Perhaps more significant in the long term was the reinvention of landownership as the protector of the rural environment and landscape. This was an extension of traditional forms of control over the countryside which landowners had long exerted, but it was refashioned through new institutions which gave the appearance of social and cultural responsibility. The formation of the Association for the Preservation of Rural

Scotland in 1926 and the National Trust for Scotland in 1930 provided means by which the traditions of the ownership of land, castles and stately homes could be preserved by attracting the middle class to gawp at them. 2 There was significant overlap in the leadership of these organisations with landowners such as Sir John

Stirling Maxwell, Colquhoun of Luss and the earl of Crawford and Balcarres prominent in both. 3 These organisations were not neutral bodies, they applied pressure when their traditional view of the countryside clashed with more dynamic visions.

Landowners were vociferous in their objections to schemes for hydro-electric power required to develop the aluminium and carbide industries in the highlands in the

1 the 8 th duke of Argyll was an exception, see Mulhern, ‘The intellectual duke’ 2 Smout, Nature contested , 156 3 Lorimer, ‘ “Your wee bit hill and glen”’, 74-90 1920s and 1930s. They were also careful to attempt to retain control of the countryside as larger numbers of people from urban Scotland sought their leisure there. Mountaineering and rambling had been popular since the Victorian period but the inter-war period saw the expansion of car ownership, wider marketing of the delights of rural pursuits and the formation of organisations such as the Scottish

Youth Hostels Association, all of which contributed to wider use of the countryside for leisure pursuits. This was not merely a middle class pursuit. The I.L.P. organised walking and rambling groups, healthy and elevating pursuits for the worker, and there was independent working class activity. In the 1920s Tom Weir, then a young employee of the Co-op in Springburn, used to cycle out of town to the Campsie Fells most evenings to hone his rock-climbing skills. Interestingly, in an echo of the landlord view, Weir recalled:

I’m glad all the same that I was discovering Scotland the hard way, walking

the hills and glens in the 1930s before the changes of land use that were to

follow after the war: the building of hydro-electric dams and massive

ploughing operations for forestry. 1

Indeed, the Labour movement in parliament also argued against hydro schemes in the

1930s because they were opposed to the exploitation by private enterprise of the water

resources of the highlands. The opposition to the British Oxygen Company’s

Caledonian power scheme in the late 1930s drew together coal and preservation

1 Knox, Industrial nation , 198; Weir, Weir’s world , 17, 21. lobbies along with angling and game interests, not the natural allies of the likes of

David Kirkwood who also spoke out against it. 1

Access to, as well as preservation of, the countryside had long been a source of tension in Scottish society and landowners became more keen to keep people off higher ground as the expansion of deer forests made the mountain tops potentially profitable. This was a cause taken up by radical Liberalism in the Victorian period.

The principal advocate of freedom to roam being James Bryce, MP for Aberdeen

South, later Ambassador to the United States, who presented a series of Bills on the question in the 1880s and 1890s. One of his principal arguments was that landed property carried it with it a responsibility to act in the interests of the community as a whole. Exclusion was taken to be an abdication of that responsibility and an another indication, if such be needed, that Scottish lairds were inherently selfish. As one of

Bryce’s correspondents put it: ‘depend upon the fact that Scotch proprietors … exceed all bounds in their domineering and grasping action. They put down with the vain hand of despotism all attempts to have the freedom of the country. They mete and vend the very light and air of heaven’. 2 Neither Bryce nor his successors were successful in this cause and the debate over the recreational and economic uses of the countryside continued. Further evidence of this clash came when the APRS lobbied

Ramsay MacDonald in 1930 in an attempt to influence the nature of the road being constructed through Glencoe, itself owned by the NTS from 1936. 3 This was one of

many examples of the landed classes seeking to control the amenity value of their

estates. Their unholy alliance with coal interests to defeat hydro-electricity schemes in

1 Luckin, Questions of power , 118-37 2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, James Bryce Mss, 169, ff. 177-8, William Fisher to Bryce, 11 Mar. 1884; Smout, Nature contested , 155 3 See the material in TNA: PRO, J.R.MacDonald MSS, PRO30/69/1525 the 1920s and 1930s was another. Despite a weakening of their economic position landowners remained an important part of the social and political elite in Scotland.

Land, however, was no longer synonymous with great wealth. Industrial fortunes greatly exceeded landed ones as, in truth, they had done for over a century.

Nevertheless, industrial and magnates like Beardmore and the Lithgows still sought to acquire the trappings of landed wealth and indulge in the pastimes of the laird, as

Baird of Gartsherrie and Sir James Matheson had in the nineteenth century. 1

Leisure and recreation

The general trend from widespread participation in distinctive sporting activities

towards spectating at commercialised venues was an important change. For the more

active there were also changes, mass participation in rowdy—even violent—and

unregulated activities was giving way to the codification, organisation and, in some

cases, professionalisation of individual sports. This can be seen in the case of the most

popular activity, football, with the formation of the Scottish Football Association in

1872 and the Scottish Football League in 1890. Although Scotland’s oldest club—

Queens Park formed in Glasgow in 1867—retained its amateur ethos, the game was

aggressively professional and commercial. Individual clubs were important in

projecting identities of various kinds as well as generating cash. Hibernian of Leith

(1875) and Glasgow Celtic (1888) were associated with the Catholic Irish community,

while Glasgow Rangers (1872) increasingly sought the loyalty of the Protestant

skilled working class. Thus was born a form of tribal rivalry between two of

Scotland’s most important football clubs and their supporters; although like many

strong rivals there was also a trend of mutual dependence, in this case reflected in the

1 DSSB , i, 92-3, 222, 228 term ‘The Old Firm’. Celtic’s ground at Parkhead in the east end was, ironically, located in one of the most staunchly Protestant parts of the city. Football clubs sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the industrial areas of Scotland with particular concentrations in Lanarkshire and West Fife, although further afield

Queen of the South (Dumfries), St Mirren (Paisley), St Johnstone (Perth) and

Aberdeen reflected less problematic local and civic identities. The SFL had 20 clubs in its first division by 1914 and a second division had been formed in 1893. This activity has led one historian to conclude that ‘considering its population size and resources no other country has sustained the scale and quality of professional football attained in Scotland.’ 1 Professional sport, especially football, demanded considerable infrastructure and stadia of increasing size and sophistication began to appear on the urban landscape, mostly located, until the relocations of the 1980s and 1990s, in the centre of working class districts—such as Govan (Rangers) or Gorgie in Edinburgh

(Heart of Midlothian)—surrounded by tenement housing from which free views of the matches could be had. Important developments occurred in the inter-war period and one of the principal figures behind the massive monuments to the attractive possibilities of football was Archibald Leitch, a Glaswegian engineer, who designed many of the most important stands in Britain. He introduced new standards of safety and convenience of viewing, considerations which became relevant after tragic disasters such as that which took place at Ibrox in 1902. His work at Ibrox and

Hampden Park remain the centrepieces of these stadia, despite massive redevelopment in the modern era. 2 The results of these efforts contributed to the accommodation of massive crowds at Scottish football matches in the inter-war era,

1 Holt, Sport and the British , 256 2 Inglis, Football grounds , 16-20, 276-343 culminating in a gathering of nearly 150,000 people at the Scottish cup final at

Hampden in 1937.

This mania for football was facilitated by social and economic changes over the period since the 1880s. The disposable income of the working class had increased markedly; working hours had been reduced; and there was a general consensus among employers for a half-day holiday on Saturday afternoons when the most important matches were played. Transport infrastructure, especially trams, augmented in

Glasgow by underground trains and ferries on the Clyde, was in place to convey the hordes to and from the ground. Ibrox was particularly well connected, a source of angst for Celtic whose ground, despite being nearer the city was less convenient for supporters to reach. These new forms of transport steadily took over from the horse drawn ‘brakes’ which had been the traditional form of conveyance to football matches. The use of formal public transport was a boon to the authorities which had struggled to control the raucous behaviour associated with the ‘brakes’. 1 Finally, football was cheap entertainment: admission costing between 3d and 6d in this period, well within the pocket of the working-class supporter. 2 The increasing national

obsession with football was viewed with less than equanimity in a variety of quarters.

Participants in other sports, especially cricket, felt that footballers crowded them out

and hacked up their pitches. Churches and other forms of authority were worried

about the attention devoted to it as well as the gambling, swearing, drinking and large

unregulated gatherings associated with spectating. 3

1 Murray, Old firm , 41-5; Moorhouse, ‘Professional football’, 298-9. 2 Vamplew, W., ‘Economics of a sports industry’, 552 3 Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, 255-6 Across the social and geographical divide similar trends were evident in the case of rugby with the formation of the Scottish Football (Rugby from 1924) Union in 1873,

Scotland remained free of the divisions in the game in the 1890s and the amateur ethos of the Union variant remained dominant. This allowed leading players to make significant contributions in other areas of public life: Eric Liddell, athlete and missionary and John M. Bannerman, Gaelic singer and Liberal politician being two examples. The older day schools in Edinburgh with their powerful F.P. (Former

Pupils) teams and the newer boarding establishments—Fettes, Loretto, Glenalmond— emerged as bastions of the game. A different profile was evident in the farming and textile communities of the borders, where the game was accorded the same quasi- religious status found in mining communities of south Wales. Further regional specialisation was to be found in the north of Scotland where Argyll, Lochaber and

Badenoch were the heartlands of shinty, a stick and ball game, codified and regulated from rumbustious material from 1893 by the Camanachd Association, in which Lord

Lovat, an important Inverness-shire landowner, found an arena for leadership in an age of declining influence among landlords. 1

Sport, especially football and rugby, provided an outlet for Scottish national identity

in that it formed one of the few fields in which Scotland could appear on the

international stage. Until the post-war period, however, most internationals, involving

XIs and XVs representing Scotland involved the other ‘home nations’. Especially

important were matches against England, the ‘auld enemy’, although the visit of the

original ‘All Blacks’ from New Zealand in 1905 provided an important boost for the

public profile of rugby football, while administering a dent to the morale of the

1 MacLennan, Shinty , 69-70 players who faced them. Shinty’s international prospects were limited by the highland exclusivity of the game and the longstanding reluctance, on political and religious grounds, of the Camanachd Association to contemplate the possibility of official combined rules matches with Irish teams. Sport did not intersect with Scottish national identity in the same way as in Ireland where the Gaelic Athletic Association was an important component of Irish nationalism and Gaelic sports—hurling and

Gaelic football—were important markers of national identity. Interestingly, these sports do not seem to have attracted the participation of the Irish community in

Scotland; their sporting identity was channelled towards support for teams like

Glasgow Celtic and Hibernian of Leith.

Other participant sports, especially golf and tennis, were notable for the way in which they attracted female participation. They were safe arenas for female physical activity in that they were devoid, mostly, of aggressive physical contact and could be played by ladies in demure clothes. Golf and tennis clubs became archetypal middle-class institutions in Britain in the inter-war years. In Scotland, however, the pattern, especially in golf, may have been slightly different with a larger number of municipal courses providing facilities for proletarian players to improve their handicaps, although this should not be overstated. 1 Exclusivity was present in clubs like the

Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, based on the links at Muirfield. Scotland was also well endowed with the natural resources for golf in the form of the links courses on the coastlines of Moray and Nairn, Angus, Fife, East Lothian and Ayrshire which provided the venues for the majority of the Open Championships held in the years from 1860 to 1939. Scotland was also the ‘Home of Golf’ in a wider sense with

1 Lowerson, ‘Golf and the making of myths’, 75-90. the rules and spirit of the game emanating from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of

St Andrews.

The worries about regulated and organised sport were nothing compared to panics engendered by less respectable activities, especially those associated with gambling, drinking, violence and cruelty to animals. The last was a hangover from the nineteenth century popularity of activities such as cock-fighting. Despite the active disapproval of the RSPCA this survived in mining communities in the inter-war period. 1 Newer forms of ‘rough culture’, however, were emerging in the inter-war

period. Commercialised sport created an endless vista for betting, much of which took

place illegally on the streets and in illicit clubs. Despite the views of churches and

other middle-class lobbies, the police ceased to attempt to control it. 2 Sometimes panics developed a life of their own: that over Italian ice-cream shops encompassed fears of violence and sexual promiscuity, gambling and unregulated gatherings of the young. A much more tangible and serious problem related to the violent gangs on the streets of Glasgow. These were tinged with sectarianism and territorial identity and were especially hard to counter, despite the best efforts of Percy Sillitoe, the self- promoting Chief Constable of the city’s police force. Although unemployment may have played a small part in their make-up their principal characteristics were violence and criminality and they accorded ‘kudos and excitement’ to their members and enduring status to their unrepentant leaders. 3 The obvious solutions were legal

regulation and the creation of organised structures of leisure, especially for young

people, although the hardened gang members were beyond this. The Boys Brigade,

founded by William Smith in Glasgow in 1883, was the best known and most

1 Smout, ‘Patterns of culture’, 270 2 Brown, ‘Popular culture’, 220-3 3 Davies, ‘Street gangs’, 251-67, quote at 252. distinctively Scottish example of this trend. Smith and other BB leaders created a youth organisation with protestant, muscular and militaristic overtones with the objectives of inculcating discipline, orderliness and neatness in unruly boys. A plethora of ad hoc youth clubs and organisations created by churches of all denominations and individual middle-class do-gooders attempted the same objective, albeit in a less regimented manner. From the 1930s the Scottish Office became more interventionist in this area and the education system was to be the overall structure for inculcating Scottish youth with a healthier attitude towards leisure activities. In contrast to the years immediately following the Boer War, when physical training was imposed on a feckless and degenerate working class for their own good, whether they liked it or not, the ethos in the 1930s was of individual fulfilment and of community spirit. The latter was particularly important since the housing reforms of the inter-war period had broken up traditional urban communities and relocated large numbers of people to unfamiliar locations, often on the edge of cities away from facilities. The latter were also a problem, provision of swimming pools and other equipment lagged well behind the ideal expressed by Walter Elliot in 1936 when he said: ‘we want to avoid any suggestion of compulsion about physical training and sport. We want our young folks to take healthy exercise and play games for the fun of the thing.’ 1

Education

Along with legislation on housing, land settlement and agriculture the post-war

government passed an important Education Act in 1918 which was a cornerstone of

their attempt to create a ‘Land fit for heroes’ in the aftermath of the Great War. The

best known feature of this measure is the provision for denominational education for

1 quoted by Brown, ‘Popular culture’, 224 Roman Catholics funded from local taxation—‘Rome on the rates’ to its detractors.

This brought voluntarily funded Catholic schools, mostly in the west of Scotland, into the public sector, further evidence of the lack of penetration of racist or bigoted thinking in Scottish political culture. After a lengthy legal dispute in Stirlingshire beginning in 1922 it emerged that the 1918 Act could be interpreted as providing for the expansion as well as the maintenance of the Catholic sector. This was crucial in ensuring that the Catholic sector shared in the widening access to secondary education which was a hallmark of the inter-war period. Involvement in the state-sector led to improvements in the fabric, pupil-teacher ratios and training of staff which could not have been achieved in the straitened circumstances of voluntary funding. 1 The

structures for the administration of the education system were also reformed by the

1918 act, the School Boards created in 1872 were replaced by thirty-eight Education

Authorities. These were elected by a system of proportional representation and as well

as their educational role they provided an arena for political organisation for such

previously marginalised groups as Catholics and the labour movement. 2 These authorities had a short shelf life, however, they were abolished in 1929 and their function asumed by County Councils.

The most controversial element of the debate about education in inter-war Scotland, as had been the case since 1872, was secondary education. The question was ‘should secondary schooling be regarded as a stage of education common to all, or as a level of education only for some?’ 3 The 1918 act seemed clear that the former was the

ambition of the state, but its agent in administering Scottish education, the SED, had

1 Rosie, Sectarian myth , 118-20; Paterson, Scottish education , 58-9; McPherson, ‘Schooling’, 87-8 2 McCaffrey, ‘Irish issues’, 126-31 3 McPherson, ‘Schooling’, 86 different ideas. The act was clear that the school leaving age should be raised to fifteen; further

No young person …who is qualified for attendance at an intermediate or

secondary school, and in their opinion formed after consideration of a report

from the teachers concerned shows promise of profiting thereby, shall be

debarred therefrom by reason of the expense involved. 1

The achievement of the objective of free secondary education up to the age of fifteen

was hampered by a number of factors. The continuation until 1936 of fees for the five

year secondary course which was a pre-requisite for university entrance was a

considerable impediment to educational opportunity for poorer children in a period of

high unemployment and economic difficulty. The SED went further than this,

however, and their infamous ‘Circular 44’ of 1921 instructed the Education

Authorities to divide those children who had passed the ‘qualifying examination’

taken at the age of twelve into those who were perceived as likely to benefit from a

five-year academic course leading to higher education, and the much larger group

who were perceived to be unfit for such a course. The background to this policy may

have included the government’s plans for restrictions in public expenditure as a

response to the economic recession. The lack of clarity on how this division was to be

made among children who had passed the qualifying exam and the assumption that those likely to leave at fifteen were the same group who were unfit for secondary education confused social and academic selection. The Circular was enormously unpopular among education authorities, as some did not have the facilities to separate

1 Paterson, Scottish education, 61 the children in the way expected by the SED, but for others there were ideological objections and they continued to offer ‘academic’ subjects to those pupils intending to leave at fourteen. Whilst this could be interpreted as evidence of a democratic ethos in

Scottish education there is more compelling evidence for the conservative prioritisation of ‘academic’ education and resistance to ‘vocational’ courses for those not intending to attend university. 1

Despite the activities of the SED the inter-war period saw the expansion of secondary

education. Many of the ‘Higher Grade’ schools which had been established in the

1890s were augmented to provide a full secondary course and by the eve of the

Second World War over 170,000 children, or fifty two per cent, were in secondary

education; a much smaller proportion, less than fifteen per cent, completed a five year

course and there were only around 10,000 students in higher education in the late

1930s, suggesting only around three per cent went on to this level. 2 The inter-war

period saw significant changes in the University sector as well, the most important

being the increased level of state funding after the establishment of the University

Grants Committee in 1919. This supplemented funding from philanthropic sources

such as the Carnegie Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation; the former provided

funding for capital projects, but also helped to ensure relatively open access through

financial assistance to students and even funded new lectureships in specific subjects.

The Rockefeller foundation provided funds for major capital projects, such as the new

science buildings at the University of Edinburgh. Neither the secondary nor the higher

education sector was free from the impact of demographic changes and social and

economic problems. Demographic problems arose from the changes in the birth-rate

1 Stocks, ‘The people versus the department’, 48-60 2 Paterson, Scottish education , 67, 81 in Scotland in the 1920s—an initial surge in 1919-20 and then a falling away for the rest of the decade. The emigration of the 1920s also reduced the number of young people in the population. Unemployment, or the fear and threat of it, on the other hand, may have encouraged a larger number of children to stay on at school.

Nevertheless, in difficult economic circumstances the prospect of a job would have been enough to end the school career of many a working-class fourteen year-old, regardless of ability. The fact that public expenditure cutbacks in 1922 and 1931 and the onset of war in 1939 meant that the school-leaving age was not raised to fifteen until after the Second World War did not help. The location of most schools offering five year secondary courses in middle-class areas and the assumptions of central and local education authorities and teachers themselves were further factors in the strong bias towards the middle class in Scottish secondary education in this period. 1

The inter-war period had been one characterised by the social consequences of

economic depression and unemployment. It is not that these forces disturbed a society

devoid of difficulties, but they added new pressure to existing problems, especially in

the housing question. A further theme, and one which would become increasingly

important in the years which immediately followed, was the debate over the advance

of the state into a variety of areas of social and economic life. In this the hesitancy of

state intervention in the 1920s and 1930s was rapidly overtaken by the exigencies of

total war and then by the demands of post-war reconstruction.

1 Stocks, ‘Social class and the secondary school’, 26-39 Chapter eight: The Second World War

The Second World War hit Scotland in mid-October 1939. On the 16 th German bombers raided the Firth of Forth; their objectives were Royal Navy vessels and the

Forth Bridge, of which the Luftwaffe had exceptionally clear photographs. Onlookers seemed unaware that the attack was for real, perhaps because a general warning was not sounded, ‘a matter of great indignation’ among the local populace. 1 The German bombers damaged several ships, including HMS Southampton, and twenty-five men were killed or wounded. Oddly, they did not press home their attack by bombing the bridge, which was at that time not especially protected, possibly because a train was crossing. Due to a mistaken sounding of the ‘all-clear’ at North Queensferry it was allowed to proceed from Dalmeny and the passengers had an uncomfortably close view of the action. The enemy was engaged by the Spitfires of the City of Edinburgh squadron, who were scrambled from RAF Drem in East Lothian; one enemy aircraft was downed and the others made their escape. The following day an attack was made on Scapa Flow in Orkney and the two bombs which fell on the island of Hoy were the first of the Second World War to strike British soil. Scapa Flow also saw the sinking of HMS Royal Oak on 13-14 October 1939, after it was struck by a torpedo fired by a

German submarine. This tragedy forced the home fleet to take refuge in Loch Ewe on the west coast and persuaded the government to construct defensive barriers to prevent future attacks. 2 These events did not, despite contemporary fears, provide an

accurate foretaste of Scotland’s experience of the Second World War. Although the

Forth Bridge was defended by barrage balloons after the October 1939 attack, and

substantial gatherings of naval strength took place in the Firth, notably in April 1940

1 NAS HH50/5, Enemy Action, Air Raids, Home security intelligence summary, 16 Oct. 1939; Paton, ‘Scotland in the air war’, 45 2 O’Brien, Civil defence , 316; Hendrie, The Forth at war, 90-9; Miller, The North Atlantic front , 73 prior to the Norwegian campaign, it did not become an important theatre of combat.

Shetland was only 200 miles from German occupied Norway and was an important link in the escape of thousands of refugees on the ‘Shetland Bus’, as the boats which conveyed them to safety were known, and a detachment of the Lovat Scouts were stationed on the Faroe Islands, but Scotland’s ‘northern front’ was no more active than the east coast.

The Second World War saw greater state intervention than the Great War: the mobilisation of the resources of society—military conscription and conscription of the workforce (too controversial to be contemplated in 1914)—was on a new scale. This was ‘total war’. At a global level the distinctions between the conflicts are well known. The scale of military losses in the Great War were unprecedented, but British civilian losses were negligible. During the Second World War the pattern was quite different for western nations like Britain and France: military losses were less than in the Great War (at around 260,000 less than a third in the case of Britain), but civilian losses were much greater, just over 90,000 in the British case, concentrated in the heavily bombed areas of the south east of England. The fear of aerial bombardment prompted the government to develop an evacuation scheme to remove mothers and children from dangerous areas such as the industrial regions of the west or towns, such as Rosyth and Inverkeithing, on the Forth. This scheme, organised by the SED and the DHS, was scarcely the Scottish Office’s finest administrative hour. The scheme was voluntary and by early 1940 large numbers of children, a much higher proportion than in England, had drifted back to the cities. This posed educational problems because the SED was not enthusiastic about keeping urban schools open, fearing mass loss of life should they be bombed. This prompted a renewed attempt to encourage evacuation from potentially vulnerable areas, but the take up in Glasgow was less than 10 per cent of those eligible. This led the Glasgow Herald to comment caustically, ‘the parents of over 106,000 Glasgow children are, apparently, less afraid of air raids than of sending their children to the country’. 1 Nevertheless, by the middle

of 1940 there were over 140,000 evacuees in the official scheme and many others

who had made private arrangements, keeping track of the latter posed a bureaucratic

challenge for the SED. 2

One of the major reasons for the failure to make evacuation stick in Scotland was complacency about the bombing threat in 1939 and 1940. Scotland did not escape bombing, but it was not affected in the same way as London and the ports on the south coast. 3 Two attacks on Clydebank and Glasgow on 13 and 14 March 1941 left

more than 30,000 people homeless, caused major problems for industry and resulted

in around 1000 deaths. 4 Tragically, some of these deaths were of children who had been evacuated in late 1939 and had returned home; the raids prompted a ‘second wave of evacuation’ in the spring and summer of 1941. 5 The authorities encountered huge problems in dealing with the damage and although other raids caused more fatalities the Department of Health for Scotland noted, ‘Clydebank, relative to its size

“was blitzed” to an extent which no other town in the country has yet suffered.’ 6

There were also serious raids on Aberdeen in April 1943 and, perhaps due to its location as the closest urban centre to German bases in Norway, it was one of the

1 Quoted by Lloyd, ‘Scottish school system’, 90 2 details of evacuation based on Lloyd, ‘Scottish school system’, 35-119 3 Davies, Europe , 1328 4 Dewey, War and progress , 310-11; Hume and Moss, Beardmore , 251-2; MacPhail, Clydebank blitz ; Kay, ‘The Clydebank blitz’, 1-11 5 Stewart, ‘Evacuation of children’, 107. 6 NAS, HH36/5, A note on the department’s activities, Apr. 1941; see more material in this file and at HH50/3 most frequently attacked British cities, but it sustained much less damage than

Clydebank. 1

The military experience also provides contrasts. Although Scottish soldiers had fought

in the Middle East as well as Europe in the Great War, the Second World War—a

truly global conflict—drew Scottish soldiers into a wider variety of alien

environments in Europe, Africa and the Far East. The oral testimony of soldiers from

the Second World War testifies to the contrast between the static quagmire of the

Western Front and the exotic locations of fighting in 1939 to 1945. The experience of

Eddie Mathieson, an Edinburgh joiner who became a commando and spent time

training in the rugged terrain around their base at Achnacarry in Lochaber before

being sent to Burma, exemplifies this. Tentatively exploring the jungle near his camp

he was nearly attacked by a group of ‘baboons’ before he had had any opportunity to

engage the Japanese. 2 As in the Great war Scottish soldiers served in every theatre of

conflict. As the armed services in the Second World War were a conscript force from

the start there was not the same opportunity for the rhetoric of Scottish regimental

identities to be played out in the manner of 1914 and 1915. Nevertheless, military

organisation and symbolism retained a strong element of Scottishness. Divisions like

the 9 th and the 15 th were composed of Scottish regiments, but it is doubtful if more than a small minority of their soldiers were from Scotland. The reduction of the number of Scots in the ranks had begun in the Victorian period and it continued in the twentieth century. Even more marked was the paradoxical identity of the 51 st

(Highland) Division. Given the extent of highland depopulation since 1850 it was not

possible for the ranks of this famous Division to be populated exclusively, or even

1 Harris, Aberdeen at war , 7-9, 69-96; Perren, ‘Survival and decline’, 100-1 2 MacDougall, Voices from war, 233 mainly, by highlanders. Nevertheless, large numbers of highlanders joined the regiments that made up this division—the Camerons, the Seaforths, the Gordons and the Black Watch—and when they were in action the losses had a significant impact on the north of Scotland. The history of this Division also exemplifies the trajectory of

British military failure and success during the Second World War. It had been involved in fighting on the Maginot line and on the Somme in 1940, but became cut off from the main portion of the British army prior to the evacuation from Dunkirk.

Ultimately, it was encircled by General Rommel’s forces in the French coastal town of St Valery en Caux and forced to surrender, the only section of the British Army to do so in the debacle of 1940. Thousands of men, many of them from the north of

Scotland, spent the rest of the war in difficult conditions in P.O.W camps in Germany.

It has even been suggested that this division was sacrificed by high political considerations in Britain determined to indicate that the withdrawal from Europe did not represent a complete abandonment of France. If such a sacrifice was made in an attempt to prevent French surrender it was in vain. Given the stress on the highland martial tradition, the glorification of that tradition during the Great War and the stress on the aggression and indomitable nature of highland regiments, there was a particularly humiliating element to the surrender at St Valery. 1 The Division was

reformed in Britain and fought through North Africa and Italy before being involved

in the Normandy landings, liberating St Valery in September 1944 and ending the war

in Germany.

Military highlandism was adapted in the Second World War, the kilt was not a

prominent military symbol, the War Office having decreed that it was not suitable for

1 the conspiracy theory is dealt with in detail by David, Churchill’s sacrifice mechanised warfare and highland regiments were ordered to surrender their kilts. One officer of the Gordon highlanders, who regarded the directive as in the same tradition as the banning of tartan after Culloden, oversaw the ceremonial burning of a kilt in protest. 1 Famous incidents, such as Lord Lovat’s piper playing the ‘Blue Bonnets’ as

No. 4 Commando landed on Sword beach on D-Day, have perhaps emphasised the

distinctiveness of Scottish military identity in the Second World War when the

universal elements of the experience can be emphasised with equal justification. 2

El Alamein was a decisive moment in the Second World War: it was the first meaningful victory which the allies scored over the Axis powers, it relieved mounting pressure on Churchill and it occasioned a sense of national relief with Church bells heard for the first time since the start of the war. 3 Scottish representation in

Montgomery’s Eighth Army came from the reformed 51 st Division under General

Wimberley. Despite this other symbols of Scottishness were prominent in the North

African desert. Wimberley’s soldiers attacked with the cross of St Andrew on their back and to the accompaniment of regimental pipers, the desert air carrying their music over huge distances. The objectives in the battle had been given place names from the recruiting areas of the regiments involved, Dundee, Arbroath and Stirling, for example. Thus even in this moment of supreme importance for Britain and the

Empire (and there were troops from India and Australasia at El Alamein) the identity of Scottish soldiers seemed clear. Occasional complexities were introduced, such as the officer who would not accept replacements to his depleted highland regiment if they were lowland Scots! 4 The war in the desert also produced some of the most

1 David, Churchill’s sacrifice , 11 2 Lovat, March past , 310, see also 322-3 3 Latimer, Alamein , 1-2 4 Latimer, Alamein , 182-3, 235 notable Scottish poetry from the Second World War: in English, Sydney Goodsir

Smith’s sad ‘El Alamein’ from his ‘Armageddon in Albyn’; and in Gaelic, Somhairle

MacGill- Eain’s, ‘Curaidhean’, born out of his experience as an Eighth Army soldier.

Whether these points exemplify a distinctive Scottish experience of the war or not is a moot point; Scottish military identity was strong, but then so was that of troops from

Australia and New Zealand and from English urban areas. One of the best accounts of the experiences of Second World War soldiers was written by Peter White, an English officer in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. It describes, in traumatic detail, the progress of the regiment across Europe in 1944 and 1945. Although some of the soldiers were Scottish, and White refers to them throughout as ‘Jocks’, the combat which they encountered, the privations endured during the winter, the bravery and occasional cowardice of the men, and the relief felt at the end of the war were the primary elements of that experience and were not especially mediated through a

‘Scottish’ identity. 1

Domestic politics

Images of Scotland during the Great War are dominated by the ‘Red Clyde’, but one historian has advised us to

Forget the Red Clyde: throughout World War I Scotland was overwhelmingly

patriotic. Tactless enforcement of the Munitions Acts admittedly caused

episodes of industrial discontent as the armaments drive got under way, but

after 1916, with the real slaughter still to come, tranquillity reigned. … In

World War II, by contrast, industrial discontent in Scotland appeared

1 White, With the Jocks inconsiderable, but the government became worried about Scottish morale and

belligerency. 1

The official history of wartime factories and plant comments that Rolls Royce

‘courageously’ decided to ‘leap over the border’ to Glasgow in 1939; and the firm’s

historian recalled that ‘pessimists warned that the company was making a mistake in

going to Glasgow, where the very words Rolls Royce, on account of their association

with luxury and wealth, might arouse the antagonism of the Clydeside workers with

their pronounced left wing views.’ 2 The ‘Red Clyde’ was not easy to forget. Like the

Great War, the Second World War provides a challenge to Scottish historians and,

also like the Great War, we should not discount the possibility that a distinctive

Scottish experience is a chimera, and that its impact on Scottish identity was neutral. 3

To trace the awkward politics of Scotland during the war requires some awareness of

the way in which international events affected the party political debate in the late

1930s.

Political debates over international issues in the 1930s—the Spanish Civil War,

appeasement, rearmament—did not map easily onto party divisions. There was, for

example, a strong ethical commitment to international cooperation through the

League of Nations which encompassed the Liberals, where the tradition originated,

Labour and elements in the Unionist party. This is not to deny that there was a strand

of opinion in the first two organisations which opposed disarmament, preferring

expenditure on social and economic development. The rise of European dictatorships

1 Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish government’, 1-2 2 Hornby, Factories and plant , 290; Nockolds, Magic of a name , 169 3 Macdonald, ‘“Wersh the wine o’ victorie”’, 105-12 discusses the relative neglect of the Second World War by Scottish historians; Morgan, ‘England, Britain and the audit of war’, 151. added new dimensions to Scottish politics beyond the question of rearmament. These questions disturbed the course of party politics. Indeed, during a by-election in

Dunbartonshire in March 1936 (won by a Labour candidate inclined to pacifism)— just after the publication of the government’s plans for an enlarged defence budget and the German re-occupation of the Rhineland—‘apathy’ was noticeable.

The international situation and the government’s rearming programme are so

vital and overwhelming questions that they do not lend themselves to

flippancy or the ordinary brand of humorous electioneering. … People …are

impressed with the importance that the nation and countries abroad will attach

to their decision, and when the time comes they will not treat the franchise

lightly. 1

The wider British debate over ‘appeasement’ may not have had a peculiarly Scottish dimension—although with the exception of the Glasgow Herald, the principal newspapers were supportive of Chamberlain. Its divisive results for the Conservative party were evident in the resignation of the Duchess of Atholl in 1938 and the subsequent by-election which she fought, and lost, as an independent anti- appeasement candidate. 2 The Duchess, despite being known as the 'Red Duchess' due to her support for intervention in Spain, was scarcely a progressive. She did, however, share a passionate opposition to appeasement with Robert Boothby, the MP for East

Aberdeenshire, who was on the left of the party. Walter Elliot, on the other hand, was a progressive who became tainted with the accusation that he was an appeaser. At a meeting of the ‘Other Club’ just after the Munich agreement he was excoriated by

1 Scotsman , 17 Mar. 1936, 8 2 Ball, ‘Politics of appeasement’, 49-83, Stewart, ‘Fellow travellers’, 348-54, 364-71 Churchill for his association with such a cowardly policy. His career never recovered:

‘Munich broke the spring and the watch never told the right time afterwards’ was

Boothby's sorrowful comment. 1

Foreign policy also caused problems for the left. The Spanish Civil War has been the

subject of much myth-making in the Labour movement. The contribution of over 400

Scottish volunteers to the International Brigade, organised by Communists, gives an

impression of a virtuous left-wing campaign against the Fascist threat. 2 Many

volunteers had had military experience, some were motivated by unemployment

others by politics. Remarkable experiences emerge from the memories of these men,

none more so than that of Tommy Bloomfield, a Fife miner: he had been in the Black

Watch as a boy in the early 1930s, but volunteered for the International Brigade in

December 1936 after hearing Willie Gallacher speaking at Thornton. He was captured

and repatriated in 1937, joining the Communist party on his return to Scotland before

going back to Spain to fight for a second time. Bloomfield volunteered for the Royal

Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War, but in common with other Spanish

veterans, was treated with suspicion by the military authorities on the grounds of his

presumed political views. 3 Despite the response of local activists—such as those in

Edinburgh who quickly raised over £100 for humanitarian aid to Spain—which helped to invigorate the party in the aftermath of the 1935 election, the war brought difficulties. 4 The initial response of the Labour Party was to support the National

Government’s non-interventionist line and, although a more critical view emerged, unambiguous support for the Republicans was a minority view for several reasons.

1 ODNB (1888-1958); James, Bob Boothby , 183-4; Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom, 19-40; Harvie, ‘Walter Elliot’, 122-31 2 Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish civil war , 121-45, esp. 126 3 MacDougall, Voices from the Spanish civil war , esp. 47-55 4 Worley, Labour inside the gate , 205-7 One was religious: specifically, reports of Republican anti-Catholicism. The Glasgow

Observer was overt in its support for Franco, and caused tension between the left and

the Catholic Church. It took the best efforts of Patrick Dollan, himself a Catholic, to

prevent a serious rupture. 1 The situation was made worse by John McGovern, the ILP

MP for Shettleston—a maverick in his politics and his Catholicism—denounced the support of the Catholic Church in Spain for Franco, and the attitude of the Church and

Catholic press in Scotland for peddling ‘false propaganda’. 2 The ILP was generally pragmatic in its response to the war, however. The party hierarchy was engaged with the Republican cause, its leaders travelling to Spain; nevertheless, the death of the young ILP activist Bob Smillie (grandson of the miners’ leader of the same name) in a

Republican prison in Valencia in 1937 presented difficulties. The circumstances of

Smillie’s death are obscure, but his incarceration had much to do with the marginalisation of the ILP’s allies by Communist elements in the sectarian conflicts within Spanish republicanism. It has been suggested that the ILP was unwilling to allow this to become a cause celebre lest it endanger other prisoners, further blacken the image of the Republic in Scotland and provide propaganda for the right-wing press. 3 Thus the conflict with Fascism in Spain created divisions for Labour in

Scotland.

Important voices in the movement initially denied even the seriousness of the threat

from Hitler’s Germany, opposed re-armament and argued for non-aggression, and

League of Nations activity. Re-armament was seen as a capitalist and imperialist

conspiracy and German aggression explained by the injustice of the Versailles

1 Gallagher, ‘Scottish Catholics and the British left’, 35-8; Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish Labour movement’, 623-5 2 McGovern, Why Bishops back Franco , 11; Buchanan, ‘“A far away country”’, 8; Stewart, ‘Fellow travellers’, 231 3 Buchanan, ‘Death of Bob Smillie’, 435-61 Treaty. 1 The left of the movement, especially the ILP, supported appeasement from a

pacifist point of view. 2 By 1939, and the incontrovertible evidence of German

aggression, this line had softened, but some Labour activists were vocal in their

opposition to war. Emrys Hughes argued that

the British and the French alliance with Poland [was] one of the great blunders

of our foreign policy. For it implied War for Poland and War for Europe. It

meant the setting in motion of the gigantic machinery of destruction and

devastation and horror and disease spreading like a ghastly plague over

civilisation. 3

Much to the disgust of older activists such as Arthur Woodburn, a conscientious objector during the Great War, Forward took this line. He and Dollan, who drew

attention to the need for civil defence, took a different view. They stressed that while

party politics should be suspended, the Labour movement had an important role to

play in mediating between the people and the increasingly powerful state. Woodburn

saw opportunities for Labour, he recognised that ‘war makes it necessary to plan

society’ which represented ‘great tribute to the foresight of socialists to see that their

ideas being resorted to by those who formerly opposed them’. 4 These divisions were evident at the Clackmanan and East Stirling by election in October 1939 where

Woodburn’s official Labour candidature was unopposed by the Unionists under the terms of the political truce declared by the major parties at the outbreak of the war.

There was a pacifist candidate— supported by Forward —but a crushing victory for

1 Forward, 2 May 1936, 6; 1 Oct. 1936, 7 2 Stewart, ‘Fellow travellers’, 355 3 Forward, 9 Sept. 1939, 1 4 Forward, 16 Sept. 1939, 3 Woodburn exemplified Labour’s role as a supporter of the national cause rather than as a pacifist critic of it. 1 Woodburn used Forward to drive this message home: ‘to advocate acceptance of Hitler’s demands is to become the accomplices of his aggression.’ 2

Scotland and the state in wartime

The most obvious contrast between the Scottish experience of the Great War and the

Second World War is the early introduction of conscription; the appeal for volunteers

and the debate over compulsion was not revisited. This was an example of a further

contrast, the unambiguous and rapid advance of the state into the lives of individuals.

Industries were effectively nationalised, workers conscripted to the service of the

state, food rationed, and the movement of people strictly controlled. Men and women

even wore ‘utility underwear’ designed by the government in the interests of

husbanding resources. The technological demands of the war effort were much greater

than had been evident in 1914-18: added to the munitions which had been the stock in

trade of heavy industry in the Great War, was a demand for more sophisticated

products—engines, vehicles, aircraft—which Scotland was not well-equipped to

deliver. There was no equivalent of the disputes of 1915 and 1916; although there

were more strikes the number of days lost was less (1.98m per year throughout Britain

compared to 5.36m) disputes tended to be short, localised and were mostly confined

to industries with long records of bad industrial relations, including mining and

shipbuilding. 3 One factor here was the fact that industrial action was subject to greater

legal limitation than had been the case with the Munitions Act of 1915. Nevertheless,

1 NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc. 7656/13/4, Woodburn to W. Small, 21 Oct. 1939; Woodburn to Dollan, 20 Oct. 1939; Woodburn to Gordon Stott, 20 Oct. 1939 2 Forward, 14 Oct. 1939, 4 3 Fielding et. al. , ‘England arise!’ , 31-3; Dewey, War and progress , 306 the impression should not be given that Scottish workers were entirely quiescent during the Second World War. The year 1941 saw a major strike among engineering and shipyard apprentices seeking better pay and conditions, their disadvantage having been exposed by higher wages for dilutees. At its height nearly 7000 apprentices were on strike, but solidarity melted when the government threatened to call them up for military service. A strike at a Govan engineering works in late 1940 saw David

Kirkwood reprise his Great War activities as industrial troubleshooter, and there was significant strife in the mining industry. None of this is surprising given the attitudes of management and workers in the 1930s; the hostility and grievances of the inter-war period could not be expected to melt away overnight. Mine managers in Scotland complained of the ‘obstructive’ attitude of the men and one Clydeside shipbuilder referred to his employees as ‘animals’. The Ministry of Labour, clearly exasperated by prevailing attitudes, complained of the ‘club-footed’ approach of the employers in their response to an apprentices strike in 1941. 1 A framework of almost total control

of capital and labour was in place from the earliest stages of the war and conscription

was a handy threat to have in reserve. Although the leaders of the Clyde Workers

Committee may not have been opposed to the war in 1915 they were organised and

politicised; the activities of ILP activists like John Wheatley, able to link industrial

and housing grievances, provided a challenge to the government which was not

repeated in the Second World War.

Despite this there was, perhaps, more resentment at the way in which ‘Scotland’ was

expected to contribute to the war effort. Some of this was at a decidedly low level,

such as irritation about the interruption to work caused by frequent soundings of air

1 Johnman & Murphy, British shipbuilding, 65-72; Rose, Which people’s war, 41-4 raid sirens in false alarms. 1 There was resentment at the movement of female labour, mostly younger women without families, to work in the English midlands. The war effort was more important than Scottish feeling in this regard and the transfer of labour continued, although women under the age of twenty were not taken and absolute compulsion was recognised as counterproductive. 2 At one level this was something which exercised the ‘green ink brigade’ who had the time to write to the newspapers and were prepared to condemn England as a ‘foreign’ land—not surprisingly, it was used by the SNP as a means of gaining publicity—but there was a more serious dimension. The controversy was linked to the nature of the Scottish economy and the fact that war production facilities were located in the English midlands rather than in the central belt of Scotland. 3 That large proportions of Scottish factory space was used for storage rather than production was another facet and, once he became Secretary of State for Scotland in 1941, Thomas Johnston made a point of appearing to fight hard for more war contracts—some 7,000 or 13.5 per cent of the total by the end of the war—to be awarded to Scotland. 4 This was not a partisan

position, most Scottish MPs were Unionists and did not dissent from Johnston’s

portrayal of his role as a defender of Scottish national interests. In this ‘campaign’ he

was certainly not above attempting to scare his cabinet colleagues with the spectre of

Scottish nationalism. This was not an entirely empty threat as the SNP took advantage

of by-elections and Common Wealth were also active in Scotland.

Economic activity

1 O’Brien, Civil defence , 318 quoting Scotsman , 31 Oct. 1939 2 Calder, The people’s war, 333 3 Rose, Which people’s war? , 225-8 4 Harvie, No gods , 53 Although the Scottish economy was not the engine of war production as in the Great

War, significant changes took place and novel problems had to be faced. The principal objective was to increase production and success required inculcating the workforce with a quasi-religious approach to output. One consequence was a deterioration of the health and safety record of the Scottish workplace, something which had improved during the 1930s. Increased hours, hastily trained workers, the dangers caused by the blackout and the casual use of dangerous materials, like asbestos, in the headlong dash for increased output, raised levels of stress and danger in the workplace. 1 The principal difficulty, in contrast to the unemployment of the

1930s, was shortage of labour. The coal industry, which struggled during the war, was

especially affected, but agriculture and shipbuilding, which ‘did well’ in the war, also

had to surmount this obstacle. Other industries had to take special measures: when

Rolls Royce came to Glasgow in 1939-40 they invested in training to ensure this. 2 An important change took place in the structure of the workforce: women made up only

20 per cent in 1939 but 40 per cent in 1945. 3 The process of introducing women

proceeded apace in some sectors, such as engineering, but in others traditional

attitudes presented problems. In shipbuilding women made up a maximum of 7 per

cent of the work force in 1944. Employers viewed women as unsuitable to the

shipyard environment on health and safety grounds, arguing that they were prone to

accidents and absenteeism and unable to cope with the stress and noise of the

shipyard. Although the Ministry of Labour attempted to overcome this prejudice by

pointing out that women were suitable for tasks like welding—‘the average woman

takes to welding as readily as she does to knitting’—progress was slow and by 1944

only 23 per cent of the women employed in shipyards were engaged in what had been

1 Johnston & McIvor, ‘The war and the body at work’, 113-36 2 Nockolds, Magic of a name , 170; Hornby, Factories and plant , 290 3 Devine, Scottish nation, 549; Harvie No gods , 53 regarded as skilled work. 1 Rolls Royce also claimed to have encountered problems with female labour; married women seemingly had great difficulty with twelve-hour shifts as they had ‘to prepare meals for their husbands and have young families to look after’. 2 The Rolls Royce factory at Hillington was also the site of a dispute in

1942-3 over equal pay, a demand which was not conceded by the Ministry of Labour. 3

There is much evidence to suggest that the wartime employment of women was less

than a long-hoped for entry to the workplace on equal terms; there was a reluctance to

consider equal pay and the marriage bar was retained in many occupations during and

after the war. The history of gender relations in the workplace do much to undermine

‘an idealised image of social harmony’ in wartime. 4

Some Scottish industries were better able to respond to the technical demands of war than others. Even those that were, such as shipbuilding, faced great difficulties because of severe contraction in the 1930s and a wartime shortage of labour. In this case an ironic symmetry was achieved with the appointment of the architect of contraction, Sir James Lithgow, as ‘Controller of Merchant Shipbuilding and

Repairs’. While this may not have guaranteed good industrial relations it ensured that the industry was in the hands of an ‘insider’ who would protect its traditional interests. Shipbuilding faced two challenges: the obvious, but technically complex, one of building warships; and the production of mercantile tonnage to replace the losses incurred in the Battle of the Atlantic. This was a massive task: in 1942 ships amounting to nearly 8 million tons were lost . 5 While mercantile output of 6m tons

1 Murphy, ‘“From the crinoline to the boilersuit”’, 82-104, quote at 92 2 NAS, DD10/497, Denholm (Ministry of Labour) to Anderson (Scottish Home Department), 5 Mar. 1942 3 Smith, ‘The problem of “equal pay for equal work”’, 663-5 4 Smith, ‘The womanpower problem’, 625-45, quote at 645; see also, McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 157 5 Johnman & Murphy, British shipbuilding , 77, 91-3 was achieved from 1940 to 1945, the construction of over 1300 naval vessels amounting to over 1.9m tons was a more impressive achievement given the complexity of the product. The launch in 1942 of HMS Howe—a 35,000 ton battleship of the King George V class, the biggest ship to emerge from the Clyde during the war—was a potent symbol of the way in which rearmament and war had revived the shipbuilding industry. 1

The extent of war production increased due to Tom Johnston’s activity and the

recognition that Scotland was safer from the German bomber than the south east or

midlands of England. The North British Locomotive factory at Springburn was

pressed into the production of munitions and light tanks; J and G Weir produced field

artillery; Sunderland flying boats were manufactured at Dumbarton; and Barr and

Stroud’s factory at Anniesland produced optical instruments. The Rolls Royce factory

on the industrial estate at Hillington was Scotland’s biggest war production facility:

over 30,000 aero engines were produced by a workforce of over 20,000. 2 Although this story of expansion was predicated upon war conditions Hillington was in a

Special Area, the factory was planned before the war and construction began in the summer of 1939. 3 The Scottish electronics industry was founded during the second

world war when Ferranti Ltd moved from London to the relative safety of Edinburgh

in 1943. 4

1 Osborne & Armstrong, Glasgow , 160; Jeffrey, This time of crisis , 179 2 Osborne & Armstrong, The Clyde , 111; Osborne & Armstrong, Glasgow , 173-5; Jeffrey, This time of crisis, 182 3 Hornby, Factories and plant, 218, 257-62; Nockolds, Magic of a name , 169-70, 198 4 P. Haug, ‘US high technology multinationals and silicon glen’, Regional Studies 20 (1986), 103-16 at 104; NLS, Acc 7330, Scotland’s record This story of increased production—matched by high wages which boosted the incomes of Scottish workers—did not extend to the coal industry, which had a difficult war, although many of the problems predate 1939. The isolation of the eastern Scottish coalfield from its traditional European markets, added to the exhaustion of reserves, and restrictions on coal as a domestic fuel contributed to these difficulties. The workforce contracted by about 10 per cent as miners joined up or sought better prospects in the munitions industry, despite official attempts to prevent this. These problems were compounded by the ageing of the workforce and the demographic stagnation of mining communities in the inter-war period, especially in the difficult years of the early 1920s. Industrial relations difficulties also plagued the industry, with a rash of strikes in Lanarkshire and West Lothian; working days lost to strikes in the coal industry in 1940 amounted to 50 per cent of the total, although this improved in 1941 the industry remained a problem. The result was a slump in production, down from 30m tons in 1939 to 21m tons in 1945. 1

The theme of intervention can also be seen in the wartime history of Scottish

agriculture. 2 Scottish farmers faced a daunting task: to increase the food supply with a small labour force. To achieve this agricultural production was controlled and subsidised and the labour force regulated. Success can be seen in the expansion of the grain acreage from less than 1m in 1939 to 1.4m in 1942, most of it devoted to the growing of oats, and increases of a similar order were seen in the production of potatoes and turnips. This expansion was matched by very high prices for most commodities, a striking contrast with the experience of the inter-war period; the war

1 Court, Coal , 118-24; Leser, ‘Coal-mining’, 109-11; Jeffrey, This time of crisis , 177-8; Devine, Scottish nation , 548; PP 1944-5 IV, Scottish coal-fields: the report of the Scottish coal-fields committee has a wealth of background information 2 see Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 196-8 seemed to be a ‘direct intervention of providence’ for the arable farmer. 1 The same could not be said for the livestock farmer, especially in the store sector, as land was turned over to crops; sheep numbers, for example, fell by over a million during the war. 2 Labour was a problem for Scottish farmers during the war, although farm labour was not pressed into military service in any great numbers. Even the 6500 who were mobilised represented a serious depletion and their numbers were made up by the

Women’s Land Army and Prisoners of War, especially Italians, but there was a shortfall in skill. The experience of the war for agricultural labour was a mixed one: wage levels, regulated since 1937, were increased, but the much valued freedom of movement was severely curtailed. 3

According to an economic historian: ‘The outbreak of the Second World War in

September 1939 was bound to have profound effects on the Scottish economy and, on balance, those effects were likely to be deleterious.’ 4 Is this view justified? The

overall impact of the war on the Scottish economy was superficially positive.

Unemployment, the scourge of the inter-war period, was dealt with and, despite

flickers of discontent in the early 1960s, did not return as a serious problem until the

1980s. The examples of ‘high-tech’ production cited above, however, were the

exception rather than the rule: a ‘major tragedy’. 5 Despite the variable impact of

bombing across Britain and Johnston’s (possibly self-inflated) influence, industrial

dispersal did not proceed very far and Scotland only benefited at the margins. If

anything, the war emphasised the role of the traditional heavy industries which had

seemed prostrate in the 1930s. The Second World War brought a hiatus in the long-

1 SJA , 25 (1944-6), 194-5 2 Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 197 3 Marshall, ‘Scottish agriculture’, 58-62; SJA, 23 (1940-2), 246-52 4 Lenman, Economic history , 232 5 Lenman, Economic history , 233 term decline of these industries; this was extended by post-war reconstruction, by nationalisation, and by the concerns of post-war governments for the social consequences of significant economic re-orientation.

A Scottish wartime state?

Secretary of State for Scotland, Thomas Johnston, regarded himself as Scotland’s man in the cabinet rather than vice versa . Although the office had been upgraded in the

1920s and the Scottish Office had been reformed in the 1930s, it was political circumstance rather than administrative structure which gave Johnston greater latitude than his predecessors. Since Scottish politics and administration were something of a sideshow for the government during the war Churchill could afford to grant license to

Johnston. Johnston’s interpretation of events was that he had laid down conditions and had been granted permission to undertake ‘large scale reforms’ which had the capacity to lead to ‘Scotia resurgent’. 1 With one possible exception, the establishment

of the North of Scotland Hydro Electricity Board in 1943, his record in office does not

match his rhetoric in retirement. This does not mean that he was a failure. There has,

however, been an uncritical acceptance of Johnston as ‘The Great Man’ of twentieth

century Scottish politics, often arising from an unquestioning acceptance of his own

account of his career. 2 Johnston did suggest some innovations when he accepted office in February 1941: first, that Scottish MPs should meet in Edinburgh and have access to Scottish Office civil servants; second, that Scottish legislation should merely be rubber stamped by Westminster if it had been approved in Edinburgh; third, he sought permission to form a ‘Council of State’ composed of former Scottish

Secretaries, ‘acting as a sort of Scottish equivalent to the coalition cabinet’ or even ‘a

1 Johnston, Memories , 147 2 Walker, Thomas Johnston is far superior to Galbraith, Without quarter sort of informal home rule’ according to one historian. 1 Since the British system does not allow for alternative sources of sovereign power, especially not on an informal basis, these innovations were less important than Johnston claimed. The first two were largely meaningless, but the Council of State had more substance, although its activities were devoted to general thinking about post-war policy rather than immediate reforms. It made important suggestions in crucial areas such as housing and industrial policy, but it was one voice among many in the debate over the shape of post-war society and it is by not clear that it was influential. 2 One of its most important initiatives came from Walter Elliot who used the Council to maintain his profile after his political marginalisation. He argued that more ought to be done to attract war industry to Scotland, the subsequent creation of the Scottish Council on

Industry in February 1943 helped to maintain the pressure on this issue and may have contributed to subsequent improvements in the position of Scottish industry. Elliot was an active member of the committee and his activities gave it a bipartisan air, but he had been active in these areas of policy during his period at the Scottish Office in the 1930s and, although he was a Tory to his core, his views and those of Johnston were not so far apart. Far from being an innovation, the Council of State gave expression to a pre-existing consensus in Scottish politics.

Power from the Glens

The highlands had for long attracted the attention of lowland politicians who felt that their ideological background could provide a golden bullet to solve its problems.

Gladstone and Lloyd George were both prone to this view and Johnston, perhaps

1 Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish government’ 2 Campbell, ‘The committee of ex-Secretaries of State’, 1-10 influenced by the latter, took a similar approach. He had been in parliament in the inter-war period when land settlement and assisted emigration been expensive failures. Further, he had been able to observe an unholy alliance of landowners and coal interests frustrate hydro-electricity schemes. Johnston recognised that wartime conditions gave him the opportunity to obliterate this obstacle. An act of 1943 established the NSHEB which aimed to supply electricity to remote areas without passing on the costs of transmission to the consumer; but Johnston saw the Hydro

Board as ‘an instrument for the rehabilitation of the highlands’, so it had to do more than that. Private hydro-electricity schemes had been part of the development of the aluminium industry at such exotic locations as Foyers, Kinlochleven and Fort

William, and the failed Caledonian Power Scheme of the 1930s was part of an attempt to develop a carbide industry in the highlands. 1 Johnston’s hopes that this model would be replicated in the post-war period were unfulfilled. The famous ‘social clause’ of the NSHEB, which suggested that it cooperate with other bodies to assist in social and economic development of the highlands was a dead letter. The ‘Hydro

Board’ was affectionately regarded by those whose homes it lit and ensured that later plans which threatened its identity were resisted. 2 Johnston’s chairmanship also contributed to its ability to punch above its weight. The construction of large hydro- electricity schemes in the north of Scotland from the 1940s until the early 1960s, when the Treasury ceased to believe that they represented value for money, provided employment for a large army of workers and for a time reversed the flow of migrant labour from the highlands. 3 Although the NSHEB presided over the flooding of large areas of scenic land, Glen Affric for example, its dams and powerhouses have

1 NAS, SEP12/94, memo on developments in the highlands and islands; for background to the NSHEB see Payne, The Hydro , 3-49; Walker, Johnston , 157-8 2 Cameron, ‘The Scottish highlands’, 204-6; Johnston, Memories , 180 3 the experiences of the work-force, which included this author’s father, are dealt with in Miller, The dam builders and Wood, The hydro boys attracted aesthetic plaudits; indeed, they soon became tourist attractions and drew as many visitors as the now inundated glens.

Like Churchill, Johnston found the prospect of renewed party politics awkward; unlike Churchill, who resorted to aggressive partisanship in 1945, he ceased to be a party politician, although he was prominent in Labour’s campaign in 1945. 1 This Red

Clydesider seemed to have travelled far since Lloyd George had suppressed Forward in 1915. That he was sensitive to this is suggested by his attempts to purchase remaining copies of his excoriating Our Scots noble families in order to take it out of circulation. In truth, Johnston had always stood slightly apart from the Red

Clydesiders and had travelled even further than is suggested by the contrast between

1915 and 1945: born in 1881 and active in politics since the Edwardian era,

Johnston’s politics, as well as his style of dress, owed as much to the radical liberalism of that era as to the dogmatic socialism of the west of Scotland during the

Great War and the 1920s.

Wartime politics

Scottish by-elections provide more evidence for an awkward wartime relationship between Scotland and Whitehall. Throughout the UK there were 141 vacancies in parliamentary seats, sixty-six unopposed returns and by-elections in seventy-five

(53.2 per cent) of these seats. In Scotland there were thirteen vacancies, only two unopposed returns and eleven by-elections (84.6 per cent). The principal reason for this was the fact that the SNP, which contested ? seats, was not privy to the truce between the main parties. Neither was the ILP, which had its base in the west of

1 Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 938 Scotland, and there was one intervention, at North Midlothian in February 1943, by

Common Wealth, the main proxy for left wing opposition to the coalition government. As was the case during the Great War, when by-elections were much less volatile, political conditions were abnormal. The register, unaltered since early

1939, was inaccurate, biased against younger voters and contributed to low turnouts

(the average in Scotland was 39 per cent). The rationing of paper and petrol made campaigning difficult, especially in large seats with scattered population, like Argyll.

An added difficulty in this case was the fact that much of the seat was in the

‘Protected Area’, access to which was controlled. A further distinctive feature of wartime elections was the way in which government candidates sought to portray their opponents as necessitating frivolous and unnecessary contests in a moment of dire national emergency. 1 For example, the government candidate in Argyll in April

1940 was none too subtle in his suggestion that William Power, his SNP opponent, was unpatriotic:

Major M’Callum said that having soldiered alongside some of our most

famous Scottish regiments, in whose ranks were included many men from

Argyll, he knew that if one of the most important constituencies in the

Highlands supported this attack upon the government, these soldiers would

feel that they had been stabbed in the back, when they were doing their utmost

under extreme discomfort and extreme hardship to resist the enemy and to

protect the liberties and freedom of this country against aggression. 2

1 for a review of the issues see Addison, ‘By-elections’, 130-50; Fielding, ‘Second World War and popular radicalism’, 48-52 2 Scotsman , 30 Mar. 1940, 11 Power, emphatically not an anti-war candidate, was careful to argue that the conditions of the highlands, rather than the war (or indeed home rule), should be the main issue. He suggested that depopulation was preventing Argyll from making a full contribution to the war effort. 1 In other by-elections, most notably at Kirkcaldy in

February 1944, the SNP took a slightly different line. On this occasion their candidate was Douglas Young, a divisive figure in the party, who had opposed conscription on the grounds that it was a breach of the Treaty of Union, and was imprisoned as a result. The publicity surrounding his trial contributed to a miserable performance for the party at Glasgow Cathcart in April 1942. At Kirkcaldy he polled a more than respectable 41 per cent and an explicitly anti-war candidate who took 7 per cent of the vote, allowed him to argue that there was a bare majority of support for the government at the election, but that the main issue for him was the ‘shift south of industries and workers’ rather than the ‘war effort’. 2 The war provided a mixture of opportunity and division for the SNP. A formal split occurred in 1942 when John

MacCormick, wary of an electoral strategy, left the party after Young became

Chairman. MacCormick devoted his energies to attempting to build the all-party pressure group which eventually became the Scottish Convention in the post-war period. His departure, with many moderate nationalists, allowed those who remained to build a party with a clearer identity, a greater focus on elections and, under the influence of Dr Robert McIntyre, a more professional approach. The last theme culminated in McIntyre’s victory over Labour at Motherwell in April 1945. Although he did his best in the House of Commons, causing a fuss over some of its conventions as well as making substantial interventions on social and economic issues, he was not able to compete in peace-time politics and Labour regained the seat at the general

1 Scotsman , 5 Apr. 1940, 5 2 Scotsman, 19 Feb. 1944, 4; 22 Feb. 1944, 4; for more on Young see Finlay, Independent and free, 224-32; Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish government’, 8-10 election in August. The history of nationalist politics provides some qualified evidence that there was a general air of dissatisfaction abroad, but the SNP could not capitalise on it. Contested Scottish wartime politics indicates a distinct political tradition, although but for fringe parties like the SNP and the ILP this would have been less obvious. That the Second World War represented a blip in the trajectory of

Scottish political development is suggested by what came afterwards. The 1940s and

1950s, when Labour and the Unionists dominated Scottish politics, suggests that wartime grievances were not translated into a general dissatisfaction with Scotland’s position in the United Kingdom. The SNP and the Liberals were condemned to the margins of a bi-polar political system until the 1960s.

What of the other parties? There is less to say about them because of the truce. The

Unionists, as might be expected, were the most self-denying, shutting down their organisation; but they had the easiest task during the war, wrapping themselves in the flag and fielding candidates with military backgrounds. They were also in a strong position in that the relative party strength at the outbreak of war favoured them and was preserved by the truce. Johnston’s prominence hid the fact that Labour did not have a good war. The truce trapped them in the subordinate position of 1935 and their machinery was weak after the disaffiliation of the ILP in 1932. Although trade unions accrued members during the war, activists were thin on the ground and membership fell to 16,000 in October 1942 from 29,000 in 1939.1 Further, Scottish Labour was in a weak position in the increasingly centralised Labour party. Home-rule had scarcely been a central feature of Labour’s appeal in the late 1930s and the flickers of interest in the early wartime years were diminished once Johnston got into his stride, seeing

1 Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 929 practical measures and his own stature as a viable alternative to a Scottish parliament.

A 1941 Plan for post-war Scotland presented a sketchy and confused scheme for home-rule which was not taken seriously by the party authorities. 1

The experience of the Italian community

The Italian community in Scotland was not large: originating in emigration during the

1880s it amounted to less than 6,000 people scattered throughout central Scotland at the outbreak of the Second World War. Its wartime history reveals much about the tensions within Scotland, rather than between Scotland and the central state, during the conflict. 2 They were a visible community, distinct in language and religion and

often identifiable as owners of barber shops, cafes and ice cream parlours. It has been

argued that the Italian community lacked cohesion: there was no Italian congregation

of the Roman Catholic Church, for example, even in Glasgow where it would have

been viable. The scattering of Italian families throughout central Scotland meant that,

outside Glasgow and Edinburgh, the community was not concentrated. There were

also divisions based on origins; most came from either the province of Lucca in

northern Italy or Frosinone south of Rome. A greater sense of Italian identity was

generated by the Great War, during which a large number of men returned to fight for

their native land, and a greater sense of cohesion was evident in the inter-war period.

The work of an Italian priest, Father Toncher, from 1918 was important in

strengthening the connection between the Italian community and the Church in

Scotland, evident also in the ecclesiastical architecture of Jack Coia. Business activity

generated a modest level of prosperity in the 1920s and 1930s and increasing

confidence was demonstrated by the formation of trade and cultural associations,

1 Keating & Blieman, Labour and Scottish nationalism , 132-3 2 this section draws on Colpi, ‘The Scottish Italian community’, 153-167 and Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozzia’, 13-21 such as the Italian Commercial Syndicate in 1928. The influence of fascism in the inter-war period caused problems, however, as organisations such as the Casa d’Italia in the west end of Glasgow, were taken over by the movement. 1

Whilst individuals were often subjected to slights and abuse based on their origins,

and Italian ice cream shops were the object of suspicion based on their perceived lack

of respect for the Sabbath and provision of unsupervised venues for boys and girls to

mix, there does not seem to have been hostility towards the community as a whole.

This was to change suddenly with the Italian declaration of war in May 1940 which

precipitated a night of anti-Italian violence, especially Edinburgh and Greenock. A

large crowd gathered on Leith walk and criminal damage and looting was visited

upon Italian businesses. 2 The memory of the Italian community stresses the suddenness of the change. Dominic Crolla, later to become a well known businessman in Edinburgh, felt that ‘the work of fifty or sixty years vanished into thin air’.

Frederico Pontieri, an ice-cream seller, recalled ‘they all started to hate me because I was Italian … I was up the public park one day standin’ wi’ the barra’ and this man, he says, “Get away with that barra,” he says, “you and Mussolini.”’ 3 This remark suggests that the hostility was political as well as ethnic. Much worse was to come for the men of the Italian community, many of whom were interned from 1940 to 1944.

Some were sent to Canada and 450 were killed when the Arandora Star was

torpedoed in July 1940 by the same submarine which had sunk the Royal Oak. Italian

prisoners of war were used as labour on Scottish farms, especially on the Black Isle

and Orkney, where a simple Nissen hut was lovingly and ingeniously transformed

1 Colpi, ‘Scottish Italian community’, 163 2 Colpi, ‘Impact of the Second World War on the British Italian community’, 172-3 3 quoted by Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozzia’, 18-19 into a highly decorated chapel which can still be seen. 1 Thus was an odd situation

created where peaceable people who had lived in Scotland for many years were

deported, but soldiers who had fought against the British army were brought to

Scotland to work. The government were aware of the potential for grievance here but

did nothing to overcome it. 2 In the aftermath of the war hostility to the Italians subsided, as the Crolla family found to their benefit from growing custom at their delicatessen on Elm Row in Edinburgh, some from former soldiers who had discovered Italian food and wine during the war. 3 The trauma caused by the

chaotically organised internment—which ‘collared’ anti-fascists and men who had

spent their whole lives in Britain, alongside Fascist activists—should not be

underestimated and many played down their Italian identity in the post-war period.

The experience of Italian women was even more difficult. They had to bear the

absence of fathers and husbands, take on new roles in business and cope with the

hostility and, on occasion, violence of their neighbours and people who were

considered friends who attacked their premises and stole their property. As one

woman recalled over fifty years later:

Italy had declared war. And the next minute there was a brick through my

window … and my best friend with a clothes basket, taking all the sweeties

out of the window. Yes! And a week previous to that she’d borrowed a dress

from me for a dance. 4

1 The subject of a novel by Jessie Kesson, Another time, another place , published in 1983 2 NAS, AF59/3/4, Minutes of Home Defence (Security) Executive, 21 Jan. 1941 3 see Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Victor Crolla, Independent , 26 Nov. 2005 4 quoted by Ugolini, ‘Memory, war and the Italians in Edinburgh’, 428 Their experience, however, is extremely difficult to excavate. The Italian community itself developed an ‘official’ version of their wartime experience which emphasised the suddenness of the violence against them and contains a tendency to elide its lingering effects by reference to the business and artistic success in the post-war period. This underplays the diversity of experience, ranging from those who were

interned to others who fought in the British army. 1

The 1945 general election

Relative Labour weakness in Scotland was shown in the 1945 general election: the

party gained fifteen seats to take their total to thirty-seven and secured 47.6% of the

votes. Despite this Atlee administered a ticking off at their conference at

Musselburgh. This indicates the change in expectation which had been engendered by

the national success in 1945. Labour recovered from the weaker performances of

1931 and 1935, but did not win many seats which they had not held before—of the

gains only Edinburgh North and Glasgow Kelvingrove had not seen recent Labour

representation. So the result in Scotland was not so shocking as in other parts of the

country which felt overrun by socialist hordes. No new seats were won in the

highlands (although Malcolm Macmillan retained the Western Isles), the north-east or

the borders. Labour had not burst out of the strongholds of 1929, their best inter-war

result. Set against this is the fact that recovery from the defeats of 1931 and 1935 was

no mean feat, only seven seats had been captured on the former occasion.

There did not seem to be the millenarian enthusiasm evident in other parts of the

country, or which could be remembered from 1922; turnout was relatively low,

1 Ugolini, ‘Internal enemy “other”’, 137-58 especially in Glasgow where Labour made only one gain. This may have had something to do with the quality of the 1945 intake, an aged and uninspiring lot who had ‘served their time’ as trade union officials or party apparatchiks. One exception was Hector McNeil, elected for Greenock in 1941: an articulate graduate and former journalist he served in the Foreign Office under Bevin from 1945 to February 1950 when he entered the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Scotland. 1 McNeil’s early death

in 1955 was a blow for Labour in Scotland, although there were signs that he was

already losing interest in politics, his period at the Scottish Office a contributory

factor. 2 Labour’s vague and fleeting references to Scottish home rule in the 1945 election presaged a period, which lasted until the upsurge for support for the SNP in the late 1960s, when its unionism was prominent.

The Unionists were depressed by the outcome in 1945; they lost fifteen seats, compared to the Unionist and National Liberal total in 1935, and their share of the vote was down by 8 per cent. They used the defeat as motivation to action and after an overhaul of organisation and constant propaganda against socialist centralisation, for liberty of the individual and freedom of enterprise, acceptance of the welfare state and housing reform, they began an upward curve which took them to 50.1 per cent of the vote and thirty-six seats in 1955. 3 For the Liberals the 1945 election was a vale of tears: the party which had dominated Scottish politics in 1910 was left without a single seat. In Caithness and Sutherland Archibald Sinclair was defeated by an independent Conservative in an extraordinary election where only sixty votes separated the three candidates. Indicative of Liberal weakness was their inability to

1 ODNB . 2 Healey, Time of my life, 106 3 NLS, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association MSS, Acc 11368/4, Central Council Executive, 2 Sept 1947; Hutchison, Scottish politics , 72-6 field more than twenty-three candidates and the party scarcely functioned outside its rural heartlands in the highlands and the north-east. Even John M. Bannerman could not get more than 12 per cent of the vote in Argyll in the first of his many election fights for the party. The party also found it difficult to offer distinctive policies: land reform and free trade were scarcely relevant to post-war reconstruction, especially as they had been seen to fail in the 1920s. The moderate nature of Scottish Unionism, with its campaigns against Socialist centralisation stole much potential Liberal thunder. 1 A thousand people may have heard Beveridge at the Assembly Hall in

Edinburgh during the campaign but few listened to his Liberal message. 2

The 1945 election result has been explained with reference to important shifts of

opinion which took place since the last general election. The collectivism of the

war—through service in the armed forces and domestic privations—predisposed the

electorate to vote Labour in 1945. For example, speaking of the evacuation of urban

children to rural areas in the early part of the war, Alexander King, a school inspector,

remarked in 1941, ‘one half of the world has got to know how the other half lives’.

This enforced mixing of previously isolated social and religious groups stimulated

much snobbery about the hygiene, honesty and table manners of the evacuees, but

prompted some reflection on the structural reasons for the condition of these poor

children from the towns. 3 Many of the issues arising from the social implications of

evacuation are dealt with in a 1956 novel by the distinguished Scottish novelist Robin

Jenkins, The Guests of War . This recounts the movement of city children to the

borders. Jenkins, who had been a schoolteacher during the war, had direct experience

of the evacuation experience. This probably did not directly convert many voters to

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics, 79-82 2 McCallum and Readman, General election , 166 3 Stewart, ‘Evacuation of Children’, 116-19; quote from Lloyd, ‘Scottish school system’, 44 support for Labour, but it may have helped to move the social and political agenda back onto the territory of housing and welfare reform which profited the party.

Government intervention in the economy and society was accepted by both parties, although the electorate seemed not to trust the Conservatives in this realm. The consideration of post-war reconstruction from a relatively early stage in the conflict perhaps also played into Labour’s hands. This may have been an area where there was a distinct Scottish dimension, in the shape of Johnston’s Councils of State and

Industry. 1 The Scottish picture provides some evidence for the alternative explanation of the 1945 result as one driven by apathy and a belief that Labour were the best of a bad lot rather than a movement to be embraced enthusiastically. The notion of apathy as a factor in 1945, especially among servicemen, who did not turn out in great numbers, has to be tempered by clear evidence that Labour were perceived as the party best equipped to undertake the social reform which electors firmly believed was necessary. 2 A rightwards drift in Scottish public life has been cited as a contributory

factor in the strength of Unionism in the 1930s and countervailing movement in the

late 1930s and during the war contributed to Labour success in 1945. If the attitude of

the press did not moderate much, significant changes can be seen in the outlook of the

Church of Scotland. The Church retained its status as an important national institution

and in the late 1940s and early 1950s underwent a revival. Its wartime views on

social, economic and political problems were much more attractive than the

xenophobia of the 1920s and early 1930s. 3 The Church of Scotland altered its outlook and demonstrated an awareness of the damage which had been done by the views of its leaders during the inter-war period:

1 Addison, Road to 1945 contains the clearest exposition of this general argument 2 Fielding, ‘What did “the people” want’, 623-39; Fielding et. al. , ‘England arise!’ , 27-31, 64 3 Brown, ‘The campaign for the Christian commonwealth’, 216-21 It is widely felt that Scotland has not only a very unsatisfactory record in the

past, but also a very uncertain industrial prospect for the future. The slum

conditions which surround the lives of very large numbers of people compare

unfavourably, not only with what is ideally desirable, but with what has

actually been achieved in certain other countries of comparable wealth … If

only because the religious and moral interest of the people is adversely

affected by the devitalising influence of such conditions, there rests upon a

national Church a special obligation to consider the present state of the

nation. 1

There were also more base political explanations. Although Churchill had great status

as a national leader and had been generally popular since the improvement in military

fortunes in 1942, the difficult first three years of the war showed that his personal

popularity and that of his government were not unconditional. The year 1942 had also

seen the publication of the Beveridge Report which proposed a comprehensive

welfare state. The Labour party were much more enthusiastic about this than the

Conservative leadership, although Scottish Unionists were perhaps less cautious than

their party as a whole. Aside from the effect of Beveridge in shifting the focus of

politics onto ground more favourable to Labour, the experience of participation in the

wartime coalition had also given them credibility not acquired in 1924 or in 1929-31.

Political memory was also relevant. Labour’s campaign in 1945 emphasised welfare,

housing and pensions; whilst the Conservatives did not neglect these issues they gave

greater emphasis to foreign, defence and imperial policy. There was even a strong

Scottish tinge to the addresses of Labour candidates, with over half prioritising

1 Church of Scotland, God’s will for church and nation , 63, see also 154-5; Newlands, John and Donald Baillie , 234-5 Scottish issues and around 40 per cent advocating home-rule, although it was not top of their list. 1 Churchill, like Johnston, was a figure perceived to be above the party

fray and even his status may not have been able to obliterate memories of the

Conservatives as the party of economic depression and appeasement. Despite wartime

evidence of disillusionment with party politics, and a taste for a political realignment,

there was a rapid return to contested two-party politics. No serious consideration was

given to continuing the war-time coalition, as in 1918, although that was hardly a

positive precedent. 2 The two-party system returned with a vengeance in Scotland, the

Liberals and SNP were marginal in the 1950s and Labour and the Unionists often gained more than 95 per cent of votes.

1 Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 938 2 Fielding, ‘Second World War and popular radicalism’, 38-58, esp. 55 Chapter nine: a social revolution?

There is an argument that Scottish identity in the period between the wars was in

crisis. 1 The failure of traditional industries, high unemployment, massive emigration

and intractable social problems led to pessimism and a moment of sectarian

animosity. By contrast, the consensus on the period since 1945 is that Scottish identity

has recovered from this crisis, Scottishness has increasingly asserted itself over

Britishness and that this has been reflected in a consensus on devolution in the late

1990s. 2 This has not been straightforward, but the results seem clear enough. The

social problems which blighted the inter-war period have not disappeared, far from it.

In addition, new issues, undreamt of in the 1930s, have increasingly asserted

themselves. Primary amongst these are the misery, crime, violence and health

problems associated with the drug problem. Nevertheless, even a general discussion

of post-war social change reveals insecurity and concern originating in the rapid pace

of change: established institutions and older generations have been bewildered by the

maelstrom around them. Falling fertility, reduced rates of marriage, the apparent

social acceptability of cohabitation, increased female participation in the workplace

have, for some, undermined the ‘traditional’ family with its clearly defined gender

roles. Rural depopulation and subsequent re-population, increased mobility

(especially among the young), occupational restructuring, and shifts in housing tenure

and location seem to have broken up ‘communities’. Mass secondary and higher

education have increased social mobility and older class structures would appear to

have broken down. Occupational changes have eroded the status of, mostly male,

traditions of craft and skill, and left large groups unsure of their place in society.

1 Finlay, ‘National identity in crisis’, 242-59 2 refs to consensus on national identity: McCrone? Compared to the religion soaked period with which this book began—when disestablishment and presbyterian reunion could dominate political debate, when kirk sessions dispensed discipline, when catholic and protestant churches retained a close interest in the education system, when substantial numbers of people went to church, or at least marked major life events with religious ceremonies—Scotland seems to have become a secularised society with a culture suspicious of religious faith and institutions. Across western societies there has been a worry that participation in social and community organisations has declined, a formerly existing sense of trust among neighbours has collapsed and that social norms have broken down. This has been much discussed by social scientists around the concept of ‘social capital’, the activities and involvement which maintain civil society and community. 1 We should not, however, idealise the past by assuming a former abundance of ‘social capital’.

There is also the danger of creating a circular argument: is diminished social capital a cause or an effect and is increased social capital ‘a characteristic of a flourishing society, or a means of achieving it?’ 2 Nevertheless, there does seem to be a paradox in post-war society, not confined to Scotland of course: the insecurity which has been generated by perceived loss of community identity is contemporaneous with the increased choice of individualist modes of living, travelling and relating to society.

Putnam argues that television has been the principal culprit in destroying the culture of participation and diminishing social capital. Others argue that its informative capacity and the connections that can be fostered by the internet mean that the pessimistic case is overstated and could even represent a ‘revolutionary rise of social capital’. 3 The perceived decline in social capital has been related to declining levels of

1 see Putnam, Bowling alone for the classic exposition of the thesis; Paterson, ‘Social capital’ 5-32 and Paterson, ‘Civil society’, 39-55 are sceptical discussions of its relation to Scotland. 2 Schuller, et. al. , ‘Social capital’, 29-30 3 Putnam, Bowling alone , 216-46; Lin, Social capital , 214. political participation, but it is social changes and the debate about community and identity which they have stimulated which will be the principal theme of this chapter.

There is a further point in this debate which is directly relevant to recent Scottish history: since devolution there has been an expectation that some of these problems have policy solutions, albeit indirect, through the creation of social capital. As yet it is not clear whether this is the case. 1

Demography

The demographic history of the period since 1945, characterised by growth until the

early 1970s, has been bracketed by pessimism about the vitality of the population of

the nation. The patriotic Registrar General for Scotland, James Gray Kyd, argued in

1948:

While we Scots are proud of the part our kinsmen have played in the building

of your great Empire—and if I may say so, in building the prosperity of

England—we are poorer at home for this loss, and one can but hope that in

years to come we will be able so to plan our economy that our own people

may find work and happiness in their own native glens and the uplands of our

lowland counties. 2

This concern in the late 1940s contributed to the climate of opinion that eased the reception of interventionist economic planning, demographic redistribution and social engineering such as the creation of new towns. 3 In contemporary Scotland there is fear of a ‘demographic time bomb’ primed by a low birth-rate, continuing migration

1 See Field, Social capital , 118-23 for a general discussion of this point. 2 Kyd, ‘Third Statistical Account’, 316; see also Scotsman , 31 Oct. 1949, 3. 3 Glasgow Herald , 24 Nov. 1948. and a falling population. The comparison with Ireland is instructive here. As in earlier periods Scottish demographic history seems to mirror that of Ireland. In the period from the famines of the 1840s until the final decades of the twentieth century this comparison favoured Scotland. Since the 1970s the situation has been reversed, it is now the Scottish population which is falling while the Irish population increases, by as a tradition of emigration which has been embedded in Irish society for at least 150 years has been overturned. The population of Ireland was 3.2m in 1901, declined to

2.8m as late as 1961 but since then has risen sharply to 4.2m. 1 The Scottish population is stagnant by comparison. This is not an apolitical matter. Demographic lassitude is,

for nationalists, a symptom of the unhealthy nature of the union; for the

Labour/Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive of 1999 to 2007 it lay in the background

to policies on education, employment opportunities and health. 2

So much for the perception: what are the principal features of Scottish population change in the post war period? The first point to consider is the overall size of the population and the rate of change. The following table gives the picture since 1931

(there was no census in 1941) and compares the rates of growth with England.

Table ?: Scottish population growth, 1931-2001

Population (000s) Percentage change per decade

Year Scotland Scotland England

1931 4843 -0.8 6.0

1951 5096 2.6 5.0

1 http://www.cso.ie/statistics/Population1901-2006.htm 2 Joshi & Wright, ‘Starting life in Scotland’, 166-85 1961 5184 1.7 5.6

1971 5236 1.0 5.9

1981 5180 -1.1 1.7

1991 5107 -1.4 2.3

2001 5064 -0.8 2.7

Two points are immediately evident from this table: first, the Scottish population

peaked in 1971, although recent data has shown modest increases since 2003 and

suggests a figure of 5,094,800 in 2005—it is not clear whether this is an established

trend. 1 Second, even in the period of growth from 1931 to 1971 the rate of growth was much less than in England. Scotland’s population as a proportion of that of Great

Britain has been falling for most of the twentieth century. This is also noticeable in a

European context: compared to other small European countries (Benelux,

Scandinavia, Finland), Scottish growth over the twentieth century has been slow. The

Netherlands, for example, with a population similar to Scotland in 1870, now has 16m people. 2 It might be suggested that Scotland experienced population decline in the

1920s prior to a forty year period of growth, but there are a number of features which

distinguish the period since 1971. During the 1920s, when the population of Scotland

fell by nearly 1 per cent, the principal factor was out-migration, the balance of births

over deaths was reasonably healthy. This has not been the case since 1971 and,

arguably, population decline is more deep-seated than the ‘blip’ in the 1920s. Death-

rates (mortality) have been fairly stable since the 1930s and are not an important

factor of overall population change. Long-standing Scottish problems in this area have

improved. Infant mortality, for so long a scourge in Scottish society, has stabilised at

1 Scotland’s population, 2005 , 2. 2 Paterson et. al. , Living in Scotland , 11. very low levels (currently around 5 per thousand live births) indistinguishable from

England and Wales. There is still a depressing variation according to social conditions, but it is not as great as it used to be. 1 Although mortality is not a significant component of population change, elements of Scottish distinctiveness remain, not least that for the over-50s mortality is higher than the rest of the United

Kingdom. This is closely related to Scotland’s dreadful health record in the post-war period. Although infectious diseases have been conquered since 1945, the big killers in recent times have been cancers, underdiagnosed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and heart disease; although death rates from both have declined in recent years, especially among men. Nevertheless, in a European context Scotland’s record in areas like heart disease, closely related to diet and lifestyle, is utterly depressing. In the late 1990s mortality from coronary heart disease in Scotland was

150/1000, compared to France at 40, Spain at 54, Portugal at 55 and Italy at 65. The few countries worse than Scotland included Ireland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and

Slovakia which were in the range 153 to 216. 2 The wider implications of this evidence have been the subject of considerable attention. In language reminiscent of the concerns of the 1930s a classic study published in 1991 attempted to construct an index of deprivation based on overcrowding, male unemployment, low social class and car ownership. This led to the conclusion that there was a clear link between health and deprivation:

The more favourable health enjoyed by people living in affluent areas and the

adverse health experience of those living in deprived areas starts with the risks

associated with birth—weight at birth and perinatal and infant deaths—,

1 Anderson, ‘Population and family life’, 20; Paterson et. al. , Living in Scotland , 158. 2 The Scottish diet: report of a working party to the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland , page no? followed by morbidity in the population of working age—as seen in the census

measures of temporarily and permanently sick—, and in the population

generally—as observed in cancer registrations—and culminates at life’s

termination with the gradients in mortality being steepest in younger adults but

nevertheless continuing into older ages. 1

These problems were most in evidence in Scotland’s cities and especially in Glasgow.

Of the most deprived post-code sectors sixty-three out of 117 were in that city

(compared to nine in Lothian) and 50 per cent of its population lived in these areas, compared to only 9 per cent in Lothian. 2 Attempts to place Scotland’s health and mortality patterns in a wider European context suggest that, although deprivation is a factor, it does not tell the whole story and that there is a deeper Scottish effect which is related to history, culture and aspects of lifestyle. That said, it has been noted that, measured in an international comparison, Scotland’s position has not always been as bad as it is today. In some areas, such as incidence of liver disease, Scotland has regressed badly in recent years. Levels of excess mortality seem to be worst among people of working age and there is a definite gender effect with very high mortality among women of working age contributing to very low life expectancy for Scottish women in a European context. In 2000 female life expectance in Scotland, at 78.2, was thirty first place in a league table of forty-eight societies. The countries performing more poorly than Scotland were mostly from eastern Europe and South

America. It is true that mortality among Scottish women of working age has declined markedly since the 1950s but it has done so much more slowly than in most other

European societies and remains above the figures achieved by the best performing

1 Carstairs & Morris, Deprivation and Health , 214 2 Carstairs & Morris, Deprivation and Health , 28 European societies in the 1950s. An attempt to isolate the factors which contribute to this depressing picture places emphasis, certainly, on diet and alcohol intake, but gives greatest prominence to smoking. This is seen most clearly when analysing incidence of cancers of the lung and oesophagus which are mostly closely related to smoking: here Scotland has some of the highest levels of mortality, especially among women. In some ways this tells us less about Scotland today than it does about

Scotland twenty-five to thirty years ago since these illness take a generation or so to show up. Levels of smoking were very high in Scotland in the 1970s and although they have declined since then they have not done so evenly over the social classes or among men and women. Scottish women are more likely to smoke than their counterparts in Europe, with the possible exception of Denmark, and they are certainly more likely to die of lung cancer. 1 This trend is not, however, devoid of

social elements. Smoking is more prevalent among lower socio-economic groups than

among professionals and evidence from the 1980s indicates that cases of lung cancer

were three times higher in the most deprived areas than in the most affluent areas and

the levels of mortality were 2.6 times as high. 2 Thus, if one examines Scotland’s health in a European context national trends appear evident, and a ‘Scottish effect’ does seem to follow Scots when they migrate, but detailed analysis of diversity within

Scotland elevates social and environmental factors to prominence.

In the post war period, and especially since the early 1970s, the birth rate has gone into precipitate decline in the context of stable mortality and net out-migration, slowing and reversing population growth. This is shown in the next table.

1 This section is based on the grimly compelling data in Leon et. al. , Understanding the health of Scotland’s population , esp 2 Carstairs & Morris, Deprivation and Health , 229 Year Birth-rate Death-rate

1941-5 19.4 13.8

1946-50 20.0 12.6

1951-5 17.9 12.1

1956-60 19.2 12.0

1961-5 19.7 12.2

1966-70 17.9 12.1

1971-5 14.4 12.2

1976-80 12.6 12.3

1981-5 12.9 12.4

1986-90 12.9 12.3

1991-5 12.5 12.0

1996-2000 11.2 11.7

2001-5 10.4 11.3

To put this in context, in the early 1900s, the peak years in the twentieth century,

there were an average of 132,400 births; compared to only 51,270 in 2001, the year

with the lowest figure since then. This time the European context does not distinguish

Scotland so markedly, most EU countries face the same problem of a falling birth-

rate; Germany’s is the lowest at 8.6 and Ireland’s the highest, by some distance, at

15.5. 1

Low fertility is not just a statistical artefact. Currently, the fertility rate is insufficient to reproduce the population, leading to population decline and, perhaps more

1 Scotland’s population, 2005 , 78, 80. importantly, an ageing population. The age structure of the Scottish population is heavily skewed towards an older age group, a novel feature in Scottish demographic history. In the last ten years there has been a decrease of around 10 per cent in the number of children under sixteen and an increase of 14 per cent in those over seventy- five. 1 This is likely to get worse if fertility continues to fall and as the cohort born in

the surge in fertility just after the second world war reach retirement age. There are

issues of status and economic and political confidence here, but an ageing population

has the capacity to place enormous stress on the public services, especially health and

housing, with knock-on effects in pension provision. 2 The reasons for falling fertility are complex and contested, but changes in the position of women in society are central. More and more women are delaying conception, possible now given virtually complete control over fertility through reliable methods of contraception. This not only reduces the years available for childbearing but also concentrates it in the thirties and early forties when fecundity is reduced. The number of births to women in their twenties has fallen from nearly 64 per cent of the total in the late 1960s to 44 per cent in 2001. 3 Increased female access to higher education and participation in the

workplace, especially in professional occupations, has placed a high financial and

status cost on maternity-related career disruption during a woman’s twenties when she

may be establishing herself in a competitive work environment. Although this is an

area of social policy where the Scottish Executive may believe that it can make a

difference, it will not be an easy task. It is by no means clear that low fertility can be

altered by government policy; explicit pronatalism or social welfare policy to provide

affordable child care and parental leave are currently in operation in different parts of

1 Scotland’s population, 2005 , 9. 2 Graham & Boyle, ‘Low fertility in Scotland’; Wright, ‘Can Scotland afford to grow old?’, 15-18; Wright, ‘Impact of population ageing’, 41-5. 3 Paterson et. al. , Living in Scotland , 15. the world, but the results are mixed. Whether the prevailing political culture in

Scotland, regardless of changes of government in Holyrood or Westminster, would tolerate the expenditure on such policies is open to question.

The population shifts in urban and rural Scotland are a further novel feature of the post-war demographic pattern. Urban areas have been the traditional engines of expansion, both in terms of natural growth and migration. Rural depopulation has been a similarly endemic aspect of Scottish demographic history since the middle of the nineteenth century. In the period since 1971 this would appear to have been reversed. Urban areas, especially in the West of Scotland, have seen an absolute population decline, the ‘top’ eight areas with the biggest population declines over the last ten years include Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Paisley. As in much urban history over the last century and a half the exception is Edinburgh, whose population has increased over the last ten years, although the bulk of this growth is composed of in-migration. Some rural areas, even in the highlands, have seen population growth for the first time since the 1840s. If this is now an established trend it is a major discontinuity in Scottish history. In rural areas such as the highlands the changes have been driven by in-migration which has counteracted a persistent natural decline of the population. Thus, for example in the Highland Council area the natural population change shows a decline of 0.7 per cent per year per 1000 people since 1995, but net migration, measured in the same way, at 3.3 has produced a growing population. This pattern is not evident everywhere in the north of Scotland: the Western Isles have seen the greatest proportional decline of population in Scotland over the past ten years and this has been driven by out-migration and an excess of deaths over births. Indeed, the only parts of Scotland which are growing both naturally and through migration are Aberdeenshire, East Renfrewshire and West Lothian, the last being the fastest growing area of Scotland. These areas are all within travelling distances of large cities and their new populations include many young families pushed out by rising urban property prices. 1 Population increase in rural areas brings change of different kinds: healthy school rolls, but sometimes inflated property prices and pressure on local services; the increase in commuting, particularly evident around Edinburgh, leads to increases in traffic congestion and pollution. There is no simple relationship between a rising population, even in formerly depopulating rural areas, and a vibrant community. 2

Migration and emigration have been consistently important in Scottish demographic history, but the pattern has changed in the post war period. As we have seen in earlier chapters the analysis of emigration is dogged by data problems. Despite better figures for the period since 1945 there are still gaps since, unlike births and deaths there is no statutory provision for recording migration. Nevertheless, estimates using the records of the health service have suggested that Scotland’s traditional export of people began to stabilise in the 1960s and that in the first half of the 1990s and since 2001 there is evidence that Scotland was a net importer of people. The difficulties of estimating international movements of people have been compounded recently by the increase in seasonal migration, especially from EU accession states such as Poland. 3 Prior to

1945 we have noted that Scottish emigration patterns were distinctive in a British and

Irish context. In the post-1945 era this is probably less marked. The post-war peak in

emigration from Britain came in the mid-1960s and has been declining since then.

1 Scotland’s population, 2005 , 13; Cameron, ‘Scottish highlands’, 155. 2 Stockdale , et. al. . ‘The repopulation of rural Scotland’, 243-57; Hague & Jenkins, ‘Changing image and identity’, 223. 3 Scotland’s population , 2005 , 34-41. This decline seems to have a closer relationship with the migration policies of traditional destinations for British emigrants—Canada, Australia, South Africa and the USA—than with factors relating to economics and information which drove the movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the 1960s

Commonwealth countries have not given priority to migrants from Britain, and the policies of assisted emigration to Australia which fuelled a substantial movement in the 1960s, have been terminated. The New Zealand government offered free passage to people who had been in the services during the Second World War on the condition that they took a government job for two years. This preference, rooted in the imperial past, has declined in recent decades. Emigrants from Britain are no longer the dominant stream as Canada has given greater stress to its Francophone culture and

Australia and New Zealand have taken more people from Asia, steadily diminishing the British-born proportion of their populations. 1 This has changed the nature of the

emigration process at an individual level and suggests important results for the

identity of Scottish emigrants in their new surroundings. Whilst not wishing to deny

the wrench which may have been involved in emigration prior to 1945, Scottish

emigrants travelling down a well known path were informed by Scots who had

preceded them and were sometimes received by Scottish communities. Even if the last

factor did not apply then they were moving into an environment which was defined in

culture and ethnicity by British mores. Even those who were attracted to the United

States were moving to an English speaking country. Since 1945 this has no longer

been the case to the same extent. Scots and Britons were only one element of a very

diverse stream and the ‘Britishness’ of countries like Australia and New Zealand has

1 Hatton, ‘Emigration from the U.K.’, 149-69; Constantine, ‘British emigration’, 16-35; McCarthy, ‘Personal letters’, 59-79. markedly declined. 1 This may have led Scottish minorities to stress their Scottish identities to a greater extent than they did when they were part of the dominant flow from the home country to the dominions.

Even if Scottish emigration is not at the same levels as it was in the 1920s or the years immediately prior to the Great War, it is still part of a perceived structural problem in

Scottish society. Just as historic emigration from Scotland was dominated by the skilled working class, modern emigration is rich in highly-educated younger people.

Just as miners, builders and granite workers operated in a transatlantic labour market in the nineteenth century, the ‘creative workers’ in the ‘knowledge economy’ are crucial to prosperity in contemporary Scotland. This has attracted attention recently in government sponsored research, but has for long been a predictable conclusion of studies of migration from Scotland 2. Added to the difficulties arising from an ageing

population and a falling birth-rate this provides a major problem for the Scottish

Executive. A ‘Fresh Talent Initiative’ was launched in 2004 with the objective of

preventing the Scottish population from falling below 5m. Why this particular figure

is significant has not been made clear and more optimistic projections from the

Registrar General suggest that long term decline might be slower than was suggested

in the early 2000s. The initiative aims to encourage highly qualified people to settle in

Scotland in an effort to counteract the negative effects of the falling birth-rate. This

represents a positive element of the current debate about ‘immigration’ which seems

to be driven by fear rather than information; ‘immigration’ is a policy area ‘reserved’

to Westminster and it is questionable just how much ‘control’ the Scottish Executive

has. Further, it would be a major achievement to reverse the historic pattern of

1 McCarthy, ‘Personal accounts’, 206-7; Constantine, ‘British emigration’, 25-31 2 Rogerson et. al. , Progress report on the Fresh Talent Initiative , 11, 33-4; Lindsay, ‘Migration and motivation’, 154-74. Scottish migration flows. We have seen the way in which Scotland was an international migration hub in the nineteenth century, but the current objective is to limit net emigration—a legislative aim once sought by highland landlords in the

Passenger Vessels Act of 1803—and encourage settlement in Scotland. The

‘Initiative’ extends into several areas of policy, including higher education and the encouragement of entrepreneurship, and its objectives are not merely demographic.

Whether the attraction of highly educated people from abroad can do much to alter embedded patterns of fertility, probably also common to the immigrants’ country of origin; whether they will commit to a long-term future in Scotland is at best unclear and it is unlikely that the initiative can bear all the weight placed upon it. It might be more significant in providing a vehicle for the projection of an image of Scotland designed by the Executive, revolving around the theme of the ‘Best small country in the world’. 1

To move from emigration to immigration is to enter a difficult but crucial area of modern Scottish history. Although the ethnic composition of Scotland is overwhelmingly ‘white’—98 per cent according to the Census of 2001—substantial groups from other ethnic groups reside in Scotland. At nearly 40,000 the Pakistani and Bangladeshi community is the largest. There are around 16,000 people who describe themselves as ‘Chinese’ and a further 15,000 using the definition ‘Indian’.

The fact that the censuses of 1991 and 2001 have enumerated ‘ethnic groups’ has provided some statistical foundation—although not entirely firm as it is based on self description—in an area where researchers once had to resort to ingenious methodologies to ask basic questions. One early study of the Pakistani community in

1 Rogerson et. al. , Progress report on the Fresh Talent Initiative , esp. 18, para. 2.19 Dundee identified its sample from the names on shopkeepers’ delivery lists! 1 The

Pakistani community is now of relatively long standing. There was substantial

immigration, mostly of Muslim people from the Punjab, in the aftermath of the

partition of India in 1947, and a further boost to numbers in the early 1960s as many

immigrants arrived prior to the imposition of legislative restriction in the numbers

from the Commonwealth in 1962. The largest community was in Glasgow, although

there was also a substantial group in Dundee working in the jute industry, which was

about to enter a period of precipitate decline in the late 1960s. This pattern of

immigrant involvement in declining industries is familiar. Studies of the community

over the last thirty years demonstrate that its spatial concentration in, for example, the

Gorbals and Garnethill in Glasgow, has weakened and, as with the Chinese

community, it is ‘becoming suburbanised’. 2 The Chinese community has traditionally been much more dispersed, partly reflecting the pattern of business activity and employment in the ubiquitous restaurant trade. As with the Pakistanis there is a youthfulness in the population which contrasts markedly with the Scottish population as a whole. In 2001, 53.6 per cent of the Chinese community were under the age of twenty-nine, the figure for the Pakistani community was 59 per cent; the figure for the population as a whole was 36.7 per cent in 2001. 3 Other notable characteristics include a tendency to relatively large multi-generational households and, intriguingly in comparison to the traditional Scottish pattern, a preference for owner-occupation of housing and self employment. 4 These characteristics might be healthy evidence of a prospering and self-reliant community, or they could represent evidence of more worrying trends in Scottish society. Has, for example, what was described as the

1 Jones and Davenport, ‘Pakistani community in Dundee’, 75-85 2 Bowes et. al. , ‘Changing nature of Glasgow’s ethnic minority community’, 106 3 Census Scotland 2001 , tables 7 and 8, 29-30; Bailey et. al. ‘Chinese community in Scotland’, 66-75 4 Bailey et. al. ‘Pakistanis in Scotland’, 39-42 ‘institutional racism’ in the administration of council housing in Glasgow in the 1980s affected attitudes among the Pakistani community? 1 There is evidence that the well-

observed aversion from renting is less evident among the younger generation. Of

course, with its youthful population, new household formation in the Pakistani

community is proceeding rapidly and the private rented sector provides a ready supply

of housing. 2

Nevertheless, in the late 1990s one might have been able to argue that there was a growing sense of confidence among some ethnic minority communities in Scotland.

The opening of the new Edinburgh Central Mosque, in an area of the city in which the ecclesiastical architecture had been overwhelmingly presbyterian, in August 1998 could be adduced as evidence of this. The opening ceremony was conducted by a member of the Saudi royal family, who had provided substantial funding for the project, and gave local and national politicians such as Henry McLeish and Provost

Eric Milligan the opportunity to expatiate on the commitment to ‘the concepts of community and the inclusion of the rich variety of faith groups, who contribute so much to life in Scotland’. The ceremony was also attended by Scotland’s first Muslim

MP, Mohammad Sarwar (Glasgow Govan), who expressed similar sentiments. 3

Whether this growing confidence was real or not it was damaged by the reaction to

the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. In early October

2001 the Annandale Street Mosque in Edinburgh was firebombed, resulting in

damage to the tune of £20,000 and there were a series of incidents of vandalism to

Muslim graves in Lanarkshire. Although this was followed by expressions of

solidarity from the different faiths in Scotland, the tension which was felt in the

1 Bowes et. al. , ‘Racism and harassment’, 89 2 Bowes et. al. , ‘Changing nature of Glasgow’s ethnic minority community’, 106 3 Scotsman , 1 Aug. 1998, 5. Muslim community meant that this was a reference point for those who felt threatened. The Scottish president of the UK Muslim Association was intensely pessimistic about the future of community relations in the aftermath of the attacks on

11 September. 1 Research conducted among young Muslim men in Scotland in the

aftermath of the attacks found that perceptions of racist and Islamaphobic attitudes

towards them had increased. After a period where forms of identity which stressed

Scottishness as well as ethnic background and religious affiliation had been

developing evidence suggested that markers of an Islamic identity, including forms of

dress and the wearing of a beard, had become more common. 2

To move beyond social and demographic characteristics to explore the identity of

these communities, their experiences and perceptions of Scotland, is to enter an area

where comfortable, even dangerously complacent, notions have recently been made

insecure. It is true that politics were not racialised in Scotland in the period since the

early 1960s as they were at certain points in England. Neither the right-wing of the

Conservative party, in which an element of racist opposition to immigration has

periodically manifested itself, nor the left wing of the Labour party, in which anti-

racism was a rallying call, were much in evidence in Scotland. It has been shown that

the Scottish newspapers were broadly in favour of restrictions on immigration in the

1960s, but consistently rejected the notion of racism as a problem in Scottish society.

This view has been expressed by a wide section of opinion, including leading figures

in the ethnic minority population, and there has been an uncritical celebration of the

friendliness and tolerance of the Scottish population. Anti- racist political activity and

1 The Herald , 6 Oct. 2001, 7; Scotland on Sunday , 7 Oct. 2001, 11 2 Saeed et. al. , ‘New ethnic and national questions in Scotland’, 821-44; Hopkins ‘Young Muslim men in Scotland’, 257-72 grass-roots organisations have been relatively slow to develop north of the border. 1

Tendentious historical explanations have sometimes been advanced to explain the

absence of racism in Scotland: the ethnic mixing which contributed to the making of

the nation in the medieval period; Scottish empathy with oppressed minorities as a

product of their own oppression by the English; the inherent democracy and

egalitarianism of presbyterian Scotland; the left-wing political consensus in Scotland. 2

None of these ‘explanations’ stands up to much scrutiny and the experience of the

Irish and Italians in Scotland in the period from 1918 to 1945 period does not support the idea of a unique Scottish tolerance. Further, there is a growing body of evidence from the 1980s onwards which suggests that there is little ground for complacency.

Evidence from the Commission for Racial Equality shows a steady increase in the reporting of racial incidents to Scottish police-forces. Clearly this could represent an increasing willingness to report, or an increasing willingness by the police to define crimes as racist, rather than an increase in incidents. At the very least, however, it can be said that the issue is steadily emerging from the shadows. 3 Research by local authorities also provides evidence of racism, often at the level of graffiti, but also incidents of violence and harassment. Just as the murder of Philip Lawrence provoked a debate about racism in institutions and society in the south of England, the unsolved murder of Surjit Singh Chhokar in Lanarkshire in November 1998 prompted similar debate in Scotland. After two trials there has not been a conviction and the role of the

Crown Office and the way in which the police related to the family of the victim have been the subject of separate enquiries. The case has prompted a recognition that institutional racism is present in the Scottish legal system; indeed, one study has suggested that the system has regressed in its willingness to recognise the racial

1 Dunlop, ‘A united front’, 89-101 2 Cant & Kelly, ‘Why is there a need for racial equality activity in Scotland?’, 9-26 3 see CRE Ann. Rep. 1994. dimension of crimes. 1 As in the early 1960s, when immigration from the

Commonwealth began to be restricted, recent political debate in Britain has been

racialised. This has been prompted by the controversy over rising numbers of asylum

seekers coming to the United Kingdom and the way in which the government in

London, immigration being a reserved issue, has sought to deal with them. In 1999

new legislation was introduced in London which denied asylum seekers access to cash

benefits prior to their cases being heard and made an attempt to disperse them away

from the south coast of England where they were concentrated. Asylum seekers were

represented negatively in the newspapers and the Labour and Conservative parties

vied with each other to demonstrate ‘firmness’ on the question. Glasgow, which had

built up some experience in this area in the 1990s when people from Kosovo were

housed in the city, volunteered to participate in the dispersal programme and several

thousand asylum seekers from a wide variety of backgrounds arrived in the city.

Many were housed in the Sighthill area of Springburn in the north of the city. This

was an area marked by multiple deprivation and poor quality housing stock. Much of

the infrastructure and expertise which had been developed with the Kosovars seemed

to have been lost and tensions between the asylum seekers, many of whom reported

racial harassment and abuse, culminated in the murder of a young Kurdish man from

Turkey, Firsat Yildiz Dag, in August 2001. These incidents provoked a reaction from

local politicians, churchmen like Cardinal Thomas Winning and writers like William

McIllvanney, who argued that Scotland could not be complacent about racism but that

there were wider questions over the way in which racist and negative attitudes to

1 Scotsman , 4 Apr. 2001, 2; 25 Oct. 2001, 19; 26 Jul. 2002, 8; 15 Mar. 2003, 14; 15 Aug. 2003, 19; 24 Jun. 2004, 17; Kelly, ‘Racism, police and courts’, 141-59 asylum seekers had been tacitly encouraged by the nature of political debate about the issue. 1

An exceptional case in the history of migration to Scotland is movement from

England, which has only recently been recognised and analysed. Contiguity, absence

of a political border, a common language and the broad similarity of Scottish and

English culture and society (perhaps something which Scots are loathe to recognise)

have facilitated this movement. In some ways the English cannot readily be compared

to other immigrant groups, especially in the sense that they are relatively privileged in

educational and socio-economic terms, and therefore in power, compared to most

earlier immigrant groups. 2 In the period from 1951 to 2001 the number of English- born resident in Scotland has nearly doubled to just over 400,000, while the number of Scots-born resident in England has increased from about 566,000 to 796,000. 3 The

English in Scotland are by far the biggest migrant group, but despite the popular

perception of difference they blend into Scottish society, culture and political life

virtually seamlessly. Recent studies have concluded that they have a greater tendency

to ‘go native’ in Scotland than to impose alien values. 4 Controversy has surrounded

this movement in recent years . A perception, based largely on prejudice and

misinformation, developed that English people in Scotland had different values and

had a deleterious effect on communities in Scotland. This was evident in rural areas,

especially the highlands where the semi-ironic term ‘white settlers’ developed as a

description of ‘incomers’ who were perceived to have driven up property prices and

been insensitive to local cultural values. These perceptions imposed a false

1 Kelly, ‘Asylum seekers’, 1-26 2 McIntosh et. al. , ‘“We hate the English”’, 44, 55 3 Dickson, ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot? ’ 112-34; Watson, Being English in Scotland , 28 4 Watson, Being English in Scotland , 104-25 homogeneity on the English in Scotland. The mid-1990s saw ephemeral organisations such as ‘Scottish Watch’ and ‘Settler Watch’ produce anti-English rhetoric. However, they attracted a great deal of media coverage, almost universal public condemnation and were unable to move beyond the fringes of Scottish public life. Further effusions surrounded the reaction to the film Braveheart which portrayed a fictionalised account of the life of William Wallace during the Wars of Independence and in so doing emphasised a crude version of medieval Anglo-Scottish hostility. Proper research has, moreover, demonstrated that the reception of the English in Scotland has been largely unproblematic and, as would be expected from the general similarity of Scottish and

English society and culture, their values and even political outlook are scarcely distinctive.

Family

One ‘institution’ about which there has been much worry as a result of these changes is the family. Undoubtedly, there have been substantial changes in patterns of marriage, childbearing and gender relationships in the period since 1945, but much of the concern has arisen from an implicit measurement against a historic ideal and a failure to recognise the fluidity of these structures over time. As the most recent historian of these matters in Scotland has succinctly expressed it: ‘the view that the traditional family is disintegrating is based on the misconception that it ever existed.’ 1

There is also a predominant image in the literature of the working-class family strictly divided by gender roles with all child-care duties adopted by the mother and a perception of the absent father, whether working, drinking or indulging in male only leisure pursuits. Autobiographies and oral history evidence does not entirely confirm

1 Gordon, ‘The family’, 259 this image, but it is an area of Scottish social history which is under-explored. 1 Three developments which have accelerated in the post-war period have altered the structure and emotions of family life in Scotland. First, the reduction in overcrowding has given more space for leisure activities within the home. Nevertheless, the growing tendency for these to revolve around passive consumption of generic entertainment through television and other electronic media, and the luxury of individual space for children also provide stark contrasts to the home-life experienced by many Scots prior to the Second World War. This does not mean that we should idealise tenement life.

The second change relates to the diminution of mortality among babies, children and mothers in childbirth. No social or demographic change can be as welcome as the end of the slaughter of children induced by Scottish social conditions prior to the Second

World War. The third change relates to increasing proportions of women in the workplace and conscious restriction and delay in fertility. Survey evidence suggests that these changes have not altered a perceived traditional pattern of gender roles, with much domestic work still undertaken by women. This evidence is not conclusive as the standard against which it implicitly measures is based on an assumption about divisions of labour within families rather than firm evidence about historical patterns.

Finally, nuclear families have become less prevalent in society recently—20 per cent of all households compared to 30 per cent a generation ago. 2 Nevertheless, for

political parties and civil and religious institutions with a tendency to declaim about

social stability, an idealised family unit remains central to their expectations, despite

the fact that it may never have existed in the static form which they imagine.

1 Abrams, ‘“There was nobody like my daddy”’, 219-42; Smout, Century , 139. 2 Paterson, et. al. , Living in Scotland , 31. For much of modern Scottish history fertility and marriage were closely related since, with certain regional exceptions, most fertility took place in marriage. Since 1945, however, these variables have been operating independently. Fertility has declined and marriage is less prominent in the population as a whole (there were around 30,000 marriages in Scotland in 2005, 10,000 fewer than 1971 1), and has been delayed by

both men and women, but the link between these changes is not causal. The first

major change has been the seeming diminution of marriage in favour of cohabitation,

either as a prelude to marriage (sometimes second marriages) and, less obviously, as

an alternative to marriage. A recent survey found that nearly 40 per cent of its sample

had experience of cohabitation, but that 47 per cent of cohabitees had gone on marry

their partner. These figures are higher for younger age groups, 51 per cent of those

married and under 35 had experience of cohabitation. These bald figures prompt a

number of reflections. The first relates to attitudes to churches. Civil marriage was

introduced in July 1940 and until the 1960s the gap between the numbers of civil and

religious marriages was very wide, with around 10,000 of the former compared to

over 30,000 of the latter. The gap has narrowed since then and has disappeared

altogether in the early twenty-first century. Thus, prior to 1940 couples who wished to

marry had no choice but to approach a clergyman. In some cases an inquisition would

precede agreement to conduct the marriage and many presbyterian clergymen,

especially those in the free churches, would decline to conduct the ceremony if the

couple had cohabited, or if one partner had been divorced. This may not have been an

insurmountable barrier for determined couples, but it contrasts with the contemporary

situation where civil marriage predominates. Deference to the clergy in matters of

personal relationships has virtually disappeared and the contrast with the position at

1 Scotland’s population, 2005, 42 the beginning of the period covered in this book, when kirk sessions still attempted to dispense punishments for pre-marital sex, is one indice of the changing position of the church in Scottish society. There remains a lingering tendency for an older generation to frown upon cohabitation, only 32 per cent of those over the age of 65 approved of cohabitation in a survey of 2000, the figure for those under the age of 25 was 86 per cent. Cohabiting couples do not respect the wishes of their elders in this matter, however; pre-marital, and it is mostly that, cohabitation is a firmly entrenched feature of Scottish society, in common with the rest of Britain. 1 The concept of cohabitation

as a ‘trial marriage’ has the effect of pushing up the average age at first marriage for

both men and women. This rose slightly for both men and women from the 1860s to

the outbreak of the Second World War before declining in the post-war period, all of

these changes took place in the age range 22 to 26 for women and 28 to 24 for men.

Since the mid 1990s this climbed, reaching 31 for men and 29 for women. 2 The pattern of fertility within and without marriage has almost converged. As recently as

1981 nearly 90 per cent of all births were to married parents, by 2001 this had dropped to 57 per cent. 3

If the Scots seem to have become less enthusiastic about getting married they also seem to have shown an increasing propensity to undo the bonds of matrimony. Until the twentieth century divorce in Scotland was governed by statutes of 1560 and 1573, adultery and desertion being the only grounds. In 1938 new grounds—incurable insanity, cruelty, bestiality, sodomy—were added, although the first was highly controversial. Nevertheless, divorce remained difficult, fault-based and relatively rare.

1 Hinds & Jamieson, ‘Rejecting traditional family building?’, 33-64; Barlow, ‘Cohabitation and marriage in Scotland’, 65-91; these essays are based on the 2000 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey. 2 Paterson, et. al. , Living in Scotland , 14, 161. 3 Paterson, et. al. , Living in Scotland , 13, 163. Until the 1960s, with the exception of post-war peaks, there were less than 2000 cases annually and the law seemed to be inclined towards legal maintenance of marriages which had, in emotional terms, effectively ended. The Divorce (Scotland) Act of 1976 addressed this and permitted couples to seek a divorce on the grounds of the

‘irretrievable breakdown’ of their marriage and a divorce could be sought on the ground of non-cohabitation for as little as two years if the parties consented. The act brought Scottish and English practice into conformity, despite the fact that it was introduced as a private member’s bill by an SNP MP, Iain MacCormick (Argyll), at the height of the devolution crisis. This legislation was a compromise between a recognition of reality, the number of divorces had been climbing steadily, and a wish to avoid further undermining marriage by permitting consensual dissolution.

MacCormick argued that ‘the aim of the bill is to make provision for those whose marriages have already broken up and who are no longer married in any meaningful sense’. The debate was characterised by broad agreement that a change was long overdue, even if some Conservatives did express worries about, as Hector Monro put it, reducing the ‘solemnity and meaningfulness of marriage’ and the rapid acceptance of the mores of the ‘permissive society’. Another Conservative, Tam Galbraith, harked back to an idealised past in which bickering couples could turn to the church for support and reconciliatory advice. 1 In 1983 jurisdiction to grant divorce was extended from the Court of Session to the Sheriff Court; further legislation in 1985 allowed greater flexibility in the financial settlement to permit a ‘clean break’ between the parties. After this legislation the number of divorces increased rapidly to a peak of nearly 14,000 in 1985, since then the figure has been fairly steady, and non-

1 P.D. , Commons, 5 th ser., 906, cols 768, 786, 798-9, 25 Feb. 1976. cohabitation is the ground for nearly 80 per cent of all divorces in Scotland. 1 As with the discussion of cohabitation (to the increasing prevalence of which the recent slight fall in the divorce rate might be attributable) this history does not signify the erosion of marriage: one contributor to debate on divorce reform argued that ‘no person be compelled by law to live with any other partner with whom he or she did not desire to live’. 2 This was quite an advanced view when it was uttered by John McGovern in

1938, but since then there has been a growing recognition that marriage cannot be

artificially entrenched by legal means. Increasing numbers of divorces does not

necessarily mean that people take marriage less seriously but, rather, that they

(especially women) are less willing to endure unhappy, unpleasant or even violent

domestic circumstances.

Gender and work

The relationship between fertility decline and the changing social position of women

is one aspect of important changes in Scottish society which have taken place since

1945. The erosion of the ideology of the domesticated woman confined to the home

or to a limited range of occupations, many of which were terminable on marriage,

began in the early part of the century. It was not a straightforward process, however.

We have noted how female advance into the workplace during the Great War was

rapidly reversed in the 1920s; and how, during the Second World War, there was no

concession of equal pay for equal work. The post-war period, however, especially the

period since the 1960s, has seen a profound change as the vast majority of women

have entered the workplace and the concept of the ‘house-wife’ has become

marginalised. This is a profound change in a formerly heavily industrialised economy

1 Smith & Black (eds), Laws of Scotland , x, 527-8 and Reissue 3 , 507; Scotland’s population, 2004 , 74- 6 2 P.D. , Commons, 5 th ser., 338, cols 1238-9, 12 Jul. 1938 where the workplace culture was strongly masculine and attitudes to women were traditional, even regressive. Whether male attitudes have changed is open to question, but the data shows clearly that the gender composition of the workplace is much more balanced, although the traditional structure of male retention of status and authority has been much more difficult to break down, despite legislation on equal pay and discrimination in the workplace since the 1970s. 1

For the first half of the twentieth century the female participation rate in the workplace was stable at around a third of the total female population at employable age. This began to increase from 1951 and by 2001 had reached 64 per cent. There were significant changes in the activities of female workers: traditional sectors such as agricultural work—although statistics under-record family labour on small farms— and domestic service, in which over 180,000 women had been involved at the beginning of the century, disappeared almost completely. By contrast activities such as distribution, insurance, banking, public administration and professional employment which had employed only around 85,000 women in 1901 had become major employers of women a century later. This was not purely a change in the gender of such workforces, however, as these sectors expanded markedly for all workers over this period. Industrial employments, mostly male, which were dominant in the early part of the twentieth century have shrunk to a minority position in the early twenty-first century. This, in combination with increasing economic activity by women, have undermined the masculine workplace which contributed to a patriarchal family structure and national identity. 2 Oral evidence from the early part of the

century clearly suggests that the comfort, nutrition and status of the male worker was

1 Simonton, ‘Work, trade and commerce’, 199-234 reviews the general patterns in modern Scotland. 2 McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 139; Paterson et. al. , Living in Scotland , 42 carefully nurtured by his wife and daughters, to the detriment of the education of the latter, in a way which is unthinkable in an environment when family incomes are no longer the sole product of male work and secondary education is universal. 1 A further point is that women have spread through the workforce in a new way, although traditional male bastions, mining, quarrying, construction, manufacturing, remain so despite their more marginal place in the whole economy. Expanding sectors, such as retail, hotels and restaurants, the financial sector, and public administration have workforces which are more balanced between men and women. In some evidence of survival of the earlier pattern which consigned women to a narrow band of occupations concerned with care of the sick and of children, the occupations which have a majority of female workers include education, health and social work. 2

To leave the discussion there would be to present a positive picture and would be misleading. We have just noted the survival of one trace of an earlier unequal pattern, and there are three others. The first is that many more women work in insecure and part-time positions. As one author has noted: ‘the position of part-time female workers perhaps best reflects the continuing undervaluation and discrimination exercised against women in the post-war labour market in Scotland.’ 3 This is a

product of the recession of the 1970s and 1980s in which a shift between full-time and

part-time work was evident, in 1976 nearly two thirds of female workers were full-

time, by 1985 the divisions was nearly 50/50 and although the picture has altered

since then part-time work still predominates for women, as the following table shows.

1 Stephenson & Brown, ‘View from the workplace’, 12; Smyth, ‘“Ye never got a spell to think aboot it”’, 102-6; Abrams, ‘“There was nobody like my daddy”’, 231. 2 It is difficult to compare these issues across the whole period since the census categories by which they are measured changed in 2001, but see McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 139 & Paterson et. al. , Living in Scotland , 49 for relevant tables. 3 McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 164

Table?: percentage of people aged 16-74 in full time and part time work

(source Paterson et. al. , Living in Scotland , 44) 1

1981 1991 2001

men women men women men women

Full time 62.4 27.9 55.4 29.4 55.1 31.5

Part-time 1.6 15.0 3.0 19.5 4.2 23.6

Although larger numbers of women than men have indicated over the last twenty

years that their motivation for part-time work was through choice; nearly a third,

compared to two fifths of male part-time workers, gave inability to find a full-time job

as the reason. This is evidence of continuing distinctions in male and female

expectations of the work place, the continuing role of women as the principals in the

task of child-care and lingering inequality. In an earlier chapter we noted how

positions of authority in the teaching profession were controlled by men. Traces of

this pattern also survive in the post-war period and have spread throughout the

economy despite legislative provision designed to mitigate it. Although the

differential between male and female pay has declined over the past twenty years,

especially for non-manual work, men still earn around one and a half times as much

as women. Part of this gap is the result of female time out of the work place to have

children and part due to direct discrimination; although the failure of employment law

and welfare provisions to treat men and women equally, or to ensure that parental

leave does not impact negatively upon career prospects, is itself a form of

discrimination.

1 the figures do not add up to 100 since other categories such as unemployed, student, retired, at home, sick have been excluded.

One author, writing in the mid-1990s, referred to ‘gender apartheid’ in Scottish society and workplaces. 1 If the changes since then have done a little to undermine that claim for contemporary society it certainly has validity in the historical context; substantial areas of heavy industry were off limits to women and the majority of married women were excluded from the workplace. This arose from jealous male defence of craft apprenticeships and privileges, evident even in occupations, such as the printing industry, where there was some history of female involvement. The history of Scottish trades unionism is relevant here and historians of women in the workplace have been critical of the male dominated nature of these organisations.

One, writing in the mid-1980s, asserted that ‘the long-established unions have not much changed their view of society from the days when they killed the Women’s

Emancipation Bill in 1919 by insisting on the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act.

They still think that the status of labour as a whole is sustained by the protection of the position of male workers.’ 2 This may be a little unfair in that trades unions would see their role as to protect the interests of their members, and since most of these were male industrial workers it is not surprising that they should have a male orientated outlook. Nevertheless, this view is deeply engrained in the historiography, a more sympathetic historian has written that

the ethos of the Scottish labour movement remains deeply patriarchal and

shifts in the occupational profile of the labour market have done little to alter

1 McIvor, ‘Gender apartheid?’, 188-209 2 Mitchison, ‘The hidden labour force’, 187 this. The idea that a woman’s place is in the home, although less compelling

than formerly, is still a strong and pervasive one in Scottish society. 1

The nature of trades unionism did change in the 1980s and 1990s as combinations of skilled men became less characteristic of the movement as a whole and it reached out to unskilled female workers, especially those in the public sector. Public sector unions of that period such as, NUPE and COHSE, had substantial majorities of female members but the leadership roles were retained by men.

Class and social mobility

Class is at the heart of one version of Scottish national identity. This is also influenced by place, albeit the place in which most of the Scottish population have lived in the post-1945 period: the industrial region of the West of Scotland. Gender also plays a part. The nature of employment in the industrial economy in Scotland prior to the

1970s meant that Scotland could with some justification be described as a working class nation, a majority of the adult male population worked in manual occupations. 2

The structure of housing described above, as well as occupation, marked out the

middle class as a minority group secure in their bungalows, villas and main-door flats

and professional occupations. The pride in the skill and the complex products of

manual work was not a straightforward and static form of identity, however. Another

aspect of Scotland’s image of itself was of a democratic and egalitarian nation,

manifested in the Victorian and Edwardian the myth of the ‘lad o’ pairts’, and in the

post-1945 period by the notion that social mobility was greater in Scotland than in

England. This myth is deeply embedded in Scottish culture and can be put to a variety

1 Knox, Industrial nation, 287 2 a point discussed in Foster, ‘A proletarian nation?’, 201-40. of political uses, both nationalist and unionist. 1 This aspect of Scottish identity clashes

with another cherished element of our outlook: the extremes of wealth and poverty

present in Scotland, and inequality based on access to land. As we have noted in

discussing popular politics in the 1880s this was a common motif of radical rhetoric

among the newly politicised crofters of the highlands and the miners of the lowlands.

Anti-landlordism and deprecation of the concentrated nature of landownership in

Scotland – not a fabricated grievance it should be said – have remained part of

Scottish political rhetoric in a devolved context and is also deeply embedded in

culture and identity. Amongst the maelstrom of change which has taken place in

Scotland since 1880 one noticeable feature, although they have lost power influence,

wealth and some land, is the relative survival of representatives of the traditional

landowning classes. 2

One of the most marked features of recent social change in Scotland has been the

demise of the manual working class, the demise of heavy industry and the expansion

of secondary and higher education has profoundly altered the class structure of

Scotland. This is also related to changes in the gender composition of the workplace,

the skilled manual class was male dominated, even during wartime women only

gained a temporary toehold in these sectors of the economy. This is a topic which is

notoriously difficult to discuss in a historical context since the census definitions of

social groups has changed so frequently. The most recent definition of socio-

economic classification has charted change over the period between 1991 and 2001

and demonstrates clearly the expansion of the middle classes in professional and

managerial occupations to from 27 to 36 per cent of the adult population, a feature

1 McCrone et. al. , ‘Egalitarianism and social inequality in Scotland’, 127-47 2 Cameron, ‘“Unfinished business”, 83-114; McCrone, ‘Land, democracy and culture’, 73-92; McEwan, Who owns Scotland? ; Wightman, Who owns Scotland? common to the rest of the U.K. and Western Europe. Using a slightly older definition the working class only amounts to 41 per cent of the adult population compared to 74 per cent in 1921 and 63 per cent as recently as 1961. 1 So, the pace of change has

accelerated markedly in recent years. This is interesting in a political context, over

this long period the Labour vote in Scotland has increased as the proportion of the

electorate which is working class has declined. This point should not be emphasised

too strongly in discussions of Scottish distinctiveness, however, since there is very

little evidence that social mobility is more pronounced in Scotland than in England.

We have noted the changes in occupational structure, especially the decline of the

manual working class, and in access to education and these can be presented as social

mobility. These themes have led to an expanded professional middle class but this is

not due to any particular special, or democratic, feature of Scotland but is closely

related to economic changes in the last thirty years. Further, the Scottish pattern is not

distinctive compared to England and Wales; surveys in the 1970s and the late 1990s

showed that although a greater proportion of the later sample—29 per cent of men and

35 per cent of women, compared to 20 and 22 per cent in 1975—had been upwardly

mobile into the middle class, these figures were replicated almost exactly in England

and Wales. This is not a surprising conclusion, since the economic process undergone

north and south of the border over the last thirty years have been so similar. 2 This is not reflected, however, in the way in which Scots perceive themselves. The survival of the self-identification of a surprisingly high proportion of Scots as ‘working class’ is a marked feature of opinion polls and social attitudes surveys. In a survey of 1999 even a majority of the professional and managerial group identified themselves as working class and this tendency seems to have grown over the last thirty years

1 Paterson, et. al. , Living in Scotland , 84-5. 2 McCrone, Understanding Scotland , 86-90 despite, or because of, the decline of the working class in ‘real terms’. Why should this, which does seem to be distinctively Scottish, be so? As sociologists have noted this is related to social mobility. 1 A large group of those first generation middle class

professionals, who may well have been brought up in a council house and been the

first members of their family to have extended secondary and higher education, are

clearly reluctant to abandon the class identification which is part of their family and

geographical identity. There may also be a political dimension, with the retention of a

Scottish working class identity being part of the anti-Conservative political culture

which has emerged since 1979.

Housing

In earlier chapters we have seen the way in which earnest, although sometimes

misguided, attempts by philanthropic interests, local authorities and central

government seemed ineffectual against the overcrowding and squalor of Scottish

housing, both rural and urban. Some change was evident in the inter-war period as

more urban Scots escaped the clutches of the landlord and his factor and began to rent

from local authorities. This trend continued in the post-war period as governments of

both parties pushed forward public housing programmes, the Scottish Special

Housing Association got into its stride and New Towns were developed across central

Scotland. By the early 2000s the private landlord was a marginal figure compared to

his (and her) dominance in the Victorian period. The change has not ended there,

however; the structure of public housing built up since the early 1920s has been

largely eclipsed with increasing private ownership from the mid-1970s and, more

recently, transfer of local authority housing stock to housing associations.

1 Paterson, et. al. , Living in Scotland , 98-101.

In the thirty years after the Second World War there was a bipartisan consensus and a confidence that large-scale investment in replacing old housing stock would eradicate historic problems. From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s there were between 25,000 and 40,000 new houses completed in Scotland each year, with the majority in the public sector; this was very unusual in a European context, the other extreme being represented by Belgium which had less than 1 per cent of its stock in the public sector. 1 This helped to reshape urban Scotland; in Edinburgh, for example, a bastion of private building in the inter-war years, the public sector began to take over. 2 This

activity produced the situation encountered by the Conservative party when they

entered office in 1979, in which parts of Scotland like Clydebank, Monklands and

Motherwell had upwards of 80 per cent of their housing stock in the public sector. A

further twenty-one local authorities, from Lochaber in the north to Roxburgh in the

south, had a majority of their houses in the public sector, contributing to a Scottish

average of 55 per cent. This was a pattern not seen in any other part of the United

Kingdom. 3 The new government interpreted this as evidence of a stultifying dependency culture, but it had more to do with a long-standing recognition that only the state had the resources to tackle Scotland’s housing problems. Since 1980, although the process began in the mid-1970s as the Labour government cut back subsidy for building, public sector completions have fallen as a proportion of total construction and owner occupation has begun to advance in Scottish society as

450,000 council houses have been sold to sitting tenants. In the twenty year period to

1999 owner occupation has increased from 35 per cent to 62 per cent and the public sector has contracted from 54 per cent to 25 per cent of total housing stock. Given the

1 Glendinning, ‘Twentieth-century social housing’, 193 2 Glendinning, ‘Housing and suburbanisation’, 155 3 Gibb, ‘Policy and politics’, 163,178 history of relatively cheap rents in the public sector this has increased the cost of housing for Scots moving into the private sector and contracting mortgages to pay for their houses, something only a tiny minority were able to do fifty years ago. Scots now spend around 15 per cent of their income on housing costs, a rise from 10 per cent only twenty years ago. 1 This has not been the end of the process, however. Since

devolution two further changes have taken place. The first involves the transfer of

housing stock from local authorities to not-for-profit housing associations. This has

been condemned as ‘privatisation’, but the incentive for local authorities was the

writing off of their housing debt and permission for the housing associations to

borrow to invest in new building and improvement. This process involves ballots of

sitting tenants and although it began positively in Glasgow in 2002, with a clear

majority favouring transfer, it has run into difficulties recently, culminating in the

Edinburgh ballot in December 2005 which rejected transfer and further rejections in

Stirling and Renfrewshire in 2006. 2 The second development came with the Housing

(Scotland) Act of 2001 which qualifies the right of some sitting tenants to purchase their houses and allows local authorities to define ‘pressured areas’ where the right to buy is suspended. 3 This is a notable change of emphasis in housing policy; since 1980 the emphasis has been on extending the individual’s right to buy, empowering the private sector and limiting the autonomy of local authorities. That the 1980s and

1990s represent a profound shift in the overall nature of Scottish housing away from the state is indicated by the policy of transfer. In particular it represents a rejection of the notion that the state should subsidise cheap public sector rents, although this has caused political difficulties for the Scottish Executive in a manner reminiscent of

1 MacLennan, ‘Public cuts and private sector slump’, 171-97; Paterson, et. al. , Living in Scotland , 131, 197 2 Glasgow , June 2002, 14; Herald , 16 Dec. 2005, 11; 22 Dec. 2005, 4; 19 Oct. 2006, 1; 25 Oct. 2006, 7. 3 Scottish Executive, The right to buy in Scotland: pulling together the evidence , 2006, iv-v, 2-3, 12-13, 63-8. turbulence encountered by the Unionist government in the late 1950s and early 1960s when a similar objective was articulated. Public sector housing now caters for particular groups in society—single parents, single adults, single pensioners (a process jargonised as ‘residualisation’)—in contrast to its place in the mainstream of

Scottish society in the generation after the Second World War. Nevertheless, in a longer historical context, if the public sector has been marginalised there is no sign of a return of the private landlord, a figure who ranked high in Scottish demonology. It is a matter for debate whether it has been the effort of the public sector up to the late

1970s or the activities of individuals and the private sector since 1979 which has done the most to conquer many of the historic problems of Scottish housing.

Changes in housing patterns in the post-war period have not only been tenurial, however; there have also been spatial alterations. The overcrowded inner-city of the nineteenth century has given way to a more dispersed pattern, although one which has brought its own problems. The process began in the aftermath of the Second World

War, during which the scale of Scotland’s housing problem had been reiterated by official enquiry. Dealing with the difficulty was not merely a matter of building lots of new houses. They had to be in the right place to accommodate redistributed population and industry, both of which were important aspirations of post-war governments, also drawing on official enquiries made during the conflict. There were also political problems. The existing cities were important vested interests, not keen to lose population and revenue from the rates, if they could help it. There were even gross electoral considerations, such as Hector MacNeil’s reluctance to contemplate a new town at Houston in Renfrewshire since it would draw Labour voters away from his Greenock constituency. Later, the Unionists, who held East Renfrewshire, were unwilling to see hordes of Labour voters decamped from urban areas and the project was stillborn.

There was a recognition in the post-war planing documents, especially the Clyde

Valley Regional Plan , that an old industrial dispensation with its associated communities would have to change and housing policy would have to reflect this and could contribute to the avoidance of a repeat of the 1930s when industrial contraction without much thought for the social consequences resulted in high unemployment.

The authors of the Clyde Valley plan were most worried about the decline of the mining industry—long associated with hideous housing conditions—in Lanarkshire and the fate of the ‘redundant’ population. 1 Industrial diversification was the objective

and, again, drawing on a critique of the traumas of the 1930s, one industry towns were

to be avoided. Economic policy, or rather unstructured initiatives like the expansion

of the Ravenscraig steel plant in the 1950s, often worked against this, but it remained

part of government policy. New Towns were an important element in the process of

redistribution. The objective was to move population and economic activity to new

places in a planned way and to develop new housing free of the historic problems and

architectural style of the urban stock of dwellings. Five Scottish new towns were

‘incoporated’: East Kilbride (1947), Glenrothes (1948), Cumbernauld (1956),

Livingston (1962), Irvine (1966). They may have been successful in the sense of

moving population but they were less successful in their economic objectives, despite

government expenditure to encourage this, few new jobs were created and many of

the residents commuted to older urban areas for employment. Ironically, Glenrothes,

which was designed to be a modern mining town based on the new Rothes pit, was

1 Abercrombie & Matthew, The Clyde valley , 73-8. successful in attracting new industries in the 1960s after the mine had to be abandoned due to flooding. 1

A major problem in this area of policy was the attitude of the city authority in

Glasgow. In the late 1940s the city engineer, Robert Bruce, defended Glaswegian independence and presented ideas antithetical to the Clyde Valley plan of comprehensive regional development. Glasgow wished to retain population (rather in the manner of an eighteenth century clan chief) and build within its own boundaries, if necessary on ‘green-belt’ land. Inner-city ‘slum’ areas were to be cleared and redeveloped, the objective being the financial health and political status of the city, rather than regional planning. 2 Thus the powerful city state which had been a positive

force in the late nineteenth century when the central state was weak, proved to be a

more ambiguous force in the mid-twentieth when the central state was at its most

powerful. The city adopted different approaches over the post-war period: huge

peripheral housing schemes were constructed on land which in Abercrombie’s view

should have left as green belt; inner city areas, especially the Gorbals, were subjected

to comprehensive redevelopment, and over 200 blocks of high rise flats were

constructed in the 1960s, although such was the physical deterioration of some,

augmented by their social failure, that they were demolished in the early 1990s. The

extreme, even in a European context, was represented by the Red Road flats in

Glasgow where some blocks were of thirty storeys and soon became a byword for

social breakdown. In time these policies have come to be seen as disastrous failures,

architecturally and socially, but they ought to be seen in the context of the problems

1 Levitt, ‘New towns’, 222-38; Randall, ‘New towns and new industries’, 245-69; Smith ‘The origins of Scottish new towns’, 143-59; Smith, ‘The politics of an overspill policy’, 79-94; Smith, ‘New towns for Scottish miners’, 71-9. 2 Horsey, Tenements and towers , 28-33 being faced at the time they were conceived. In the Gorbals, for example, a population of 55000 was crammed into less then 350 acres, 87 per cent of the houses were of one or two rooms, 78 per cent shared toilet facilities and over 90 per cent were insanitary and structurally unsound. These were overwhelming problems of a unique scale in urban Britain, as they had been since the late nineteenth century, and the much derided policies of the post-war period were the first to make much progress towards dealing with them. 1

We have noted the way in which local politicians like John Wheatley used the housing question to advance the cause of the Labour movement in the early years of the century and housing remained an important cause for the movement in the post- war period. The key exponent of this view was an Edinburgh Labour councillor Pat

Rogan. Rogan represented the Holyrood ward, an old working class area to the south of the Old Town, whose streets contained some of the worst housing in the city; the city council had to issue instructions to the tenants on practices designed to prevent outbreaks of dysentry. Rogan faced a difficult task as Edinburgh local politics were dominated by the ‘Progressives’ a parsimonious anti-Socialist coalition mostly composed of lightly disguised Unionists. Eventually Rogan gained the Chair of the

Housing Committee and he was active in pushing forward a programme of public housing and drawing attention in innovative ways to the housing conditions which undermined the image of the city which the Council wished to project. The apogee came in February 1961 when Rogan, in league with Hamish MacKinven a Labour supporting journalist, attracted the attention of the BBC’s current affairs programme

1 Smith, ‘Multi-dwelling building in Scotland’ 207-43; Pacione, ‘Glasgow’, 198-217; Glendinning, Sam Bunton’, 107; Glendinning, ‘Twentieth-century social housing’, 196-7; Robertson, ‘“A great ship in full sail”’, 93-102. Panorama to the issue; a small child explained how rodents ran over her bed at night and predictable outrage followed. Whether the link was causal or not a substantial slum clearance programme soon followed. 1

Education

As has been noted in earlier chapters Scots have been at once both proud and defensive of their education system. It is deemed to be a clearly recognisable element of Scottish distinctiveness and central to the myths of egalitarianism and social mobility discussed above. Did this distinctiveness survive in the post-war period? On the surface it would seem so: Scottish secondary schooling remains quite general compared to England, although perhaps not to other parts of Western Europe, and the relative profusion of university places and the continued existence of the four year honours degree also points to a distinct tradition within the United Kingdom. Other forces—the expansion of secondary education, the introduction of comprehensive education, the creation of a mass higher education system—might be taken as examples of policies common to Scotland, England and Wales. Nevertheless, the particular way in which these developments have been implemented north of the border, and how they have overlain the historic system have resulted in the continuation of a distinctive system. Further, since education is a key area of policy devolved to the Scottish parliament, the terms of the debate, especially about higher education, have been different since 1999.

There have been two major phases of expansion in Scottish education in the post-war period, and the changes have been concentrated in secondary and higher education.

1 Rogan, ‘Rehousing the capital’, 66-75; MacDougall, Voices from work and home , 501-2, 568; NLS, J.P. Mackintosh MSS, Dep 323/70, Election leaflet of Cllr Patrick Rogan, n.d. but c. 1961 The first came in the mid-1960s with the removal of a two-tier system of schools in which only around a third of pupils were selected, on a very haphazard basis, to receive five years of secondary education ending in certificate exams and the possibility of university entry. Only around 4 per cent went on to University with about another 5 per cent going on to other forms of higher education: teacher training colleges and technical institutions offering the equivalent of degree level instruction.

This was hardly the basis for a twentieth century version of the ‘democratic intellect’.

The expansion took two forms. In secondary schools the introduction of the ordinary grade certificate in 1962, taken after four years, gave a greater sense of structure to the education of those pupils not aiming for university, although it had originally been aimed at a smaller group of pupils. The structure provided by these new examinations may also have encouraged pupils who might not otherwise have done so to stay on at school, attempt further exams and even contemplate higher education. The introduction of comprehensive secondary education in 1965, the virtual abolition of fees in the public sector and the raising of the leaving age to sixteen in 1973 completed this revolution and made at least four years of secondary education available to all Scottish children for the first time.

The second element of this phase of expansion came in the Universities. Since the establishment of the University Grants Committee in 1919 the four ancient universities were administered from London and took a rather grand and superior attitude to the Scottish Education Department. With the expansion of secondary education and the report of the Robbins committee in 1963 there was strong pressure for the expansion of higher education. In Scotland this took three forms. First Heriot-

Watt University and the Universities of Dundee and Strathclyde were formed from existing foundations in the mid-1960s. Second, action was taken to implement

Robbins’ recommendation that an entirely new university should be founded in

Scotland and, after considering the plangent claims of a range of sites, including

Falkirk and Inverness, Stirling was chosen as the location of Scotland’s new university in 1964. 1 The ancient universities, operating as a tight network, tried their best to frustrate this and argued that they had the capacity to cope with the necessary expansion on their own. This extreme view was resisted, but some increase in their student numbers was permitted and this was the third form of expansion.

The system created in the mid-1960s remained in place until the early 1990s and

2000s when a new phase of expansion was entered into. This period was not, however, a stable one. The 1980s saw difficult years in the Scottish universities, as elsewhere in the UK, as funding was cut by the Conservative government, leading to departmental closures. In secondary schools the same government passed legislation to give parents a greater degree of choice over where to send their children to be educated. Although this was controversial in some quarters there was little overt resistance. Much more controversial, more strongly resisted, and ultimately largely ignored, was the policy of facilitating the opting out of schools from local authority control. This was interpreted as an ideological attack on the ethos of Scottish public education. It had no impact on the Scottish educational landscape. 2

Changes in the early 1990s have led to the remarkable current position where more

than 50 per cent of school leavers are engaged in further or higher education. In 1992

five new universities were ‘created’ when this status was accorded to institutions in

1 TNA:PRO, UGC7/237-44 has the, often amusing, material relating to the decision. 2 Pickard, ‘History of Scottish education’, 230. Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paisley. These new universities had a quite different ethos from the ancient institutions or the foundations of the 1960s, not only emphasising science and technology but also vocational and applied subjects to a much greater degree. What was once a form of education for a tiny male elite, notwithstanding notions of intellectual democracy, is now within the normal realm of expectation for most families in the land. The universities have not confined themselves to attracting school-leavers but have forged links with the further education sector to improve ‘access’ for older students wishing to retrain or take advantage of the university education which they missed out on at an earlier stage in life when places were much less plentiful. These developments are not entirely novel, the ancient universities had a tradition of ‘extra-mural’ education and the infrastructure of adult education, some of it with a radical outlook, has been developing in Scotland since the end of the Great War. 1 This has also been facilitated since devolution with a more generous scheme of student finance for Scottish domiciled students than for their counterparts south of the border. The creation of a

Scottish Higher Education Funding Council prior to devolution means that the

Universities are now more firmly part of the Scottish political and administrative scene than they have ever been. The contrast with the outlook of senior academics in

1979 could not be more marked. Higher education is one area where there has been modest divergence of policy in Scotland and England since devolution despite Labour domination of the Scottish Executive and the Westminster government. 2

If there has been expansion in post-school education the same applies at the pre- school stage with an explosion of funded nursery places within the last ten years.

1 Paterson, Scottish education , 177-89. 2 Keating, ‘Higher education in Scotland and England’, 423-35 Alongside the increase in vocational postgraduate education and the need for flexibility and retraining in the work force even formal education is a lifelong experience for many Scots in a way that is entirely novel. This has had an effect on the school system. Once the challenge for secondary schools was to attempt to ‘equip’ its pupils for life beyond school in the knowledge that for many this would be their only experience of formal education. Now the social and economic experience of adulthood seems to require the flexibility and critical thinking which critics of the

Scottish education system argue that it has traditionally neglected. 1 Educational provision, at all levels, is probably better than at any stage in modern Scottish history.

The pertinent question, however, concerns the appropriateness of the new methods of teaching and learning which have been introduced: from the use of synthetic phonics in the inculcation of basic literacy to the more flexible forms of assessment introduced by the ‘Higher Still’ reforms, recent years have seen at least as great a challenge to traditional forms of learning in Scottish schools as that provided by the introduction of comprehensive education in the 1960s. Education is also relevant to the debate about social capital. Just as Thomas Johnston sought to deploy the education system during the Second World War to create good citizens, the proponents of the notion of social capital have argued that educational attainment encourages the civic participation which facilitates the creation of social capital and a wider sense of community. 2 Whether the Scottish education system, with its traditional reverence for

relatively narrow academic attainment, was ever very good at this is a moot point and

this is an example of the difficulty of historicising the notion of ‘social capital’.

Neither should we simply assume that improvements in provision will do the trick.

The dip in extra-curricular activities consequent upon the industrial action undertaken

1 Smout, Century , 223, 229 presents a pessimistic view; this is critically discussed by McPherson, ‘Schooling’, 102-3 2 Lloyd, ‘Tom Johnston’s parliament on education’, 109, 113; Putnam, Bowling alone , 55-8, 296-306 by the EIS in the mid-1980s, and the more recent proliferation of bureaucracy surrounding such activities, may have had a negative effect in this area. A similar effect may be a consequence of a perception of education as a vocational rather than as a critical intellectual exercise, although we should not idealise the latter in the

Scottish educational tradition. As in so many areas where modern history shades into contemporary comment it is difficult to be definitive, particularly so in this area where the results of changes in educational policy take a generation to emerge fully.

Religion

The changes in this area since the end of the Second World War seem to indicate an unambiguous process of ‘secularisation’. It is by no means as simple as this. What does not seem to be in doubt is that there has been a decline in the popularity, as measured by attendance, formal membership and its equivalents, of the Churches. For many this is to be deeply lamented as it represents a loss of faith and belief and is evidence of the power of materialist views of society. This has also had a profound impact on community and on social capital. Churches have been highly effective organisations in the task of supporting social networks and activities. This is evident in the history of both Presbyterian and Catholic churches in Scotland: Sunday schools, the Boys Brigade and sodalities have all sought to socialise church members, especially the young, and encourage participation. 1 These organisations have withered as their parent churches have decline. A qualification which has to be entered here is the fact that churches tend to be exclusive organisations: despite the recent emphasis on ecumenicism, denominational identities have remained quite strong in Scotland.

Churches are communities of believers rather than of people who merely share a

1 Putnam, Bowling alone , 65-79 common interest and this restricts their capacity to create social capital. As in so many of the areas considered in this chapter there is a tendency to measure recent changes against a constructed ideal of the past. We have noted that Churches were shocked at the apparent irreligion revealed by the 1851 census and individual clergymen reporting to the Commission for Religious Instruction in 1836 bemoaned ignorance of scripture among the poor. There has been a discussion among scholars about the longevity of decline in religious attendance, some arguing that the roots can be found in the Victorian period; others arguing that Victorian pessimists were mistaken, that the Church was more secure than it thought and that the decline is a more modern phenomenon dating from the immediate post-war years or even the 1960s. 1 The

Scottish example provides some evidence for the latter case in that the decline in

attendance does seem to have set in only since the 1950s and, perhaps influenced by

the renewed assertiveness of initiatives like Rev Tom Allen’s ‘Tell Scotland’, the

Kirk experienced a modest revival in that decade. The 1955 ‘Crusade’ of the

American evangelist Dr Billy Graham, supported by the Church of Scotland and

drawing attendances totalling 1.2 million, may also have provided a short term boost,

although Graham largely preached to the converted. 2 Despite the evident statistical decline of churches society may be less secular than it appears: churches may have declined in popularity but religious faith and belief remains entrenched, expressed in private, informal or unconventional ways. This is easy to assert but, by definition, difficult to test. It is contradicted by evidence which suggests that, although a general theism remains prevalent in society, the basic principles of Christian belief seem to be held by a declining proportion of the population. 3 The evidence pointing to decline in

1 Brown, The death of Christian Britain , esp. 170-93; Bruce, God is dead , esp.60-74; the debates are reviewed in Morris, ‘Strange death of Christian Britain’, 963-76. 2 Allan, Crusade in Scotland , 112. 3 Wolffe, ‘Religion and “secularization”’, 427-41; Gilbert, ‘Secularization and the future’, 503-21. religious observance are pretty clear. The proportion of Church of Scotland communicants in the Scottish population declined from just under 30 per cent in the early 1950s to under 15 per cent in 2000. The picture for Roman Catholicism is slightly different, with the decline in attendances coming only in the 1970s and 1980s.

Most worrying for its leaders the Churches seem to be unable to recruit from their own constituency. Less than a quarter of those baptised in the Church of Scotland as children become communicants as adults, and an even smaller proportion have their own children baptised. A falling proportion of marriages are solemnised in Church, although the figure is a little higher among Catholics than Protestants and the rolls of organisations like Sunday Schools and the Boys Brigade are falling, despite attempts to repackage them for a new generation. This decline is not, however, uniform.

Church memberships have a disproportionate number of older people and more women than men. There are also regional variations. The most notable being the higher level of attendance in the west highlands and the western isles. In these communities the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Presbyterian Church have high levels of adherence, despite recent schism. These communities provide some clues to the reason behind the decline of religious observance in Scotland. Secularisation has not proceeded so far in the west highlands as in other parts of Scotland and the church has a higher status in the community. Sabbatarianism, for example, remains influential, as does Church influence in local government and education. In the rest of

Scotland Churches are just one among many voluntary organisations; indeed, viewed in these terms they are not unsuccessful. There has been a loss of identity and a lack of clarity in the presentation of the Christian message in broad churches like the

Church of Scotland, leading some to argue that the Kirk should return to an evangelical approach. 1 This less evident in the free churches or the Catholic Church.

There are also wider social problems. The expansion of secondary and higher

education has produced successive generations of sceptical Scots less susceptible to

the influence of the Churches. Generally conservative views on matters relating to

gender roles, relationships and sexuality have not contributed to the attractiveness of

the Church among a generation accustomed to a liberal social and political regime on

such questions.

Sectarianism

Despite the decline in religious observance in Scotland there has been continuing

debate over the presence of religious sectarianism in Scottish culture and society. This

has been given renewed prominence since devolution by legislative attempts to make

incitement to religious hatred a crime in Scotland. Reflection has also been stimulated

by the argument that continuing anti-catholicism in Scotland is merely part of a wider

malaise in Scottish society. The composer James MacMillan, one of whose works was

played at the opening of the Scottish parliament in 1999, raised this issue in a lecture

later that year. In an extraordinary concatenation of unsubstantiated assertions

directed against the alleged prejudices and bigotry which allegedly scar Scottish

society and culture he concluded:

If Scotland is ever to establish a genuinely pluralistic democracy where

differences are not just recognised and respected but celebrated, nurtured and

absorbed for the greater good, we will first have to clear a seemingly

insurmountable hurdle. In many walks of life—in the workplace, in the

1 This debate runs through Reid, Outside verdict , esp xxxv. professions, in academia, in the media, in politics and in sport—anti-

Catholicism, even when it is not particularly malign, is as endemic as it is

second nature. Scotland is guilty of ‘sleep-walking bigotry… . 1

It is tempting, but tendentious, to link a series of disparate events and processes in

Scotland across the twentieth century—the activities of Protestant Action and the

Scottish Protestant League in the inter-war period, the attitude of the Presbyterian

churches in the same period, the activities of the Orange Order, historic employment

practices, the identity of Rangers Football Club, the repellent antics of some of its

supporters and officials and various unconnected incidents of savage crime—to

present an image of a sectarian society. The problem with this interpretation is that

there is very little evidence that sectarianism is systemic in Scotland. It has not, for

example, been reflected in politics or voting patterns. Political parties have not

developed around religious identities. Although the Labour party attracted the

loyalties of Catholic voters from the early 1920s and the Unionist party, especially in

its heyday in the 1950s, was perceived as a ‘protestant’ party and at certain times in

its history, although not recently, there was catholic suspicion of the SNP.

Nevertheless, these trends did not define these political parties, and there has been no

development of confessional politics or any mapping of political partisanship onto

denominational communities, as in Northern Ireland for example. 2 The contrast with

Northern Ireland or, in local government politics, with the sectarian divisions evident

in Liverpool, further undermine the notion of endemic sectarianism in Scotland.

1 MacMillan, ‘Scotland’s shame’, 15. 2 Rosie, Myth of Sectarianism , 3-4, 8, 29, 49-71 Catholicism in Scotland has moved from the fringes of society to the mainstream over the course of the century and its status has also been raised in global Catholicism since the re-establishment of the hierarchy in 1878, over twenty years after the same event in England. Two events symbolise these processes. In 1969 Gordon Gray became Scotland’s first Cardinal since the Reformation and he has been followed by

Thomas Winning and Keith O’Brien. Indeed, these men have been among the most prominent and assertive clergymen in modern Scotland. Cardinal Winning played a central role in the campaign against the repeal of Section 2a of the Local Government

Act which prevented the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. 1 There has been very little of the loss of identity and muddled messages which have characterised the Church of

Scotland since the 1960s. Gray, in particular, was keen to present his faith as rooted in

Scottish history, he remarked:

I feel no alien in a strange land when I tramp the good black earth in

Banffshire that my Catholic fathers tilled and sowed, or gaze into the water of

the Moray Firth on which my fathers sailed. I know my Catholic faith is

rooted deep in Scottish soil. That Catholicism is indigenous to our Scottish

culture and traditions. 2

Although the Catholic Church in Scotland prior to mass Irish migration, largely composed of the remnants of an elite and aristocratic community rooted in the north- east of Scotland, emphasised their Scottishness in contradistinction to the hordes coming from the west, this is not what Gray was seeking to do. He was arguing that his faith was central to Scottish history and that it encompassed the north-east and the

1 McGinty, This turbulent priest , 2 quoted in Stewart, ‘Gordon Joseph Gray’, 180; Gordon Joseph Gray (1910-93), ODNB highlands as well as the modern Catholic community in the west of Scotland. Similar views were articulated by Colin MacPherson, who in 1968 became the first Gaelic speaking Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, a diocese with 12,000 Catholics. 1

The second event which merits discussion in the suggestion that Catholicism is part of

the mainstream of Scottish society is the Papal visit to Scotland in 1982, the

arrangements for which were greatly complicated by the outbreak of the Falklands

war and criticism of the government by Cardinal Gray. This visit has been described

as a right of passage for the Church in Scotland. A huge rally in Bellahouston park in

Glasgow was attended by 250,000 people, one of the largest crowds ever to assemble

in Scotland. The Pope met the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland, a body which had only received its first address from a Catholic clergyman

when Thomas Winning spoke in 1975. The small number of protestors, led by the

predictable figure of Pastor Jack Glass, were exposed as marginal, regressive and

lacking in sympathy with public opinion. 2 In an act of political suicide the leader of the SNP, William Wolfe condemned the papal visit as a betrayal of Scotland’s reformed and covenanting traditions. Not content with this, he interpreted the

Falklands War as a clash between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. These views were not representative and justified opprobrium was heaped on Wolfe’s head, ending his political career. 3 It is odd then that the minority of ‘sectarianists’ within the

Scottish Catholic community seem to cringe from the change in status of their

1 Colin MacPherson (1917-1990), ODNB . 2 Turnbull, Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray , 109-17; McGinty, This turbulent priest , 224-43; Maver, I., ‘Catholic community’, 282. 3 Herald , 24 Oct. 1992. community, deny their place in the mainstream and crave a marginal and victimised position. 1

Evidence relating to feelings of identity further erode a sectarian interpretation of

Scotland’s recent history. There is no evidence that ‘protestant’ or ‘catholic’ supersedes ‘Scottish’ when people are questioned about their primary identity. Even in the economy, where the problem was probably at its greatest in the past, it has been obliterated by economic change, mass higher education and labour mobility. A recent writer has argued ‘[m]uch of the debate about sectarianism has proved imprisoned in an imagined history, invoking exaggerated terrors at the outset of a new era for

Scotland.’ 2 It is curious that this process of imagination emulates that of those who

imagined an Irish threat to Scottish identity between the wars. It is an interesting

question as to why this issue should retain such potency in a secular age and in the

absence of tangible evidence of its existence. In questioning uncritical assertions of

sectarianism it is important not to lapse into self congratulation about the benign

nature of Scottish society. Do media and, to an extent, academic interest in religious

sectarianism contribute to the elision of racial intolerance in modern Scotland? This

seems a more pertinent question than attempting to argue that racism can be

understood through the ‘prism of sectarianism’. 3 The marginality and powerlessness

of recent arrivals in Scotland and the evidence of changes in expressions of identity

among the younger generation of even long established immigrant communities, such

as the Pakistanis, emphasises the gulf with the position of Catholics in Scottish

society.

1 See Reilly, ‘Kicking with the left foot’ 29-40 & Bradley, ‘Catholic Distinctiveness’, 159-74, although they are challenged from a Catholic point of view by Devine, ‘A Lanarkshire perspective’, 99-104. 2 Rosie, Sectarian myth , 150. 3 Kelly, ‘Challenging sectarianism’, 32-56

Recreation

In an earlier chapter we noted the commercialisation of leisure and recreation, the rise of spectator sports, the increasing codification and organisation of sports and the appearance of Scotland on the international sporting stage, especially in football and rugby union. Scotland appeared, without much success, in the football World Cup in the 1950s and then consecutively from 1974 to 1990. In other sports, especially athletics and swimming—once a very strong sport in Scotland through the successes of the Motherwell swimmers such as the tragic Nancy Riach, and later Bobby

MacGregor, Iain Black and David Wilkie—Scottish achievement tends to come under a British flag. 1 The rather quaint Commonwealth games—twice held in Edinburgh,

1970 and 1986, and boycotted by many African nations on the latter occasion through

the presence of the former South African Zola Budd on the English team—provide an

opportunity for Scottish athletes and swimmers to compete as Scots. Many of these

earlier trends have continued, not least the commercialisation of leading spectator

sports. The importance of television revenues for Scottish football, especially through

lucrative European competition, have concentrated power in the hands of the big

Glasgow clubs and has made them increasingly cosmopolitan. When Celtic became

the first club from Britain, indeed from northern Europe, to win the European cup in

1967 they did so with all eleven players from the west of Scotland, an unthinkable

feat today. 2 Even Rugby Union, bastion of middle-class amateurism, turned professional in the mid-1990s leading to a revolution in the domestic game and a decline in the fortunes of the national team, semi-finalists in the last world cup prior to the professional era in 1991 and winners of the ‘Grand Slam’ in the then Five

1 Walker, ‘Nancy Riach’, 142-53. 2 MacPherson, Jock Stein , 157-77 Nations (the home countries plus France) championship in 1984 and 1990. Obvious symbols of this process of commercialisation are the stadia which have replaced those constructed in the first phase of commercialisation. Spectator safety became a prime concern after the deaths of sixty-six people in a crush on a staircase at the end of an

Old Firm match at Ibrox Park (home of Rangers) in January 1971. This event brought

Rangers into public disrepute—not helped by the inept performance of club officials at the resultant Fatal Accident Inquiry—for ignoring the warnings of earlier deaths and injuries on the same staircase and for presiding over squalid and dangerous conditions for their supporters. It also provided an opening for those who wished to berate the club for its sectarian identity and employment practices. 1 This tragedy had legislative consequences in the shape of the Safety of Sports Grounds Act in 1975 and led the club to construct an all-seated stadium, a task also undertaken by Aberdeen, then a very forward-looking club on the threshold of their period of greatest success under Alex Ferguson. 2 The Scottish Rugby Union also re-developed their Murrayfield stadium in the 1990s. These places became not merely venues to view the spectacle, but sites of income generation through corporate entertainment and debenture seats.

Under the influences of smaller capacities, reduced tolerance of the hooliganism and anti-social behaviour associated with football crowds, attendances declined in the

1970s and early 1980s. In season 1961/2 there were 5.1m attendances at Scottish

Football League matches, a figure which had declined to 2.5 m in season 1984/5. 3 The

revival which has taken place since then, although it has not seen a return to the

figures of the 1960s, far less the 1930s, was only achieved with the banning of alcohol

in Scottish football grounds. While this did not make attendance at an Old Firm cup

1 Walker, ‘Ibrox Stadium disaster’, 169-82; Inglis, Football grounds , 32-3, 294; Murray, Old firm , 223- 6. 2 Webster, The Dons , 14-16, 281; Maver, ‘Leisure and social change’, 440-2. 3 Lambert, ‘Leisure and recreation’, 261. tie an ideal family day out, it did reverse declining attendances and created the conditions for the emergence of a slightly more diverse fan base, as more women and children were attracted to the spectacle.

Another feature in declining attendance is the increase in sport as a media event.

Media interest in sport is not a new feature but the number of newspaper column inches devoted to it has increased markedly in the last twenty-five years and the

Scottish press, especially the Daily Record of Glasgow, covers the football scene in almost obsessive detail. 1 In the 1960s the editorial staff of the Scottish Daily Express

felt that their sports coverage, especially football—‘the drug of the Glasgow

masses’—and horse racing information for those who wished to bet, was the key to

their circulation battle with the Daily Record .2 Much more significant, however, is the

role of television with many sports securing much of their funding from lucrative

deals with terrestrial and satellite television channels. Why pay to sit in the cold at

Pittodrie when you can watch the match from the comfort of your own home, enjoy

action replays and benefit from the expert analysis of the pundits? The advent of

radio, analogue television, video, the internet and now digital television has reduced

the communal nature of mass entertainment. As well as the diminution in the size of

crowds at sporting events, the cinema, once hugely popular in Scotland, has felt the

chill wind arising from these technological changes. Television has played a central

role in the argument about social capital, the increase in the hours—currently about 28

hours per week on average in Scotland, the highest figure in the U.K.—spent in front

of ‘the box’, especially in the passive consumption of light entertainment, has been

1 Blain & Boyle, ‘Battling along the boundaries’, 125-41. 2 H.L.R.O., Beaverbrook MSS, H/232, Ian MacColl to T. Blackburn, 8 Jan. 1964. presented as having a very close link with the decline in participation in communal and civic activities. 1

Communing with the Scottish environment and landscape—clambering over it, sliding down it, observing its fauna—is another important form of recreation. Indeed, social surveys indicate that walking is one of the most popular forms of leisure activities. Recent legislative changes have settled historic grievances in this area. The

Land Reform Act of 2003 has access to the countryside as one of its central features and the recent creation of National Parks in the Cairngorms and the Loch Lomond area (Scotland having missed out, for good or ill, on national parks in the 1940s) attempt to manage the demands of leisure users of the countryside in combination with those who live and work in the localities covered by the parks. This is an activity which has been made much more comfortable compared to the rugged ventures of the

Scottish Mountaineering Club or the pioneering treks of those who ventured into the

Scottish countryside and onto the mountains in the inter-war period. It is now possible to approach the summit of Cairngorm via a funicular railway! Perhaps this is not quite what Victorian campaigners on rights of access to the mountains, men like the geologist Archibald Geikie or the Liberal politician James Bryce had in mind. The landscape and versions of the past have long been sources of recreation. The mass invasion of the countryside for leisure has been a steady development since the railways opened up the highlands in the Victorian period. This exists, sometimes uneasily, alongside more exclusive forms of rural recreation, especially ‘sport’, the commercialisation of which was also a Victorian development and which retains a foothold in the Scottish countryside although its social, economic and political impact

1 Putnam, Bowling alone , 216-46; Paterson et. al. , 146-7: Scottish Social Statistics , 2001, 155-7. is muted compared to its Victorian and Edwardian heyday. The NTS was a product of the interwar period but millions of people visited historical exhibits at the series of exhibitions in Glasgow and Edinburgh from the 1880s to the 1930s. Today, consumption of Scottish heritage often takes place through visits to the sanitised version of the Scottish past presented by the N.T.S. for Scotland or the more statutory version provided by the tidy sites managed by Historic Scotland. Despite the point just discussed there is little doubt that patterns of recreation in post-war Scotland have lost any distinctiveness which they may once have had. One area which is particularly redolent of this is the demise of a tradition of popular and variety theatre which provided an outlet for singers, musicians and comedians. Some made the transition to television when that medium acquired a distinctively Scottish face in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The period from the end of the Second World War to the present day has been one of almost unrivalled change in Scottish social history. One would have to return to classic period of Scottish economic and social development in the period from 1760 to 1820 to find a period where change had taken place on a similar scale or with such rapidity. Few of the features of Scottish society evident in 1945 remain in place today.

This is perhaps not so odd and could be said of any sixty year period. What makes this period so distinctive is that the direction of change was so profoundly altered in the middle of the period. The huge energy which went into building the welfare state and, crucially in Scotland, a regime of public housing, was overturned. The demographic regime went into reverse in the early 1970s and this was driven by the onset of deindustrialisation, the social consequences of which were massive. The economic processes which underlay these changes will be the subject of the next chapter. Chapter ten: Economic problems and opportunities

There are three prominent themes in the writing on Scottish economic history since

1945. 1 The first concerns the decline of heavy industry and the rise of the service

sector and electronics: ‘from ships to chips’ is the neat description of one recent

author. 2 The discussion of this theme is suffused with a tone of pessimism; the failure

to sustain the glories of the late Victorian revolution which brought heavy industry to

its position of dominance is lamented; and the seemingly ephemeral nature of the

‘products’ of the new Scottish economy compared to the ships and locomotives of an

earlier period is regretted. The second theme is the role of government. 3 This discussion is also tinged with defensiveness as the technicalities of government intervention shade into reference to politically inspired accusations that Scotland has been ‘dependent’ on the state in the post-war period and is home to a vociferous lobby which indulges in special pleading at every opportunity (‘How do you know when a plane load of Scots has landed at Heathrow? Because the whining noise continues after the engines have stopped,’ according to a ‘joke’ told by a BP executive). 4 This is a difficult area to extract a positive narrative when one considers the litany of failed industrial projects scattered across the landscape: the vehicle plants at Bathgate and

Linwood, the pulp mill at Corpach near Fort William, and the aluminium smelter at

Invergordon. The most potent symbol of industrial change and failed government intervention, however, is the flawed establishment, troubled history and controversial closure of the steel plant at Ravenscraig in Lanarkshire. While it is easy to conscript

Ravenscraig into a narrative of Scotland’s antiquated industrial order it should be

1 Peden, ‘Agenda’, 5-26 surveys the historiography. 2 Knox, Industrial nation , 254. 3 summarised by Peden, ‘The managed economy’, 233-65 4 Alexander et. al. , ‘The political economy of Scotland’, 13; ‘joke’ quoted by Smith, Paper lions , 127. recalled that steel was once the acme of industrial modernity and Ravenscraig was at the technological cutting edge when it was opened in the 1950s. The third theme—the failure of entrepreneurship in modern Scotland—is closely related to the discussion of government activity; indeed, it is often presented as the natural result of reliance on

‘subsidy’. This is not a point which is presented as novel in the post-war period. The disasters which befell the Scottish economy in the 1920s and 1930s have partly been attributed to the failures of the second generation of industrialists who presided over

Scotland’s major enterprises in that troubled time. Again, there is a harking back to, and an idealisation of, those giants who oversaw Victorian economic expansion and innovation. There is also a political point in this theme: the seeming lack of private enterprise in Scotland in the post-war period has been adduced as one of the principal reasons for the decline of the Conservative party. 1 These themes will be discussed in detail in this chapter but some attempt will be made to assess the changes in the past generation without adopting an uncritical admiration for an idealised industrial past. A final introductory point is that this is a topic where it is easy to adopt a ‘Scottish’ perspective without adequate recognition that for the entire period since 1945, devolution notwithstanding, macroeconomic policy has emanated from the Treasury in London and for at least the early part of this period the Board of Trade was at least as important an actor as the Scottish Office in microeconomic policy. The issue of political control has been a continuous one, albeit in different contexts, in this period.

The longstanding suspicion that London did not always know best, present in the economically impotent Scottish Office in the 1930s, has not been eradicated as that department gained more power and expertise in this area in the post-war period and eventually gave way to devolution. Ironically, one of the principal initiatives has been

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics , 114-17. to attract foreign investment to Scotland; in the 1960s and 1970s this seemed to be a success story, but it was one which was overtaken by the failure of some of the results of that effort and longstanding criticisms that this led to another form of loss of control, this time to multinational corporations as a ‘branch-plant economy’ has allegedly developed. The Scottish perspective is problematic at another level, in that it elides the regional diversity which includes the industrial areas of west central

Scotland, traditionally prioritised in Scottish economic history; the highlands, allegedly over-emphasised; the rural lowlands and the more mixed economy of eastern Scotland. 1 The social consequences of these economic changes are also central to the narrative. In the nineteenth century Scotland was known as a low-wage economy, something which was overcome in the early twentieth century, but which may have re-appeared in a slightly different guise in the post-1945 era as the nature of work changed. Scotland continues to exhibit the extremes of poverty and wealth which have been such a persistent feature of its economic history since industrialisation. Scottish industrial history has been closely influenced by endowments of natural resources—especially coal and iron-ore—and this continued in the twentieth century with the discovery of north-sea oil. We have already noted the political impact of this event but here the emphasis will be on the novel demands which it placed on the Scottish economy. The skills and capacity in the economy were not particularly well suited to harnessing the full benefit from this new industry and as a result a lower return was gained compared to other small nations on the north sea littoral such as Norway and the Netherlands. 2

1 Campbell, ‘Too much on the highlands’, 58-75; Newlands, ‘Regional economies’, 159-83 2 Pike, ‘The impact of north sea oil and gas’, 207-20. Industrial structure

That there has been a massive shift in the structure of the Scottish economy in the post-war period and especially the last generation cannot be gainsaid. In some respects, and taken in conjunction with the accompanying social changes, this period of change is comparable with the social and economic revolution which swept through Scotland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The following table shows the changes in the structure of employment and demonstrates the way in which the industrial structure which was built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has crumbled within two generations. The figures are the percentage of the workforce in each sector in each year, and they show that 36 per cent of the work force worked in manufacturing in 1951 but only 14 per cent in 2000; by contrast, services employed 45 per cent of the workforce in 1951 but 76 per cent fifty years later.

Table ?: Structure of employment in the Scottish economy, 1951-2000 1

Industry group 1951 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Agriculture, Fishing, Forestry 7.3 4.7 2.8 2.2 1.6 2.1

Mining, Quarrying 4.4 4.3 1.9 2.1

Manufacturing 35.9 35.0 35.6 26.7 18.6 14.1

Construction 6.2 7.6 8.3 7.7 6.9 5.9

Gas, Electricity, Water 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 2.5 2.1

Services 44.7 47.0 49.9 59.9 70.4 76.1

TOTAL (000s) 2195 2096 2077 2072 1988 2040

1 Leser, ‘Manpower’, 35-45; Hunter, ‘The Scottish labour market’, 168; Scottish Economic Statistics, 2001 , 104

The precipitous decline in manufacturing encompasses the well known decline in

Scottish heavy industry since the 1950s. In 1948 there were over 80,000 workers in the newly nationalised coal industry producing 24 million tons of coal. By the early

1980s, prior to the year-long strike of 1984-5, this figure had declined to less than

20,000 and output had shrunk to 7 million tons. Scottish mining employment and output had also declined relative to UK figures, from 11.4 per cent to 8.4 per cent in the case of employment and 11.2 per cent to 7.1 per cent in the case of output. After the strike the decline was rapid and terminal, by the end of the 1980s the 4000 remaining miners produced only 2m tons of coal and by the end of the 1990s deep mining had disappeared entirely from the Scottish industrial landscape. 1 The reasons for this change are not hard to find. Within the industry the small size of Scottish pits and the geological difficulty of extracting coal from them drove up prices compared to mines in easier areas such as Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Further, in the

1940s the British economy was almost literally coal-fired: it was a prime source of industrial energy and domestic heat, shipping and the railways depended on it. In

1952 89 per cent of the heat supplied to Scotland, measured in therms, came from solid fuel; by 1980 that figure was only 14 per cent. With the discovery of oil and natural gas (‘town gas’ production had required huge supplies of coal) in the 1960s and the conversion of the railways from steam to diesel and electric locomotives two vital markets were taken away. Attempts were made by government to keep the industry alive, not least by the construction of coal-fired power stations, such as those at Cockenzie and Longannet on the Forth: regarded as modern, efficient and technologically advanced when they were built, they are now perceived as

1 Payne, ‘Decline of the Scottish heavy industries’, 80; Lee, Scotland and the UK , 83 environmental black spots. Former coal-mining communities have faced difficult times since they were formerly so dependant on the pit and were often located in relatively isolated places making them difficult to modernise or integrate into a new industrial structure. Until the 1970s, however, the run down of the industry was achieved without industrial relations conflict and perhaps even without a great deal of unemployment due to the relatively elderly workforce and the buoyancy in other areas of the economy during the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless there was a campaign against the closures and one miner who had been involved recalled in the aftermath of the 1984-5 strike: ‘It didnae dae much good eventually. Even under a Labour government they closed mair pits, or every bit as many as Mrs Thatcher has closed’. 1

The bitterness occasioned by the strike of 1984-5 was an additional element in this

history. From the point of view of the National Union of Mineworkers the issue at

stake was not pay, as in the 1970s, but pit closures. Deficient leadership of the strike

and the aggressive approach of the government meant that this promising ground was

conceded and the politics of the strike revolved around the picket-line violence and

ideological clashes which ensued. The aftermath of the strike saw further closures and

the ultimate disappearance of the industry from the Scottish industrial landscape. It

cannot be said, however, that this was unexpected, or that it had not been predicted.

The consideration given to the redistribution of the economy during the Second World

War and documents like the Clyde Valley Regional Plan had given specific

consideration to the likely future redundancy of many coal mining communities.

Unfortunately, however, many of the post-war initiatives designed to mitigate the

worst effects of this process of change, not least the sinking of the Rothes pit in Fife,

were themselves failures.

1 McDowall, ‘Coal, gas and oil’, 292-311, Joe Campbell of Kelty in Owens (ed.), Miners , 68

A similar story can be told of the steel industry. Once again the future unfolded as some had predicted as early as the late 1920s when the Scottish steelmasters were unable to co-operate to develop the tidewater plant recommended by the Brassert

Report of 1929. Although nearly forty years later the idea was returned to with a massive project to construct an ore terminal and steel plant at Hunterston in Ayrshire.

What it reveals is the fact that the industry, after another generation of investment in its Lanarkshire heartland, was facing the same problems as it had in the 1920s. That

Lanarkshire heartland had received massive investment in the 1950s and 1960s, some of it carefully considered by Colvilles when the firm emerged from the formerly nationalised industry in the early 1950s, and some of it forced on the firm for political reasons by the Conservatives in the late 1950s in the shape of a loan of £50 million to build a strip mill alongside the existing plant at Ravenscraig. In contrast to the management of the National Coal Board in Scotland who were absurdly optimistic about the future output of their industry, the fact that the government had to force this unwanted loan onto a very reluctant Andrew McCance indicated his more realistic approach. He was well aware of the fact that there was not in Scotland a sufficient market for the products of the mill, despite the opening of the vehicle plants at

Linwood and Bathgate. As early as 1948 McCance was aware that ‘there would not appear to be an overall basis for a big expansion in the consumption of steel … it would probably be undesirable to incur any additional expenditure at this stage to facilitate still further expansion at a later date.’ 1 The paradox of the history of

Ravenscraig is that although it distorted the structure of the steel industry in Scotland and contributed to its downfall, it was such a totemic symbol, not of industrial

1 Payne, Colvilles , 303 antiquity but of government intervention, that it had a political significance which prolonged its life, and probably that of the Scottish steel industry. 1 Probably the

crucial event which secured the fate of the Scottish steel industry, which had been

built up by Colvilles when the industry was in private hands, was the second

privatisation of the steel industry in late 1988. This placed the industry beyond the

influence of the government and the cross-party lobby which argued the case of

Ravenscraig in particular. The privatised British Steel Corporation gained a

particularly bad reputation in Scotland, not least in the shape of its vituperative chief

executive Sir Robert (‘Black Bob’) Scholey, a man who held the ‘Scottish lobby’ in

particular contempt. It was not simply a story of changing political circumstances,

however; the inland location of much Scottish steelmaking capacity, the failure of the

vehicle industry to establish itself in Scotland and increasing international

competition, especially from Korea and Japan, provided the economic justification for

the marginalisation and ultimate closure of most of the Scottish steel industry. 2 The results in terms of output and employment were clear: the 3,330m tonnes of steel produced in Scotland in 1970 represented over 12 per cent of UK output, compared to only 571m tonnes and 3.5 per cent of total UK output in 1992; a shift which had seen the shedding of nearly 25,000 jobs, mostly in Lanarkshire. 3

A third case study in heavy industrial decline can be seen in the history of the shipbuilding industry; once the shining example of Scottish technical innovation and business creativity, it has almost disappeared. Unlike steel where the decline in

Scotland has been marked compared to other parts of the United Kingdom like South

Wales or Teeside, in the case of shipbuilding the story of decline has been a British

1 Payne, ‘The end of steelmaking’, 78 2 Stewart, ‘Fighting for survival’, 40-57; Smith, Paper lions , 137-44 3 Payne, ‘The end of steelmaking’, 71, 78. one, as figure ? graphically demonstrates. In 1947 57 per cent of the world’s tonnage was launched in Britain, this had declined to around one per cent by the early 1990s as new competitors from Japan and North Korea ruthlessly priced British yards out of the market. One prominent British shipbuilder—although one dedicated to managing the phasing out of the industry—pointed to the ruthlessness of the market in 1985,‘we are playing cricket and someone else is playing rugby league and they are getting their retaliation in first’. He went on to point out the rules of the game:

We know that in the day to day market, if for example you or I were an

independent shipowner, and we had a communication from, say, a Japanese

shipbuilder that said the price was 10, all you would have to do is produce that

to a South Korean yard and they will bid 9 without looking at the specification

or anything else. 1

It was these conditions which prompted some European countries, such as Sweden, to move out of shipbuilding altogether. This option was not taken in Britain, indeed the very opposite objective was retained until the 1980s, although a variety of policies were adopted in pursuit of that objective over the post-war period. There were two considerations which prompted the sometimes desperate attempts to keep the shipbuilding industry afloat: the perceived need to retain capacity for naval building, even with a Royal Navy much reduced in size; and the fact that shipbuilding was mostly centred in areas of high unemployment or with other forms of political sensitivities—places like Clydeside, the North East of England and Belfast. Although

1 Johnman & Murphy, British shipbuilding and the state , 231. the role of government was an important one in the history of post-war shipbuilding, the caution of the shipbuilders also played an important part in the industry’s collapse.

The post-war period began optimistically with full order books as high demand fuelled by the need to construct replacement stock to replace that damaged or foregone during the war. Underneath the optimism of these conditions there were a number of clear trends: the decline of coal-fired steam ships and their replacement with increasingly large diesel driven tankers; the increasing need to grasp the technology of welding in place of riveting; and the importance of keeping costs as low as possible. If bulk carriers and tankers were the new factor in international maritime trade there was an even more important competitor: international air travel. This increasingly challenged the international passenger market and reduced the demand for the liners which had provided so much high value work for the Clyde. Little was done to face any of these challenges. Even in the relative boom of the late 1940s and

1950s investment was low as shipbuilders averred from risk fearing the onset of another depression such as had happened after the last post-war boom in the 1920s.

Little was done in the way of marketing and many yards relied for their orders on long-standing and cosy relationships with shipowners. It was a damaging mixture of arrogance and insecurity which did not serve the industry well when more difficult conditions began to bite in the late 1950s. A government enquiry in the mid-1960s revealed serious weaknesses in the structure of an industry which was beginning to lose out to foreign competitors on the grounds of price and ability to deliver the product on time. This was clear even in a market such as Norway which was well disposed towards British shipbuilders who cornered a substantial part of the

Norwegian market in the 1940s and 1950s but lost out to other European builders in the 1960s and Asian competitors in the 1970s. 1 Added to these problems was a

complacent disinclination to indulge in marketing activity. The principal

recommendation of the enquiry was that yards should be grouped together to try to

achieve economies of scale and greater efficiency. In Scotland the principal activity

took place on the Clyde as shipyards on the lower reaches of the river, at Greenock

and Port Glasgow, merged to form Scott Lithgow; on the upper reaches four yards

came together to form Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, the scene of so much vexation in

the early 1970s. In the east Robb Caledon was created from yards in Leith,

Burntisland and Dundee. 2 These unhappy combinations did little to arrest the decline

which was exacerbated by the oil price hikes of 1973 and 1979. During this period the

industry went through the extremes of government intervention. During the mini-

crisis of the late 1950s and early 1960s, during which unemployment began to

increase, the Conservative government remained aloof. The Secretary of State for

Scotland, John MacClay showed no wish to reprise the role of his father who had

been Lloyd George’s controller of shipping during the Great War. As we have seen in

an earlier chapter the Conservative government of the early 1970s was drawn into

support of the industry somewhat against its will, especially during the crisis in 1971-

2 which precipitated the break up of UCS. The response of the Labour government

elected in 1974 was predictable: nationalisation. By the 1970s nearly three quarters of

the ships delivered to the UK registered fleet were built in foreign yards, only twenty

years earlier the figure had been zero. 3 The parliamentary progress of the Bill to

nationalise the shipbuilding industry was almost as drawn out as the devolution bills

and the end result, coming in 1977, was almost as pointless. The new creation, British

Shipbuilders, which must have made James Lithgow turn uncomfortably in his grave,

1 Johnman & Murphy, ‘Norwegian market’, 55-72. 2 Payne, ‘Decline of the Scottish heavy industries’, 106. 3 Johnman & Murphy, British shipbuilding and the state , 203. returned to the task of his National Shipbuilders’ Security of the 1930s and devoted itself to the reduction of capacity. Another initiative was to attempt to grasp the opportunities seemingly presented by the oil industry in the form of the construction of platforms. This was most evident in the aftermath of the UCS work-in in 1972 when Marathon, an American company specialising in the construction of platforms for the oil industry, purchased John Brown of Clydebank. This turned out to be an unhappy experience for the American company, some of whose directors were rather wary of the reputation of the Clyde for industrial relations problems, and the yard was sold on to a French company in 1979. In addition the kind of platforms built at

Clydebank were not suitable for exploration in deep water and the restricted space of a yard laid out for shipbuilding proved unsuitable for the fabrication of large oil rigs.

In fact, such construction was taking place at Arderseir and Nigg in the north of

Scotland on more open sites. Another problem in some accounts of this episode was the rather inflexible attitude of trades unions towards demarcation issues, although industrial relations proved reasonably peaceful. Nevertheless, this compared unfavourably to MacDermott’s at Arderseir where the management controlled industrial relations by recognising only one union, the Amalgamated Engineering

Union. 1 The reputation of the Clyde for industrial militancy in the 1970s was not only based on the events at UCS in 1971-2 but on an image of the ‘strike-prone’ nature of an industry marred by ‘restrictive practices’ and ‘demarcation disputes’. Whilst the industrial relations in shipbuilding prior to nationalisation were ‘a highly complex decentralised process’, most disputes were about wages rather than demarcation.

Management had not challenged trade union practices in the years of profitability and it took nationalisation in 1979 to cut through antiquated practices and impose a

1 McKinstry, ‘Transforming John Brown’s shipyard’, 33-60; Mackie, The klondykers, 169-91, esp. 178. system of national bargaining. In turn, privatisation, and the extremely difficult environment in which the few remaining yards were operating, meant that trades unions were compelled to embrace the ‘flexibility’ imposed by an aggressive management as the price of survival. 1

The overall picture is clear enough: but what are the implications. The first point concerns the gender composition of the workforce. In an earlier chapter we have noted the increase in female employment over the post-war period. In these structural changes the reason for it can be seen even more clearly, the mostly male dominated manufacturing, mining, fishing and forestry sectors have all declined in favour of white-collar employment which has a more diverse gender composition. The number of employed men, at 1.3 million, has not grown over the course of the twentieth century whereas the number of women at work has doubled to 1.1 million over the same period. 2 In terms of poverty and prosperity this change has two dimensions:

first, many of these new jobs are in poorly paid occupations, often dominated by

women, although others are very highly paid financial sector jobs; second, the service

sector is sheltered, although not immune, from the economic cycle to a greater degree

than manufacturing, although it is very sensitive to political decisions such as the

drive to expand nursery, secondary and higher education, put more police on the beat

or reduce the number of ‘civil servants’. There is also a regional dimension, although

some elements of the service sector are universal others are regionally specific and

have contributed to a shift in the balance of the economy from the west to the east.

This has not been a story without victims. The skills and training required in the new

economy are strikingly different from those deployed in the old industrial economy

1 McKinlay & Taylor, ‘Privatisation and industrial relations’, 293-304, quote at 297; see also McGoldrick, ‘Industrial relations’, 197-220. 2 Lee, ‘Unbalanced growth’, 212-13; Scottish Economic Statistics, 2001 , 102 and in the 1970s and 1980s, when these changes were taking place at their greatest intensity unemployment returned to haunt the Scottish economy in a manner reminiscent of the 1930s. In the post-war period Scotland, in common with other industrial regions of the UK, had relatively high levels of unemployment. This was true even in the period of ‘full-employment’ in the 1950s and 1960s the unemployment rate north of the border—rising from 3.5 per cent in the early 1950s to

6.4 per cent by the mid-1970s—was much higher than that of the south of England or the midlands. When unemployment began to climb in the 1970s and 1980s, averaging around 12 per cent in the latter decade it remained high in a British regional context.

Within Scotland there were marked variations between men and women, with much higher unemployment among the former, although female joblessness may have been under-recorded. There was also considerable regional diversity with unemployment among men in Strathclyde being nearly three times the rate of that in Grampian. 1 In contrast to the 1930s when unemployment was due to a slump in demand for the goods produced by Scottish heavy industry—a demand which recovered in the late

1930s through rearmament, continued through the Second World War and the years of post-war reconstruction—the problem in the 1980s, although not of the same scale was due to the deep structural shifts described above. Since the mid-1990s, by which time this shift had been largely completed, unemployment in Scotland has dipped and converged with the UK level at around 4 per cent of the workforce. 2 The structural

changes induced long-term unemployment in the old industrial areas of which the

west of Scotland was an archetypal example.

Entrepreneurship or dependency?

1 Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom , 67. 2 Peden, ‘The managed economy’, 248, 259. These structural changes are not unique to Scotland, but it has been argued that they have taken a particular form there because of the former concentration on heavy industry and because the decline of heavy industry was not accompanied by the rise in entrepreneurship allegedly present in other parts of the country. This is not an easy trend to measure, although considerable statistical ingenuity has been devoted to the task. It is possible to analyse the rate of formation of new firms, but not every new firm is an example of entrepeneurship. Nevertheless, data from the 1980s, when the pace of change was at its hottest, indicates that Scotland was distinctive in this regard.

Within Scotland it was the Strathclyde region, which covered much of the former industrial area of Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, which seemed to have the greatest deficiency in this regard. Economists have been rather hesitant in suggesting reasons for this apparent weakness, but one study had concluded.

…if the government is serious about raising firm formation rates in Scotland

and other peripheral regions of the UK, it would do better to focus on certain

aspects of the regions’ economic structure than on repeated exhortations to

local residents to embrace the ‘enterprise culture’. 1

As we have seen in an earlier chapter this issue did become politicised in the manner

implied by this quote; especially in the late 1980s as Conservative politicians, led by

the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, berated the Scots for dependence

on the state and, by implication, their support for other political parties. Not

surprisingly the research has indicated that the problem is more complex than this, but

that it does relate to features of Scotland’s relationship with the state. There does

1 Ashcroft et. al. ‘ New firm formation’, 405. seem to be a link between low rates of firm formation and patterns of housing tenure: in particular, the pattern of public housing which was evident in Scotland for much of the twentieth century. This does not necessarily indicate a ‘dependence’ on the local state inimical to entrepreneurship, but a more practical problem of a lack of collateral, often provided in other areas by property, to provide security for the loans required for a business start-up. Further, high rates of public rented housing may simply indicate a poverty stricken region unlikely to be fertile ground for entrepreneurial activity. Second, although the apparent lack of dynamism in the economy cannot be simply explained away by the former industrial structure, although other old industrial areas in the north of England also have low rates of new firm formation, some points are relevant. New firm formation seems to be associated with regions which have substantial experience of small firms, and most new firms are small firms. The old industrial areas of the west of Scotland do not fit this pattern. Some of the most obvious examples of Scottish entrepreneurship were in the booming economy of

Aberdeen where local businessmen such as Stewart Milne and Ian Wood developed their construction and engineering enterprises. 1 Third, the direction the Scottish economy has taken in the last thirty years may also have inhibited new firm formation. The attraction of foreign investment, much of it encouraged by government agencies and supported by Conservative and Labour administrations, seemed to be one of the success stories of Scottish economic history from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Contained within this, however, were some factors which may have held back entrepreneurship. In particular, since the incoming multinational corporations brought few research and development functions to Scotland and, even within Britain strategic management functions are centralised in the south east of

1 Newlands, ‘Oil economy’, 138, 143. England, this has bequeathed a social structure slightly deficient in social groups 1 and 2. The frequent takeovers of Scottish firms which were such a feature of the

1980s also had a similar effect in that they led to a withdrawal of key people with executive management skills. Both these factors may have operated to the detriment of ‘enterprise’. 1

A number of qualifications can be added to this tale of woe. First, some of these indicators have changed markedly since this debate took place in the 1980s, the pattern of housing being the most obvious. Secondly, the role of education system— especially the expansion of higher education and the modest commercialisation of research in universities leading to spin-off companies—has undergone significant change. Although more than 50 per cent of Scottish school leavers now enter some form of tertiary education this has not yet filtered through to very high levels of graduates in the work-force. Although that change is underway it has a long history of relatively low levels of graduate employment to overcome before it becomes fully evident. Third, there is a regional dimension to this issue, there are parts of Scotland where rates of new firm formation were reasonably healthy, suggesting that the problem is not one which is deeply engrained in Scottish culture, or attributable to some unique ‘Scottish factor’. In the 1980s the Grampian and Lothian regions performed much better than the older industrial regions by some statistical tests of new firm formation. This is consistent with some of the earlier points as these are areas with more diverse economic structures, including substantial rural areas; relatively high levels of smaller firms and historically low levels, for Scotland at least,

1 This section draws on Ashcroft et. al. ‘ New firm formation’, 395-409; Beesley & Hamilton, ‘Births and deaths of manufacturing firms’, 281-88; Storey & Johnson, ‘Regional variations in entrepreneurship’, 161-73 of local authority housing. 1 There is also evidence that in more recent years this regional pattern is shifting and that the older industrial areas of central Scotland are beginning to increase their per capita rate of business start-ups. It is true that

Edinburgh is performing best in this regard but Glasgow is not far behind and areas like Lanarkshire and West Lothian are also performing better than the average. A further point is that although the business fertility rate in Scotland is still relatively low compared to the rest of Great Britain, although perhaps not to areas with a comparable industrial history, the level of mortality is lower. This might be taken as evidence of a relative risk aversion in that business formation does not readily take place unless the prospects for success are fairly good. The differential in business mortality does not fully compensate for the gap in fertility, although that gap is narrowing. 2 The most recent statistics confirm this short historical trend and they also

reveal that levels of innovation in Scottish business are reasonably healthy. Statistics

on earnings from intellectual property, commercialisation in Higher Education

institutions, filing of patents and the introduction of new products and processes show

Scottish enterprises in a good light, providing further evidence against the accusation

of culture of dependency in Scotland. 3 Finally, massive effort has been expended in improving the environment and infrastructure of central Scotland in the period since the 1980s, although much of this was controversial and often not as successful as was initially hoped, there has been a significant transformation without entirely eradicating historic problems. In contrast to the efforts made in this direction in the inter-war period this task has been approached by government, local authorities and the private sector in partnership.

1 Beesley & Hamilton, ‘Births and deaths of manufacturing firms’, 286. 2 Peat & Boyle, Illustrated guide to the Scottish economy , 72-8. 3 Scottish Economic Statistics, 2006 , 52-72. The role of government in the economy

Another caricature of the Scottish economy is that the government has been particularly interventionist north of the border, responding to a Scottish lobby, parachuting in large industrial projects from Dounreay to Linwood, most of which have failed, in a desperate attempt to shore up Scottish industry. Some versions of this accusation even go so far as to link the role of the state with the alleged lack of entrepreneneurship. In 2005 the chairman of Scottish Enterprise was reported as arguing that the scale of government spending in Scotland had the effect of militating against private sector activity through an alleged ‘crowding out’ process. Although it is by no means clear that there is a clear relationship between low levels of public spending and corporate taxation and economic growth a negative perception of state activity is current in the Scottish media and in political debate. In Scotland public spending was just under 50 per cent of GDP in 2005 (the UK figure was 44 per cent), much higher than the ‘Celtic Tiger’ of Ireland (34 per cent) but lower than Sweden and Denmark at 56 and 57 per cent respectively. Switzerland, with a very low growth rate, has levels of government expenditure comparable to Ireland; providing evidence that there is no necessary link between growth and low levels of public spending. 1

It was certainly the case that government was interventionist in this period, aside from the large-scale policies of nationalisation and the creation of the welfare state governments of this period also had clear objectives in this regard. The 1944 White

Paper on employment declared ‘Government accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment.’ Also redolent of this atmosphere was the 1947 Agriculture Act which explicitly aimed to

1 Birch & Cumbers, ‘Public sector spending’, 36-56 create conditions for maximum food production ‘at minimum prices consistently with proper remuneration and living conditions for farmers and workers in agriculture and an adequate return on capital invested in the industry’. 1 The heyday of this policy

came in the 1960s and 1970s with governments of both parties committed to the idea,

although using different tactics. Since the election of the Conservative government in

1979 the political commitment and expenditure devoted to regional policy, for

example, has collapsed and a new infrastructure created around the idea of

‘enterprise’ has replaced older institutions based on the idea of ‘development’.

Government intervention was not confined to these special policies, however.

Economists have estimated that the annual cost of regional policy in Scotland in the

1960s and 1970s was only around 4 to 5 per cent of total government expenditure and

was dwarfed by grants to local authorities, activity by nationalised industries and

agricultural and industrial subsidies. None of these were peculiar to Scotland,

although industrial, but not agricultural, structure probably meant that these forms of

expenditure were relatively high north of the border. What is abundantly clear is that

regional policy expenditure diminished markedly in the 1980s, from £369m to

£103m, according to one calculation. 2 In addition the nationalised sector of the

economy shrank as a range of industries were returned to the private sector, central

government payments to local authorities were cut, and expenditure on public housing

was reduced. That this represented a profound shift in priorities can be gauged by the

fact that this was a time of rising unemployment and manufacturing decline, two

processes which earlier regional policies had been designed to mitigate.

1 PP 1943-4 VIII, Employment policy Cmd 6527; Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 198. 2 Lythe & Majmudar, Renaissance , 119-39, esp. table 5.1 on 121; Lee, Scotland and the U.K. , 186. There are several strands of activity which have to be disentangled to understand this theme in Scottish economic history. The starting point is the fact that initial government intervention, very modest even by the standards of the activity of the

Conservative governments of the 1980s, was directed at areas with high levels of unemployment. This was true of the Special Areas Acts of the 1930s and also of the

Distribution of Industry Act of 1945. Whether this was the right approach, and there is an argument that concentration on areas with relatively weak economic structures was not the best policy, it was favourable to Scotland due to its history of high unemployment. The Scottish Office had relatively weak powers in this area and the administration of this kind of regional policy was through the Board of Trade in

London, although a network of Scottish Offices existed. Although this form of activity was stronger in the 1945 to 1951 period and again after 1964 under Labour governments than in the 1950s under the Unionists, and a change of emphasis was signalled by the more focused Local Employment Acts of the early 1960s, there was a broad consensus on the applicability of some form of regional policy in an attempt to counter both historic problems and shifts in the economy. The Toothill report of 1961, commissioned by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry), also signalled a change of emphasis in that the author, managing director of Ferranti, argued that regional policy should be directed towards the promotion of growth rather than dealing with the consequences of unemployment. 1 Toothill had also recommended

reorganisation of the Scottish Office to prioritise the task of economic planning. In the

event, although a new Scottish Development Department was created in 1962, this

was largely administrative window dressing, no powers were transferred from London

to Edinburgh and other departments—especially Agriculture, which was responsible

1 Inquiry into the Scottish economy 1960-1961: Report of a Committee under the Chairmanship of J.N.Toothill (Edinburgh, 1961) for the highlands—retained ‘development’ functions.1 Overall, Scottish

administration was quite weak in industrial and economic policy which was, despite

some augmentation of the powers of St Andrews House in the 1950s, heavily

centralised in London. The best example of the results of this strand of policy comes

from the opening of the Rootes car plant at Linwood in Renfrewshire in 1963. The

history of this plant is a virtual barometer of the industrial policies of various

governments from the 1960s to the 1980s. Its opening had been encouraged by the

Conservative government who wished to create a market for the steel being produced

by the new strip mill at Ravenscraig. The location of this factory was entirely due to

government policy; left to their own devices the company would probably have

located in the English midlands. Linwood was to produce a new small car, the

Hillman Imp, which proved to be mechanically unreliable and commercially

unprofitable. The plant itself was dogged by industrial relations problems and

commercial insecurity. Rootes was steadily taken over by Chrysler in the 1960s and

when the UK branch of that company revealed its financial weakness in the mid-

1970s the government, strongly urged by Willie Ross, was left with little option but to

subsidise it in order to avoid adding over 7000 workers to the dole queues in the West

of Scotland at a time when the SNP was on the advance and arguing that the Union

was damaging to Scotland’s economic prospects. In addition, Ross could not afford a

large-scale closure at just the moment he was inaugurating the new Scottish

Development Agency, such an event would have virtually decapitated the SDA before

it had begun its work. The plant was taken over by Peugeot and when closure was

threatened once more in the early 1980s a Conservative government opposed to

regional policy, hostile to subsidising the car industry and uninterested in the Scottish

1 Alexander, ‘Highlands and Islands Development Board’, 214-32; Carter, ‘Six years on’, 55-78; Levitt, ‘Origins of the Scottish Development Department’, 42-63 constitutional question, made no real effort to intervene and Linwood was closed in

1981 with significant implications for Ravenscraig.1

Regional policy was not, of course confined to Scotland but traversed most of the

heavily industrialised areas of south Wales and the north of England. One

distinctively Scottish feature, however, was the treatment of the highlands. From the

1880s to the 1920s governments had attempted to deal with the perceived problems of

this area through land tenure reform. This gave way in the 1930s to a recognition that

concepts like unemployment could be applied to the crofting counties and in the post-

war period a new approach emerged. This was evident in 1948 with the scheduling of

areas at the north and south ends of the Great Glen for assistance under the

Distribution of Industry Act, but more particularly in 1965 with the creation of the

Highlands and Islands Development Board with the objective of stimulating economic

activity in the north. This had been trailed by Willie Ross as an initiative to salve the

conscience of Scotland over the highland clearances and emigration, rhetoric similar

to Gladstonian pronouncements in justification of the Crofters’ Act of 1886, and these

expectations occasioned disappointment when it became evident that the Board—a

merchant bank with a social conscience, in the words of its chairman—had few

powers to deal with festering grievances over the land question. The Board became

associated, perhaps unfairly, with a series of large scale industrial projects—a pulp

mill near Fort William and a new aluminium smelter at Invergordon in Easter Ross—

in the very areas which had been identified as potential growth areas under the

Distribution of Industry Act in 1948. 2 Both plants had failed by the early 1980s

1 Wilks, Industrial policy , 77-8, 88-9, 118-20, 136-7, 156-62, 257-9; Dunnett, Decline of the British motor industry , 76-81, 102-7, 136-7, 163-4. 2for the late 1940s see TNA: PRO, BT106/45, BT177/93, 192; Levitt, ‘Regenerating the Scottish highlands’, 21-39 causing massive employment problems in areas which had few alternative industries to cope with the enlarged populations which had been one result of their establishment in the first place. The oil industry had an important effect in the highlands, both in terms of construction yards sited in or around the region and the potential for migration to work offshore, a modern adaptation of a very old strategy for highland economic survival. During the late 1980s and 1990s, as the HIDB was transformed into Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a more sensitive approach was developed, one which took greater cognisance of ‘traditional’ industries and smaller scale developments. Advocates of crofting were very vocal during this period as it seemed to provide a model of low impact and environmentally sensitive agriculture which in its central tenet of security of tenure could provide an antidote to demographic decline. Some evidence of localised reversal of the long-standing trend of highland depopulation seems to be apparent, but this is due to in-migration; low rates of natural growth and continuing out-migration continue to be evident.

The theme of ‘development’, implying government involvement, direction and responsibility, was continued in the 1970s with the formation of the Scottish

Development Agency in 1975—a more tangible memorial of that government than the Scotland Act of 1978. The agency had three objectives: industrial investment, on a commercial basis rather than through ‘subsidy’; provision of factory buildings; and environmental improvement. The last was a particularly important function as the process of de-industrialisation had left huge acreages of vacant and derelict land in central Scotland which could not be put to new economic use until it was cleared, cleansed and provided with infrastructure. 1 The best example of this kind of work

1 McCrone & Randall, ‘The Scottish Development Agency’, 233-44 was in the Glasgow East Area Renewal (G.E.A.R.) project from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. This project has been seen as the archetypal example of the activity of the interventionist state, although the private sector was heavily involved, and has been subject to comment from a variety of quarters. Some see it as a ‘confidence trick’ which involved the application of no new resources; others see it as grand top-down initiative which took no account of the view of the local population; others still, while acknowledging the environmental and housing improvements, argued that the jobs which were created as a result of G.E.A.R. were of little benefit to the largely unskilled local population and merely drew in commuters. 1 Despite these competing views the overall significance of G.E.A.R. is twofold. First it became a symbol of the kind of government initiative which the Conservative government of the 1980s did not wish to repeat (especially when there was no prospect of an electoral dividend); second, it provided evidence for those who argue that attempting economic development of a particular space is wrongheaded as it does little to break down concentrations of poverty compared to policies which encourage mobility 2.

Agriculture

The history of Scottish agriculture since the Second World War is a good case study

of many of the themes discussed in this chapter, especially the role of government,

and it introduces a new and important theme in Scottish history in the shape of the

intervention of European political structures. Agriculture has declined as an employer

and its contribution to Scottish GDP has shrunk from over 5 per cent to around 1 per

cent over the period since 1945. Nevertheless, the importance of the task of domestic

food production, as opposed to expensive imports, in the 1940s and 1950s meant that

1 Pacione, Glasgow , 222-4; Orton, ‘Whatever happened to G.E.A.R’, 27-30; Nairn, ‘G.E.A.R.’, 59-72; Booth et. al. , ‘Organizational redundancy’, 56-72; McCrone, ‘Urban renewal’, 919-38 2 Glaeser, ‘Four challenges for Scotland’s cities’, 88-9 farmers’ activities were protected and subsidised by the government. Rather like the early post-war regional policies this was predicated upon memories of the depression of the 1930s rather than a rational appreciation of current problems and future prospects. 1 Farmers were supported by a system of guaranteed prices which had begun during the Second World War, but which expanded to cover about 90 per cent of Scottish agricultural produce. These were the outcome of complex annual negotiations between the agricultural ministries and the farmers’ organisations. When the United Kingdom eventually entered the EEC (as it then was) in 1973 the agricultural sector was one of the principal areas affected by the new structures. The

Common Agricultural Policy, which grew to dominate the finances of the EEC, supported farmers in a quite different way from the UK regime established in the

1940s. Minimum prices were set by the Council of Ministers, if market prices dropped below this level intervention was triggered and the commodity was purchased and stored, helping to create the ‘food mountains’ which became important in the popular perception of the EEC. The Common Agricultural Policy effectively charged the consumer for agricultural support and, among its many faults, it has been less effective than domestic policy at protecting the incomes of farmers. In the 1990s, in an attempt to reduce the intensity of farming and diminish food surpluses, a new regime was introduced. This paid subsidies directly to the farmer, especially arable farmers, and attempted to control the level of production, even making payments to farmers to ‘set aside’ land (i.e. desist from cultivating it). This was a reversal of the policy of paying farmers to produce and changed the balance of the relationship between farmers and the public. 2 As one farmer put it: ‘farmers were previously used

to having the nation dependant on them for supplies of food, now they find

1 NAS, AF45/454/1, Minute by Mr [Matthew] Campbell on postwar agricultural policy, date? 2 Scottish Economic Bulletin, 53 (1996), 21-30; Scottish Economic Report (January, 2001), 78-83. themselves dependant on the public for their support’, and another wrote that the policy ‘smacked of big brother not only watching what you do but controlling it as well’. 1 The shift in policy is also redolent of a move away for the perception that the task of farmers is to produce food and towards the explicit articulation of their environmental responsibilities, something which farmers argued that they had always paid attention to. As well as these general trends which have tended to marginalise farmers and dislocate them from the consumers who purchase their food in supermarkets, the sector has been subject to short term influences. Sometimes these were weather-related, such as the harsh winter of 1947 or the exceedingly wet harvest season of 1985, but more recently farming was brought into the public eye through the results of the crises induced by the positing of a link between BSE and human health in 1996 and the disastrous outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001. The cost of the latter to the rural economy, including tourism and other activities, was estimated in 2002 at nearly £500million. 2

Oil

No aspect of post-war economic history is as controversial as the impact of the oil

industry on the Scottish economy. We have already seen the way in which the

discovery of oil reserves in the North sea transformed the nature of political debate in

Scotland in the early 1970s, but what was its impact on the economy? The peak of its

influence came in the decade from June 1975—when the first oil from the North Sea,

the Argyll field to be specific, was brought ashore in the UK, initially by tanker but

later through a pipeline with landfall at Cruden bay, a quiet village north of Aberdeen,

1 McHenry, ‘Understanding the farmer’s view’, 80; Scottish Farmer , 10 Oct. 1992, 16. 2 Royal Society of Edinburgh, Inquiry into foot and mouth disease in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2002), see http://wwwma.hw.ac.uk/RSE hitherto notable only for its excellent golf course. 1 A decade of vast investment, huge construction projects and a new form of work in an extremely hostile environment was profoundly altered in late 1985 when the price of oil began to fall—as Middle

Eastern countries abandoned their strict policy of limiting supplies—from $27 per barrel to a low of only $6-8 per barrel the following year. There had been oil price crises before, but they were of a different nature: in 1973 the Organisation of

Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had, for international political reasons connected to western support for Israel, limited the supply of oil sending the price shooting up to nearly $40 per barrel. This crisis, coming before North Sea oil began to flow, had important ramifications in Britain, precipitating an energy crisis and giving the coal miners more political leverage than ever before. More positively this period of high prices opened the door to development of the North sea sector, the costs of which were astronomical due to the difficulty of the physical environment. A further hike in oil prices came in the early 1980s, also as a result of Middle-East conflict, this time between Iran and Iraq. 2 These three events demonstrated clearly that, although some may have considered the oil to be Scottish, the forces which controlled the market decidedly were not, and the industry was vulnerable to international pressures.

Despite this, during the period of expansion in the 1970s oil was a source of Scottish economic optimism. By the early 1980s Britain was self sufficient in oil and just before the price collapse of 1985 about 50 per cent of production was being exported. 3

The impact of the oil industry on the Scottish economy is difficult to measure, but there are two important starting points. The first is that, contrary to most of the industries which have driven the Scottish economy, oil exploration and production is

1 Harvie, Fool’s gold , 132; Mackie, Oilmen , 132. 2 Pike, ‘Oil price crisis’, 56-7. 3 Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom , 103. much more intense in its use of capital than labour. The bank loan of £370 million which was required for the development of the Forties field in the mid-1970s was then the biggest granted in Britain. 1 Much of the business activity around the industry was a search for capital to exploit the possibilities of oil. Despite the novelty of the industry sometimes this involved historical continuities. Alastair Dunnett was persuaded by the proprietor of the Scotsman , Roy Thomson, to leave the editor’s chair and represent his company’s interests in the oil industry. His main task was to raise money for the development of the Piper and Claymore fields for which Thomson, in combination with Armand Hammer of Occidental, had acquired the rights. Dunnett, typically, argued that the business should be conducted from Scotland and he relocated from North Bridge to the West End of Edinburgh and that traditional centre of venture capitalism, Charlotte Square, ‘an apt location for a new power in the oil industry’. 2

Piper Alpha

Compared, for example, to the mining industry the experiences of workers in the oil industry were not prominent in the public consciousness; the industry was, after all, offshore. The general perception, by no means universally accurate, was that there was money to be made for those who were willing to endure the strange lifestyle. All this changed on 6 July 1988 when a drilling rig operated by Armand Hammer’s

Occidental company, Piper Alpha, exploded with the loss of 166 lives. Suddenly the general public knew what the oil workers had always known, that this was a dangerous environment where the rights of workers were tenuous and safety considerations were not always prioritised. The press contained horrific stories from

1 Mackie, Oilmen, 134. 2 Dunnett, Among friends , 171. men who had to jump hundreds of feet into the burning sea to escape from the blazing rig. The lifeboats had not been launched and the heat was so intense that helicopters could not get close enough to lift men from the rig. Some offshore folklore had identified Piper Alpha as a particularly dangerous rig, and there had been a fatal accident there in 1982; but one experienced worker, Bob Ballantyne, suggested:

‘Piper Alpha was no better and no worse than any other. Better, in fact, than some.

But they were all the same—they all needed work done on them.’ 1 The aftermath of the disaster also exposed the myth of the fabulously well-paid offshore worker.

Although only a minority of the victims came from Aberdeen it is in that city, most strongly associated with the industry which had taken their lives, that the memory of the disaster is most potent; most notably through a striking memorial in Hazlehead

Park. What were the long term implications of the disaster for the industry? A judicial enquiry chaired by Lord Cullen, a Court of Session judge, provided a forum for the families of the victims and pressure groups representing workers to give evidence about lax safety procedures, complacency and a culture of minimal inspection by the

Department of Energy. Lord Cullen was not exaggerating when he reported that there was a ‘superficial attitude to the assessment of the risk of a major hazard.’ 2 Compared to the scale of the disaster the outcomes seemed almost prosaic. The most significant was that the Health and Safety Executive took over responsibility for inspection from the Department of Energy. There was no legal regime for corporate prosecution; the much criticised Occidental sold up its North Sea interests and Armand Hammer died soon after the publication of Cullen’s report. Industrial relations moved closer to the forefront of the industry as the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee which emerged from the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster organised strikes in 1989 and 1990.

1 Quoted in Mackie, Oilmen , 183 2 Quoted in Harvie, Fool’s gold , 334 Prior to this trades unions had found the North Sea difficult territory. This was a new industry without the history of sectional interests and identities based on craft and skill which were present in, for examples, the shipyards or the engineering industry which had a long history of trades unionism. In addition many of the corporations involved were from the USA and had little tradition of workers’ representation. Even among UK companies there may have been a determination to exploit the novelty of the industry as an opportunity to create a non-union culture as a contrast with onshore industrial relations strife.

The second point is that the impact was regionally specific, and, in contrast to much earlier industrial development in Scotland, the east and north of the country were the principal beneficiaries. This took several forms. Much of the construction of exploration and production platforms took place in yards on the east coast, notably at

Methil in Fife, Arderseir just West of Inverness and Nigg in Easter Ross. This brought new population and the novel patterns and high wages of large-scale industrial work to new. Nowhere was this more evident than at Kishorn in Wester Ross where the deep water was ideal for the construction of a gargantuan concrete oil production structure for the Ninian field, at the time the largest moveable man-made structure on the planet. The influx of a workforce of 3000 had a disturbing impact on a small crofting community. Other large developments included the pipeline landfall at

Cruden Bay and refining facilities at Grangemouth and at Mossmoran in Fife.

Nevertheless, the principal site of the economic impact of the oil industry in Scotland was Aberdeen, although it was by no means straightforward or unproblematic. By the mid-1980s, just before the collapse in the oil price there were around 35,000 oil related jobs in the city, amounting to 25 per cent of the total, and a further 25,000 jobs ‘dependant’ on the oil industry. Oil also had a positive impact on male earnings in the city and a steep rise in property prices. This positive experience would seem to have been a male one. Women did not share in these new highly paid jobs; although female employment rates increased faster in the city than in Scotland as a whole, many of the new jobs were on the margins of the industry. There may also have been as

‘displacement effect’ which has made it difficult for enterprises in other areas of the economy to compete in terms of wages and has led to a shortage of labour in some sectors. 1 Such was the level of prosperity in the city, although it was unevenly distributed, that Aberdeen was taken out of the regime of regional policy assistance in the early 1980s. Although the impact of the oil industry continues to make Aberdeen a distinctive corner of the Scottish economy the post-1985 settling down of activity and the difficulties experienced after the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 have diminished its predominance and in the increasing contribution of the service sector it has begun to return to the wider Scottish pattern. 2

1 Harris et. al. , ‘Who gains from structural change?’, 271-83 2 Newlands, ‘The oil economy’, 140, 151. Chapter eleven: politics in the age of unionism

If the Second World War has been neglected by Scottish historians the same may be said for political history from 1945 to the late 1960s. 1 This seems an uninteresting landscape compared to what came before and after; politics seemed mundane and a

‘moment of British nationalism’ was apparent. 2 In Scottish electoral history the period between 1945 and 1970 falls into two phases: from 1945 to 1959 Scottish results largely followed British trends; from 1959 divergence appeared, with Labour performing better in Scotland than in England and the reverse applying for the

Unionists. 3 Although the nature of divergence changed in the 1970s with the advance of the SNP and the precipitous decline of the Conservatives after 1979, it has remained a fact since 1959. This brought a new significance to Scottish politics, with the Labour governments of 1964 and 1974 relying on Scottish and Welsh MPs for their overall majority.

What lay behind this distinct Scottish electoral pattern? Some of the features which explain Unionist strength in the inter-war period continued to apply. One was the continuing Unionism of the press. 4 The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald

represented slightly varying forms of that doctrine based on their contrasting roots in

Glasgow and Edinburgh. Moreover, the more popular press was also favourable to the

Unionists; the Daily Record , despite its historical connection with the radical North

British Daily Mail of the late nineteenth century, and prior to its purchase by the

Mirror group in 1956, was a Tory organ, albeit a dull one. More exciting was the

1 Two exceptions are Fry, Patronage and principle & Hutchison, Scottish politics 2 The title of an article by Harvie which is critical of the concept 3 a theme given emphasis by McCrone, Understanding Scotland , 104-14 4 for a general summary see Hutchison, Scottish politics , 100-1 Scottish Daily Express ; Beaverbrook’s populist organ had existed since 1928 and few opportunities were lost to indulge the proprietor’s socially conservative and Unionist view of Scottish life. For example, in 1957 he responded to proposed changes in the

Church of Scotland and rapprochement with the Church of England by raising a scare about ‘Bishops in the Kirk’. 1 Local newspapers—such as the Dundee Courier , the

Press and Journal (Aberdeen) and the Inverness Courier —were also broadly

supportive of the Unionists. There were changes in the 1960s, notably with the

relaunch and expanded circulation of the Daily Record as a supporter of the Labour

party, but the Unionists retained an advantage. Religion has also attracted those

seeking to explain the rise and fall of Unionism in this period; sometimes a rather too

easy assumption has been made that this can be mapped onto the expansion of the

Church of Scotland in the early 1950s and its subsequent decline. Other more subtle

accounts place protestantism at the centre of an ideology of Unionism which chimed

with Scottish identity in the 1950s. 2 There are problems with this explanation,

however; there is plenty evidence that the Unionists were the party of choice for

voters with a strong connection to the Church of Scotland, but this does not mean that

the Conservative vote was primarily composed of active protestants. 3 There were

areas of the country where there was an equally strong protestant connection with the

Labour party. Seats like Glasgow Govan and Bridgeton, with strong popular

protestant popular cultures, were not happy hunting grounds for the Unionists. Neither

were the Western Isles, the most populous of which (Lewis) has very high levels of

presbyterian church membership—although Free Church rather than Church of

1 HLRO, Beaverbrook MSS, H/193, H/201 for correspondence of Jul. 1957 to May 1958 between Beaverbrook and A.C. Trotter of the Scottish Daily Express [ SDE ] on this matter; the issue received prominence in the SDE in May and Jun. 1957 2 Kellas, ‘The party in Scotland’, 677-8; Finlay, ‘Scottish Conservatism’, 122; Kendrick & McCrone, ‘Politics in a cold climate’, 595-6 3 Seawright & Curtice, ‘Decline of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’, 325-331; Bochel & Denver, ‘Religion and voting’ was an early example of a sceptical view Scotland. Further, the Church of Scotland itself was changing in the 1940s and 1950s and Unionists were no longer so well represented among the leading clergy.

Charismatic figures in the Church of Scotland included George Macleod and Murdo

Ewen MacDonald, whose political outlook was at odds with that of John White and

Alex Martin. The Church of Scotland, although somewhat reluctantly, was even prepared to sanction an experimental ministry aimed at dealing with the social problems of young people in the Gorbals. This was taken forward by Geoffrey Shaw who later became a Labour Councillor and leader of Strathclyde Regional Council in the 1970s. 1 This was not the same church over which White had presided in the

1930s. So, although the Unionists were able to appeal to some protestants, this is not an adequate explanation for their pattern of support in the period from 1945 to 1970 and the almost institutional connection between the Kirk and the Unionists which existed in the 1920s had melted away. By the late 1960s (and again in the 1980s) the

Unionists came to be regarded as an English, even an anti-Scottish, party. Nothing could contrast more strongly with their outlook in the 1950s. Although they were opposed to Scottish home rule, among their policies since the 1930s was the expansion of administrative devolution and this was also pursued in the 1950s with the numerical strengthening of the Scottish Office ministerial team and the expansion of its responsibilities. 2 They were also adept, much more than the Labour party, at

‘playing the Scottish card’, even on issues like nationalisation, which they portrayed

as anti-Scottish. Most striking was their ability to extract political profit from the

housing question in the 1950s; although some of the roots of their policy had been

laid in the late 1930s this was a striking post-war raid on Labour territory. This helped

the Unionists in the decade after the war to expand their Scottish share of the vote

1 Ferguson, George MacLeod ; MacDonald, Padre Mac , 103; Ferguson, Geoff , 49-154 2 Seldon, Churchill’s Indian summer , 131 from 41 per cent to 50 per cent and their number of Scottish seats from twenty-seven to thirty-six. As well as the economic cycle a strong explanation for the pattern of

Scottish politics has been the expansion of the state. This does not indicate, as

Conservatives of the 1980s thought, that Scotland had a feckless culture of state dependency, but that the economic structure was skewed towards the nationalised industries. Further, the welfare state, especially the NHS, and local government were important employers. Outside Edinburgh and Glasgow private education was marginal; above all, public sector housing was unusually prevalent in Scotland. Even here, however, caveats must be entered: we should be wary of the reductionist assumption that every council-house tenant or local government employee was an automatic Labour voter. It should also be recognised that the Unionist party in the

1950s did much, a very great deal in the case of housing, to create this powerful public sector. Finally, if the creation of this public sector was problematic for the

Unionists in the long term, its dismantling in the 1980s was immediately disastrous. 1

It is difficult to square the myth of working-class Unionism motivated by

protestantism with instinctive Labour voting motivated by welfare and public service.

Scottishness may have assisted the Unionists in the 1950s when Labour was highly

centralist and the SNP marginal, but the picture changed in the 1960s, even more in

the 1970s, when that party acquired credibility and an organisation. National identity

is not a complete explanation for the rise of nationalism in the late 1960s and 1970s,

support for independence was far less than support for the SNP at the polls. Social and

generational change, however, disturbed the foundations of the post-war party system

in the 1960s. The electorate got younger as those born in the demographic surge in the

late 1940s reached voting age—lowered to eighteen years in 1966. The decline in

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics , 114-15; Paterson, Scottish education , 140-2 manufacturing industry, the rise of the public and service sector, the expansion of higher education and the decline of religious adherence, especially among protestants, created a new class of voters less imbued with the certainties of their parents, more sceptical of traditional party appeals and tempted by new forces such as Nationalism.

Oddly, Scotland became more supportive of the Labour party over the period that the manual working class contracted and its class structure converged with England. 1 A more simple explanation for sudden effusions of support for the SNP, such as at

Hamilton in 1967, are local factors such, as gross complacency on the part of the

Labour party, and a wider sense of dissatisfaction with the main parties. 2

Labour politics

At the end of the Great War the return to unrestrained political partisanship had been delayed by the continuation of the wartime coalition and it was the mid-1920s before the real effects of the war on Scottish politics were clear. In the 1945 election the parties did not let their recent history of partnership prevent strident debate. Further, the result of the election established the contours of the Scottish political landscape for a generation. The principal feature was the almost complete domination of Labour and the Unionists, they regularly achieved more than 95 per cent of the votes and, until a modest Liberal revival in the early 1950s, achieved almost total domination of the constituencies. Neither the Liberals nor the SNP had the resources to mount a nationwide challenge and could find only a small number of candidates. On the left the ILP withered away after the death of James Maxton, its unique and charismatic leader, in 1946. The Communists, in the shape of Willie Gallacher, had taken the

1 comments on this issue, from a variety of points of view, are provided by McCrone, Understanding Scotland , 121-2; Dickson, ‘Scotland is different, OK?’, 53-70; Kendrick, ‘Scotland, social change and politics’, 71-90; Foster, ‘A proletarian nation?’, 202-6; Knox, Industrial nation , 296-307 2 this was debated at the time, see McLean, ‘Rise and fall’, 357-72; Bochel & Denver, ‘Decline of the S.N.P.’, 311-16 mining seat of West Fife in 1935 and retained it in 1945; but this challenge faded after

1950 when Willie Hamilton, whose orthodox right-wing views were spiced by his anti-royalism, defeated Gallacher. Henceforward, the Labour party retained a vice like grip on left wing politics in Scotland, avoiding internal splits in the 1950s and the

1980s, before the advent of the Scottish parliament with its proportional voting system gave the Scottish Socialist Party a chance of representation. The leading figure in the Scottish party exemplified the way in which the party sought to control the scene by ruffling few feathers and setting even fewer pulses racing. Arthur Woodburn had been a conscientious objector during the Great War, but, with a background as an accountant, linguist and party bureaucrat, moved to a more orthodox position in the inter-war period, before entering parliament in 1939. After serving in the Scottish

Office under Thomas Johnston, he became Secretary of State in 1947. Eschewing the innovations of his former boss he perceived it to be his job to implement policy, rather than to assuage Scottish grievances.

I knew it was possible to build a reputation at the Scottish Office by

pretending to be … a Scottish St George fighting the English dragon in the

shape of my colleagues in Cabinet but I made clear in my first speech to the

Scottish Council of the Labour party that I felt this attitude was to demean the

importance of the Secretary of State being a member of the Cabinet. He was

not there only to keep his colleagues informed on Scotland, its progress,

problems and needs but to accept equal responsibility with his other

colleagues for running the whole country. Scotland did not need to beg for

favours so long as she had rights. 1

1 NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc 7656/4/1/145

This suited the centralist ethos of the 1945 government with its emphasis on economic planning and nationalisation, but it gave strength to the criticism that Labour’s unionism was damaging to Scotland. A more general sense that the 1945 government, despite its huge achievements in health and welfare policy, had not quite lived up to expectations, led to reduction in its majority in 1950 and loss of office in 1951.

Woodburn’s fate was even worse than that of the government: his unimaginative and aggressive response to the Scottish Covenant movement led to replacement by the smoother Hector McNeil in 1950. 1 Woodburn’s comrade from the inter-war period,

Patrick Dollan, felt that this was a decision taken in London without much

understanding of Scottish conditions and an assumption that loyalty could be taken for

granted. Atlee, however, as his Musselburgh speech in 1945 and his despatch of two

Scottish Secretaries showed, was not an uncritical admirer of the party in Scotland. 2

Labour in Scotland in the generation after the Second World War was not a spectacular outfit. Aside from Thomas Johnston it had not had a good war and was not an important participant in the intellectual and political drive to the victory in

1945, or in the achievements of Atlee’s government. There was no figure to play the role of John Wheatley in 1924 and this lack of distinction was complemented by a dull conformity. The ageing former councillors and trades union officials who lurked on the back benches were not likely participants in the Bevanite rebellions of the

1950s. Whilst this placidity may have been welcomed by the leadership, lack of creativity was a problem for Labour in Scotland. The party’s appeal was overwhelmingly ‘British’; as in the 1930s Scottish home rule was not emphasised, and even when the issue was prominent among the public, in the late 1940s, Labour

1 Levitt, ‘Britain, the Scottish Covenant movement and devolution’, 48 2 NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc. 7656/6/4, Dollan to Woodburn, 9 Mar. 1950 was hostile. This episode (considered below) reveals a hostility not only to Scottish nationalism, but also to coalition building: Scottish Labour was particularly ineffective at political cooperation. The post-war home-rule movement was controlled by elements which were perceived as non-Labour and, by implication, anti-Labour, and to be opposed as a reflex. 1 This was evident in the devolution debates in the

1970s and only overcome with reluctance in the late 1990s.

Some elements of the Labour outlook in the immediate aftermath of the Second

World War seemed to be a denial of important parts of the party’s tradition in

Scotland. One manifestation was their attitude to the land question. Although the

Labour governments in the inter-war period had had little opportunity to deal with this

classic Scottish grievance, ideas such as land nationalisation remained an important

part of their rhetoric, but even this seemed to disappear after 1945. Although the Atlee

government legislated to nationalise the profits which could be made from increasing

land values, the idea of land nationalisation as a method of social reform was silenced.

This was the cause of much frustration among party activists in the Scottish highlands

and was evident in 1948 when employees on Lord Brocket’s Knoydart estate raided,

or occupied, some of his land in protest against their poverty and exclusion, the

Scottish Office did not take their side. The change in emphasis can be seen by the fact

that, almost simultaneous with the Knoydart controversy, Development Area status

was extended to the Inverness, Dingwall and Fort William regions. The highland

problem was to be solved through economic and regional policy rather than land

reform. There was a rational case for this shift based on the relative failure of land

settlement in the inter-war period, but it was a noticeable alteration in the attitude of a

1 Keating & Blieman, Labour and Scottish nationalism , 137 party which had inherited the radical Liberal anti-landlord tradition. Lack of real interest in this area of policy was confirmed with the appointment of a Commission of

Enquiry into Crofting Conditions in 1950. 1 Even the potential for securing some extra support in the highlands, a notable area of Labour weakness in 1945, did not stimulate action.

Labour’s difficulties in Scotland in the late 1940s, and the reason for the poorer performance in 1950 and 1951, related to the austere social conditions which had continued since 1945. Although Labour managed to gather more votes in 1950 and

1951 than in 1945, they fell behind the Unionists in terms of votes and seats. It would be 1959 before they caught up in the latter category and 1964 in the former. By elections results became increasingly foreboding: at Edinburgh east, where there were two contests in the 1945 parliament, the Labour vote was 10 per cent down on the

1945 result; Glasgow Gorbals was even worse, although the presence of a Communist did not help. 2 The achievements of the Labour government of 1945 to 1951 were

impressive but they have to be set against the difficulties which came with the

difficult environment in which the government were operating. The continuation of

rationing—meat, butter and cheese were not de-rationed until 1954—the fuel crisis of

February and March 1947 and the extremely harsh winter weather made the daily

grind extremely grim, especially for women, and contributed to Conservative

recovery. 3 In Scotland the Unionists did not have so far to go since they had not, as in

London and the English midlands, lost the raft of middle-class and suburban seats which made the 1945 result seem so revolutionary. Scottish life, however, was no less

1 TNA:PRO, BT106/45; BT177/93, 192, 321; Tichelar, ‘Conflict over property rights’, 165-88; Manton, ‘Labour party and the land question’, 247-69; Cameron, ‘The seven men of Knoydart’, 156-83 2 Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 331-5 3 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Rationing’, 173-97 austere, perhaps more so given the housing conditions and the relative failure of the government’s building programme. 1 Much of Labour’s power in Scotland in the

1950s lay in the local politics of urban Scotland. The party returned to power in

Glasgow in 1952 and also controlled Aberdeen and Dundee and became an establishment rather than a radical force in localities in the west of Scotland. In mitigation, the extent of the problems encountered by these administrations, especially at the sharp end of the housing question in Glasgow, were probably unique not only in a British but also a European context. 2

Despite this rather downbeat assessment, the achievements of the 1945-51

government were immense and contributed an important legacy which the party was

able to capitalise on in later decades. First there was nationalisation. Although the

Unionists were able to make political capital by attacking ‘centralisation’ this had a

massive effect on the Scottish economy. Nationalisation did not change the essential

relationship between workers and management in nationalised industries: ‘the spirit of

syndicalism had passed away’, industrial democracy was not on offer and trades

unions were generally happy with the centralised control of nationalised industries. 3

In Scotland the change may have been a little more profound, because of the economic structure inherited from the inter-war and war years Scotland was among the parts of the country most reliant on those sectors which were nationalised—coal, iron and steel, the railways—although the shipyards were left in private hands. This created a very large group of workers in the public sector, something which has been ascribed as a factor in Labour success in Scotland. The one area of clear controversy in Scotland was the nationalisation of electricity generation which introduced a threat,

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics , 76 2 Keating, ‘Labour party in Scotland’, 84-94; Hutchison, Scottish politics , 87-96 3 Morgan, People’s peace , 33-4 eventually headed off, to the NSHEB. 1 The second major initiative of the Attlee government was the creation of the welfare state with the National Health Service at its core. A Scottish dimension is easier to detect here: it has been argued that the

Highlands and Islands Medical Service of 1912 and the Emergency hospitals of the

Second World War provided a model for the NHS; the latter was established under slightly different conditions in Scotland and with less opposition from doctors. 2

Unionism in the 1950s

Unionist popularity in the 1950s has been seen as a curious conundrum to be

unravelled, or as the object of gentle damnation with faint praise as the party

eschewed government by radical innovation.3 This fails to convey the nature of

Scottish politics in the 1950s which was hardly the placid consensus implied in this

literature. To start with there was the question of language: Unionists referred to their

opponents as ‘Socialists’—a pejorative and, they hoped, negative word—rather than

the more dignified and respectable ‘Labour’. The latter was to be attacked, debunked

and exposed as the basis of a pretence that ‘Labour’ represented the interests of the

working class. 4 Nevertheless, the ‘Unionist’ label also had flexibility, useful at times but increasingly problematic by the 1960s. Its origins lie in the defence of the Anglo-

Irish Union from 1886 to 1922, but it could be repackaged to refer to the wider union implicit in the United Kingdom and the Empire. The Anglo-Scottish union was not an explicit component of Scottish Unionism, but 1707 was assumed to be the founding of

1 Johnston, Memories , 180; Cameron, ‘Scottish highlands’, 205-6 2 Levitt, Poverty and welfare, 170-2; Levitt (ed.), Scottish Office , 60-5, 355-75 3 Kendrick & McCrone, ‘Politics in a cold climate’, esp. 592-6; Seawright & Curtice, ‘Decline of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’, esp. 323-37 are puzzled; Seldon, Churchill’s Indian summer, 130-40; Fry, Patronage and principle , 193, 197-200, 223-6 are unimpressed; Hutchison, Scottish politics , 72-9, 104-15 is more balanced. 4 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Conservative Party Archive [CPA], CCO2/1/17, Memorandum from Col. Blair to Scottish candidates and election agents, 13 Feb. 1950; CCO2/4/15, P.J. Blair, The general election, Scotland, 7 Jun. 1955 the United Kingdom and the basis for parliamentary sovereignty, a concept which the

Unionists revered and which would govern their attitude to Scottish devolution. 1 The

Unionists recognised that they had to devise a strategy that was more subtle than root

and branch opposition to the changes being undertaken by Labour. Although the party

had a more distinct Scottish identity—as the Scottish Unionist Party—than Labour,

they were also vulnerable to attacks that they were materialistic, opportunistic and

without ideological underpinning. A leading Scottish Unionist remarked in 1959:

Another matter which seems to me to be important is the idea which

supporters of the Socialist and Liberal parties have tried to advance—that they

have a moral basis for their policies, while the Unionist Party is merely

materialistic. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Unionist

principles and policy recognise the value of human character and emphasise

that the individual has duties which he owes to the community as well as

rights due to him by it. 2

The 1945 election had demonstrated that the voters were not to be so easily frightened

by ‘socialism’. There were some continuities with the inter-war period, especially in

the willingness of the Unionists to come to local arrangements with the Liberals or to

revise the label to incorporate the words ‘National Liberal’ or even, in a small number

of cases—such as West Fife—‘Liberal Unionist’. 3 The Unionist strategy in the

elections of 1945, 1950 and 1951, at which they did quite well in Scotland—their

Scottish vote being close to their English one—was to play the Scottish card. This

1 Mitchell, Scottish unionism, 8-14; Mitchell, ‘Contemporary unionism’, 124-5 2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, CPA, CCO2/5/20, P.J.Blair to Secretaries, Divisional Councils, 7 Dec. 1950 3 Oxford, Bodleian Library, CPA, CCO1/8/566, P Ensor Walters to T.F. Watson, 16 May 1951; Hutchison, Scottish politics , 76-8 was most obvious in arguments against nationalisation. As well as the argument used in England that such policies would lead to inefficiency and a bad deal for the taxpayer, they also argued that Scotland would be disadvantaged. At the Aberdeen

South by election of 1946, Lady Grant (later Tweedsmuir), the Unionist candidate, pointed out:

Scotland’s position under the various nationalisation schemes of the

government has been the subject of acute anxiety by Scottish MPs. Under

socialist administration the tendency has grown to concentrate power in

Whitehall, remote from Scotland and inevitably leading to a neglect of the

special conditions ruling in that country. Under nationalisation local boards

are set up but unless they are given executive powers the result will be that

important decisions affecting the country’s industries will be taken in London

with no guarantee that they will be closely related to Scottish needs. 1

Conservatives used this argument to try to explain the rise in demands for Scottish

home rule, they opposed this but argued that the Scottish office administration should

be strengthened.

…the whole attitude of the Socialists is one of complete indifference to the

special circumstances and distinctive needs and conditions of Scotland both in

legislation and administration. Unionists believe that the revolutionary change

in the conduct of Scottish affairs being brought about by the Socialists will

result not only in unnecessary delays and inefficiency, but in a disastrous loss

1 NLS, Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc 11884/1/3/56, Aberdeen South by-election, 1946, political notes: nationalisation. of Scottish prestige. Complaint is sometimes made that through the congestion

of business at Westminster Scottish affairs are neglected. 1

The was not a period of success of the SNP, but the Covenant movement was an

attempt by John MacCormick to build a coalition for Scottish home rule.

Nevertheless, their relatively strong position in Scotland notwithstanding, the

Unionists were willing to raise the issue of home rule as a warning of the profound

threat of ‘socialist’ policies to Scotland. Churchill, whom the Scotsman felt to be sympathetic to Scottish grievances and ‘understanding’ of Scottish aspirations, told a meeting at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh in 1950:

If England became an absolute Socialist state, owning all the means of

production, distribution and exchange, ruled only by politicians and their

officials in the London offices, I personally cannot feel Scotland would be

bound to accept such a dispensation. I do not therefore wonder that the

question of Scottish home rule and this movement of Scottish nationalism has

gained in strength with the growth of Socialist authority and ambitions in

England. 2

This strand in Unionist rhetoric was especially effective in Scotland but it was also deployed in Wales, where the Unionists were marginal, and over Labour reforms in

English local government. It has been argued that this represents a response to

Labour's tendency towards centralisation which was evident in all these contexts. 3

1 NLS, Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc 11884/1/4/29, Aberdeen South by-election, 1946, political notes: home rule. 2 Scotsman , 15 Feb. 1950, 6; Glasgow Herald, 15 Feb. 1950, 7. 3 Cragoe, ‘“We like local patriotism”’, 965-85 Nevertheless, it was highly refined in Scotland and deployed from a position of increasing strength and confidence. When the Tories returned to power in 1951, with an improved vote in Scotland, and confirmed this position in 1955 with over 50 per cent of the Scottish popular vote, Labour seemed the party in difficulties, they had regressed to the pre-1914 position where their Scottish share of vote was less than that in England. One historian has warned: ‘we must be wary of assuming that the post-

1945 settlement involving the welfare state immediately and decisively established

Labour’s supremacy in Scotland.’ 1 The Conservative rhetoric on this question was

hardly matched by deeds, the ministerial team at the Scottish office was bolstered by

the appointment of the Earl of Home as Minister of State; functions were transferred

from Whitehall, but little was done to alter the centralised control of the economy;

indeed, with the creation of the Scottish Development Department in 1962 it may

have been increased. There was certainly no rolling back of the tide of nationalisation,

with the exception of the steel industry which was privatised in 195? .2 Other than on

housing, the government was scarcely active. A weak Crofters Act of 1955 ignored

the central recommendations of a Commission of Enquiry and, despite investment in

roads, highland affairs, supposedly Home’s priority, were allowed to drift. Important

decisions were taken, however, most notably to build road bridges across the Forth

and Tay. It has been suggested that Home was activated by ‘progressive paternalism’

during his time at the Scottish Office, and this could be taken as a description of the

Scottish policy of the government. 3

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics, 72 2 Seldon, Churchill’s Indian summer , 130-40; Stuart, Within the fringe , 161-70; Home, The way the wind blows , 102-4; Young, Sir Alec Douglas-Home , 81-3 3 Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home , 148 Conservative credit for the relative prosperity in Scotland in the 1950s became a fading asset by the early 1960s as the rhetoric of ‘you’ve never had it so good’ did not ring true in Scotland where the economy seemed less robust and unemployment was higher. There was a self satisfaction in Unionist reflection on election results in 1951 and 1955, a confidence in organisation, candidates, leadership and policy. 1 The tone

changed after 1959 when seats began to be lost and party activists felt that the tide of

economics and politics was slipping away from them. Housing policy was no longer

quite the asset it had been, with the completion rate falling and legislation of 1957

reducing the level of subsidy for local authority houses. The Unionist diagnosis for

the reverses of 1959 and 1964 emphasised organisational defects—widespread

apathy, insufficient canvassing in key seats, lack of youth appeal, failure to make best

use of television broadcasts and insipid leadership—as well as policy. 2 Local

associations in seats which had been lost were more direct in their criticisms. The

Executive Committee in Central Ayrshire remarked in 1959:

There appeared to be some doubt as to whether ministers were sufficiently

aware officially that the lack of expanding industries in Scotland was likely to

lose the Government some seats. The popular “you’ve never had it so good”

slogan was a mistake in the west of Scotland where the incidence of

unemployment was so high. 3

1 NLS, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association [SCUA] MSS, Acc. 11368/12, Minutes of the General Committee of the Glasgow Unionist Association, 30 May 1955, 26 Oct 1959 2 NLS, SCUA MSS, Acc. 11368/12, Minutes of the General Committee of the Glasgow Unionist Association, 26 Oct. 1964 3 NLS, Central Ayrshire Conservative and Unionist Association, Acc. 9079/3, Executive Committee minutes, 29 Oct. 1959 Was this an accurate diagnosis, what were the policies which the Unionists were able to defend in the 1950s but could not do so effectively in 1964? The prosperity of the

1950s played a part and the Unionists were able to point to achievements especially in housing, and development of new towns. The Scottish housing question, for long the principal rallying call of the Labour party, worked to the benefit of the Unionists in the 1950s. As has been noted in earlier chapters the task facing the Labour government in this aspect of reconstruction was particularly daunting. Added to the legacy of nineteenth century squalor, inter-war activity was insufficient, there was the new problem of war damage and everything was exacerbated by the high post-war expectations. A final difficulty was the desire of local councils, especially the large cities, to retain population, and hence revenue from rates and rents, rather than see people dispersed to new towns. By 1949 and 1950 Labour had begun to make some headway, achieving over 20,000 completions per year; but the Unionists made more progress, assisted by new legislation in 1952 which increased the level of subsidy offered by Labour’s act of 1946 and by accelerated building in the New Towns of

East Kilbride and Glenrothes. Most houses were built by local authorities, although the work of the SSHA reminds us that the Unionists had a track record in this area. 1 In

the late 1950s, however, the success story was tarnished, an act of 1957 reduced the

level of subsidy for local authority housing, encouraged cheaper methods of

construction and the high-rise flats later to be so problematic. In addition, the

completion rate began to fall, something for which the Unionists were criticised at the

1959 election when five seats were lost.

1 Gibb & Maclennan, ‘Policy and process’, 273-8 There were important differences between Labour and Conservative approaches to the housing question. Labour policy had been to provide public housing for the good of the community as a whole not merely ‘the working classes’ as had been the case in the inter-war period. The Conservatives were suspicious of this emphasis and wanted to try and involve the private sector to a greater degree. 1 They were not entirely

successful in this ambition in England and Wales, where private building increased,

but it had a very limited impact in Scotland. Even in 1962, the peak year for the

private sector, two thirds of all houses were built by the public sector. Further, the

Unionists were storing up trouble by their very success. Although there was a period

of sustained building under Labour after 1964, the Unionists were responsible for a

large part of the dominance of public housing in Scotland, identified as an important

obstacle for the party in the 1980s. The post-war state, which became such an enemy

for the Tories in Scotland, was not entirely a Labour creation. Viewed more positively

the Unionists shared with Labour a major change in Scottish society in the post-war

generation as it seemed that massive progress was made towards dealing with

Scotland’s most serious social problem. That new problems were being created was

not immediately obvious to contemporaries and housing policy was an important

electoral asset in 1951 and 1955. By 1959, however, there was a sense that elements

of Scottish political culture and Unionism were beginning to diverge. At that election

five seats were lost, the Unionist vote went down by about 3 per cent and there was

some evidence that attempts to chip away at the growing public sector in Scotland

were greeted with faint praise from the electorate. This would be more evident in

1964 when more votes and a further seven seats were shed. Erosion of rent control,

1 Jones, ‘“This is magnificent!”’,99-121; Weiler, ‘Rise and fall’, 122-50 which had provided cheap houses for so many Scots, caused problems in the late

1950s and was not helped by the superior tone adopted by the party:

…we have to remember that in Scotland we have a long tradition of low rents.

We do not pay as much for shelter north of the border as is the custom in

England and Wales … On rent and rates in Scotland people on an average are

paying less than they are paying on either drink or tobacco … It cannot

reasonably be maintained that people in Scotland cannot afford to pay more

than 1/18s and that drink, tobacco, football pools, cinemas etc have prior claim

as necessary expenditure. 1

As the 1950s progressed and the post-war replacement boom, which provided an

‘Indian summer’ for Scottish heavy industry, was dissipated, there was a growing realisation that the traditional industries could not provide a sustainable future in terms of employment or output. Dragged down by these failing industries, especially coal and shipbuilding, Scottish G.D.P. per head began to fall behind the UK average and unemployment began to rise. Even although the rise in the latter indicator was modest by the standards of the 1930s, or the 1980s, this was something which scared those politicians (of both parties) who had vivid memories of the agonies of the inter- war period, this was especially the case for Harold MacMillan whose Stockton seat had suffered terribly in that decade. In contrast to the modest intervention of the

Special Areas legislation of the 1930s, and the detachment of the governments of the

1980s, the Unionists in the 1950s and 1960s were active and innovative in ‘regional policy’. This was an emerging area of political consensus. The Distribution of

1 NLS, Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 11884/3/1, 1955 General Election: Housing Industry Act of 1945 identified ‘Development Areas’ which were scarred by high unemployment. Government used a number of carrots and sticks to encourage industry to set up in these areas and to limit expansion in areas where unemployment was not such a problem. Under this legislation most of the industrial areas of west central Scotland, Dundee and, oddly because unemployment was not such a problem there, parts of the highlands were scheduled. Not only did the Unionists retain this policy when they returned to government in 1951 but they extended it in 1958 and added a new layer of regional policy in 1960 with their Local Employment Act which scheduled virtually the whole of Scotland as a ‘Development District’. 1 This was

evidence of a bipartisan commitment to full employment, but also indicative of a high

degree of confidence that government intervention could and should influence the

movement of capital, the decisions of industrialists and solve long-standing problems.

When regional policy was abandoned in the 1980s these assumptions were regarded

as dangerous nonsense.

In addition to this structural effort to diversify the economy and iron out the pattern of

unemployment through macro-economic policy there were also a series of high-

profile initiatives in partnership with individual companies. The most striking was the

assistance given in 1958-9 to Colville’s to construct a new plant for the production of

thin steel plate at Ravenscraig. Demand for the output of such a facility to make cars

and consumer goods was growing, and when the debate over the site for such a plant

began, a considerable campaign, led by industrial and trades union interests, pressed

the case of Scotland. Within the Cabinet there was strong support, including from the

Secretary of State for Scotland John Maclay; there were Unionists seats to be

1 McCrone, Regional policy , 106-26 defended in Scotland, unlike Wales or the north east of England, and it was argued the new factory would stimulate the development of modern manufacturing industry. Sir

Andrew McCance was opposed to such a development on a variety of practical grounds but he could not afford to have another company take on the project because of the knock-on effects for Colville’s activities in Scotland, including retention of skilled staff. The result was a loan from the Ministry of Power for £50m and the construction of a state of the art strip mill at Colville’s Ravenscraig site. McCance had pointed out that shortage of coal and lack of local markets for its products was likely to prove unprofitable, the construction of a second strip mill in Wales further handicapped its prospects. 1 Further government intervention saw assistance to the motor-industry to establish new factories at Bathgate in West Lothian, where the

British Motor Corporation would manufacture trucks and tractors, and at Linwood in

Renfrewshire where Rootes was to produce the distinctive Hillman Imp. Such initiatives were not confined to central Scotland, at Fort William the government assisted the paper manufacturers Wiggins Teape to build a pulp mill which, it was hoped, would provide employment and stimulate the local economy. These projects were evidence of the government’s confidence that the economy could be manipulated for essentially political and social ends. Unfortunately, the long term results were poor; even in the short term there were difficulties, such as the endemic industrial relations problems at Linwood. They were not components of a structured attempt to diversify and reorientate the economy away from its heavy industrial base, as had been suggested by the Barlow Commission during the Second World War and by the Clyde Valley Plan just after it; rather, they were piecemeal and haphazard reactions to events. Nevertheless, the Unionists were committed to the creation of

1 Payne, Colvilles , 368-405 affluence and economic growth through the development of industries producing for the consumer. This coincided with Unionist electoral decline, especially in Scotland, where, by 1964, the party had shed a fifth of its share of the vote and twelve seats.

There was a modest rise in the unemployment rate at a UK level and this was exceeded in Scotland, rendering the Unionists vulnerable to the cry that they had presided over ‘thirteen wasted years’.

The National Question

If the appeal of Labour in the early post-war years was unionist and the Unionists were willing to play the Scottish card in an attempt to counter this, then the SNP was peripheral despite evidence of wide popular interest in the Scottish question. The

SNP, under modernisers who wished to move it leftwards, had some success during the war, but peacetime consigned the party to the margins. Eight seats were fought in

1945, but six deposits were lost—only MacIntrye in Motherwell and Young in

Kirkcaldy avoided this. By 1955 the party fought only two seats (two lost deposits), and little progress seemed to have been made since 1934. 1 There was a vivid and superficially attractive side to Scottish nationalism, but ultimately it amounted to little. These were the activities of the Scottish Convention which John MacCormick had formed after leaving the SNP in 1942. 2 Its strategy was to build a widely based

pressure group to push for home-rule. Traditional methods, such as deputations to the

Scottish Office, cut little ice with the Labour Scottish Secretaries of the late 1940s.

More adventurous were ‘National Assemblies’ in Edinburgh from 1947; the intention

was to demonstrate, through attendance by a wide range of Scottish interests, that

there was a consensus in favour of Scottish home rule. At the third Assembly a

1 Hutchison, Scottish politics , 85-6 2 for overviews see Mitchell, Strategies , 87-99, 144-53; Brand, National movement , 243-9 Scottish Covenant was launched, John MacCormick later claimed that nearly 2 million people signed and presented this as evidence of ‘the fire of Scotland’s rediscovered nationhood’. 1 His enthusiasm and commitment was extraordinary, but

there were a number of problems with the Covenant. First, as with the Chartists’

petition, much fun was poked at the spurious signatures, suggestions were made that

many people had signed more than once and that non-voters (children for example)

were among the signatures. The second problem, vagueness, was more serious:

We the people of Scotland who subscribe to this Engagement, declare our

belief that reform in the constitution of our country is necessary to secure good

government in accordance with out Scottish traditions and to promote the

spiritual and economic welfare of our nation.

Further, the Covenanters undertook ‘to do everything in our power to secure for

Scotland a Parliament with adequate legislative authority in Scottish affairs.’ The

Covenant also contained a declaration of loyalty to the United Kingdom. 2 There was

nothing here which a Unionist could not sign up to in fair conscience. Third, those

signing were not giving an indication that they would put this issue at the top of their

personal political agenda.

The political strategy of the SNP was unsuccessful at the three general elections

between 1945 and 1951, a fact which encouraged others to believe that direct action

would be more profitable. Although conducted by figures—such as Wendy Wood’s

‘Scottish Patriots’—outside the party this detracted from its credibility. Chief among

1 MacCormick, Flag in the wind , 133 2 MacCormick, Flag in the wind , 128 these stunts was the removal of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on

Christmas Day 1950 by a group of students from the University of Glasgow who were in contact with John MacCormick. Although it was returned to London in April 1951 the brief liberation of the stone gave publicity to the nationalists and exposed the reverence with which such symbols were regarded by establishment figures in

London as well as by high-spirited Scottish nationalists. Finally at a by-election at

Paisley in February 1948, John MacCormick, the Liberal candidate, negotiated with the Unionists to stand down to give him a clear run at Labour as a ‘National’ candidate. This was controversial. Liberals felt that the identity of their party was being toyed with and it gave Labour the chance to argue that the national movement was a plaything of the Unionists, determined to embarrass Labour by ‘playing the

Scottish card’. The precise meaning of MacCormick’s ‘National’ label has been debated: was it meant to draw attention to the cause of home rule, or, did it suggest that MacCormick was closer to the Unionists than to his own party? The previous year had seen a virtual amalgamation between the Unionists and the Liberal Nationals

(the remnant of the Liberals who had supported the 1931 coalition government), and the ‘National’ label was frequently used in this context. 1 The Scottish Liberal

Association (the desecendants of the Liberals who had opposed the national government) were suspicious of MacCormick and did not endorse him, although the local party did. In the event MacCormick lost the election by 6,500 votes; his 20,668 votes were fewer than the combined vote for the Unionist and Liberal candidates in the 1950 general election. 2 This by-election proved to be unique, not a harbinger of

realignment, either in the sense of building a coalition to advance home rule, or an

Unionist-Liberal anti-socialist amalgamation. The latter was perhaps a more realistic

1 NLS, SCUA MSS, Acc. 11368/4, Central Council Executive Committee minutes, 2 Sept. 1947 2 Dyer, ‘“A nationalist in the Churchillian sense”’, 285-307 proposition in Scotland in the fifteen or so years after the war. The Liberal party had a strong belief in ‘individual liberty’ which they felt was compromised by nationalisation; in this there was the prospect of cooperation with the Unionists. This would be the natural extension of activity at local government level under labels such as ‘Progressive’, ‘Moderate’ or ‘Independent’. Although there is evidence that the

Labour ministers in the Scottish Office were unsure of how to respond to nationalism—oscillating between affecting to ignore it and condemning its extremism—the task became easier after 1950. After the erosion of the government’s majority and another relatively poor result in Scotland, Labour began to focus on other issues and its rhetoric sought to portray the benefits which nationalisation and health and welfare reform had brought to Scotland. The Conservatives, perhaps wary of the company it seemed to be keeping, chose not to press home the attack and important Scottish interests, from the press to trades unions and business, displayed hostility towards the Covenant movement. Within the Scottish Office, voices which had mooted the extension of administrative devolution began to scale down their suggestions and ultimately the only response of the government was to establish the

Catto committee which examined Anglo-Scottish financial relationships. 1 Even apparently mundane suggestions, like the upgrading of the Board of Trade’s Scottish controller, brought forth a stream of objections from that ministry’s Whitehall base; not the least of which was the worry that it would set an unhelpful precedent and stimulate demands for similar treatment from the English regions and Wales. 2 This

was designed to deflate nationalist propaganda by demonstrating the extent of

Scotland’s dependence on the UK. The welter of uncoordinated nationalist activity

1 Levitt, ‘Britain, the Scottish Covenant movement and devolution’, 33-57 2 TNA: PRO, T222/1048, J H Woods (Board of Trade) to David Milne, 24 Nov. 1948 had created a good deal of noise, but did not have much effect on Scotland’s economic or political structures.

Scottish politics in the 1960s

The election of a Labour government in 1964, and its confirmation with a working majority in 1966, brought change to Scottish politics. The Unionist performance in

1966 was their worst since 1929. This led to soul searching in the party and, despite false starts in 1970 and 1979, these votes and seats have never been recovered. Even bigger changes seemed to come from the advance of the SNP, which flickered into life at by elections at Glasgow Bridgeton and West Lothian in the early 1960s, before confirming its revival at the Pollock and Hamilton by-elections in 1966 and 1967. The latter saw Winifred Ewing returned to parliament as the first SNP member since 1945.

This induced self examination among the major parties; with, arguably, the Unionists being better equipped for the task. A similar pattern was evident in the history of the

Liberal party. At the general elections of 1964 and 1966 around 7 per cent of the vote was gained and five Scottish seats were won in 1966, only Liberals with memories of

1931 could recall such a result. This was progress, but its significance has to be qualified by the party’s inability to break out of the rural fastness to which it had retreated in the 1920s, where constituencies with small electorates gave the party a disproportionate relationship between votes and seats. A new generation of younger

MPs—especially David Steel and Russell Johnston—would help to shape the direction of the party in the coming generation. Although the changes to the party system caused by the electoral convulsions of the 1960s were not as profound in retrospect as they appeared to contemporaries, they did signify the end of the two- party system which had prevailed in the 1950s. The combined vote of the Unionist and Labour parties in 1970 was 83 per cent of the electorate, compared to 97 per cent in 1955.

The single political event which marked Scottish politics of the 1960s as colourful, vibrant and apparently distinctive was the Hamilton by-election of 1967. It was not merely that the Scottish National Party won its first seat since 1945, but that it did so with a novice candidate—albeit an exceptionally good one—in the safest Labour seat in Scotland. In 1966 Labour was victorious with 71 per cent of the vote, the

Conservatives had only 29 per cent and the SNP did not bother with a candidate. Yet on 2 November 1967 they triumphed with 46 per cent of the vote (on a higher turnout than at the general election), and Winifred Ewing was able to appeal to both

Conservative and Labour voters, their shares fell to 12.5 and 41.5 per cent respectively. This was a disaster for Labour. No seat seemed safe and the SNP built on the resultant credibility in local government elections in 1968, including exceptionally good results in Glasgow where they topped the poll. Further, this did not seem to be a flash in the pan, recent by-elections had seen much improved SNP performances. At Glasgow Bridgeton in November 1961, Ian McDonald gained 19 per cent and at West Lothian in June 1962, in the first of seven contests between the same SNP and Labour candidates, Willie Wolfe gained 23 per cent against Tam

Dalyell. It is true that there were weaker performances at Glasgow Woodside in

Novermber 1962 and at Kinross and West Perth, Dundee West, and Dumfriesshire in late 1963; but the significant point was the appearance of SNP candidates in these contests, ten years earlier there would have been none. 1 An additional worry for the main parties, especially Labour, was a similar advance by Plaid Cymru in Wales,

1 Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 338-9 especially at the Carmarthen by-election of 1966. The firm appearance of the SNP on the Scottish political landscape was confirmed by their ability to run thirteen and twenty-two candidates in 1964 and 1966 respectively; and by their performance at the

Glasgow Pollok by-election of March 1967, when the SNP’s 28 per cent of the vote allowed Professor Esmond Wright to win for the Conservatives with only 37 per cent of the vote, after the Labour vote collapsed from 52 to 31 per cent. 1 Hamilton

represented something of a false start for the SNP, however; in 1970 the seat was lost

to Labour and only one other seat, the Western Isles, was taken. Donald Stewart’s

victory owed more to his high local profile as a former Provost of Stornoway, than to

hebridean belief in Scottish independence. In making this downbeat assessment a

number of caveats must be entered. First, Hamilton did represent a breakthrough for

the SNP, although they had periods of poor results after 1967—notably from 1979 to

1987—they never regressed to the invisibility of the 1950s. Second, although the

1970 general election did not meet post-Hamilton euphoric expectations, it was by no

means a bad result for the party which ran fifty-nine candidates and gained 11 per

cent of the vote, compared to only 2.4 per cent six years earlier. Third, the nationalist

upsurge could not be viewed from a detached stance by the Labour and Conservative

parties and their reactions to it are suggestive.

The Unionists were perhaps more sensitised to the issues presented by the Hamilton

by-election since they had been losing votes and seats in Scotland since the mid-

1950s. Their enquiries into the nationalist threat merged with their more general

search for explanations of decline. These were depressing for a party which had won a

1 Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 340 majority of Scottish votes little more than a decade earlier. Discussions with electors revealed that:

The Scottish Conservative Party has got an exceedingly bad image. It is

thought to be out of touch, a bastion of “Foreign” (English) privilege,

Westminster orientated, associated with recalcitrant landowners …the only

party which, on mention, often elicited mirthful or mirthless laughter. It was

variously described as “run by lairds”, “landowners” and the “business

community”. Among the insults heaped upon it were that “Conservatives are

the dregs from England” and that Conservatives (sic) MPs with Scots names

“are no true Scotsmen”. The Scottish Conservative Party was described as

being comprised of “misguided Scots”. 1

This was not encouraging. The antipathy was more than could be overcome by policies on housing, industry, regional development, or even devolution. Perhaps especially dispiriting was that these findings came just after internal reforms, organisational improvements, and the addition of ‘Conservative’ to its title in

Scotland for the first time since 1912. This was partly a matter of administrative convenience, but also an attempt to avoid confusion in an era of national appeals to the electorate through television. There was a recognition that Unionism needed a clearer identity, the word was often confused in the minds of the electorate with trades unionism and it is perhaps fortunate that it was deleted from the Scottish political lexicon prior to the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland which brought renewed attention to Ulster Unionism, proximity to which may not have been an

1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, CPA, CCO500/50/1, Opinion Research Centre, A survey on the motivations behind Scottish nationalism, carried out for Conservative Central Office, 4 unalloyed advantage for Scottish Unionists. Unwittingly, it may have contributed to the perception that the party was ‘English’ in its orientation, although nomenclature does not seem to have figured in the lamentations of the late 1960s. There was also a recognition that party members needed to be more active, and that a higher standard of candidates and agents was required, if a recovery was to be achieved. 1 These changes did arouse some controversy among party activists in Scotland who felt that a distinct, and not unsuccessful, political structure and identity in Scotland was being sacrificed in a panic occasioned by recent poor election results. 2 From the point of

view of the centre, however, action seemed to be required. English organisation had

been modernised by Lord Woolton and the party performance in Scotland was

regressing more rapidly than in England, by 1966 there was a 5 per cent gap

compared to rough parity in 1955. Further, the relatively new leader of the party,

Edward Heath, presented a less tweedy image than his predecessor Alec Douglas

Home, who seemed like a less intellectual throwback to the Edwardian leader, Arthur

Balfour. Ironically, the party in London had woken up to the threat of nationalism in

Wales and Scotland after the Carmarthen by-election in 1966 and recognised that the

advance of Plaid and the SNP was evidence of national grievances in Scotland and

Wales, rather than mere dissatisfaction with the government of the day. 3 In this, not especially insightful, realisation they were ahead of the Labour party to whom the

Hamilton result was a bolt from the blue. The party recognised that these grievances would be difficult for a unionist party to deal with, although the Scottish card had been played in the early 1950s with some positive effect. This time the task was more

1 NLS, Central Ayrshire Conservative and Unionist Association, Acc. 9079/3, Executive Cttee miniutes, 8 Nov. 1960; Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 1184/1/6, The Unionist party in Scotland, proposals for reorganisation, 8 Jan. 1965; 2 Seawright, ‘Scottish Unionist party’, 90-102; Seawright, ‘Scottish Unionism’, 54-72 3 Oxford, Bodleian Library, CPA, CCO500/50/1, Confidential paper [by Chris Patten], Nationalism and Regionalism, July 1966 complicated; then it had been relatively easy to outflank the centralist Labour government with a display of sensitivity to Scotland, but in the late 1960s the SNP could not be so easily dealt with. This did not prevent an attempt being made. At the party’s Scottish conference at Perth in 1968 Heath declared that the party would support the idea of Scottish devolution and appoint a ‘Constitutional Committee’ to consider the details. 1 This may have seemed a good idea at the time, but the insensitive and autocratic way in which this declaration was made alienated the

Scottish party who felt that an about-turn had been foisted on them with no regard for their historic opposition to home-rule. Heath had played the Scottish card, but in a way which did nothing to overcome the perception that his party was out of touch with Scottish opinion. 2 The ‘Constitutional Committee’, although distinguished, was a pointless exercise which produced much paper but no meaningful proposals. By the time its report was published in 1970 the Conservatives were back in government and the SNP threat seemed to have passed. 3

Labour’s difficulties with nationalism threat in the late 1960s seemed more serious since they had lost one of their safest Scottish seats and they were in government.

Further, the divisive potential of the question of Scottish home rule was greater; although the party was unionist in its general outlook it did have a devolutionist wing.

Some of its younger MPs, from more exotic backgrounds than the former councillors and shop stewards who inhabited the back benches, embraced issues like devolution and Europe as a means of giving the party a more progressive outlook. John P.

Mackintosh, elected for East Lothian in 1966, was the prime example: a historian and

1 for extracts from his speech, see Paterson, Diverse assembly, 26-30 2 Mitchell, Conservative and the union , 55-7; Hutchison, Scottish politics , 107 3 Paterson, Diverse assembly , 51-7; NLS, SCUA MSS, Acc. 11368/79(ii), /166, 177; & Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 11884/6/13 for material on the Committee political scientist he seemed to offer a new dimension to Scottish Labour politics, but his independence and his contempt for Harold Wilson ensured that he never achieved high office. 1 Donald Dewar—victor over Lady Tweedsmuir in Aberdeen South in

1966—was another example of the younger, better-educated generation who

supported home rule. The chief representative of the unionist wing of the party was

the Secretary of State for Scotland, Willie Ross, a former Ayrshire headmaster, who

saw his role in the aftermath of Hamilton as a bulwark against unwarranted

capitulation to nationalism. One of his cabinet colleagues reported to the Prime

Minister that his instinctive response to Hamilton was to ‘bash the nationalists’

(perhaps not literally), an approach which has encouraged one historian to describe

him as ‘Stalinist’. 2 Ross’s Scottish patriotism—he was an elder in the Kirk and a

Burns enthusiast—was as assertive as his unionism, and he was a dogged opponent of condescending anglocentricity. 3 Within the Labour party in Scotland Hamilton induced an enquiry into devolution which confirmed the party’s unionist credentials— seemingly greater than the Scottish Conservatives’—when it reported in 1970. 4

Within government, a discussion about devolution, led by Richard Crossman, was already under way. The rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism was only one factor in stimulating it. Crossman’s interest in devolution stemmed from his interest in creating a regional level of government rather than anything to do with Scotland and Wales.

These ambitious proposals came to nothing and the whole exercise revealed the divisive nature of the devolution issue among Scottish and Welsh Labour circles.

Willie Ross, and his Welsh counterpart George Thomas, were typical of an older

1 ODNB ; Glasgow Herald 31 Jul. 1978; Scotsman 31 Jul. 1978; The Times , 31 Jul. 1978; 2 TNA: PRO, T330/185/23, Dick Crossman to Harold Wilson, 25 Jun. 1968 (copy at CAB164/158/13); Morgan, People’s peace , 268 3 William Ross (1911-88), OCSH , 530-1; ODNB ; the brevity of the article in the latter source is absurd for such an important figure. 4 Keating & Blieman, Labour and Scottish nationalism , 155 generation who were deeply antipathetic to nationalism. 1 The proposals mooted in this

stern environment amounted to little more than the usual ideas for keeping the Scots

quiet, some of them dating back to the 1880s: Edinburgh meetings of the Scottish

Grand Committee, administrative devolution, surveys of public opinion, fiscal

devolution could be researched or Whitehall civil servants could be dispersed

(predictably unpopular among the potential victims). 2 This discussion was reminiscent of that which had taken place in a slightly lower key in the late 1940s. Willie Ross was no less unionist than Arthur Woodburn and was as realistic in recognising that wider economic or social issues, which contributed to a perception of national grievance, had to be tackled. Indeed, he had pressed the Prime Minister on this point prior to the Hamilton by-election. Drawing attention to decisions on pay awards for local authority workers, increases in electricity tariffs and public transport fares as well as the perennially vexed question of council house rents, Ross worried that the government was creating a damaging impression of anti-Scottish bias, ‘as I fear the

Pollok by-election may show.’ 3 In some senses this was the most prescient point made

in the explosion of comment and interest in Scottish politics which was occasioned by

the rise of the SNP in the late 1960s. This did not point to a sudden interest in

constitutional innovation, far less Scottish independence, but was a distinctive

manifestation of the dissatisfaction with economic and financial policy which was

damaging to the reputation of the government. Even Dick Crossman, a supporter of

devolution, recognised that ‘nothing will win back votes except an economic

revival.’ 4

1 Tanner, ‘Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson and devolution’, 545-78 2 There is voluminous material at TNA: PRO, CAB130/390, 151/45, 164/658, 165/298-9; T330/184-5 3 TNA: PRO, CAB164/393 , Ross to PM, 23 Feb.1967 4 TNA: PRO, T330/185/23, Dick Crossman to Harold Wilson, 25 Jun. 1968; NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc.7656/1/1, Crossman to Woodburn, 10 Nov. 1967 Despite Crossman’s enthusiasm for devolution, or perhaps because of it, he was unable to overcome the engrained suspicion of his colleagues, and the only tangible proposals to emerge from these contemplations was the appointment of a Select

Committee on Scottish Affairs, of which Winifred Ewing was made a member; and then the classic delaying tactic, the appointment of a Royal Commission in 1968, in this case the delay lasted until its report in 1973. There was, perhaps, a rational case for delay in action on the constitutional question in Scotland in the late 1960s. This rested on the work of another Royal Commission, this time into Scottish local government, chaired by the eminent judge Lord Wheatley (nephew of the hero of the

Red Clyde). There seemed little point in putting forward definitive suggestions for a devolved assembly until his recommendations were known, especially since large- scale regional administration was one of the options being considered. When

Wheatley reported in 1972 he recommended a two-tier system of large regions and smaller districts to replace the archaic system of parallel county and burgh government. Despite the adjacent reports of Wheatley and Kilbrandon in the early

1970s it has been notable and problematic that reform of local government and the planned introduction of devolution were not considered in an integrated way in the

1970s, or the 1990s when single tier local authorities were restored. Chapter twelve: a decade of Scottish politics

During the mid-1970s Scottish issues had an important effect on high politics at

Westminster; they were prominent in the media; a considerable academic literature developed; for the puzzled a number of ‘instant’ explanations of devolution were published; and polemical literature proliferated. 1 It is difficult, when devolution is an

established fact of life in Scotland, and was achieved through a largely consensual

process, to summon up the atmosphere of the 1970s. For Norman Buchan, Labour MP

for West Renfrewshire, devolution was ‘the most dangerous issue that this House has

faced for a very long time’ and he found it ‘traumatic’ that ‘around me I cannot find

an understanding of the sense of danger that we are facing.’ Buchan’s position, as a

former supporter of devolution, aroused strong feelings: Jim Sillars, a former Labour

unionist, referred to his behaviour as an ‘open … display of political cowardice’. 2

Feelings ran high not just because of the bitterness between Labour and the

nationalists but also because devolution exposed divisions within parties. Devolution legislation soaked up more parliamentary time than any other topic since the

Government of India Bill in the 1930s and certainly more than the legislation which took Britain into the EEC in 1973. 3 That this marathon produced no tangible results is

ironic since one of the principal demands of Scottish home rule movements since the

1850s was more parliamentary time for Scottish affairs. The debate ended in March

1979 with the Labour government’s narrow defeat in a vote of confidence in the

House of Commons and the failure of its plans for home-rule for Scotland and Wales.

This was the first time since 1924 that a government’s resignation had been

1 Webb, The growth of nationalism ; Mercer, Scotland ; Drucker & Brown, Politics of nationalism are instant studies; Dalyell, Devolution , is unsurpassed as a political tract on—or, rather, against— devolution; Mackintosh, A parliament for Scotland puts the opposite case. 2 P.D. , 5 th ser. 926, 1291-5, 22 Feb. 1977; Sillars, Case for optimism , 66 3 A point made by Michael Foot in defending the guillotine motion on the Scotland and Wales Bill on 22 Feb. 1977—P.D. , 5 th ser., 926, 1241 precipitated in such a manner. That the root was Scottish devolution and that the resulting election empowered a Conservative government which became especially unpopular in Scotland is also a considerable irony. The unproductive politics of devolution in the 1970s helped to shape the contours of Scottish and British politics in the 1980s which ultimately paved the way for the implementation of a second

Scotland Act in 1998. They deserve detailed consideration.

The starting point was the SNP’s virtual breakthrough in October 1974 and the appearance of four party politics in that election. The discomfited Labour party hit upon devolution as a method of self preservation. The unionist heart of the party did not stop beating, however; indeed, some of its valves worked harder than ever.

Although devolution was a centripetal force in all political parties, in the 1970s it was most obvious in Labour ranks. This had been evident in the late 1960s when the subject was contemplated by the government, but ‘few of the lessons … had been learnt by the time of the devolution referenda in 1979’ 1. By the 1990s the experience

of eighteen years of Conservative government, profoundly unpopular in Scotland, had

altered the outlook of the party. There was also an economic dimension to this debate.

The Scottish heavy industrial economy had been in decline since the 1950s and,

despite regional policy, inward investment and other initiatives, economic difficulties

seemed to be endemic. Since the early 1960s indicators like unemployment rates

marked out the Scottish economy as a political problem for governments of both

parties. Industrial relations strife was also part of the mix, both in new industries, such

as the car factories at Bathgate and Linwood, and in traditional industries like

coalmining and shipbuilding. This was particularly evident during the Conservative

1 Tanner, ‘Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson and devolution’, 578 administration of 1970-74 and, although not peculiar to Scotland, had particular manifestations north of the border, notably the dispute at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in

1971-2, and certain features of the miners’ strike of 1972. These conditions allowed proponents of devolution to argue that centralised government was incapable of delivering policies relevant to Scottish needs, but it also gave credence to unionist arguments that Scotland was too poor for independence. This argument was transformed by the discovery of oil in the North Sea, a resource which nationalist rhetoric quickly claimed for Scotland. Many critics of Labour’s devolution legislation were disappointed that despite, or perhaps because of, these important economic bases to the debate, the powers of the proposed Scottish Assembly were very weak.

Electoral patterns

Only a short time after the Hamilton by-election and the local government elections of

1968 the surge in support for the SNP seemed to have passed, and analysis was devoted to its ‘decline’. 1 The 1970 general election seemed to confirm this and the

fact that the SNP gained only one seat, the Western Isles from Labour, was no doubt

reassuring for the main parties. They could comfort themselves further in that the

defeat of the large and indolent member, Malcolm Macmillan, could be explained by

the local prominence and popularity of his Nationalist opponent, Donald Stewart. A

further source of pleasure for Labour was the recovery of Hamilton, where the turnout

and the Labour vote went up; and of Pollok, where the SNP vote collapsed. The

apparent stability to be perceived in the results, with only four seats changing hands,

masked subtle changes which provide some signposts that the journey to four-party

politics had begun. While the Liberals had only twenty-seven candidates, the SNP

1 Bochel & Denver, ‘Decline of the S.N.P.’, 311-16 mustered fifty-nine, contributing to their 11.4 per cent share of the vote, their highest total yet, although they must have hoped for a better result.

Election LAB CONS LIB SNP

Seats Vote Seats Vote Seats Vote Seats Vote

1970 44 44.5 23 38.0 3 5.5 1 11.4

1974(Feb) 40 36.6 21 32.9 3 8.0 7 21.9

1974(Oct) 41 36.3 16 24.7 3 8.3 11 30.4

1979 44 41.5 22 31.4 3 9.0 2 17.3

Table 1: General Election results in Scotland, 1970-9

Between the 1970s and the 1990s election results would fluctuate markedly. The

Labour vote sank to 36 per cent in February 1974, their worst post-war result, before

rising to fifty-six seats from 44 per cent of the vote in 2001. The Conservatives’ 1970

result although a very slight improvement on 1966 was part of their long decline from

the peak of 1955. Arguably, however, the most significant fluctuations have been in

support for the SNP. What seemed likely in the late 1960s appeared to be happening

in the general elections of February and October 1974 in which the party achieved

seven and then eleven seats with 22 per cent and then 30 per cent of the vote;

although Labour could take comfort from the fact that eight of their gains were from

the Conservatives. The nationalists, however, came second in a further forty-two

seats, thirty-five of which were Labour, and in nineteen they exceeded the 30.4 per cent which was their share of the Scottish vote. 1 Some evidence suggests that most of the votes which went to the SNP between February and October 1974 in central

Scotland came from the Conservatives and that the core Labour vote was stable. 2 This was not evident at the time, however, and the advance of a party recently regarded as a joke was worrying for Labour. It is tempting to argue that the rise of the SNP in the late 1960s and early 1970s can be put down to profound shifts in identity. This thesis argues that voters were responding to a decline in the power of symbols of

Britishness, especially the Empire. This does not explain why the SNP did not put down deeper roots and why its vote fluctuated so much in the 1970s and 1980s. IT does seem that the SNP profited from the decline in the Conservative vote, a trend which had been ongoing since the late 1950s. This allowed the party to expand, to field more candidates and thereby to gain credibility by capturing more votes, winning by-elections and council seats. Studies of the 1974 elections demonstrate that the SNP did quite well among voters in non-manual occupations, almost rivalling the

Conservatives, with support of around 30 per cent of this group. Further, the party did well in the New Towns which had been created in the post-war period. 3 This suggests that in the 1970s the SNP were the beneficiaries of support among younger voters who were new to professional occupations after the expansion of secondary and higher education in the 1960s. This aspirational group were central to Mrs Thatcher’s appeal, although this was less evident in Scotland, in the 1980s. The same group of people, suspicious of the herd mentality encouraged by Labour and the Conservatives, may have been attracted by the SDP. The problem for the SNP was that their vote was not based on deep loyalty to the party, their support for the SNP was conditional and

1 N.L.S., John P. MacKintosh MSS, Dep. 323/143, ‘The political and economic situation in Scotland: a background memorandum’, 21 Nov. 1975, indicates the extent of Labour discomfort. 2 Jaensch, ‘The Scottish vote 1974’, 313-15 3 Brown et. al. , Politics and society in Scotland , 158-9 sceptical and the party’s performance in the late 1970s was not sufficient to retain their support. This does not mean that those who voted for the SNP were all new voters—turnout did not change sufficiently to substantiate this interpretation of the rise of the SNP—nor were they merely protest voters. The protest vote theory is attractive, but does not explain why the SNP, rather than the strongly Scottish Liberal party for example, benefited from this process. Also, as we have seen there were two surges in SNP support, that leading to Hamilton and its aftermath and that culminating the results of the 1974 general elections. This seems too much to explain by protest alone. The SNP’s concentration on Scottish issues—devolution and oil especially— contributed strongly to their ability to capitalise on the failings of the main parties on economic policy and on a general feeling that Scotland was being neglected.

Although studies suggested that, not surprisingly, SNP voters reported strong feelings of Scottish national identity, there was no simple relationship between voting for the

SNP and believing in independence for Scotland, support for which ran far behind

SNP partisanship in this period. This was just as well, for in the five years from 1974 the SNP presented an exceedingly muddled message on what was supposed to be its core principle.

A further difficulty was that they were spread thinly across the country. Even their relative concentrations in the new towns was not sufficient to allow the SNP win the seats in which they were located. The roller-coaster ride which was the SNP’s experience in the 1970s continued at the 1979 general election: paying the price for the failure of Labour’s devolution scheme they lost nine of their eleven seats, only

Donald Stewart in the Western Isles and Gordon Wilson in Dundee East survived the rout, although the party’s share of the vote was 17 per cent.

A Conservative prelude, 1970-74

The moment which changed Scottish politics, not quite forever but certainly for the rest of the 1970s, occurred in the summer of 1969 when the drilling rig The Sea Quest discovered the Montrose oil field in the north sea 100 miles east of Aberdeen. This turned out to be a small field, but it was the first and it demonstrated that ‘sweet oil with not a trace of hydrogen sulphide’ lay below the sea bed off the east coast of

Scotland. Despite the economic and political importance of north sea oil it scarcely figures in the published accounts which form the high political memory of the period. 1

This would have surprised any politically aware Scot in the early 1970s. Optimistic

soothsayers predicted a yearly gross revenue of £4000 million, self sufficiency by

1980 and the transformation of Scotland into the ‘California of Europe, weather

notwithstanding.’ 2 The SNP was the first political party to catch on to the

possibilities. It was deployed by Robert McIntyre (the victor at Motherwell in 1945)

at the Stirling and Falkirk by-election of September 1971, and the famous ‘It’s

Scotland’s oil’ campaign was launched a year later. The political impact of the issue

was aided by the fact that no-one really knew what would be the value of north sea oil

to the economy when it started flowing ashore five or so years hence. This allowed

the SNP to provide for the first time an effective counter to one of the most difficult

accusations thrown at them: Scotland was too poor to be independent. Now oil

seemed to offer limitless prospects of employment, cheap petrol and generous

pensions in an independent Scotland. 3 The then leader of the party made this clear in

1 Harvie, Fool’s gold , see 1 for quote, amnesia is one of the central themes of the book. 2 Fulton, ‘Scottish oil’, 310-22 3 Lynch, SNP , 123-7; Levy, Scottish nationalism , 37-40 1973: ‘The wealth of the oil destroys the myth that Scotland is too poor for self government. It gives the Scots confidence to run their own affairs.’ 1

Despite the attempts of the SNP to inject a note of optimism the period from 1970 to

1974, in Scotland as in Britain as a whole, was dogged by industrial relations

difficulties. Indeed, because of the industrial structure north of the border the impact

of the disputes was greater. Heavy industries were targets of the government’s

emphasis on pay restraint in the public sector, since most of them remained

nationalised. Further, Scottish trades unionism, especially the NUM, were perceived

as militant. The president of the NUM in Scotland, Mick McGahey, was a communist,

and there were confrontations between the authorities and pickets in Scotland—

especially at the coal-fired power station at Longannet on the north shore of the Forth

in the miners’ strike of 1972—but the two are not causally linked. The rank and file in

areas, like Scotland and Wales, which had seen contraction since the 1960s were

probably more militant than the leadership. 2 The miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1974— the former the first national dispute in the coal industry since 1926 and the latter the precipitator of a general election on the theme of ‘who governs?’—seemed to exemplify the weakness of the Heath government. The 1972 strike was part of a wider crisis of industrial relations, larger in scale than anything since the 1920s. At every turn the government seemed to be assailed by strikes and an inability to assert its authority. The feeling grew that the trades unions had grown in confidence to such an extent that they threatened the legitimacy of the government. 3 This provided a convenient justification for the ruthless industrial relations policies of the next

1 Wolfe, Scotland lives, 160 2 Phillips, ‘The 1972 miners’ strike’, 187-202 3 Lyddon, ‘“Glorious summer”’, 326-52; Taylor, ‘Heath government and industrial relations’, 161-90; Reid, United we stand , 326-9 Conservative government, many of whom had held office under Heath. The Heath government also expressed a commitment to remain unbowed by pressure to intervene to save failing industrial enterprises. This seemed to wilt in the face of

‘Communist inspired’ militancy. At Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971-2 the threat of closure induced the workforce, led by charismatic shop stewards Jimmy Reid and

Jimmy Airlie, to engage in a 458 day ‘work-in’. This stimulated much public support and compelled the government to intervene, contrary to their initial position. Despite their own politics, Reid and Airlie carefully nurtured a diverse body of workers and cultivated a wide coalition of public support for their ‘work-in’ which was, famously, to be conducted with ‘no hooliganism …no vandalism …[and] no bevvying.’ 1 Amidst

government worries that large-scale public order difficulties would be occasioned by

the unemployment associated with closure—although this may have been a cloak to

conceal the discomfiture caused by the ‘work-in’—£70 million of public money was

poured into the yards which made up UCS and the dispute was called off in October

1972 when their future was guaranteed. 2

These events contributed to what followed in a number of ways. First, they eroded the credibility of the Conservative government. Second, they seemed to benefit the SNP: in the elections of 1974 from Banffshire in the north east to Galloway in the south west the nationalists took seats from the Tories, only in Dundee East did they take an urban seat from Labour. These circumstances helped to change the political agenda as

Labour turned to devolution as a means of self preservation. Third, self government was by no means irrelevant to the industrial politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

1 quoted by Foster & Woolfson, ‘How workers on the Clyde gained the capacity for class struggle’, 305 2 Murphy & Johnman, British shipbuilding , 189; for contrasting views on the UCS dispute see Foster & Woolfson, Politics of the UCS work-in ; Thompson & Hart, The UCS work-in ; McGill, Crisis on the Clyde Rather than focusing on the ‘militancy’ and ‘subversiveness’ of Communist trades union leaders the main political parties might have paid some attention to their interest in devolution. As the politics of devolution would unfold over the remainder of the decade, trades unionism and the Communist party would be consistent supporters of the concept. The successes of the ‘glorious summer’ of 1972 gave the trades union movement the confidence to broaden their political agenda to encompass devolution and a ‘national assembly’ on the question of Scottish Home Rule was held in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh in 1972. There was a strong feeling on the left that

Socialism could not be achieved through conventional Westminster politics and that home-rule was a stepping stone not to independence but to Socialism. Although there was no direct link to the results of the 1974 elections, it contributed to the growing debate about Scotland’s governance which helped to shift the focus of politics in the mid-1970s.

Devolution divisions

As in 1886, the efforts of the Wilson and Callaghan governments to devolve power in the mid-1970s cannot be divorced from parliamentary arithmetic. Just as Gladstone required the support of the eighty-six Irish party MPs in 1886, Labour was in a minority position in the House of Commons from February to October 1974, and from

February 1977 and relied on Scottish and Welsh nationalists and fourteen Liberals.

There is a further parallel, however; just as Gladstone had been defeated by Liberal defections, Labour’s policy was frustrated by the actions of their own backbenchers.

Labour’s difficulties lay not only in the House of Commons, but also with the electorate; they had not promised devolution in their February 1974 manifesto, and the Queen’s speech on 12 March merely indicated that the government would consider the question. Labour’s failure to signpost its intentions was to cause many problems, both tactical and strategic, later in the process, but there were strong signs that SNP support was on the increase. By elections suggested this: narrow defeat at

Dundee East in March 1973 was followed by victory at Glasgow Govan in November.

Against this has to be set a disappointing result in Edinburgh North and perhaps the

Labour party felt that they had over-reacted to the Hamilton by-election in 1967, given what happened at the 1970 general election. Another signal was the 1973

Report of the Kilbrandon Commission, established by Wilson after Hamilton, recommending devolution. 1 Labour was damned—for pandering to Nationalism and for opportunism—if it did take action; and damned—for ignoring Scottish opinion—if it did not. As with Edward Heath’s 1968 Declaration of Perth, the party leadership in

London took the crucial decisions and imposed them on the Scottish party, most notably at a special conference in Glasgow in August 1974, with the trades unions to the fore. 2 The party may have moved a little since the late 1960s, but it cannot be described as enthusiastic. William Ross, back as Secretary of State, had scarcely undergone a Pauline conversion on devolution. John P. Mackintosh. M.P. for Berwick and East Lothian, was a powerful advocate of devolution, but was regarded with suspicion by the leadership. Donald Dewar, defeated in Aberdeen South in 1970, only returned to parliament in 1978. Although there were other devolutionists—Harry

Ewing, MP for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth, Jim Sillars (Ayrshire South) and, latterly, John Smith (North Lanarkshire)—the parliamentary arithmetic was such that the government could be held to ransom by unionist backbenchers, such as Tam

Dalyell, Willie Hamilton and George Cunningham. Even within the Cabinet there

1 Bogdanor, Devolution in the U.K. , 170-7 & Hutchison, Scottish politics , 130 disagree on the importance of the Commission 2 Miller, The end of British politics? , 66-70; Keating & Bleiman, Labour and Scottish nationalism , 167-72 were strong reservations: senior ministers, like James Callaghan (who represented a

Cardiff seat), were sceptical, regarded nationalism with derision and feared that devolution would compromise the authority of the government. 1 Labour members

from the north east of England were also vocal in their opposition, fearing that

resources would be diverted to Scotland. John Smith, given the task of managing the

detail of the legislation, had given the impression at the special conference in 1974

that he was a sceptic. Perhaps this was mistaken, but it led to accusations of

inconsistency when he became the leading advocate of Scottish devolution in the

House of Commons. Smith, however, was pragmatic on devolution it was a

contribution to the better government of Britain, rather than recognition of Scottish

particularity. 2

The position in the SNP was not straightforward. Devolution was perceived by some as a unionist distraction, a mirror image of unionist fears of disintegration. Other nationalists, although supportive, did not trust Labour to produce a good scheme. 3 The

SNP were not quite in the position that Parnell had occupied in 1886. They posed a

potent electoral threat to Labour in 1974 and 1975, and it was perhaps fortunate for

the government that there were no Scottish by-elections during this period, but its

opinion poll rating faded from 1978. The perception of decline was confirmed at the

Glasgow Garscadden by-election of April 1978, when Donald Dewar comfortably

defeated an unimpressive SNP candidate. 4 In reality, the SNP’s room for manoeuvre was circumscribed, they found it difficult to influence the government and their ultimate weapon, the threat to bring it down, was risky. Finally, the SNP were not the

1 Morgan, Callaghan , 361, 510, 629, 677 2 McSmith, John Smith , 76-8; Stuart, John Smith , 79-81; Lang, Blue remembered years , 142 3 ‘Levy, ‘Search for a rational strategy’, 236-48; Mitchell, Strategies for self-government , 212-13 4 Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 378-9 only minority party to whom the government could turn in a moment of crisis, as was demonstrated with the formation of the Lib-Lab pact in the spring of 1977.

The Conservatives were also divided and seemed most at risk, having lost eight seats to the SNP in 1974. Since the Hamilton by-election their attitude to devolution had veered far from the Declaration of Perth. In the aftermath of the 1974 elections the pro-devolutionist wing, led by Alick Buchanan Smith and Malcolm Rifkind, appeared to be strong, but in reality the party was divided. A group of older MPs took a traditional Unionist position, deprecating slights to Scotland but not advocating devolution. Many English MPs, not under threat from the SNP of course, seemed surprised that the party was contemplating devolution. From 1975, influenced by Mrs

Thatcher’s leadership, the party moved to a clear opposition to home rule, leading to the resignation of Buchanan Smith and Rifkind from the opposition front bench. 1

There were even divisions within the Liberal party, arguably the group with the longest and most consistent history of commitment to the principle. Nevertheless, events in the late 1960s and 1970s suggested that this was no longer the Liberal priority it had been before 1918, or would become in the 1980s and 1990s. During the

Lib-Lab pact the party did not push particularly hard for concessions, proportional representation for example. The rural seats which they held in the 1970s were hardly bastions of devolutionary sentiment.

All of the parties were divided and these splits cut across the customary ideological fissures which afflict all parties; some of them divided English and Scottish MPs of the same party. All parties had to perform contortions in their attempts to find a

1 Mitchell, Conservatives and the union , 69-78 common position on devolution, often an impossible objective. Understanding these divisions helps to explain the fractured campaigns in the referendum of March 1979.

It also helps to explain the failure of the government’s devolution proposals in another respect. Devolution was a lowest common denominator: for some it was a tactic to advance independence, for others to prevent it, for others still the concern was self preservation. 1

Power devolved?

Devolution was designed as an antidote to nationalism. The 1974 White Paper,

Democracy and Devolution made this plain:

The Government …regard it as a vital and fundamental principle to maintain

the economic and political unity of the United Kingdom. This is not just a

matter of tradition and sentiment, important though they are. The unity of the

country and of the economy is essential both to the strength of our

international position and to the growth of our industry and national wealth.

That unity is crucial if we are to play an effective role in international

negotiations, whether political or economic; and it is crucial for the central

management of the economy and so to the distribution of resources in favour

of all the less prosperous areas of the United Kingdom. 2

This was the fundamental theme running through the speeches of the Prime Minister,

James Callaghan—‘This is a measure for Wales and Scotland and a measure for preserving the unity of the United Kingdom’—on the devolution legislation, and those

1 Brown & Drucker, Politics of devolution , 128 2 PP 1974 XXI, Democracy and devolution: proposals for Scotland and Wales (Cmnd 5732), 1, see also 5, 9; PP 1975-6 XIV, Our changing democracy: devolution to Scotland and Wales (Cmnd 6348), 4 of the ministers most concerned with it, Michael Foot and John Smith. The last was the most forthright, he declared in Feb 1977: ‘there is a serious challenge to the unity of the United Kingdom. It comes not from the Bill, but from the nationalists who, from their point of view, want to break it up.’ 1 Devolution was not new territory for

the British government, there was the precedent of Northern Ireland from 1920 to

1972. Devolution for Scotland, however, was a novelty and the issue crawled out

from the faddist fringes of Scottish politics. Further, from 1976 to 1978 Scottish

politics were debated at Westminster more frequently and in greater depth than at any

time since the Union and gives Scotland a walk-on part in histories of Britain. 2 From

the first tentative steps taken in the aftermath of the general election of February 1974

the party’s devolution proposals evolved, but they did not depart from central

principles laid down then; indeed, Gladstonian principles remained relevant. The

discussion concerned, amongst other topics: the powers of the proposed Assembly

(the word ‘parliament’ was studiously avoided); financial provisions; and Scottish

representation at Westminster.

The early proposals were cautious, especially on the powers of the Assembly. 3 As well as the reserved powers common to all devolution schemes in the UK since

1886—control of the armed forces and foreign policy—others included social security, higher education, aspects of industrial policy and of policy over public sector pay, the last a crucial area of concern in an inflationary period. These meant that the

Scottish Assembly—to number 142 members (two for each of Scotland’s seventy-one constituencies) elected on a first-past-the-post-basis—would have circumscribed powers over economic and social policy. This was likely to hamper its popularity,

1 P.D. , 5 th ser. 922, 977, 13 Dec. 1976; 926, 1360-1, 22 Feb. 1977 2 Clark, Hope and glory , 356-7; Morgan, People’s peace , 367-71 3 Bogdanor has described it as ‘a minimalist conception of devolution’, Devolution in the U.K. , 179 since it would be unable to demonstrate that it could make a difference on bread and butter issues. The reservation of higher education policy was also interesting: the universities’ four year honours degrees, relatively broad curricula, and structures of internal governance were distinctively Scottish; but their staffs were drawn from an international network, the student body was not exclusively Scottish, and they were part of a British system which relied for part of their funding on nationwide research councils. Thus the University Grants Committee was to continue its oversight of the

Scottish Universities (a contrast with the 1998 scheme). 1 All devolution schemes contain compromises of this nature, but in the Labour schemes of the mid-1970s where there was doubt the tendency was to retain power at Westminster.

There was to be no devolution of fiscal policy and funding for the Scottish executive would come from a block grant from the Treasury. 2 Despite the weakness of the

financial provisions of the Scotland Act of 1978, its passage provided an important

moment in the history of Scottish funding arrangements. This also has its roots in the

1880s. In 1888 when the establishment of Scottish county councils was being

contemplated a system was required to allocate financial support for their activities.

Since the money was to come from a U.K. wide fund, receipts from Probate duty, G.J.

Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, decided to allocate the money on the basis

of each country’s contribution to that and other exchequer funds, Scotland’s was

13.75 per cent, or 11/80ths, of that of England and Wales. This method of allocating

money became known after the Great War as the ‘Goschen formula’ and survived into

the 1950s, possibly later, its application spreading despite its datedness. 3 The formula

1 Our Changing Democracy , 26 2 Our Changing Democracy , 19 3 Levitt, ‘Scottish secretary’, 93-116, esp. 95; NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc. 7656/16/2, W.G. Pottinger to Woodburn, 13 Aug. 1957; NAS, ED26/1323, contains material from 1969-71about the formula was not applied comprehensively across the board of public expenditure and should not be thought of as the means of general allocation of allocating Scotland's share of public expenditure, it was most often deployed in expenditure on education. 1 The question of national contributions to and receipts from the Exchequer was a controversial item in the 1880s because of the debate on Irish home rule and Irish nationalist complaints that Ireland was contributing more than she was receiving; the

SHRA made similar claims, although in a lower key. A Royal Commission investigated the issues but its conclusions were not definitive because the political context was so heated. Another investigation was carried out in the 1950s by the Catto

Committee and the question was raised again in 1978. It was recognised that a new arrangement was required to find the size of the block and to make marginal changes to Scottish expenditure. This led to the Treasury undertaking an assessment of

Scotland’s public expenditure needs and coming up with another formula, designed to be temporary, based on population shares, which identified Scotland’s share of any changes to public expenditure in England at 10/85 ths . This became known as the

‘Barnett Formula’ after Chief Secretary to the Treasury Joel Barnett. This also survived longer than intended and has been altered from time to time. 2 By the 1970s there was a widespread awareness that per capita public expenditure in Scotland was higher than in England. This should not be seen, pejoratively, as ‘subsidy’, nor as evidence that Scotland was ‘dependent’ on England or the state. Rather, it was the product of political decisions made by governments of both parties to spend money on particular problems, such as housing or transport, which had Scottish peculiarities, and which helped to create a large state sector in Scotland. 3 The existence of large

sparsely populated areas made Scotland a more expensive country to service. A

1 Mitchell, Governing Scotland , 149-81, 236-40 2 McCrone, ‘Scotland’s public finances’, 34-7 3 Finlay, ‘Unionism and the dependency culture’, 100-16 rational argument could be made that if social and economic equity across the UK was the objective of government, then that required varying levels of public expenditure in its different parts. The unthinkable alternative was to say that the underlying principle was flat levels of public expenditure across the country and to accept the political consequences. As in the 1880s, however, the prospect of devolution brought these assumptions, calculations and requirements into the public eye. Many years later Joel Barnett argued that his formula had nothing to do with devolution but related to the general principles of income and expenditure in different parts of the UK. 1 Scotland may not have acquired a parliament but governments acquired a surprisingly durable formula for dealing with changes to public expenditure. Because the Scotland Act was repealed by the Tories in 1979 the principles governing the formula remained obscure until their publication in

December 1997, by which time devolution was back on the agenda. 2

The third element of Labour’s devolution scheme which can be historically

contextualised is Scottish representation in the House of Commons. This was one of

the principal issues which divided the Liberal party over Irish home rule in 1886. On

that occasion there was to be no Irish representation in London following the

establishment of a Dublin parliament. This led Joseph Chamberlain and others to

argue that the union and the empire would be imperilled, the House of Commons

would no longer represent the entire U.K., and vexed questions of taxation and

representation could recur. Later schemes argued for retaining Irish members or

suggested that Irish MPs should have the right to attend and vote, but only on some

issues. Another notion was to reduce the representation from the devolved territory, as

1 see his deft evidence to the House of Commons, Treasury Committee’s report on the Barnett formula in Nov. 1997 2 House of Commons Debates, 6 th series, 302, 510-13, 9 Dec. 1997 was the case in Ulster after 1920. None of these ‘solutions’ would have been entirely satisfactory, and the last, although ‘it might reduce English resentment at “Scottish privilege”’, does not deal with the principle involved. 1 This is that following

devolution Scottish MPs could vote on, for example, English health policy, but

devolution would prevent English MPs from reciprocating. To attempt to solve this

problem by ending Scottish representation, or by suggesting that they could only vote

on reserved matters, seemed likely only to compound the original difficulty. To ignore

it and maintain the status quo was, to opponents of devolution, such as Francis Pym

(Conservative) or Tam Dalyell (Labour), an inevitable path to Anglo-Scottish

conflict. 2 Dalyell raised this point incessantly and it was christened the ‘West Lothian

Question’ after his constituency; in reality, it was as old as devolution itself. 3 The only

logical solution would have been federalism or ‘home rule all round’, but the problem

was how to accommodate England, as Churchill had found in 1911 and the

government reiterated in 1976 in a white paper on the ‘English dimension’ of

devolution. In any case, there did not seem to be any demand for English home rule in

the 1970s. 4

Devolution was not only potentially problematic for the other parts of the United

Kingdom but there were difficulties with the new local government structure in

Scotland. The structure which had been established in 1889 and reformed in 1929 was, by the 1960s, creaking. The rather haphazard system of burghs and counties with large corporations for the main cities was illogical. Many of the burghs were too small

1 McLean, ‘Are Scotland and Wales over-represented in the House of Commons?’, 268; a point also made by, inevitably, Tam Dalyell in the House of Commons on 13 Dec. 1976 during the second reading of the Scotland and Wales Bill, see P.D. , 5 th ser., 922, 1058 2 Dalyell, Devolution , 245-51 3 P.D. , 5 th ser., 924, 371-5, 19 Jan. 1977 4 White paper on English dimension of devolution to carry out their responsibilities and services, such as policing, were needlessly fragmented: in all there were 234 institutions of local government. Local government boundaries made little sense in some areas. In the Hebrides Lewis was part of Ross- shire but Harris, part of the same land mass, was in Inverness-shire. Low turnout at elections indicated that there was widespread apathy and this was unhealthy. As regional economic development became an important matter in Scotland in the 1960s this structure of local government was ill-equipped to fund the infrastructure required to be able to attract industrial investment. The Labour government of the 1960s responded characteristically by establishing a Royal Commission under the judge

Lord Wheatley. This body did indeed ‘spend years taking minutes’ and did not report until 1969. The report recommended a two tier system with seven large regions and thirty-seven smaller districts, the division to be functional rather than geographic, but left intact the existing functions of Scottish local government. When the new system was implemented in 1975, following legislation of 1973, there were nine regions

(Highland, Grampian, Tayside, Central, Fife, Lothian, Strathclyde, Dumfries and

Galloway, and Borders) and three unitary island councils (Western Isles, Orkney and

Shetland). This outcome was the result of vigorous rearguard actions fought by the islands, Borders and Fife to maintain their independent existence. The system was completed by fifty-three districts. These were often labelled as a ‘second tier’ but they were separate from, not subordinate to, the regions. Powers were divided between the regions and districts with the most controversial decision involving housing being allocated to the smaller districts. This prevented Labour dominated regions from using revenue from relatively prosperous localities to subsidise council house rents. This resulted in some controversial decisions on District Council boundaries; none more so than the House of Lords vote which saw a series of wealthy suburban areas removed from Glasgow District and taking their strong revenue base with them.The government had desired institutions of local government which were not necessarily more autonomous or with wider functions, but stronger in the sense of having a sufficiently wide revenue base and infrastructure to be able to implement government policy without extensive support from centre. 1 As far as the relationship

between local government and devolution was concerned the problem was

Strathclyde. This was Scotland biggest region with over 2 million residents in a

geographic area stretching from Mull to South Ayrshire. This would be a powerful

alternative political arena to a Scottish Assembly. Indeed, Strathclyde was hostile to

devolution, in a debate in June 1974 the council rejected the idea of devolution by

sixty-six votes to twenty-two. For many of its leading figures—such as Geoff Shaw,

the radical clergyman who rose rapidly to its leadership—an Assembly seemed little

more than a sideshow compared to Strathclyde’s decision-making capacity. Shaw saw

devolution as ‘bureaucratic centralisation of power which only the SNP is daft enough

to advocate’. 2 If the latter was not quite true, the idea of devolution as centralisation demonstrates how different was the view of an Assembly in the mind of an important

Labour Councillor compared to government ministers with a small majority and a strong SNP threat. The reform of local government prior to the onset of the devolution debate created a very significant problem and a potentially illogical structure. Had the

Scotland Act of 1978 been implemented there might well have been considerable tension between the Assembly and Strathclyde Regional Council, especially if they came to be controlled by different political parties. By the time devolution was implemented in the late 1990s Strathclyde had been dismantled and the Parliament

1 Midwinter et. al. , Politics and public policy , 119-22; Kellas, Scottish political system , 164-73 2 Ferguson, Geoff , 155-285, esp. 216-17, 246. was more powerful than Labour’s proposed Assembly in the 1978 Scotland Act, so the potential clash between local and devolved institutions was less of a problem.

Not surprisingly, given these political and constitutional problems, as well as a divided governing party, the passage of the Scotland Bill was fraught, and concluded with ‘disastrous failure’ according to Denis Healey. 1 There were three points at which disaster loomed. The first was the failure of the Scotland and Wales Bill in the House of Commons: it was harried by its opponents to such an extent that by late February

1977 a guillotine motion was attempted in order to expedite matters. This was defeated by a majority of twenty-nine, twenty-two Labour MPs voted against the motion and a further twenty-three abstained. 2 The government’s response was to

bring forward separate bills for Scotland and Wales in November 1977. With the

government now in a minority, Labour rebels were more cautious and guillotine

motions were successful. Unfortunately, this did not entirely smooth the passage of

the Scotland Bill. The notion of a referendum had been conceded in February 1977

during the debates on the Scotland and Wales Bill and this gave Labour backbench

opponents a further opening. 3 James Callaghan’s account emphasises the difficulty

caused by Labour backbenchers who felt that constitutional issues were a topic on

which they had some expertise and authority. 4 The principal example of these guerrilla raids being the successful ‘40 per cent’ amendment put forward by George

Cunningham, a Scot representing a north London seat. This did not commit the government to repeal the Act if less than 40 per cent of the Scottish electorate supported it in the referendum, but it required that parliament be invited to do so. Its

1 Healey, Time of my life , 460 2 P.D. , 5 th ser., 926, 1234-1366, 22 Feb. 1977; 1640-52, 24 Feb. 1977 3 P.D. , 5 th ser., vol no.?, 266-455, 15 Feb. 1977 4 Callaghan, Time and chance , 502-10 supporters argued that devolution was such a fundamental step that a simple majority was not enough, and that a general election was no test of opinion since the parties were so divided. Cunningham denied that it was a ‘wrecking amendment’—if ‘the people of Scotland overwhelmingly want devolution, far more than 40 per cent will presumably vote for it.’ 1—but it was not designed to advance the cause. 2 Supporters

of devolution countered by arguing that the 40 per cent provision ‘will encourage all

supporters of devolution to work the harder to ensure a high turnout and that the result

of the referendum is not in doubt’. 3 In the end it proved fatal. The turnout in the referendum was around 63 per cent, the ‘yes’ vote only about 33 per cent of the total electorate, but 52 per cent of those who voted, and the act was duly repealed by the

Conservatives in June 1979. 4 The 40 per cent rule caused massive problems in the

organisation of the referendum, especially in the now vital accurate assessment of the

precise size of the electorate. The electoral register indicated entitlement to vote rather

than the absolute size of the electorate and although an allowance was made to take

changes and inaccuracies into account, many argued that it was not generous enough

and the 40 per cent hurdle was, in reality, higher.5

The third milestone on the road to disaster was the referendum campaign. 6 The divisions within the Labour party became obvious in late 1978 and early 1979. This had been foreshadowed in referendum on EEC membership in 1975, but devolution was a central policy of the government, not something implemented by its

Conservative predecessor. The campaign did not come down to a simple battle

1 P.D. , 5 th ser., 942, 1468, 25 Jan. 1978 2 Bogdanor, ‘The 40 per cent rule’, 249-63 3 N.L.S., John P. Mackintosh MSS Dep. 323/147, John Smith to Mackintosh, 5 Apr. 1978 4 P.D. , 5 th ser., 967, 1327-1462 (20 Jun. 1979) 5 Bogdanor, Devolution in the U.K. , 189 6 Perman, ‘The devolution referendum campaign’, 53-63 is critical of the Yes campaigns. between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps. The umbrella ‘Yes for Scotland’ campaign contained people from a wide variety of political backgrounds, but few well known figures. It was fatally wounded by the death of its originator, and best advocate, John P.

Mackintosh in June 1978. Other Labour MPs were deterred from participating by the presence of Mackintosh—regarded as an eccentric by his less imaginative colleagues—and, even worse, Jim Sillars, the former ‘hammer of the Nats’ who had

‘betrayed’ the Labour party in establishing the Scottish Labour Party in 1976. 1 This

nationalistic and broadly left wing composition made the group unattractive to

Conservative devolutionists like Alick Buchanan Smith and Malcolm Rifkind. ‘Yes

for Scotland’, if it had generated more enthusiasm and wider support, had the

potential to play a role not unlike that of the Covenant movement in the 1950s. This

potential was unrealised, however, and it has been called a ‘mismanaged shambles’. 2

John MacCormick had been able to appeal on the basis of the popularity of a broad

principle, in the 1970s the devolution debate was mired in tiresome detail and squalid

political tactics—popular enthusiasm was impossible. 3 There was also a ‘Labour

Movement Yes’ campaign, the principal characteristic of which was an exclusive approach. Helen Liddell, the general secretary of the Labour party in Scotland (‘a brilliant and attractive young woman who would have risen to the top in any other walk of life’ according to Denis Healey) forbade collaboration lest any partnerships dilute the party’s credit for devolution. In particular there was to be no trysting with the ‘separatists’ because their motivation for devolution—a staging post to independence—was antithetical to Labour’s unionism. This was rational enough, but the deep political hatred of the Labour establishment for the SNP was betrayed by

1 For ‘Yes for Scotland’ see N.L.S. John P. Mackintosh MSS, Dep. 323/149, correspondence with Donald MacKay, Lord Kilbrandon and Roderick MacFarquhar, Jan.-Jun. 1978; Sillars, Case for optimism , 64-5 2 Brown & Drucker, Politics of nationalism , 121 3 MacArtney, ‘The protagonists’, 14-15; McCrorie, Highland cause , 218-19 Mrs Liddell’s language: ‘we will not be soiling our hands by joining any umbrella group’. 1 Labour divisions were demonstrated through the ‘Labour Vote No’ campaign

fronted by Tam Dalyell and Robin Cook as well the journalist and future MP Brian

Wilson. This group allowed Labour anti-devolutionists to campaign against the

government’s proposals without ‘soiling their hands’ by co-operating with

Conservatives. 2 Their most important intervention was to raise an action in the Court of Session against the Independent Broadcasting Authority on the question of the allocation of time for broadcasts. LVN argued that if each political party was awarded time for a broadcast this would give an unfair advantage to the Yes campaigns and that a more just allocation would be broadcasts for the Yes/No alternatives. Lord Ross upheld this view in his judgement. 3 The picture of confusion and division was matched in the Conservative party with rival ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns; the former led by the former shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Alick Buchanan Smith and included Malcolm Rifkind and a number of Conservative Councillors. 4 ‘Scotland

Says No’, was strongly supported by the Conservative Party and grew out of

Parliamentary groups like ‘Keep Britain United’ and the ‘Scotland is British’

campaign. It was well funded, contained many prominent figures and its constant

recitation of negativity about devolution—it would be expensive, it would mean more

tax, it would clash with the new regional councils, it would be dominated by

Glasgow, it would lead to conflict with England, it would diminish Scotland’s

presence in the centre of real power in London, it would endanger the union, there

was insufficient talent to make the assembly work—was influential. 5

1 MacArtney, ‘The protagonists’, 16-18; Daily Record , 14 Nov. 1978 2 Balsom & McAllister, ‘The Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda’, 405 3 Fowler, ‘Broadcasting—Television’, 121-7; Scots Law Times , 1979, 282 4 Mitchell, Conservatives and the union , 92-3 5 See the reproduction of campaign materials in in Bochel et. al. (eds), The referendum experience , 180-7; Harvie, No gods , 163-4

James Callaghan, had contemplated calling an election in late 1978 but had decided to wait until 1979, he thought that over the winter the government would be able to produce better news on the economy and public finances. He was wrong. The ‘winter of discontent’ saw public sector strikes which affected the daily lives of many people and knocked devolution down the news agenda. 1 Thus, devolution was associated

with an unpopular government, as Callaghan later admitted. 2 Although voter

weariness should not be discounted, it was not the principle of devolution but the

Scotland Act of 1978 which was the subject of the referendum. This created another

group of potential ‘No’ voters, those who favoured devolution but disliked Labour’s

scheme, or who merely wished to give that party a bloody nose. The debate had lasted

since 1974, every counter-argument had been aired, while the arguments in favour

had been divided among Labour, Scottish Labour, Liberal, SNP and even some

Conservative voices. There was movement towards the ‘No’ camp, especially among

Conservatives, in the final weeks. Since SNP voters had been solid supporters of

devolution, their opinion poll decline, confirmed by the election, also handicapped the

Yes campaign. 3

Ally’s tartan army

The writer William McIlvanney implied that the tragi-comic performance of the

Scottish football team at the World Cup in Argentina had dented Scottish self confidence in a way which affected the result of the referendum. 4 The cartoonist of the Glasgow Herald , Turnbull, whose lion had been the symbol of Scotland during

1 Drucker & Brown, The politics of nationalism , 121 2 Callaghan, Time and chance , 558 3 Balsom & McAllister, ‘The Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda’, 405 4 McIlvanney, Surviving the shipwreck , 17 the referendum campaign, produced a cartoon with his once bullish beast—weighed down by the ball and chain of ‘apathy’, wounded by the experience of ‘Argentina’— reduced to indecision, over the caption ‘I’m feart’. In McIlvanney’s words ‘it smelt the terrible distances of freedom’. 1 Scotland had qualified for the World Cup for the first time since their ill-starred efforts of 1954 and 1958 and under the management of the ebullient Ally MacLeod approached the tournament with extreme confidence.

Hampden Park was the venue on 25 May for an unprecedented ‘send off’ attended by

30,000 fans. Unfortunately, initial results in Argentina were less than impressive.

MacLeod had underestimated a gifted Peruvian side who came from behind to defeat

Scotland 3-1. Worse was to follow, in the shape of a 1-1 draw with Iran, Scotland’s goal coming courtesy of an Iranian defender, and the news that a Scotland player,

Willie Johnston, had taken a banned, although clearly not performance-enhancing, substance. He was sent home. Other results meant that Scotland’s next game against the Dutch, runners-up in 1974 and one of the best teams in the tournament, had to be won by three goals to ensure progress. For a brief moment half-way through the second half it seemed possible. Archie Gemmill had scored the best goal of the tournament and Scotland were two goals clear. It couldn’t last. It didn’t last. Only three minutes later Johnny Rep lashed a thirty-yard shot past Alan Rough and

Scotland’s world cup dream lay in tatters. Some SNP members of the time allege a connection between this nemesis and the deflation that led to the result of the referendum in March 1979. Unfortunately, the facts get in the way of a good story.

The Hamilton by-election, at which Margo MacDonald was defeated by George

Robertson, took place just before the start of the World Cup, and seemed to indicate that the SNP were on the slide before the excitements in Argentina. At the next World

1 three of Turnbull’s cartoons are reproduced in Bochel et. al. (eds), The referendum experience , 198-9; quote from McIlvanney’s poem ‘The cowardly lion’, Surviving the shipwreck , 24 Cup in Spain in 1982 (for which Scotland had qualified but the Dutch had not) the villain of the piece, Johnny Rep, was among Scottish fans and was soon identified, in his own words, as ‘the fucker that killed Scotland’. The effects of his spectacular goal, however, were confined to the football pitch. 1

The result of the referendum has been interpreted as an unenthusiastic endorsement of the Scotland Act. 2 Given its parentage, difficult birth and argumentative upbringing,

Scottish ‘devolution’ was more popular in 1979 than might have been expected. 3 Its

Welsh cousin was decisively smothered by a margin of four to one amidst division

between Welsh and English speaking regions of Wales. In many ways this was not

surprising: although Welsh linguistic and cultural identity was stronger than Scottish,

its distinctive civic society and political culture was less well developed, and its

history of assimilation with England was long. In Scotland too there were

geographical divisions. The north-east—ironically where ‘Scotland’s oil’ flowed

ashore—the borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Orkney and Shetland recorded ‘no’

majorities. This indicated that prosperous areas were unwilling to risk, or share, that

prosperity and that ‘peripheral’ fears of centralisation remained strong. An additional

factor in southern Scotland were historic links with England which increased the

reception of the argument that devolution would be isolationist.

Region Yes No Turnout

Borders 40.3 59.7 67.3

Central 54.7 45.3 66.7

1 Wilson, Don’t cry for me ; McColl, ‘78 2 Devine, Scottish nation , 588; Morgan, People’s peace, 411 3 Harvie, ‘Scottish politics’, 255 Dumfries & Galloway 40.3 59.7 64.9

Fife 53.7 46.3 66.1

Grampian 48.3 51.7 57.9

Highland 51.0 49.0 65.4

Lothian 50.1 49.9 66.6

Strathclyde 54.0 46.0 63.2

Tayside 49.5 50.5 63.8

Orkney 27.9 72.1 54.8

Shetland 27.1 72.9 51.0

Western Isles 55.8 44.2 50.5

SCOTLAND 51.6 48.4 63.6

Table 2: Results of the referendum on Scotland Act, 1 March 1978 (Source: Hassan &

Lynch, Almanac , 372)

It is interesting to compare the results of the 1979 referendum with that of 1975, at

which voters were invited to confirm Britain’s membership of the EEC. There was a

much greater degree of enthusiasm for Europe—58.4 per cent ‘yes’ vote on a turnout

of 61.4 per cent—than for devolution, and only two local authority areas, Shetland

and the Western Isles recorded ‘No’ votes. Although the former was sceptical about

devolution in 1979, the latter was enthusiastic and other ‘no’ areas on devolution—the

Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Grampian—supported European membership. 1

This would suggest that Scottish voters, who seemed to be strongly in favour of

devolution in 1975, saw no necessary contradiction between acquiring some more

1 Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 371 control of Scottish affairs but ceding some control to Brussels, although enthusiasm for Europe was higher in England. The SNP’s later support for ‘independence in

Europe’ was a distant prospect at this time and the party took a strong anti-European line, one area where it seemed to be out of step with Scottish opinion. Their campaign to try and demonstrate that Scotland was opposed to European integration, preferring the ‘alternative’ of Scottish independence was not borne out by the results. 1

Questions

Was the nationalist sentiment which seemed to actuate the 1974 election results

merely a chimera? If Labour had held its unionist nerve would the problem simply

have gone away? Why did devolution not put down deeper roots in the hearts and

minds of the Scots in the 1970s? Were the political and chattering classes misled by

their own enthusiasm for devolution? The answer to the first question is a qualified

yes. There were many reasons for voting SNP in 1974, belief in independence being

some way down the list, and opinion poll evidence, imperfect though it is, suggests

that support for independence was running well behind support for the SNP. 2

Nevertheless, there was clear support for some form of constitutional change, only

Labour went into the February 1974 election advocating the status quo . The same sources suggest that Labour was right, for reasons of self preservation at least, to take on the devolution issue. Opinion polls show strong SNP support until late 1977 or early 1978. The last two questions are more difficult to answer.

1 Wolfe, Scotland lives , 138-9, 165; Stewart, A Scot at Westminster , 49-56; Lynch, Minority nationalism , 32-7; Miller, End of British politics? , 235, 247 2 Miller, End of British politics? , 98-103; Brand, National movement , 156-65; Brand, McLean & Miller, ‘Birth and death of a three party system’, 464-75 While most of the national newspapers, especially the Scotsman and the Glasgow

Herald , were supportive of devolution, although disappointed in the timidity of

Labour’s plans, the Scottish Daily Express , a longstanding supporter of home rule, turned against it under new ownership. 1 The Scotsman had long been in favour of

Scottish home rule, despite the fact that it came under the ownership of Roy

Thomson, a Canadian, from 1956; indeed, the paper flowered under the cultured

editorship of Alastair Dunnett from 1956 to 1973. His successor, Eric Mackay, was

also a strong, even fanatical, supporter of devolution. 2 It has even been suggested that

the whole devolution debate was the creation of Dunnett and Mackay, their ceaseless

advocacy helping to convince elements of the political class that it was an important

issue with the public. 3 If this is going a little far, there can be no doubt that it captures an essential truth about the devolution debate: journalists and politicians who supported it were far more enthusiastic than the electorate, as the referendum would show. The Glasgow Herald had remained in Scottish hands, but had been generally unionist until the 1970s. At the time of the devolution debate it was undergoing a takeover bid from Tiny Rowland’s Lonrho consortium. Its traditional owners, George

Outram and Co. were owned by a company chaired by Hugh Fraser, a convert to nationalism. Although Fraser’s influence on editorial matters was not direct, his politics may have been a subtle influence in moving the paper in a devolutionist direction. 4 Brian Wilson (of the Labour Vote No campaign) was the editor-proprietor

of the West Highland Free Press —a campaigning local newspaper based in Skye—

which was strident in its opposition to devolution, arguing that the highlands would

suffer just as much from Edinburgh government as they had allegedly done at the

1 Harvie, No gods and precious few heroes , 164 2 Goldenberg, The Thomson empire , 34, 38; Dunnett, Among friends , 129-49; Marr, My trade , xx; Smith, Paper lions , 30-5 3 Reid, Deadline , 8-16, 22-3, 155. 4 Meadows, ‘Constitutional crisis’, 50 hands of Whitehall. 1 Other local newspapers, especially the Dundee Courier , which had saturation circulation in Dundee and Tayside, and to a lesser extent the Press and

Journal of Aberdeen, were hostile. This was one area where there was a distinctive

Scottish culture: the London based press had little influence in Scotland in the face of

competition from the Scotsman , Glasgow Herald or Daily Record . Opponents of

devolution lamented the role of the press, and even the BBC, for giving it too much

prominence; independent television and radio were regarded as being more balanced

in their coverage. 2 The Scottish press, especially the Scotsman , gave huge coverage to devolution, especially during the referendum campaign; the result is a salutary reminder that the press has to be weighed with great care as a source of historical evidence. Caution must also be exercised in making assumptions about its influence: that the Scotsman published 400 letters on devolution during the referendum campaign, the majority supportive, as well as frequent editorials, is not evidence of its influence, but of its enthusiasm for the cause. 3 Journalists were part of a political class which could be subject to febrile obsessions, such as with devolution, not shared by the readership and electorate. Further, there were commercial considerations: the devolution debates led to increased circulation for the Scotsman and the Glasgow

Herald and the expectation was that the creation of a parliament would continue the

trend. The influence of the press, however, could not prevent the loss of enthusiasm

for home rule indicated by the turnout and result of the referendum. 4

The Church of Scotland and the Scottish Trades Union Congress were two prominent

Scottish institutions with long traditions of being favourable to devolution. The STUC

1 West Highland Free Press , 23 Feb. 1979 2 Brand, National movement , 139-43; Dalyell, Devolution, 196-203 3 Brown, ‘The Scottish morning press’, 64-84 4 Smith, Paper lions , 30-5 had been important at the Dalintober Street conference and were an important pro- home rule voice within the wider labour movement at the general election of February

1974 when the Labour party said little on the subject. For a period under Harold

Wilson’s premiership they had extraordinary access to the highest levels of government, even if they could not claim to have had much influence on the final shape of the legislation or the result of the referendum. The General Council met with

Michael Foot and John Smith in June 1976 and in March and July of the following year. Even more remarkable had been Harold Wilson’s visit to Scotland in March

1975. With seven senior ministers in tow he had undertaken two days of consultation with the STUC. This level of access was turned off rather abruptly in 1976 with the advent of James Callaghan as Prime Minister. As we have seen he was sceptical of devolution and more concerned with keeping his government in office than in consulting with the STUC. The substance of the STUC’s views on devolution shifted perceptibly over the course of the 1974 to 1979 period. Initially they had been suspicious of a revenue-raising assembly but their enthusiasm increased as time went on. They were less than impressed by the compromises in Our changing democracy and by 1977 were arguing for strong economic powers, control of oil revenues and was even prepared to contemplate proportional representation. The STUC was a strong voice in the Yes campaign in 1979. During this period the STUC general secretary was Jimmy Milne, a Communist. His party had a long and unambiguous tradition of support for devolution. Milne, as might be expected, was hostile to the

SNP. He despaired after the defeat of the guillotine motion in 1977, fearing that events were conspiring to hand great opportunities to the SNP with the potential for

‘divisive effects on the British working people’. The views of the STUC provide yet more evidence that the wider Labour movement contained a wide diversity of view on the home-rule question. 1

A discussion of the attitude of the Church of Scotland to devolution is indicative of

slightly different themes. The Kirk retained a conceit that its annual General

Assembly was a surrogate parliament. Although an increasing range of issues were

debated in that forum in the post-war period, it was scarcely representative and

Church membership had been declining since the 1950s. The Kirk had given evidence

to the Balfour Commission and, through its Church and Nation Committee, had

argued that devolution could help to counteract spiritual apathy. Nevertheless, there

were complications. The Church could not endorse the policy of any particular party,

and its statements on home rule were rather general. The focus demanded by the

devolution referendum brought conflict among the clergy. The Reverend Andrew

Herron, a former Moderator of the General Assembly, was an active member of the

‘Scotland Says No’ campaign and led the opposition to devolution within the

Church. 2 The position of the Church of Scotland was redolent of the whole devolution debate in Scotland in the 1970s: here was an institution which had a tradition of general support for home rule, but whose voice, when it came to the crunch in March

1979, was muted and ambiguous.

There were countervailing forces, however. Industrialists were generally suspicious of devolution and were generous in their support of ‘Scotland Says No’. The President of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, C. J. Risk, published an extraordinary example

1 Aitken, Bairns o’ Adam , 242-58, quote from 248. 2 Proctor, ‘The Church of Scotland’, 523-43 of the mixture of sweaty fear and vicious contempt with which the business community viewed what they regarded as the lunacy of devolution:

…the assembly would mean more taxes, more politicians, more civil servants,

worse and disputative government, less influence in London and compelling

demands for the break-up of the country. And separation would mean Scots-

English alienation, economic disruption, less investment and fewer jobs. 1

The Universities were another anti-devolution force, fearful of parochialism despite the fact that they had lobbied successfully to have control of higher education reserved to Westminster. Feelings ran high in the corridors of academe: when, in the aftermath of the referendum, G.W.S. Barrow, the new Professor of Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, a rather anglicised institution, delivered his powerful inaugural lecture entitled ‘The Extinction of Scotland’, the University broke with tradition and declined to publish it. Their fears may have been confirmed when a mischievous colleague of Professor Barrow arranged to have it published under the imprint of the Scots Independent !2

What seemed to be missing from the debate in the 1970s, as a result of devolution

being arrived at as a least worst solution for a tactical problem, was a lack of

consideration of its meaning or its potential to create new conditions for the Scottish

people. Discussion of this point returns the focus to the oil which was flowing ashore

from the North sea to Flotta and Grangemouth by the time the Scotland Act began its

brief visit to the statute book. The SNP had used this to generate optimistic visions,

1 Risk, ‘Devolution’, 124 2 Barrow, The extinction of Scotland based on assumptions about potential share outs of North Sea oil which, in the event of Scottish independence, would not have been shared in Whitehall, and to argue that this would make Scotland rich. 1 This argument was heard most loudly in the early

1970s and, curiously, seems to have been stilled as the decade progressed. Why was

this? One argument is that this was an ‘all-too-rational capitalist strategy’ which was

not likely to be particularly helpful in the political circumstances after 1974 when the

SNP’s further progress necessitated an ‘appeal to Labour voters who suspected any

détente between it and the leaders of Scottish commerce.’ 2 A further point is that ‘Its

Scotland’s oil’ ran the risk of being simply selfish, especially in the period after 1973 when prices were so high and the economy in such potential difficulties. Were the

SNP suggesting that the rest of Britain be held to ransom by the new state in the north? This would put a Scottish government in the same category as Libya. Some

SNP activists, in a spirit of magnanimity, put forward a conference resolution in 1974 calling for preference by a putative Scottish government for ‘our neighbours in the

British Isles’. 3 Other complexities in the oil campaign included devising a realistic

approach to the oil companies, one which would neither alienate them nor provoke

accusations of cosying up to them. So, as time passed, the simplicity of ‘its Scotland’s

oil’ and ‘Rich Scots poor Britons’ was compromised. In the 1970s the SNP’s vision

for Scotland—if, indeed, there was such a thing—was rather different to the social

democratic position so painstakingly cultivated by a new generation of nationalists in

the 1980s. Another alternative vision was exemplified in the Red Paper for Scotland ,

edited by Gordon Brown. As the title suggests this sought to adapt socialist views to

the Scottish national framework. It had two significant features: first, it sought to

move the argument on from the simple question of devolution or the status quo, to the

1 see the contrasting views of Fulton, ‘Scottish oil’, 310-22 & Lee, ‘North Sea oil’, 307-17 2 Harvie, Fool’s gold , 248 3 Levy, Scottish nationalism , 53 purpose of devolution as a mechanism for dealing with endemic social problems like low pay, housing, public health and poverty. Second, many of the contributions— especially those by the editor, Ray Burnett and John McGrath—were hostile to the

SNP as a right wing force which would ensure that a putative independent Scotland would be less than congenial for Socialists. 1 The importance of the Red paper is not

that it was influential, but that it represented a view which was not prominent in the

debate over devolution; it stands as a potential starting point, perhaps rough in places

(not least in its appearance), for a more wide ranging discussion of Scottish politics

and society which never took place despite the extensive parliamentary debates and

acres of newsprint devoted to devolution. 2 Because devolution came to be seen as a response to nationalism the best argument for it, the broadly democratic one that it could help to make government more accountable and open up new vistas of reform, was hardly heard. The debate was sucked into the emotional territory of unionism and nationalism, with their attendant hopes and fears, and mired in detail. 3 Viewed in its historical context perhaps none of this is very surprising. A unionist consensus is one of the principal features of Scottish politics in the twentieth century and the unionism of the political class faced with opportunistic devolution plans is not an oddity. There was some appetite for constitutional change among the wider electorate, but the politicians could not produce a piece of legislation which was comprehensible to the voters, nor could they marshal very convincing arguments in its favour. This, combined with the declining popularity of the government, ensured that the debating chamber in the old Royal High School building, where the Assembly was to be based, lay silent, slowly acquiring status as a symbol for the ‘we wuz robbed’ school of nationalism. Journalists who had been sharpening their pencils in readiness for a new

1 Brown (ed.), Red paper 2 Hassan, ‘Labour’s journey from socialism to social democracy’, 197-9; Harvie, Fool’s gold , 246-7 3 Brown & Drucker, Politics of nationalism , 124, 128 subject of news, comment, speculation and scandal had to find a different story.

Luckily, Mrs Thatcher provided it.

Power retained

The final point in this sorry tale concerns the fall of the government in 1979. 1 Some

SNP sources argued that the government could have brought forward the repeal

motion, as they had to do under the Cunningham amendment, but under a three line

whip to reject it. Events unfolded differently. The government, fearful of exposing its

divisions, refused to set a date for a repeal motion, inducing a motion of no

confidence from the SNP. Ultimately the confidence vote, held on 28 March, which

the government lost by one vote, was tabled by the Conservatives, the official

opposition. Nevertheless, political folklore, influenced by James Callaghan’s

memorable phrase about the novelty ‘of turkeys voting for an early Christmas’,

prioritises the SNP’s opposition to the government. Although a minority of SNP MPs

privately opposed this, it was justified on the grounds that Labour seemed to be

showing no enthusiasm for devolution. 2 Tory duplicity also figures in memories of these politics: a speech by Lord Home in February 1979 had encouraged a ‘no’ vote on the grounds of the weakness of Labour’s scheme and he hinted that something better might be on offer if the Conservatives came to power. 3 Lord Home was

certainly regarded as pro-devolution, he had been identified by Edward Heath in the

late 1960s as the best person to lead the party’s rethink on devolution. This perception

was not confined to fellow Conservatives, however. Interestingly, Home’s position—

supportive of devolution but critical of the Scotland Act—was similar to that of arch-

devolver John Mackintosh. He told Home that his case for a tax-raising assembly,

1 Naughtie, ‘The year at Westminster’ 42-50 is well informed. 2 Sillars, Case for optimism , 69-73; Mitchell, Strategies for self-government , 217-18 3 Mitchell, Conservatives and the union , 91-4 elected by proportional representation, was ‘splendid’ and expressed the ‘hope that if the Conservatives win the next election they will amend the Bill along the lines you indicate before submitting it to a referendum.’ 1 Although it cannot be conclusively

linked with Home’s speech, a noticeable trend in opinion during the referendum

campaign was the falling away in support for the Scotland Act among those who

identified themselves as Conservatives. 2 After the election the Conservatives lost no

time in repealing the Act and establishing their inflexible unionist credentials. One

unkind historian has written, with reference to Home’s involvement, as Lord

Dunglass, in the Munich crisis of 1938, ‘a career which had begun with the betrayal

of Czechoslovakia ended with the betrayal of Scotland’. 3

The 1979 election was a marked contrast to those of February and October 1974: on

those occasions Scottish issues, such as oil and devolution, had been to the fore and

the SNP had profited from this, as well as Conservative unpopularity. In 1979 the

focus had shifted: devolution was dead, voters were worried about economic matters. 4

As Neil Ascherson commented ‘If this is a dreich colourless election the Scots made it

so. The referendum and its aftermath abruptly withdrew the brightest theme … We

had forgotten, perhaps, how dull British politics are.’ 5 The government’s economic record rendered it vulnerable to Conservative attack, as did the industrial relations of the ‘Winter of discontent’ which added veracity to Conservative arguments that the public sector was at the heart of a malaise which hindered Britain’s competitiveness and efficiency. This meant that the election was largely fought out over general

1 N.L.S., J.P. Mackintosh MSS, Dep. 323/147, JPM to Lord Home, 16 Mar. 1978; P.D., (Lords), 389, 1215-19, 14 Mar. 1978; Scotsman , 15 Feb. 1979 2 Balsom & McAllister, ‘The Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda’, 403, 405, 408 (table 4a) 3 Harvie, Scotland and nationalism , 197 4 Hetherington, ‘The 1979 general election campaign’, 93 5 quoted by Miller, The end of British politics , 254 ‘British’ issues and it was hard for the SNP, ridiculed over their parliamentary role, to dictate the terms of the discussion in Scotland. The result was almost a return to the pattern which prevailed from the late 1950s to 1970: the SNP lost nine seats—seven to the Conservatives, two to Labour—only the Western Isles and Dundee East remained in nationalist hands, as their vote fell to 17 per cent. This bore out the Prime

Minister’s view that the fall of the government would mean the end of the Scotland

Act and ‘electoral suicide’ for the SNP, whom ‘no one could stop …from jumping off the Forth Bridge.’ 1 The SLP was also routed, Jim Sillars lost Ayrshire South, not

helped by SNP intervention and Labour vituperation, and John Robertson was

defeated in Paisley. Scottish politics entered a new phase. This was not immediately

apparent; indeed, would not become so until after the 1987 general election. Although

there had been some restlessness in the 1970-74 period when Gordon Campbell was a

Conservative Secretary of State backed by a minority of Scottish MPs from his own

party, this would pale into insignificance compared to the arguments during the 1980s

over the Conservatives’ ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland with a diminishing rump of

Scottish MPs. The success of Labour’s devolution policy after 1997 has its roots in

the political conditions which prevailed in the period from 1979 to 1997 and

especially the period from 1992 to 1997. The contrasts with 1974-9 are much more

evident than the continuities. Before this topic can be dealt with the 1980s—a dark

ice-age according to some, a missed opportunity for Scotland to end its thirlage to the

state according to others—have to be considered.

1 Callaghan, Time and chance, 560 Chapter thirteen: ‘mothering devolution’, politics 1979-1997

The repeal of the Scotland Act and the decline of the SNP in 1979, when they lost nine of their eleven seats, did not signal the end of Scottish divergence from British political trends. The years from 1979 to 1997 saw the collapse of the Conservative vote and the appearance of sophisticated tactical voting designed to eradicate that party from the Scottish political map, an objective which was achieved in 1997. This came at a time when its vote in England was increasing, so the gap between their

Scottish and English performance, evident since the 1960s, became extremely wide. If the 1970s had seen Scottish politics dominate Westminster, the period from 1980 to

1997 saw an interesting political agenda develop in Scotland, but one which was at odds with the rest of the United Kingdom. Scottish reactions to Thatcherism created a distinct political culture which was the essential building block for the renewed demand for Scottish home rule which slowly gathered weight in the late 1980s, and advanced significantly in the aftermath of the Conservative’s unexpected victory in the 1992 election. The following table gives the pattern of seats and votes for each party in the period covered by this chapter.

Election LAB CONS LIB 1 SNP

Seats Vote Seats Vote Seats Vote Seats Vote

1979 44 41.5 22 31.4 3 9.0 2 17.3

1983 41 35.1 21 28.4 8 24.5 2 11.7

1987 50 42.5 10 24.0 9 19.4 3 14.0

1 Lib/SDP Alliance 1983-1987; Liberal Democrat since 1992 1992 49 39.0 11 25.7 9 13.1 3 21.5

1997 56 46.0 0 18.0 10 13.0 6 22.0

‘That woman’

There was no Thatcherite Revolution in Scotland. That might seem

strange for Scotland in the eighteenth century was the home of the very

same Scottish enlightenment which produced Adam Smith . . . It had been

a country humming with science, invention and enterprise—a theme

which I used time and again to return in my Scottish speeches. But on top

of decline in Scotland’s heavy industry came socialism—intended as a

cure, but itself developing quite new strains of social and economic

disease, not least militant trade unionism. 1

The Conservative failure to achieve electoral success in Scotland in the 1980s was a source of consternation to the Prime Minister. The Scottish Office added ‘a layer of bureaucracy, standing in the way of the reforms which were paying such dividends in

England’, and provided a base for ministers to ‘go native’. George Younger,

Thatcher’s first Secretary of State, had considerable autonomy and seemed to be the archetypal advocate of Scotland’s interests, especially over the threat to close the

Ravenscraig steel plant. By contrast, Michael Forsyth was singled out for praise as the

‘powerhouse for Thatcherism at the Scottish Office’, but was allegedly the fount of much infighting. 2 His principal contribution was to have the notion of ‘opting out’ introduced to the 1989 Scottish Education Bill. Very few schools chose to opt-out of

1 Thatcher, Downing Street years, 618. 2 Thatcher, Downing Street years, 619-20; Kemp, The hollow drum, 175-208; Smith, Paper lions , 83- 94. local authority control, but an earlier reform, giving parents the right to choose the schools in which their children were educated, was more important. 1 Mrs Thatcher’s

puzzlement over Scottish psephology masks two important areas where she might

have been grateful to the Scots: first, through North Sea oil ‘the country was keeping

her in business’; second, the unpopularity of the Labour Party’s ‘botched devolution

scheme of 1978-9—as well as … the miscalculations of the Trades Unions and of Mr

Edward Heath’—played a part in ‘her rise to power’.2 The Scottish perception of the

Prime Minister had much to do with matters of personality, clearly Mrs Thatcher

jarred with the Scottish electorate. In an opinion poll in 1989 only 10 per cent agreed

with the statement that she had ‘the best interests of Scotland at heart’; 77 per cent

agreed that she treated ‘the Scots as second class citizens; and a poll in 1987 found

that 75 per cent perceived her to be ‘extreme’. 3 Conservative unpopularity, however,

was not just a matter of personal dislike of Mrs Thatcher. John Major’s personal

rating was much better than that of his predecessor, but it did not prevent the

obliteration of the Scottish Conservatives at the 1997 election. Policy was clearly

important and several areas of Scottish political debate in the 1980s can help us to

understand why such a great distance emerged between the government and the

Scottish people: housing reform, the community charge/‘poll tax’, the miners’ strike

and the constitutional question.

Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s bemusement at her party’s poor record in Scotland arose from

Scottish enthusiasm for some of her policies. Selling ‘council houses’ to tenants at a

discount is an example. This policy had a much greater impact on Scottish society

compared to other parts of the country: ‘the strong government commitment to home

1 Marr, Battle for Scotland, 172. 2 Harvie, No gods and precious few heroes, 165; Scotsman, 7 Jun. 1983. 3 Mitchell & Bennie, ‘Thatcherism’, 96-7 ownership … faced a much greater uphill struggle in Scotland, and represented a more extreme reversal of policy’. 1 By 1981 the public rented sector—with 54.6 per cent of Scotland’s housing (26 per cent in England)—dominated the Scottish housing market. In west central Scotland the figure was even higher: Clydebank, Monklands and Motherwell had over 80 per cent of housing in the public sector. Concomitantly, relatively few Scots owned their own houses: only 34.7 per cent of Scottish households compared to 58 per cent of English and Welsh households in 1981. The areas with low rates of public sector housing were in rural and suburban Scotland:

Bearsden and Milngavie, and Eastwood (effectively suburbs of Glasgow) had less than 20 per cent of their houses in the public sector. 2

An attempt to achieve Noel Skelton’s property-owning democracy was only part of

this story, another was an attempt to pressurise local government. Labour control of

district and regional councils was another deep-seated problem in Scotland in the

Thatcherite view. Housing Support Grant, which helped to keep rents down, was cut

drastically, from 39 per cent of local authorities’ revenue in this area in 1979 to only 7

per cent in 1985. This placed pressure on Labour Councils to raise rents to make up

the shortfall, thus compromising their electoral support. 3 An earlier attempt to do this,

in the late 1950s merely made the government unpopular, but the governments of the

1980s were interested in overturning historical patterns rather than learning from

experience. The aim was to shift the source of local authority revenue towards local

taxation paid by a wider section of the population, rather than allowing local

authorities to take the pressure off income from the rates by exploiting windfalls. Mrs

Thatcher made this clear in May 1981:

1 Thatcher, Downing Street years, 623-4; Gibb, ‘Policy and politics’, 180. 2 Gibb, ‘Policy and politics’, 177-80. 3 Gibb, ‘Policy and politics’, 178.

We need your help as local electors and ratepayers to insist on better

housekeeping from the town halls and the regional headquarters. It can be

done: . . . Labour regions and districts raised their rates by 39 and 40 per

cent respectively. Such extravagance is totally unnecessary and we have

got to bring it under better control. 1

Whilst the sale of council houses across the United Kingdom chimed with rhetoric of

individual responsibility and property owning in the hope of inculcating

conservatism—and, hopefully, Conservatism—there was an extra dimension to the

policy in Scotland. Giving council tenants the right to buy was one way of removing

substantial numbers of people from the clutches of left-wing conspiracy.

The ‘Poll Tax’ is held to be an example of Scottish events driving the wider British

agenda. This, however, is more evident in its origins than in its demise. 2 Of course, its

unpopularity was not confined to Scotland, but it took different forms north of the

border. Opposition went beyond the customary group of political activists and

involved cross- party co-operation. 3 The tactic of opposing the poll tax by non- payment was the occasion of a bitter argument between Labour, who deprecated it, and the SNP, who advocated it. Protest in Scotland was largely contained within the law and did not involve the violence which was seen on occasion in England. The legal implications of non-payment remained within the jurisdiction of Scots civil law,

1 Thatcher, Revival of Britain , 142. 2 Mitchell, Conservatives and the union , 118; this is even admitted in Stevenson, ‘Writing Scotland’s history’, 111 3 Marr, Battle for Scotland, 165. another contrast with England. 1 There was an alleged qualitative difference in the

Scottish opposition to the poll tax: ‘it was not legitimised by the choice of the Scottish people’. 2 This idea has some substance, in that these sentiments were part of the anti-

poll tax rhetoric, but it only tells part of the story.

The Nationalist mythology has it that the poll tax was an example of

Scotland being used for political vivisection by the cold-hearted English.

In fact, it was the Scottish Tories who fought to have the tax quickly (a

rare example of self assertion by the party in Scotland that does not reflect

well on its collective wisdom). 3

There are three areas of the poll tax episode where the Scottish dimension is

prominent: first, the role of the political controversy over the rates in 1985; second, its

early implementation; and third, the extent to which Scottish opposition was

important in its downfall.

In 1985 the Scottish Office became aware that the political fall out from the statutory

quinquennial revaluation of the rates was likely to be awful. This was brought home

to Mrs Thatcher when her trusted deputy Lord Whitelaw returned from a visit to the

suburban Tory seat of Bearsden in March 1985. He described the anger engendered

by the rates as unlike anything he had encountered in his long political career. 4 The

perceived political problem with the rates was that it was a property tax paid by

relatively few people, thus it did not contribute to a sense of individual responsibility

1 Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 521-3. 2 Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 529. 3 Marr, Battle for Scotland , 178. 4 Butler et. al. Failure, 64; Financial Times, 28 Mar. 1985. or awareness of local authority expenditure. Stereotypes were central to the argument.

A sardonic Scottish Office Civil servant commented: ‘the basis of the poll tax was the old ladies of Morningside [a posh area of Edinburgh] living in six-bedroomed family houses who had no children at home and only had their bins emptied once a week’. 1

These were the citizens who were deemed to be victims of the alleged unfairness of domestic rates. The other stereotype was the working class family with young adult offspring in work, four incomes, consuming far more services than the Morningside spinster, but paying far lower domestic rates because their property, perhaps rented from the local authority, was less valuable. Under the Community Charge the position would be reversed: the family would pay four community charges, the spinster only one. Opponents of the ‘Poll tax’, they never used its formal title, were equally adept at producing stereotypes. This time the contrast was between the rich man in his castle and the pensioner in her flat, both contributing to their local authority at the same rate. The political pressure in Scotland came just at a time, March 1985, when the poll tax had emerged from the brainstorming in the Department of the Environment and had received the endorsement of the Prime Minister.2 Fuel for the fire was replenished

in May 1985 at the Scottish Conservative conference in Perth. The customary calm of

this event was disturbed by no less than forty-six motions which were hostile to the

revaluation. George Younger’s response was to announce a financial package to ease

the rates burden and to hint that a wider reform was likely. 3 Although Younger and

Malcolm Rifkind were avid supporters of the poll tax, they were so for practical and

political, rather than ideological, reasons.

1 Butler et. al . Failure, 63. 2 Butler et. al. Failure, 64-5. 3 Scotsman, 6, 7, 10 May 1985; Lawson, View from no. 11, 569-70. Nigel Lawson argues that he advocated pioneering the tax in Scotland because ‘there was an outside chance that, if the implementation of the Poll Tax in Scotland demonstrated its horrors, there might still be time for the Government to have second thoughts about its introduction in England and Wales’. 1 Also important was pressure

from the Scottish Conservative Party and especially from George Younger, whom one

Scottish Office official described as ‘hell-bent on it’. Scottish Office officialdom,

however, was not so gung-ho; Sir William Kerr Fraser, the Permanent Secretary,

warned George Younger and Malcolm Rifkind of the difficulties. 2 Perhaps they were influenced by the marginality of their seats and were keen to have the replacement for the rates in place in time for the 1987 general election. This seems ironic in view of the results of that election, but the fear of the likely consequences of a rates revaluation was the most important consideration.

The poll tax added to strife between Labour and the S.N.P.: the latter laid particular stress on non-payment during their victorious Govan by-election campaign in

November 1988. Around 18 months after the implementation of the tax in Scotland the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (C.O.S.L.A.) estimated that there were around 600,000 non payers: this amounted to 15 per cent of the nation-wide total but there were particular concentrations in urban Scotland. The level of non-payment was greater in Scotland than in England and Wales: by the end of the financial year 1990-

91 over 90 per cent of the tax had been collected in England compared to only 75 per cent in Scotland. The constituency of support for non-payment seems to have been even wider with polls suggesting over 40 per cent supported such tactics in September

1 Lawson, View from No. 11, 580; Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 524. 2 Butler et. al. Failure , 101-2. 1990 1 Tommy Sheridan, later an MSP, organised the Anti-Poll Tax Federation and

focussed his activity on the disruption of poindings (valuations of property) and

warrant sales (sales of confiscated property to settle a debt) conducted by Sheriff’s

Officers. Nevertheless, such activity was not the main factor in the demise of the poll

tax. Nigel Lawson’s view was that ‘since the Scots had made a practice over the years

of complaining bitterly about every initiative the Government had ever taken, this

occasioned little surprise, let alone alarm’. 2 Most accounts have placed greater emphasis on the violence in England and the fact that the political threat of the unpopular tax was much greater south of the border. The 1987 General Election had shown that the Conservatives could sustain severe losses in Scotland without seriously compromising their overall majority. So, despite the fact that the poll tax was extremely unpopular in Scotland, it is questionable if the political significance of such unpopularity was significant in wider British terms. Indeed, it is only by turning to look at the constitutional question that one really begins to see the longer term significance of the profound unpopularity of the Thatcher governments in Scotland.

A clear element of Mrs Thatcher’s outlook on government was to exorcise the failures of the past, especially the monuments to the interventionist state, and release individual power, housing reform was presented in these terms. There was, however, another more base objective: revenge. The particular targets was the National Union of Mineworkers which had inflicted humiliations of the government of Edward of

Heath, of which she had been a member, in the early 1970s. Her conflict with the miners, for which she was spoiling from the moment she entered office, was presented in stark terms. The much anticipated strike came in the spring of 1984,

1 Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 522-9. 2 Lawson, View from no. 11, 582. lasted for a year and perhaps to an even greater extent than the Falklands War of

1982, was the central event of her premiership. This was not a strike about pay, as those of 1972 and 1974 had been. The leadership of the NUM wanted to fight on the issue of pit closures, and for the rank and file of the union and the communities from which they emerged this was crucial, but they were unable to convince the general public and the media that this was the issue at stake. Coal was coming to be perceived as old fashioned, although the environmental argument against its use had not yet emerged. The leadership of the NUM, especially Arthur Scargill allowed themselves to be portrayed as obstacles to progress. Above all, for the government the strike was about crushing the remnants of trade union power. The pit closure programme was not crucial to the government’s economic programme and they were willing to sustain massive losses to the national purse in order to achieve their objective. Indeed, they did not view the costs, estimated at over £3 billion, of the strike as a loss but, extraordinarily, as an ‘investment’. 1 The government were successful in presenting their response to the strike as being equivalent to facing a national emergency. This went beyond the question of ‘who governs’ to become a question of ‘who survives’?

There had been pit closures before, not least in the 1950s and 1960s, but these had been conducted in the context of a mutual recognition on the part of the NCB and the

NUM that the industry had a future. This was no longer the case by the 1980s.

The new Chairman of the NCB, Ian MacGregor, was a Scot who had spent most of his business career in America. He had been born at Kinlochleven, ‘within sight and very definitely within sound of the British Aluminium works’ and after studying metallurgy at Glasgow University had begun his business career in 1936 at

1 Richards, Miners on strike , 117; Lawson, View from no 11 , 155 check this; Beardmore’s forge under the tutelage of Sir James Lithgow. 1 This background, which provides a direct link between the miners’ strike of the 1980s and the depression of the inter-war period, was not designed to give MacGregor a positive view of the role of trades unions. True to form he told miners at Bilston Glen in Midlothian in

September 1983 ‘perform and you have a future; don’t and you have no future, it’s as simple as that.’ 2 It was not as simple as that, however. The Scottish coalfield had been

troubled by the threat of pit closures at Kinneil (West Lothian)—which led to a strike

at Christmas 1982 and a further strike in March 1983—the vexed issue of transfers

from Cardowan colliery near Glasgow and the threat to Polmaise colliery in

Stirlingshire, recently hailed as a success, had created a combustible situation in

Scotland by early 1984. There was tension over the closures but also difficulties in

areas like West Fife to which miners from the threatened pits were to be transferred. 3

So although Scotland was a relatively small, peripheral and declining area of the

British coalfield it was central to the rising tensions which preceded the opening of the strike in March 1984. The Scottish perspective is also interesting from the point of view of the vexed question of the legality of the strike. In England and Wales the government were successful in creating the perception that the strike, in the absence of a ballot, was illegal. This became a reality after legal action and the funds of the

NUM were frozen and subject to sequestration. The position in Scotland was quite different. The question of the legality of the strike in Scotland had been raised in the

Scottish civil courts and the decision of the Court of Session was that, as an area strike properly called under NUM rules, it was perfectly legal. This meant that the

Scottish NUM became the banker for the national union and its General Secretary

1 MacGregor, Enemies within , 19-21 2 Quoted by Richards, Miners on strike , 96. 3 Brotherstone & Pirani, ‘Were there alternatives?’, 108-15 Eric Clark, later a Labour MP, travelled round the country with his briefcase stuffed full of wads of Scottish banknotes to ensure that the NUM could continue to operate. 1

Although it does not show up in election results in Scotland, the strike placed the

Labour party in a very difficult position. The strike came in the aftermath of the humiliating 1983 general election, although the allegedly suicidal party fared better in

Scotland than in other parts of the country, and at the start of the determined attempt by Neil Kinnock to modernise the party. Kinnock had aligned himself against

‘extremists’ in the party. By this he had in mind the Militant Tendency and other organisations which had sought to infiltrate the Labour party. Unfortunately for

Kinnock the way in which the government was able to control the way in which the strike was perceived meant that the media presented the striking miners as

‘extremists’ and thereby made it very difficult for the Labour party as an organisation to support the strike. The illegality of the strike in england and Wales contributed to this difficulty, but there was no sign that the different legal status of the strike in

Scotland made much difference to the attitude of the party. MPs in mining constituencies, such as Tam Dalyell, West Lothian, referred to the absence of a national ballot as a sticking point and even Eric Clarke felt, in hindsight, that the

NUM had erred in not holding one. 2

The perception of the Conservative party in Scotland as hard-line defenders of the constitutional status quo is largely a creation of the Thatcher years. The Conservatives cast aside their traditional understanding of the union and adopted a centralised approach. One scholar has argued that United Kingdom is not a ‘unitary state’

1 Clarke, ‘Mineworkers’ strike 1984-5’, 138-55 2 Brotherstone & Pirani, ‘Were there alternatives?’, 106; Clarke, ‘Mineworkers’ strike 1984-5’, 144 dominated by a monolithic centre, but an altogether more dynamic entity, a ‘union state’. 1 By this is meant that the United Kingdom is a state where there are strong vestiges of the different polities and traditions which predated the union. In the

Scottish case the most obvious examples are the legal, educational and ecclesiastical structures. This has been overlain by a strong tradition of administrative devolution which has developed since the establishment of the Scottish Office in 1885. During the 1980s the Conservatives, who claimed to eschew consensus, found this difficult to deal with, thereby provoking a clash with a Scottish political culture which was largely unionist but which rested on a degree of autonomy which governments were expected to respect. This unfolded steadily over the course of the decade. By later standards the 1979 General Election was by no means a bad result for the

Conservatives: substantial ground which had been lost to the SNP in the 1974 elections was recovered. By 1987 the picture had changed markedly, the

Conservatives lost eleven seats and there were difficulties in finding sentient candidates to staff the Scottish Office. These straits heightened debate about whether the Conservatives had a ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland. A Scotsman editorial on the

1979 result in Scotland tentatively referred to the disparity in the Conservative vote north and south of the border; the populist Daily Record was more colourful in noting that Scotland ‘will not be an easy country for a Tory Prime Minster to Govern’ and went on to warn that the Conservatives would only sour the relationship between

Scotland and England ‘by despatching right wing policy chariots North of the

Border’. 2 In the parliamentary debate on the repeal of the Scotland Act of 1978, during which the Conservatives affirmed their Queen’s speech offer of all party talks on devolution, both Bruce Millan and Donald Dewar argued that the Conservatives

1 Mitchell, ‘Scotland in the union’, 85-6. 2 Scotsman, 5 May 1979; Daily Record, 5 May 1979; Miller et. al. , ‘Government without a mandate’, 202; Dickson, ‘Peculiarities of the Scottish’, 367. had no ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland. 1 This argument was increasingly heard as the

Conservative vote fell away at the 1983 and 1987 General Elections. 2 The logical response to this idea, and it was one to which Mrs Thatcher and the Conservatives resorted without fail, was as follows: the only mandate required to govern the United

Kingdom was a majority in the House of Commons. The strict constitutional logic of this position was unanswerable, but the perception which it fostered—of an inflexible and insensitive government—was damaging. The constitutional question became threatening to the Conservatives in Scotland only after the 1987 General Election when the they lost seats to all the other parties. These including prosperous constituencies such as Bearsden and Milngavie, and Renfrewshire West to Labour.

Lasting damage was sustained by accusations that the Conservatives had lost the moral right to govern Scotland. Their response to such accusations was blank defiance. Malcolm Rifkind, the Secretary of State for Scotland, played the straightest of bats by arguing ‘This was a British election to choose a United Kingdom government. . . . There are certainly no constitutional implications at all in the results.’ Mrs Thatcher went further in pointing out that ‘England had to submit to being governed by Labour when Conservatives had the majority. Really what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’. In the aftermath of the election there was some incredulity in the Scottish press that the Conservative party intended to adopt such a brazen line. 3

In the aftermath of the 1987 election the groups which Mrs Thatcher had identified as conspiring against her in Scotland, began to do just that. The Campaign for a Scottish

Assembly (CSA), which had been established in the aftermath of the 1979 referendum

1 P.D. , 5 th ser. 968, 1342, 1376 (20 Jun. 1979) 2 Daily Record, 11, 13 Jun. 1983; Scotsman, 11 June 1983 , 12 Jun. 1987. 3 Scotsman, 13 Jun. 1987. in order to keep the home rule flame alive, commissioned a ‘Constitutional Steering

Committee’. Chaired by the eminent planner Robert Grieve, supported by a former

Scottish Office civil servant, Jim Ross, its task was to produce a plan for a

Constitutional Convention. This they began to do in their ‘Claim of Right’ which was published in July 1988. This document took as its starting point the notion that the divergence in election results in Scotland and England had produced a constitutional crisis. It was strongly critical of the sovereignty of Parliament, which it argued was an

‘English’ doctrine; it interpreted the nature of the British state as being devoid of

Scottish input or consent; and portrayed earlier reforms, such as the establishment of the Scottish Office and the extension of its powers, as inadequate and counteracted by the process of centralisation. The bulk of the ‘Claim’ was devoted to an argument for the calling of a Constitutional Convention, a quasi-representative body, which would devote itself to the task of producing a plan for Scottish home rule. 1 The portentous language of the document was no doubt an attempt to reproduce the profundities of earlier constitutional landmarks. It was, in reality, a very selective reading of Scottish history and was unclear on the status of the outcome of the Convention’s deliberations, or how they were to be implemented, other than by the achievement of a majority in the U.K. parliament of a party committed to devolution. The title of the document was, nevertheless, one with historical echoes. The prologue noted, ‘twice previously Scots have acted against misgovernment by issuing a Claim of Right; in

1689 and 1842.’ 2 To adopt a title used by the seventeenth century Scottish parliament

or a group of nineteenth century evangelical churchmen placed the document in a

historical tradition, but it was not best suited to a modern inclusive debate.

1 The full text of the ‘Claim’ can be found in Edwards (ed.), A claim of right , 9-53 & extracts in Paterson, Diverse assembly , 160-8; see Wright, The people say yes , 30-8 2 Edwards (ed.), A claim of right , 10 Parliamentary sovereignty and popular sovereignty

A common theme running through the debate on the Scottish constitutional question is the ‘doctrine’ of popular sovereignty and its juxtaposition with the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament. The former idea is appealed to by nationalists, but it is not exclusive to them as the Claim of Right showed; further, during the debate on the

Scotland Act of 1998 it was endorsed by Liberal Democrats like Jim Wallace. Most discussions start with the incidental comment by Lord Cooper in the Court of Session in 1953, in the case of MacCormick v. the Lord Advocate, that parliamentary sovereignty was a purely English doctrine and had no place in Scottish constitutional law. This case concerned the appropriateness of the title Queen Elizabeth II for the new monarch, since there had never been a Queen Elizabeth I of Scotland. The case fell as it was found that the monarch’s title was part of the royal prerogative, but it also involved the question of the courts’ ability to nullify an act of parliament. Also central was the issue of whether the Acts of Union represented a fundamental constitutional law which restrained the activity of parliament. If one accepts that the

U.K. is a union state inheriting elements of all its constituent parts there is no need to assume that the sovereignty of the English parliament was carried over into the new

British parliament which was created in 1707. Some would argue that the Scottish parliament was not sovereign: it was subservient to the Lords of the Articles and, although not in the years between 1689 and 1707 when it was quite assertive, there were other rival national institutions, such as the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland. So, although there might be a sound case for the absence of a Scottish doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty the assertion of popular sovereignty to fill the gap seems less secure. This argument rests on medieval and early modern evidence— notably the Declaration of Arbroath and the work of George Buchanan—that the authority of Scottish monarchs are, in the words of its most distinguished advocate,

‘limited by the express or implied terms on which the powers are entrusted to them’ by the people. Modern scholars might be a little uneasy about this weight being placed on the Declaration of 1320 and stress the anachronistic nature of interpreting it in the context of modern notions of democracy and nationalism. Nevertheless, this is a significant argument because it has implications for the constitutional status of the

Union of 1707 and the conditions under which it can be modified or even dissolved.

An acceptance of the popular sovereignty argument suggests that the future of the

Union is not merely in the hands of the Westminster parliament, but that the Scottish people, perhaps through a referendum, have a role to play. The legal question of where sovereignty resides is, of course, deeply affected by political considerations.

The Thatcher governments were perceived, and not only by nationalists, to have trampled over the wishes of the Scottish people, thereby encouraging an appeal to popular sovereignty. Further, in a democratic political system, strict observance of the pure doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty is not realistic. The example often given is the fact that although parliament could revoke the independence of the dominions this would have no impact on the reality of their status. Similarly, parliament could repeal the Scotland Act of 1998—and did repeal its 1978 predecessor—but is unlikely to do so, especially since it was established after a clear result in a referendum. If guided by parliamentary sovereignty the latter was unnecessary, but politics intervened, as they had in 1979. 1

In 1988 the Scottish Constitutional Convention began its long deliberations which eventually produced a blueprint for a Scottish parliament. It was composed of the

1 I have drawn on the different interpretations of Goldsworthy, Sovereignty of parliament , 166-72; Tierney, Constitutional law and national pluralism , 109-117, 152-65, 205-7; MacCormick, ‘Does the United Kingdom have a constitution?’, 1-20; MacCormick, ‘Is there a constitutional path to Scottish independence’, 721-36 (quote at 729-30); MacCormick, Flag in the wind , 187-90; see also the essays by Broun & Simpson in Barrow (ed.), Declaration of Arbroath , 1-12, 108-15 churches (indeed, it was chaired by a clergyman, Canon Kenyon Wright) the trades unions, home rule pressure groups, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats.

Predictably, the Conservatives did not participate in the Convention (although they had offered all party talks on devolution in 1979). The SNP decision to withdraw was more controversial and drew accusations that they were incapable of acting for

Scotland’s wider interests in an anti-Tory umbrella organisation. 1 Their argument was

that the Convention was established to develop a blueprint for devolution, and their

ultimate objective of independence would be marginalised. The SNP felt that the

Convention ‘would be sewn up by the Labour party unionist establishment, not as a

means of articulating and developing Scottish demands, but of keeping them in check

and watering them down.’ 2 Others argued that the nationalists were overconfident in the aftermath of their dramatic by-election victory at Glasgow Govan in November

1988 which saw Jim Sillars return to parliament. 3 Although there was a strong

resemblance between the recommendations of the Convention and the proposals of

the Labour government elected in 1997 some wariness is required. The leader of the

Convention, Canon Wright, had posed the question of what happened when the

government simply said ‘No’ its effusions. His answer, ‘We say yes and we are the

people’, was wonderful, but empty, rhetoric. The Convention was neither a popular

nor a representative body, although a large number of MPs and Councillors were

involved. Indeed, Wright admitted that the greatest failure of the Convention was its

inability to communicate its ideas to the Scottish people. 4 A more positive view would be that the Convention raised important questions, most of which had been absent from the poverty-stricken debate of the 1970s—the role of women in a Scottish

1 P.D. , 5 th ser. 967, 49 (15 May 1979); 968, 1333 (20 Jun. 1979); Marr, Battle for Scotland, 195-209. 2 MacLean, ‘Claim of right or cap in hand?’, 116 3 Mitchell, Strategies for self-government , 128-9 4 Brown et. al. , Politics and society , 66 & Mitchell, Strategies for self government , 131-2 damn the Convention with faint praise; Wright, The people say yes , 130 parliament, the possibility of proportional representation, financing devolution—and it confirmed the consensus that a future parliament should have greater power than that proposed in 1978. Regardless of the outcome, the Convention also served to introduce people from different political parties, and cultures, to each other; the habit of working together proved useful after 1999 when proportional representation dictated that the Scottish Executive be a coalition.

The Convention continued issuing reports until the mid-1990s, but its activities were overtaken by events. 1 The roots of the Convention were diverse and the bases of its thinking was confused. It encompassed traditional and longstanding supporters of devolution and more recent converts, mostly from the left, who saw devolution as a response to the powerlessness induced by the divergence of Scottish and English electoral patterns. For Donald Dewar, it was ‘based on the assumption that it was possible to mount pressure even on a hostile administration and that there are tactics other than simply working for victory at the next election.’ 2 It was not, however, a nationalist body—indeed, the SNP were hostile—but it drew on important aspects of the Nationalist tradition, especially the idea of Scottish popular sovereignty and the concept of ‘self determination’, but this proved chimerical in the aftermath of the

Conservative victory in 1992. 3

The Conservative response to this situation, beyond their rejection of constitutional change, was unclear. At times Malcolm Rifkind, the Scottish Secretary, seemed to suggest that a more sensitive approach was required in Scotland. In 1988 he argued: ‘I

1 Its final report, Scotland’s parliament. Scotland’s right , was published in 1995 2 From a lecture at the University of Stirling, 21 Oct. 1988, Paterson, Diverse assembly , 172 3 Edwards (ed.) Claim of right , 18, 27; Wright, The people say yes , 32, 54, 119-20; Mitchell, ‘Creation of the Scottish parliament’, 656-61 am not concerned with more Thatcherism or less Thatcherism. My main responsibility is to identify Scottish interests as I perceive them and put forward policies which I believe respond to these Scottish interests’. This approach aroused frustration in the

Prime Minister, she singles out Rifkind for particular criticism in her memoirs (‘His judgement was erratic and his behaviour unpredictable’). 1 Rifkind’s message was clouded, contradicted even, by a succession of Cabinet ministers who berated the

Scots for dependence on the largesse of the United Kingdom. The most famous articulation of this point came from Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in November 1987. He dismissed constitutional change as a ‘red herring’ and argued that the real problem in Scotland was more profound than lack of enterprise.

It is frequently swamped by an overriding sense of dependence on the state.

Large areas of Scottish life are sheltered from market forces, and exhibit the

culture of dependency rather than that of enterprise . . . Even the eastern bloc

countries can’t beat the more than 80 per cent council housing in parts of

Glasgow. 2

These arguments increased the distance between the Conservative government and developments in Scottish politics, especially the detailed consideration being given to constitutional change. As part of the post-1987 strategy of attempting to deal with the

Scottish problem, Mrs Thatcher addressed the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland in her ‘Sermon on the Mound’. She tried to engage with Scottish distinctiveness:

1 Scotsman, 2 May 1988; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 620. 2 Glasgow Herald, 24 Nov. 1987. I am very much aware of the historical continuity extending over four centuries,

during which the position of the Church of Scotland has been recognised in

constitutional law and confirmed by successive sovereigns . . . I am therefore

very sensible of the important influence which the Church of Scotland exercises

in the life of the whole nation, both at the spiritual level and through the

extensive caring services which are provided by your Church’s department of

social responsibility. 1

The reaction to the speech in Scotland was largely to see it as part of ‘the newly launched campaign to paint the electoral map of Scotland blue’, which had also seen the Prime Minister argue that the Scots, in the shape of Adam Smith and other enlightenment thinkers, had invented Thatcherism. 2 Allan Massie, a journalist who

could not be condemned as part of the anti-Thatcherite Scottish conspiracy, noted

three positive aspects of this event: first, her speech offered a serious and well

considered response to serious and well considered questions’; second, by attempting

to place her policy within a Christian framework she was ‘affirming its fundamental

morality’; and third, she admitted the ‘thorniness of debate’. 3 In these aspects and her

tacit recognition of an element of Scottish civil society, albeit one of declining

importance in the shape of the Church of Scotland, this was a curiously un-

Thatcherite episode. By 1988, however, it was too late for Mrs Thatcher to restore her

reputation, or that of her party, in Scotland, and the reaction to the speech was

negative.

1 Glasgow Herald, 23 May 1988; Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union , 119-26. 2 Glasgow Herald, 14, 19, 23 May 1988 3 Scotsman 23 May 1988. In May 1979 the Scotsman asked: ‘ . . . what are the 44 Scottish Labour MPs . . . going to do with themselves in opposition?’ 1 The Labour Party was in a difficult position as the biggest Scottish party in Parliament and in Scottish local government, but committed to unionism and, in the early 1980s at least, very suspicious of devolution. This placed the party in considerable difficulties in relation to the poll tax, which they opposed but had to collect. Despite their opposition to Conservative policies in Scotland they could not use the legitimacy or mandate arguments too forcefully, as they were tinged with nationalism. 2 Indeed, at times the Labour Party’s only response to the Scottish situation was to say to the Scottish electorate: ‘you’ll have to wait another five years and hope like us, that the party in England is capable of delivering us to power at Westminster’. 3 It was only in the aftermath of the 1987

general election that they showed any sign of coming to terms with the situation. The

Thatcher years marked a qualitative shift in this pattern. The consistent unpopularity

of her governments stimulated a wider coalition of interests to engage with the

constitutional question, making it ‘the settled will of the Scottish people’, in John

Smith’s famous phrase.

Major disappointments and surprises

The fall of Mrs Thatcher in 1990, partly caused by the English politics of the poll tax

and her replacement by John Major, inaugurated a curious period in Scottish political

history. Many in left-wing and nationalist circles seemed puzzled as to how best to

react to the demise of their bete noire . Although there was some expectation that the more consensual figure of John Major, who had not shown any previous interest in

Scottish affairs, would make the Conservatives more electable, there remained

1 Scotsman, 5 May 1979. 2 Scotsman, 7 Jun. 1983. 3 Scotsman, 13 Jun. 1987; Daily Record, 13 Jun. 1987. widespread optimism that a ‘time for a change’ feeling would override this. Major had inherited a fractious and virtually impossible party, seemingly determined to rupture itself on the European issue. One of his strategies for dealing with this was to scrape its appeal back to its Unionist base. During the 1992 election campaign he made the future of the Union a key issue in his appeal to voters across the U. K. His view was that the future of the Union was far too important to be left to the Scots; both Scotland and the U.K. would be diminished by the dangerous and illogical concept of devolution, which contained the potential for a damaging English backlash. Neither the Scottish press nor their advisors in London could quite believe what Major and Ian

Lang, his Secretary of State, were up to. Nevertheless, they believed that their rhetoric helped to prevent a Tory wipe-out in Scotland (widely predicted), and contributed to modest success in Scotland in 1992. Many of the arguments used by Major and Ian

Lang, were reminiscent of the propaganda of the ‘Scotland Says No’ campaign of

1979, particularly the fear that business would evacuate from Scotland in the event of devolution and that Scotland would be ground under the heel of an old-fashioned socialism. 1

This Conservative accusation was predictable, but did it touch on something important? Was Labour culture north of the border distinctive? The party faced three difficulties. First, at a UK level they were in meltdown, disputes over ideology and strategy had almost destroyed the party in the early 1980s, and their performance at the 1983 election was disastrous. Their vote held up much better in Scotland, however, and they retained a majority of Scottish seats. It has been suggested that, as with the Bevanite revolts of the early 1950s, Scottish Labour was not so prone to this

1 Major, Autobiography , 415-30; Seldon, Major , 262-3, 279-81; Lang, Blue remembered years , 77, 178-89 introverted masochism. Militant were present in Scotland and their activity helped to create Scottish Militant Labour and eventually the Scottish Socialist Party in the

1990s. 1 Second, perversely, the decline of the Conservatives presented problems as

well as opportunities. Labour was a unionist party and found it difficult to respond to

nationalist arguments about mandates and self determination prompted by

Conservative governments elected by English votes. What could they offer their

electorate, growing from 1983 to 1997, beyond the implication that they would just

have to wait until the next election? This may have defensible, just, in 1979 but it was

wearing thin by 1992. The Scottish Constitutional Convention, by giving the

appearance of activity, provided a partial route out of this corner. This leads to the

third problem: pressure from the SNP. This was negligible in 1979 and 1983,

certainly compared to 1974, as the SNP spent much of the early part of the decade

mired in divisive recriminations over the devolution debacle, but by 1987 the position

had changed. 2 In that election the nationalists won only three seats, all of them from the Tories, and lost two to Labour, but there was an element of renewal in the party. A younger generation was coming to the fore, even if two of their MPs were ‘retreads’ from the 1970s. 3 Another way in which the SNP had changed was in their attitude to

Europe, their former hostility having been transformed with the argument, developed

by Jim Sillars in the late 1980s, for ‘independence in Europe’. Although this

stimulated a debate on whether an independent Scotland would automatically

continue as a member of the European Community (as it was then), it did provide an

effective counter to the accusation that the ‘separatists’ were also ‘isolationists’. 4

After the 1987 election they argued that the third example of Labour dominance in

1 Devine, Scottish nation , 601-2; McLean, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 43-4 2 Levy, ‘Third party decline’, 62-8; Lynch, SNP , 160-77; Mitchell, Strategies for self government , 221- 31 3 Mitchell, Strategies for self government , 222 4 Sillars, Case for optimism , 181-91; Lynch, SNP , 185-7; Lynch, Minority nationalism , 37-49 Scotland obliterated by English Conservative strength was a ‘doomsday scenario’, that the Labour MPs elected were ‘the feeble fifty’, and that unionist politics offered no protection to Scotland. Many of these accusations were sharpened by the implementation of the poll tax in Scotland in 1988, an ideal symbol of Labour weakness according to the SNP. A further edge was added by the Govan by-election in November 1988 when Jim Sillars defeated a weak ‘old’ Labour candidate and boosted the nationalist ego. This was a damaging result in that Labour had called the election in this seat by sending the sitting MP, former Secretary of State Bruce Millan, to Brussels as a European Commissioner, thereby giving the impression that they took a Labour victory for granted. Bitterness between leading figures on both sides contributed to the SNP’s departure from the Convention in early 1989 but were deeply embedded in Scottish political culture. Donald Dewar, in particular, loathed the SNP and many scars inflicted in the vicious scraps of the 1970s remained raw, even bleeding. Labour had been in this position before, of course, in the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, and on those occasions, much to the displeasure of some, the tendency had been to appease nationalism. How would they respond this time, when they were the dominant force in Scotland but out of power in Westminster?

Regardless of the contradictions, the idea of devolution steadily became more entrenched in the Labour party in Scotland throughout the 1980s, allowing them to participate in the Convention and only have one MP, the utterly consistent Tam

Dalyell, decline to become involved. Former opponents of devolution, such as Robin

Cook and Brian Wilson, remained quiet if not convinced. 1

1 Geekie & Levy, ‘Devolution’, 399-411 This shift can be explained by the political pressure exerted by the SNP, capable of profound alterations in the Labour mood, as history showed; but, with only three MPs and less than 20 per cent of the vote, SNP influence is not a sufficient explanation. An additional factor was a fear of the results of divergence in electoral patterns in

Scotland and England. A third point was the perception that devolution, and a stronger scheme than that of 1978, could ‘protect’ Scotland against what Labour perceived to be the depredations of Thatcherism. This was also an element of the

Claim of Right, although it went beyond the essentially negative argument of protection, to argue that devolution could stimulate new economic activity and help to develop the indigenous financial sector. 1 The Conservatives saw it differently, of

course. Michael Forsyth remarked of devolution in 1995:

During the 1980s an attempt was made to breathe life into its corpse by leftist

politicians hoping to ring-fence Scotland’s collectivist and interventionist

establishment and protect it from the free market reforms of the Conservative

government. This was the new motive for advocating a Scottish parliament:

socialism in one country. 2

Scotland in the 1980s was subject to a series of high profile industrial closures.

Across the country, from Invergordon in the north to Linwood in the south, the flagships of industrial development and regional policy were closed. Conservatives viewed this as much needed medicine for the antiquated Scottish economy, which their party had helped to create, of course. The other parties concentrated on the social and human consequences, especially in high unemployment, back as a serious blot on

1 Edwards (ed.), Claim of right , 23-6 2 Michael Forsyth on ‘The governance of Scotland’, reprinted in Paterson, Diverse Assembly , 246 the economic landscape for the first time since the 1930s. The ultimate example of this was the desire of the British Steel Corporation and the Department of Trade and

Industry to close the Ravenscraig steel plant; first as an element of rationalisation, then of privatisation. Successive Conservative Secretaries of State resisted this, for political rather than economic reasons, and stays of execution were arranged. 1 After privatisation the complex was closed in 1992 with the government shrugging its shoulders and arguing that this was a matter of market forces and a decision for a private firm: the ghost of Ted Heath and the U.C.S. work-in was well and truly exorcised. Whether devolution was a realistic answer to these industrial politics is not the point—and it would have taken a powerful devolved parliament and a great deal of political will to prevent them—but it served a purpose for Labour and bolstered the argument for devolution.

These frustrations came to a head in the aftermath of the 1992 election, the result of which dashed rising expectations in Scotland. An event which both symbolically and tangibly exemplified this took place in December 1992. During the second half of the year the U.K. held the rotating presidency of the European Council of Ministers and the customary summit meeting was scheduled for Edinburgh. The intention of the government was perhaps to demonstrate to Scotland that here was the kind of international leadership and participation which came with membership of the United

Kingdom. Unfortunately, as with so many Conservative ventures north of the Border, it rebounded. The home rule organisations organised a massive demonstration, numbering 30,000, to march through the city in the full glare of the international media, drawing attention to what they perceived as Scotland’s democratic deficit.

1 Lang, Blue remembered years , 71-4 This apparent expression of popular frustration also served to expose the weakness of the claims for a Scottish doctrine of popular sovereignty: it had no meaningful impact on the government and devolution remained a distant prospect.

During the election the government had promised to ‘take stock’ and, indeed, a White

Paper was published in 1993. Its contents did not amount to much: a description of administrative arrangements; an essay on the benefits of the union to Scotland; an increased role for the Scottish Grand Committee (a traditional response of

Westminster governments to Scottish disquiet); further administrative devolution; and a campaign to make the work of the Scottish Office better known. Above all, it sought to breathe ‘new life’ into the union, which ‘must permeate every area of government.’ 1 There was a political problem though, by 1993 the government’s

reputation for economic competence had been destroyed by the enforced withdrawal

from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992, and the tensions

over wider European issues which would make its life a misery were already evident.

Added to continuing unpopularity in Scotland, and an impression that the electorate

had been cheated by the absence of Tory scalps in the general election, they were

unable to reinvigorate the union.

After Ian Lang’s ‘promotion’ to the Department of Trade and Industry in 1995 the

new Secretary of State, former enfant terrible Michael Forsyth, adopted a vigorous approach, possibly in the knowledge that his government was doomed. His initiatives ranged from important measures, such as the establishment of a project for a

University of the Highlands and Islands (a long standing aspiration of those interested

1 PP 1992-3 XCIII, Scotland in the union: a partnership for good (Cm 2225), quote at 40 in the development of the north of Scotland), to populist stunts, such as the return of the ‘Stone of Destiny’ to Edinburgh. He also brought a new energy to the media campaigns of the Scottish Office, whose efforts in this area he felt to be rather old- fashioned, but this was not achieved without strife with the staff in the Scottish Office

Information Department. 1 His most important activity, however, was his rhetoric on

the theme of the ‘tartan tax’. In response to Labour’s increasingly well developed

devolution commitments Forsyth argued that the principal result of their

implementation would be to make Scotland the highest taxed part of the United

Kingdom. This referred to the proposal that a future Scottish parliament should have

the power to vary the standard rate of income tax by plus or minus three per cent. He

alleged: ‘This tax would put an extra £6 a week onto the average income tax bill in

Scotland—and only in Scotland. … It is a proposal to tax people for working in

Scotland.’ 2 This was aimed at two obvious targets: first, the support of the Scottish electorate for devolution, consistently indicated in opinion polls of the time and implied by the result of the 1992 general election; second, the careful attempts by

Labour to cultivate an image as a party of low taxation. There is also a historical irony here, since in 1979 Lord Home and other Tories had used the absence of tax raising powers as a criticism of the devolution proposals then current. The response of the

Labour party, by now under the leadership of Tony Blair, suggested that Forsyth had hit a raw nerve. The party shifted rapidly from the position adopted in the Convention that all that was necessary to give legitimacy to the proposals for a Scottish parliament was support at a general election for parties which advocated it. Suddenly a referendum was back on the agenda and, even more surprising—not least to George

Robertson, shadow Secretary of State for Scotland—was that there should be two

1 Schlesinger et. al. , Open Scotland? , 120-5 2 Michael Forsyth on ‘The governance of Scotland’, reprinted in Paterson, Diverse Assembly , 247 questions, the second seeking popular assent to the future parliament’s tax varying powers. 1 The Labour response is also interesting in a historical context. As in 1974,

and despite the Convention partnership, it seemed to be the national leadership in

London which was making the running. Opinion poll evidence, however, indicated

that these shifts were unproblematic and that Scottish opinion was favourable to

devolution and tax varying powers. The Labour response was effective and during the

1997 general election campaign little was heard about the ‘tartan tax’. Labour’s

attitude to devolution had undergone an interesting series of shifts in the period since

1979. In the 1980s they began to move to a quasi-nationalist understanding of Scottish

politics: unionism remained important in their outlook, but the autonomy of Scottish

politics and the centralised and unitary nature of the British state were no longer

shibboleths. This led to assent to a document which had nationalist overtones—the

Claim of Right—and participation in the Convention, despite the fact that the party

was led for much of this period by Neil Kinnock whose hostility to devolution had not

softened much since the 1970s. Tony Blair, not perceived as an instinctive supporter

of devolution, did much to create the climate for the implementation of devolution by

reforming the outmoded centralist outlook of the party, a historic obstacle to support

for home rule. 2

An additional factor in the mix of Scottish politics in the 1980s and 1990s was that the ‘Liberals’ experienced a transformation which threatened, briefly, to realign British politics. In 1981 a group of right-wing Labour MPs abandoned the party in protest at its move to the left and established the short-lived Social Democratic Party. Among the rebels, traitors in the Labour view, were Scottish MPs Robert MacLennan (Caithness and Sutherland) and J. Dickson

Mabon (Greenock). A by-election at Glasgow Hillhead in 1982 saw the leader of the SDP, Roy Jenkins, return to the

House of Commons after serving as President of the European Commission. The appeal of the bookish Jenkins to this highly educated electorate was not surprising, but his victory proved as anticlimactic as that of Asquith, his hero, at

1 A clear account of events is given by Brown et. al. , The Scottish electorate , 31-7; Mitchell, ‘The creation of the Scottish parliament’, 660-1 2 Mitchell, ‘The evolution of devolution’, 479-96 Paisley in 1920. 1 The initial surge of the SDP was over, the outbreak of the Falklands War just after the by-election altered attitudes to the Conservatives, although this was not evident in Scotland despite the popularity of the war there.

At the 1983 general election, the twenty-three year old Charles Kennedy defeated Hamish Gray (Conservative) in Ross- shire. An ‘Alliance’ was sealed with the Liberal party and together their achievement of nearly a quarter of the Scottish vote and eight MPs in 1983 was the best ‘Liberal’ result since the 1920s, although many traditional Liberals regarded the

SDP as a political cuckoo ignorant of the values and history of Liberalism. The Alliance proved fractious and a merger in

199?, which produced the Liberal Democratic party, was interpreted by some Social Democrats as a take-over of their party by the Liberals and, briefly, they essayed an independent existence. The general election of 1983 proved to be a false dawn and the Alliance/Liberal Democrat vote fell away in succeeding elections, stabilising at around 15 per cent of the Scottish vote. The ten seats which this gave the party in 1997 and 2001 was something of an embarrassment of riches for a party which professed proportional representation. As with the old Liberal party, rural Scotland proved an important source of support and the small electorates in seats in the highlands and the borders gave the Liberal

Democrats their disproportional ‘vote efficiency’. Perhaps more fittingly, given the history of support for home-rule among Liberals, the party has achieved greater prominence since devolution as Labour’s coalition partner in the Scottish

Executive since 1999. Although this has come despite modest success at Scottish parliamentary elections, they have played a reasonably effective role as junior partner in the coalition, influencing higher education and health policies. Critics would view their involvement in the Executive as a missed opportunity to raise the profile of Liberal values, but this view overestimates the leverage of a minor party in a coalition. Scotland has provided the Liberal Democrats with successive leaders in Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell, but the party at Westminster is less Scottish than formerly, as it has achieved greater success in England at the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005.

A combination of the unimaginative response to the constitutional question, a perception of a deeply divided party and a refinement of tactical voting after the missed opportunity in 1992, brought the Conservative party to disaster in 1997. The party which in 1955 had gained 50.1 per cent of the vote in Scotland and held thirty six seats, now collapsed to less than 20 per cent of the vote and returned not a single

Scottish MP. Even in a shorter time-frame the collapse was dramatic: twenty-four seats had been lost since 1979. Table ? gives an indication of the tactical voting which brought this about. In each case the vote was concentrated in the hands of the second place candidate from 1992, Perth being a slight exception since there had been a by

1 Crewe & King, S.D.P. , 152-6; Jenkins, Life at the centre , 556-64 election in 1995 which saw the SNP take the seat from the Conservatives on the death of the maverick MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn. Roseanna Cunningham’s feat of repeating her by election victory at the subsequent general election was a first in SNP history.

Constituency Cons Lab LD SNP Swing from Cons (winner)

Aberdeen South -10.99 +11.37 +0.98 -2.33 11.18 (Lab)

Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine -10.23 +2.27 +6.41 +0.59 8.32 (LD)

Ayr -4.63 +5.81 -2.74 +1.41 5.22 (Lab)

Dumfries -15.06 +17.91 -0.60 -2.72 16.49 (Lab)

Eastwood -13.07 +15.61 -4.74 +0.55 14.34 (Lab)

Edinburgh Pentlands -7.82 +11.84 -2.78 -2.66 9.83 (Lab)

Edinburgh West -10.23 +1.42 +13.31 -3.70 11.77 (LD)

Galloway & Upper Nithsdale -11.47 +3.37 -2.17 +7.46 9.47 (SNP)

Perth -11.13 +11.57 -3.92 +1.99 6.56 (SNP)

Stirling -6.66 +8.83 -0.50 -1.11 7.75 (Lab)

Tayside North -10.65 +4.32 +0.26 +6.06 8.36 (SNP)

Mean swing from Conservative 9.93

Table ? changes in share of the vote in seats lost by Conservatives at the 1997 general election.

A party which had once been deeply embedded in Scottish life, in local and national government, across classes and communities, had been obliterated. The Unionist party had forgotten how the union worked and had paid the price. It is ironic that the elections to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 allowed the Scottish Conservatives to begin rebuilding their electoral position and also, by necessity in the new Scottish politics, to restore the perception of the Conservatives as a party with a Scottish face. It was the very opposite perception, based partly on opposition to devolution, which contributed to the Conservative unpopularity from 1983 to 1997. During these years the party showed no signs of being able to cope with the distinctive civil society and political culture in Scotland, other than to rail against it. The union, as a guarantor of a distinct Scottish national identity under a British political framework, came under threat from avowed, but inflexible, Unionist Prime Ministers. Their crude advocacy of the permanence of the Union was much more threatening to its integrity than a realisation of its inherent malleability. Their Unionism was more reminiscent of

Andrew Bonar Law on Ulster than of Walter Elliot on Scotland.

Chapter fourteen: Devolved politics

Since 1997 the political scene in Scotland has been altered by the election of a Labour government committed to Scottish (and Welsh) devolution and by the creation of a

Scottish parliament. This might be said to be a new beginning for Scottish politics with a new institution, elected by proportional representation, with multi-party representation, and a far greater proportion of female members than represented

Scottish constituencies at Westminster. Post-devolution politics will be assessed later in the chapter, but the 2007 Scottish election provides some evidence that a new electoral pattern has emerged with the SNP winning twenty-one constituencies compared to only eleven from a comparable share of the vote in 1974. Further, for

Labour the most recent results are their worst in a straight contest since the 1920s, worse than the election of October 1974 when the SNP did well and, perhaps more worryingly, worse even than 1983 when they placed a raft of very unpopular policies before the electorate. Nevertheless, there are continuities as well. The long-term decline in the Conservative vote shows little sign of changing, although with their support spread very thinly across the country they are disadvantaged by the electoral system and return very few seats compared to their total vote, seven less than the

Liberal Democrats with a similar share of the vote. The ups and downs of the SNP vote continue, although the 2007 election is their best result ever in terms of votes cast or seats won. It is also interesting, although not surprising, to note that the nationalists have tended to do better at Scottish parliament elections than at Westminster elections in the post-devolution period.

Election LAB CONS LIB SNP Seats Vote Seats Vote Seats Vote Seats Vote

1999(Sco) 1 53 39.0 0 16.0 12 14.0 7 29.0

2001 56 44.0 1 16.0 10 16.0 5 20.0

2003(Sco) 46 34.6 3 16.6 13 15.4 9 23.8

2005 2 41 39.5 1 15.8 11 22.6 6 17.7

2007(Sco) 37 32.2 4 16.6 11 16.2 21 32.9

New Labour, new parliament, new Scotland?

The general election of 1997 has been seen in a British context as a watershed comparable to the events of 1906, 1945 or 1979. Labour was elected with a decisive parliamentary majority for only the third time in its history and, in contrast to 1964 and 1974, did not rely on Scottish seats for its majority. The government was elected on a ticket which included a commitment to establish a Scottish (and a Welsh) parliament, although that policy was, as befitted Blairite rhetoric, placed in the context of reform of the British constitution rather than in quasi-nationalist terms.

Perhaps this was a echo of the still-born Crossmanite aspirations of the late 1960s.

There was, however, the business of the referendum to get out of the way first. Post-

1997 home rule politics can usefully be compared and contrasted to the wretched history of the Scotland Act of 1978. Contrary to the sequence of events in 1979, the referendum was held prior to the detailed legislative consideration of devolution.

Voters were asked to endorse the broad principle of a Scottish parliament after the publication of a White Paper which outlined the key issues, rather than agree to a fully worked out scheme which had been placed on the statute book. Thus, voters were not fed up with the subject as they undoubtedly were in 1979. The status of the

1 Constituency Ballot only 2 Number of Scottish seats reduced to fifty-nine at 2005 election. government was another factor. In 1979 devolution was associated with an exhausted minority government desperately clinging to power: in 1997 it was the proposal of a new government backed by the authority of a huge majority and still enjoying its honeymoon. The argument that devolution would lead to independence was less potent and a more positive attitude to Europe had taken the edge off fears of

‘isolation’. Donald Dewar’s white paper, Scotland’s parliament , published in July

1997, presented a much more positive argument for devolution than Willie Ross had done in 1974. Dewar laid far less stress on the continuing importance of Westminster and gave priority to ‘what the Scottish parliament can do’. 1 The fear factor was also less evident compared to 1979 in the relative absence of scaremongering interventions by the business community. Bruce Patullo, the Governor of the Bank of Scotland, criticised the potential for tax increases, but he drew a hail of fire in his direction; the not insubstantial figure of John Prescott was even pressed into rebuttal service and

‘business’ kept its head down. Finally, crucially, there was a single ‘Yes’ campaign which was adhered to by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. This represented a remarkable contrast with the antipathy of 1979. Traditional hostilities between Labour and the SNP were suspended and divergent perceptions of the role of devolved institutions were elided for the duration of the campaign. Indeed, that the campaign was curtailed by the death of Princess Diana on 31 August spared the

Scottish electorate an extended discussion of arcane constitutional points. Scotland was also largely spared the hysterical and vicarious grief evident in London following the tragic crash in Paris. 2 Whereas the result of the 1979 referendum is universally interpreted as an unenthusiastic endorsement of devolution, the consensus on the 1997 vote is of an eager acceptance of the idea of a Scottish parliament. Given the gulf in

1 PP 1996-7 IL, Scotland’s parliament , Cm 3658 2 Dardanelli, ‘Democratic deficit’ 320-42; Mitchell et. al, ‘The 1997 devolution referendum in Scotland’, 166-81. attitudes it is interesting to compare the results of the two referendums. Of course, in

1997 there was no 40 per cent hurdle to clear, whereas in 1979 there had only been one question.

1997 Devolution (%) Taxation powers (%)

Yes 1,775,045 (74.3) 1,512,889 (64.5)

No 614,400 (25.7) 870,263 (36.5)

1979

Yes 1,230,937 (51.6)

No 1,153,502 (48.4)

Table?: Results of the devolution referendums of 1979 and 1997 (Source, Hassan &

Lynch, Almanac , 371-2)

It can be seen that there was a much clearer result in 1997, although the turnout, at

60.4 per cent, was slightly lower than the 63.6 per cent of 1979, it was in line with other referendums and higher than local government elections. 1 In the light of the 40 per cent rule from 1997 it is interesting to note that the proportion of the electorate supporting devolution was 44.7 per cent, but only 38.1 per cent supported tax varying powers. 2 Another factor which had eroded the legitimacy of the ‘Yes’ vote in 1979

was the fact that some Regions had voted ‘No’. As can be seen from the next table,

which maps the 1997 result onto the former Regions which had existed in 1979, this

was not evident in 1997. With the exception of Orkney’s scepticism about the taxation

powers, this was a nationwide endorsement. Hints of the 1979 pattern remained in the

1 Pattie et. al , ‘The 1997 Scottish referendum’, 4-6. 2 Bogdanor, Devolution in the United Kingdom , 199 lower ‘Yes’ votes in Orkney and the Borders and the high ‘Yes’ vote in the Western

Isles. The biggest change was in Grampian, which recorded a 68 per cent ‘Yes’ vote compared to only 48 per cent in 1979. This pattern of almost nationwide support is confirmed by the fact that in 1997 there was a ‘Yes’ vote in thirty-one of the thirty- two smaller single tier authorities which had replaced the Regions since 1979. Thirty authority areas recorded a yes vote for tax varying powers: Orkney, and Dumfries and

Galloway being the exceptions. 1 The 1997 referendum caused much less confusion within political parties than had been the case in 1979. On that occasion all parties were divided to a greater or lesser degree: in 1997 the Conservatives were isolated as opponents of devolution and this is confirmed by post-referendum surveys of electors which show that their supporters were overwhelmingly opposed, in contrast to supporters of Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats (although the majority was smaller among the last group). The same survey showed that people with a clear sense of Scottish identity were strong supporters of devolution and that support was higher among people who identified themselves as working class. There was also strong support across religious identities, with the highest level of support among Roman

Catholics, 83 per cent of those surveyed indicated that they had voted ‘Yes/Yes’.

There was even a majority among ‘Anglicans’ a religious identity connected to

England, although the native episcopalian tradition in the north east of Scotland should not be forgotten. All this demonstrates that support for devolution was overwhelming in 1997. 2 As in 1979 Scotland was much more favourable to

devolution than Wales where, on a turnout of barely 50 per cent, only 50.1 per cent of

those who voted agreed that there should be a Welsh assembly.

1 Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 372-5 2 Denver, ‘Voting in the 1997 Scottish and Welsh referendums’, 827-43 Region Devolution Taxation

Borders 62.8 50.7

Central 76.1 65.6

Dumfries and Galloway 60.7 48.8

Fife 76.1 64.7

Grampian 67.6 55.1

Highland 72.6 62.1

Lothian 76.4 64.9

Strathclyde 75.7 65.0

Tayside 67.4 56.7

Orkney 57.3 47.4

Shetland 62.4 51.6

Western Isles 79.4 68.4

Table?: regional support for devolution and tax varying powers at the referendum of

1997 (Source, Hassan & Lynch, Almanac , 373)

Compared to the legislative marathon (or fifteen-round bout) which surrounded the

abortive Scotland and Wales Bill and the Scotland Act of 1978, the parliamentary

passage of the Scotland Act of 1998 was straightforward. This was helped by the

government’s massive majority and the emasculation of the Conservatives. The

central principle of the Scotland Act of 1998, as with all previous devolution

legislation, is the sovereignty of parliament. The Scottish parliament is the creation of

the Westminster parliament and the legislative rights granted to it do not affect the

right of Westminster to legislate on any matter, even those devolved to Scotland. Supporters of devolution may have expatiated on the sovereignty of the Scottish people, but that slippery doctrine had no place in the Scotland Act. The parliament provided for in the 1998 Act is composed of 129 members, seventy-three elected from constituencies which map onto the Westminster constituencies extant in 1998, with the exception of separate representation for Orkney and Shetland. The remaining fifty-six members are elected from lists of candidates put forward by the parties in each of eight regions. This brings an element of proportionality into the system since the calculation which produces the list MSPs favours parties which have won few or no seats in the constituencies in each region. The effect of this is that it is virtually impossible for any party to achieve a majority. Cynics would argue that Labour was willing to give up the possibility of a majority in order to ensure that the SNP would not achieve one. Elections take place on a fixed four-yearly cycle which began in May

1999, this is a contrast with Westminster where the date of the election is in the hands of the government within a five-year term. The only exception is in the event of the parties failing to agree on the composition of an executive within thirty days of an election, in this case a second election would be held, a horrible prospect.

1999 2003 2007

Labour 53 46 37 Const

3 4 9 List

56 50 46 Total

SNP 7 9 21 Const

28 18 26 List

35 27 47 Total

Lib Dem 12 13 11 Const

5 4 5 List

17 17 16 Total

Conservative 0 3 4 Const

18 15 13 List

18 18 17 Total

Green 0 0 0 Const

1 6 2 List

1 6 2 Total

SSP 0 0 0 Const

1 7 0 List

1 7 0 Total

Others 1 2 0 Const

0 2 1 List

1 4 0 Total

Table ?: seats won at Scottish parliament elections 1999-2007

The first two elections show a fair degree of continuity with Westminster polls and the principal trend to emerge has been the expected competition between Labour and the SNP. The first election was preceded by a period in 1998 in which the SNP were riding high in the polls and the election, although a good result for the nationalists, may not have quite met their expectations. They came under relentless media scrutiny and made an embarrassing error in their projections of Scotland’s fiscal position which was central to their argument for the economic credibility of independence.

This perhaps signified a new position where the SNP, rather than the Tories as had been the case in the 1980s, were the targetted ‘significant other’ in Scottish politics. 1

The PR system gives the SNP a far better return of seats for votes cast than the purely

FPTP system of Westminster elections. The PR system also means that Conservative marginalisation is less obvious in Scottish elections because of the party’s ability to secure votes across the country, even if it still finds it difficult to win seats. The political map of Scotland also shows a great deal of continuity. In the constituency section of the election the Labour party is still largely confined to central Scotland with the SNP and the Liberal Democrats winning seats in broadly the same areas where they have had success in Westminster elections in recent times. These elections also created the conditions for multi-party representation, a stark contrast to the early part of the post-war period. This was most evident in the 2003 election where the

Greens and the Scottish Socialists expanded their representation. There was also space for two doughty and independent minded characters, Denis Canavan and Margo

Macdonald. The former as an independent in his Falkirk West seat after the churlish refusal of Scottish Labour to accept him as a candidate. The latter had served as an

SNP MSP from 1999 to 2003 but retained her place as a list MSP at the 2003 election after differences of opinion with the party leadership. Labour and the SNP were the principal victims of this tendency of the electorate to recognise independents and

1 McCrone, ‘Opinion polls’, 32-43; Miller, ‘Modified rapture’, 299-322; Jones, ‘The 1999 Scottish parliament elections’, 1-9. single-issue campaigners. Nearly 23 per cent of the list vote went to ‘minor parties’, possible evidence for a ‘considerable degree of discontent with the “mainstream” parties’ according to one commentator. 1 This provides modest evidence for the existence of ‘new politics’ in the post-devolution environment. The relatively high rate of female representation in the parliament has also been pointed to in this regard; the figures were 39.5 per cent (51 MSPs) in 2003 compared to 37.2 per cent (49

MSPs) in 2003. This puts the Scottish parliament relatively high in the global league table for this measure, but is less impressive than the position in Wales where 50 per cent of Assembly Members are women, possibly reflecting the use of quotas in the choice of candidates for Labour and Plaid Cymru. In Scotland Labour had the highest rate of female MSPs, 56 per cent in 2003, among the main parties, although the smaller SSP group was two-thirds female. At the opposite end of the spectrum, of the

Liberal Democrat group of MSPs only 12 per cent were female. These figures were the result of a mixture of luck and judgement, although more concrete steps to achieve a higher level of female representation were taken in 1999 than in 2003. 2 In this, as in so many other areas of the discussion of gender in modern Scotland, we have to note, depressingly, that political leadership is predominantly male. This has been modified slightly in the run-up to the 2007 election when Annabel Goldie led the

Scottish Conservatives and Nicola Sturgeon led the SNP in the Scottish parliament, although the ‘leader’ of the party was Alex Salmond, a Westminster MP.

The powers of the Scottish parliament are much greater than that for the Assembly proposed in 1978. There is a further difference in the way in which the parliament is constituted: the Scotland Act of 1998 lists the powers reserved to Westminster,

1 Denver, ‘A “wake-up!” call to the parties’, 33 2 Mackay, ‘Women and the 2003 elections’, 74-90 thereby granting a degree of flexibility to the devolved institution to cope with the appearance of new issues on the political agenda without constant renegotiation with

Westminster. The principal reservations are: constitutional matters, foreign affairs, defence, fiscal policy, immigration, nationality and extradition, telecommunications, energy policy, social security, employment and industrial relations, abortion and broadcasting. Any disputes about competency are to be decided by the Judicial

Committee of the Privy Council. Importantly, the Scotland Act does not limit the power of the Westminster parliament, which is sovereign and can legislate on all matters, including devolved ones. A classic British constitutional compromise was engineered in which a convention was agreed that Westminster would not legislate on a devolved matter without the prior agreement of the Scottish parliament. Critics argue that the parliament has ceded power in this way on rather too many occasions.

This process also points to the fact that the distinction in the Scotland Act between

‘reserved’ and ‘devolved’ issues is less clear cut than first appears and that there might be occasions where Westminster legislation on a devolved area is the most convenient way to proceed. The ambiguities in this area have led to the suggestion that ‘devolution is by no means a “settlement”, but a dynamic process subject to continuous conflict and change’. 1 This much is clear. What is less obvious is how political clashes between a Scottish Executive of a party, or parties, different to that, or those, in Government at Westminster. Would a Scottish version of the French concept of ‘cohabitation’ develop, or would friction lead to difficulty? If the latter, then all the power lies at Westminster, but political reality might well dictate restrained use of it, especially since the governing party will still be in search of

Scottish votes at UK general elections.

1 Cairney & Keating, ‘Sewel motions’, 134; see also Page & Batey, ‘Scotland’s other parliament’, 501- 23

One issue which has not been dealt with by the Scotland Act, or by subsequent changes, is the West Lothian Question. Scottish representation at Westminster was reduced to fifty-seven seats prior to the general election of 2005; but, as noted elsewhere in this book, this does not deal with the asymmetry at the heart of the question. Scottish MPs have continued to hold Cabinet positions other than that of the curious hangover of Secretary of State for Scotland (now downgraded to a part-time position). Along with continuing controversy over the Barnett formula, the role of

Scottish MPs at Westminster gives those, such as London Mayor Ken Livingstone, supposed grounds to argue that Scotland is a uniquely privileged part of the United

Kingdom. The defence of devolution is a traditional one: Scotland has since the Union of 1707 possessed a distinctive legal system, education system and established church

(the latter less important in a constitutional sense than it once was); since 1885 there has been a developing system of administrative devolution. In addition to these technical points the infrastructure of civil society in Scotland is held together by distinctive institutions which, although not isolated from their counterparts elsewhere in the United Kingdom, operate in a Scottish context. There is nothing new in this, of course, and the notion of a ‘semi-independent’ or ‘autonomous’ Scotland within the

Union is longstanding. 1 This is at once a basis for devolution but also a challenging

environment for the new parliament. It will be required to hold very experienced

operators in well established networks and institutions—in the educational or

agricultural fields, for example—to account, subject their activities to robust scrutiny

and attempt to democratise their operation. The alternative is that the parliament

becomes the prisoner of these powerful centres of Scottish civil society. On the

1 Murdoch, The people above ; Paterson, The autonomy of modern Scotland evidence of its first two terms a note of cautious optimism can be sounded. There is also a long history of a distinct Scottish national identity, not unproblematic as we have seen, based on a variety of cultural and linguistic markers, symbols and historical memories. For part of the period since 1880 there has been a distinct political pattern as well and it was the recent manifestation of this which produced the political will to transform the traditional dormant case of devolution into action.

Despite the diversity of the United Kingdom there is no other part of the country which exhibits this combination of circumstances. There is no doubt, however, that devolution has produced an asymmetry in the constitution. Even although Welsh devolution was implemented at the same time as Scottish and renewed, but intermittent, devolution to Northern Ireland has been a component of the peace process, this should not be thought of as federalism. The constituent parts of the

United Kingdom have no defined territorial representation at the centre as would be the case in a true federal system. This is an ad hoc process which happens to have

produced roughly coincidental devolution. This is not even the ‘home rule all round’

favoured by the SHRA in Victorian and Edwardian times. It is true that a ‘British-

Irish Council’ was established as part of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ of 1998 which

firmed up the peace process in Northern Ireland. This was designed to promote

political contact between the constituent parts of the U.K., but it has not evolved from

its initial ‘talking shop’ status. Devolution has been part of a process which has seen

the reassertion of English identity and to a degree its disentanglement from

Britishness. Although there have been some calls for an English parliament, tentative

explorations of the levels of support for regional devolution in the north of England

found that there was little real interest in the concept. Looked at in the historical

context of the generally negative views of Scottish devolution in that area of the country this was not surprising. Nevertheless, the north-east of England had evinced much interest in regional government, based on ideas of economic development and restructuring, over the course of the twentieth century but when a referendum on the question was held in November 2004 an elected assembly was rejected. This may have reflected the declining popularity of the government which proposed it and gives further stress to the propitious timing of the Scottish referendum in 1997. 1

Innovation and continuity

The popular perception of ‘devolution’ concentrates on the strengths and weaknesses of the parliament, an obvious innovation, but the Executive is at least as interesting.

When there was devolution to Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1972 there was a

‘government’ with a ‘prime minister’; the Scotland Act of 1998 established an

‘executive’ with a ‘first minister’. It is unlikely that this linguistic distinction between devolved and Westminster institutions was accidental, although the word

‘government’ is used in Wales where far fewer powers are devolved. 2 There is a considerable continuity between the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Office. Civil

Servants, for example, remain part of the U.K. civil service, and are recruited by the same means as those who work for U.K. departments in London. Nevertheless, prior to devolution the staff of the Scottish Office have had a very strong Scottish identity, most of them were educated in Scotland and served most of their careers in the

Scottish Office. At the time of devolution there were just under 50,000 civil servants in Scotland working for the Scottish Office and agencies such as the Prison Service,

Historic Scotland and the Students Awards Agency for Scotland. 3 In the main the

1 Tomaney, ‘Anglo-Scottish relations’, 248 2 Keating, Government of Scotland , 96 3 Parry, ‘The Scottish Civil Service’, 66. Scottish Executive is responsible for the same areas of policy as the Scottish Office, but with a larger number of political masters. Where there were four or five Scottish

Office ministers and seventy-two Scottish MPs, there are now over twenty members of the Scottish Executive and 129 MSPs, hence the civil service workload has increased. 1

General political stability in the period from 1999 to 2007 also emphasised continuities. In this period there seemed to be very little divergence between Scottish and British electoral patterns. The SNP tended to do slightly better in Scottish elections, as might be expected; they scored their best result since 1974 in the first

Scottish election in 1999, but fell back in 2003. The proportional system allowed greater representation by smaller parties, such as the Greens and the Scottish Socialist party, and 2003 saw the advent of unpredictable elements from outside the formal party system, notably the Scottish Senior Citizens Union Party and single issue campaigners on hospital closures. Fortunately, their impact has been modest. Many candidates of all parties have been guilty of blurring the lines between devolved and reserved issues in their campaign material: Westminster candidates refer to health, a devolved matter, for example. The most recent example came in the Dunfermline and

West Fife by election in 2006. The death of the sitting Labour MP produced a contest in an area, traditionally thought of as very safe for Labour. Indeed, Labour had first won a seat in this part of the country in 1910 and Gordon Brown represented part of the area prior to boundary changes in 2005. Dunfermline was strongly affected by a large number of new middle class households, many of them migrants from

Edinburgh, and this gave the Liberal Democrats well founded confidence. Their

1 Parry, ‘The Civil Service and the Scottish Executive’s Structure and Style’, 85 victory came after a campaign at which one of the issues was tolls on the Forth

Bridge, despite the fact that this was a devolved issue. Even more curious was the fact that the minister in the Scottish executive responsible for transport was a Liberal

Democrat; this did not prevent the victorious Liberal Democrat in the by election being highly critical of the Scottish Executive’s policy on retaining tolls on the creaking and congested bridge. This does not mean that devolution is unworkable, illogical or flawed, as some have suggested; it merely suggests that politicians and the electorate use the opportunities provided by the political process to identify issues which are of interest. Political culture in Britain is not used to the compromises and occasional awkwardness which arises from the coalitions which have ensued in

Scotland since 1999. Although one of the objectives of devolution was to restore a link between Scottish voting and Scottish issues, it is not realistic to assume that the voters will put the issues in the relevant mental boxes when they are voting in different elections. Scottish elections, like those for local government, may well be used to give the Westminster government a hiding, perhaps even on issues relating to foreign policy which have nothing to do with the Scottish parliament.

There are two clear areas of innovation implicit in devolution. The first are the procedures of the Scottish parliament. This is a very different institution from

Westminster and only a very small minority of its members have any experience of the Westminster system. Far more, around 40 per cent, cut their political teeth in

Scottish local government. The parliament is sometimes unfairly derided as being a house of ‘jumped up councillors’: the fact that nearly 50 per cent of Scottish MPs at

Westminster are former councillors suggests that, if it is, it is not the only one. 1 The

1 Keating, Government of Scotland , 110 fact that there are more women and younger people in the Scottish parliament, that its daily hours are relatively normal and its annual timetable owes more to the Scottish school terms than the grouse-shooting season, also distinguish it from Westminster.

Its unicameralism and distinctive committee system are also interesting features. The three-stage legislative process of the Scottish parliament is also distinctive from

Westminster. Stage one sees bills, mostly introduced by the Executive, referred immediately to one of a series of subject committees for discussion on the basic issues involved. Parliament then debates these issues, votes, and refers the bill back to the committee. The detailed consideration of the bill by the committee forms stage 2, and stage 3 occurs when the Bill is returned to the floor of the house for final consideration, amendment and approval. This is designed to avoid the constant partisan adversarialism which is so embedded in the Westminster system. This has not produced a bland and consensual process devoid of aggressive partisanship (witness

First Minister’s questions), and the vicious battle between Labour and the SNP. One should not expect a consensual style of politics to emerge in the Scottish parliament.

Most of its members have been brought up within a British style of politics which focuses on divisions between parties, rather than areas of agreement. Much of this has been carried over into Holyrood. 1 There are possible comparisons with European

parliaments, as specialists have pointed out, but aspects of the Westminster system

survive even in this aspect of the Scottish parliament. 2 The Committees are very carefully managed by the party whips and a rearrangement of the committees in 2001 reduced the membership of most of them. This has been described as a ‘shabby party political stitch up which, engineered by the party managers in the Parliamentary

1 Mitchell, ‘New parliament, new politics’, 617 2 Arter, ‘The Scottish committees’, 71-91 Bureau, not only bypassed the Procedures Committee, but was received unenthusiastically by many MSPs.’ 1

Is devolution a threat to the unionist consensus which has dominated Scottish politics for the entire period covered by this book? This might seem an odd question to ask since devolution is a unionist policy. Many unionist opponents of devolution argue that it contains the seeds of the destruction of the U.K. Concomitantly, nationalists hope that this will be the case, although there is a wing of the party, very quiet of late, that is suspicious of devolution. The 2003 election seemed to indicate that the political trend since the creation of the Scottish parliament was working against the SNP, although Labour demonstrated some over-confidence in this matter by asserting that devolution had killed the SNP ‘stone dead’. Given the ups and downs in the SNP vote in the past this was a foolish statement. In some senses devolution has not changed the essential politics of the constitutional question: a parliament, the focus of the campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s has been established, but there is little evidence that independence is more popular after eight years of devolution. The convention seems to have been established that major constitutional issues are to be decided by referenda. The SNP indicated that they would hold such a referendum if they gained control of the Scottish Executive, but they would not do this immediately. Their lack of a majority after the 2007 election makes it difficult to undertake this unilaterally and such a prospect may have been a deterrent to other parties joining them in coalition. Just as was the case prior to devolution, independence cannot be achieved by stealth, and the SNP do not advocate such a course. Nevertheless, possibly predictably, there does seem to be an appetite for extending the powers of the Scottish

1 Arter, ‘On assessing strengths and weaknesses’, 97 parliament. This can be done in two ways. The first, the amendment of the Scotland

Act to colonise formerly reserved powers, is unlikely to occur. The second, the capturing of new issues as they arise might well be a more fruitful route, but even this is not entirely within the competence of the parliament. The Judicial Committee of the

Privy Council is, under the Scotland Act, the body which has the power to determine the competence of the Scottish parliament. As has been noted, ‘this little-known legal entity has been given a potentially explosive political function.’ 1 That no serious issues of this kind have emerged was partly a function of the congruence of Labour control in Edinburgh and London from 1999 to 2007, although this is no guarantee of lasting stability. One indication of the success of devolution has been the fact that the parties involved have got down to the business of government and opposition and have not pushed the Scottish political agenda into these troublesome waters. One exception to this general statement is an ongoing argument about fiscal autonomy.

This has become something of a mantra for those who believe that the parliament should have more powers but are not willing to endorse independence. A debate on fiscal autonomy might be thought odd when there has been such denial of the parliament’s existing power to vary income tax rates. The concept is rather slippery.

Fiscal autonomy might mean giving the Scottish parliament the right to retain all taxes raised in Scotland after exacting a charge for expenditure incurred under reserved powers, social security being the most obvious example. This was the model used for Irish home rule acts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. On the other hand it could involve trusting the UK government to collect tax revenue and then handing over the estimated yield from Scotland. A further point is that the economic results of fiscal autonomy are not clear partly because there is no way of

1 Mitchell, ‘Devolution and the end of Britain?’, 61-82 at 77 telling what decisions might be taken over spending the money raised in a fiscally autonomous regime, or what kind of tax incentives might be offered. A final point which should not be forgotten is that the current fiscal powers of the parliament are not negligible. As well as the power to vary the rate of income tax by 3 per cent, the parliament also has the capacity to set the levels of non-domestic rates and Council

Tax; this amounts to between 15 and 17 per cent of the total funds available to the

Scottish Executive through the parliament. Of course, the bulk of its funding comes from central government. 1 Discussion of this issue naturally leads on to consideration

of the Barnett formula which currently influences funding for the Scottish parliament.

As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the formula emerged in the planning for

devolution in the late 1970s and has survived with modifications since then. It does

not define total government expenditure in Scotland but does affect the changes from

year to year. A proportion, based on population, of any changes to departmental

budgets in the UK equivalent of devolved policy areas, such as health or education,

are passed to the Scottish parliament based on the formula. Thus if English health

expenditure increases, an amount, or ‘consequential’, based on the formula is passed

to Scotland to be used at the discretion of the Executive, and not necessarily on the

policy area from which the consequential has derived. For such an arcane matter to

have emerged into the limelight in the way of the Barnett formula is as remarkable as

its unpredicted longevity. Also remarkable is the series of contradictions which

surround the formula. On the one hand the Scottish Office and, since devolution, the

Scottish Executive, have seen it as something to defend in the realisation that if it

were to be abolished its replacement would be unlikely to be so generous to Scotland.

On the other hand there is a strong and growing feeling that Barnett is unfair to

1 This issue was fully discussed in a special issue of Scottish Affairs (no. 41, Autumn 2002) edited by David Heald. Scotland, that there is something painful called the ‘Barnett squeeze’ and that it leads to the convergence of government expenditure levels north and south of the border, especially when government spending is growing. This arises from the fact that since the baseline of expenditure in Scotland is higher than in England the population based

‘consequentials’ are not so generous and over a long period expenditure would, in theory, come into line. This was, after all, the original point of the formula; but a population based formula is problematic when Scotland’s demographic pattern has been one of decline compared to England. This, alongside quite numerous occasions on which the formula was bypassed, meant that convergence has not taken place at the expected rate. Some data suggests that the ‘squeeze’ has taken place to a greater extent since devolution as the formula was applied to a greater range of expenditure and it bypassed less frequently. Like devolution the Barnett formula is unpopular in parts of England, especially in the north east where the local newspaper in Newcastle,

The Journal , rarely misses an opportunity to argue that it favours the Scots at the

expense of the Geordies. 1

Opening the Scottish Parliament

The opening of the Scottish parliament on 1 July 1999 was a revealing event. 2

Although it was carefully stage managed as a national—in the Scottish sense— occasion, it pointed to the diverse, even contradictory, forces which led Scottish politics to this moment. It looked forward, certainly; but the past was also strongly represented. The meeting place was significant: the general assembly hall of the

Church of Scotland on the Mound in Edinburgh, the temporary home of the

1 There is a vast literature but for recent contrasting views see McLean, ‘Financing the Union’, 81-94; Heald & McLeod, ‘Scotland’s fiscal relationships’, 95-112; Keating, Government of Scotland , 140-67 also provides a clear introduction. 2 For an account see Ritchie, Scotland reclaimed , 205-10 parliament until the opening of its new troublesome building a mile or so down the hill at Holyrood. This chamber was contained in a building, New College, opened in

1846 as the seat of learning of the new Free Church of Scotland. Even in a secular age presbyterianism was just below the surface of this political event. It had hosted the national conventions of John MacCormick’s Covenant movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s and had also been the site of Mrs Thatcher’s infamous ‘sermon on the

Mound’ in 1988; an event which, in itself, had done much to bring about a broader consensus for home rule. The ceremonies were symbolic of novelty and change, yet also of continuity and tradition. On the one hand there were strong nationalist emphases during the day, not least in the rhetoric of Winfred Ewing, the grand dame of the SNP, who, as the oldest member, took the chair for the opening proceedings.

She suggested, without contradiction, that the new parliament was the reconvening of the institution which had been ‘adjourned’ in 1707.1 This seemed very backward- looking and it might be thought odd that a nationalist would wish to associate herself with an institution which passed an Act of Union in 1707. Mrs Ewing, of course, was seeking to reconnect with a native Scottish constitutional tradition and to imply a link between the new parliament and the notion of popular sovereignty. On the other hand there were almost equally strong unionist emphases. The prime symbol of this was the presence of another elderly lady: Queen Elizabeth, whose royal numeral had caused such a stooshie in 1952. Further, the Crown was borne into parliament by the Duke of

Hamilton, the senior Scottish peer. A radical tradition was also symbolised in the proceedings by the extremely moving rendition of Burns’ ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ by Sheena Wellington, the last verse of which was accompanied by the untrained voices of the massed members of the new parliament. Much was made of its anti-

1 Official Report, Scottish Parliament , 12 May 1999, col. 5 aristocratic message being sung in the presence of the monarch and the fact that her husband and eldest son seemed to join in! Finally, fittingly, it was left to Donald

Dewar, one of the very few consistent Labour home rulers, to open the parliamentary, as opposed to the ceremonial proceedings. He did so with a speech which even his bitterest opponents in the SNP regarded as one of his finest.

This is about more than our politics and our laws. This is about who we are, how we carry ourselves. In the quiet moments today, we might hear some echoes from the past: the shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards; the speak of the Mearns, with its soul in the land; the discourse of the enlightenment, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were a light to the intellectual life of

Europe; the wild cry of the great pipes; and back to the distant cries of the battles of Bruce and Wallace. The past is part of us. But today there is a new voice in the land, the voice of a democratic Parliament. A voice to shape Scotland, a voice for the future. 1

Thus was Scotland’s new parliament opened with both historical reference and forward-looking thoughts. For some of its members it was designed to strengthen the union, for others it was a staging post to independence, for others still a vehicle for a new version of a Scottish tradition of radical politics.

Certain events which have taken place since devolution, especially the ongoing, and extremely damaging controversy about the cost of the Scottish parliament building, have been used by critics of the process, especially the hostile press (led by the

1 http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/history/donaldDewar/index.htm Scotsman , a remarkable contrast with 1970s) to bolster their case. This tendency to

carp is characteristically Scottish. It simply would not do to be too enthusiastic about

the new parliament and sections of the media has concertedly expressed a lack of

confidence in the quality of many of the MSPs. 1 There were, however, tangible

reasons for this negativity. In the first session of the Scottish parliament the press

declared that too much attention was paid to marginal issues. These included the

extensive debates over ‘housekeeping’, salaries, allowances and other perks which

marked the first few weeks of the parliament’s history. That this was necessary does

not detract from the fact that it gave an unfortunate impression. Among the ‘faddist’

issues to which attention was given in the first session of parliament included the

banning of hunting with dogs in Scotland, legislation to guarantee the right to breast-

feed in public (rather unfairly derided in a society where breast-feeding rates are

historically low), and the banning of the smacking of children in public places. The

matter of electoral turnout has also been held against the Scottish parliament by its

critics. In the 1999 election the figure was 58 per cent and declined to 49 per cent in

the 2003 election. These are not impressive figures if one considers that local

government elections in the 1970s secured participation rates of more than 50 per

cent. Looked at in another way, however, this negative view can be contextualised.

First, despite the powers of the Scottish parliament, elections to it are certainly

‘second order’ polls and these traditionally attract fewer voters. Second, participation

rates are falling in western democracies; the turnout at recent Westminster elections,

for example, has been less than 60 per cent. A more closely contested election with a

clearer possibility of a change of government might stimulate greater enthusiasm for

the political process.

1 Schlesinger et. al. , Open Scotland? , 87

Other less than auspicious events, which have added to the criticism of the parliament, have included the disaster which befell the school examination process in the summer of 2000. A new body, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, created to run a new system of examinations, ‘Higher Still’, suffered a catastrophic failure and many candidates did not receive their certificates on time. That the S.Q.A. was a semi- autonomous agency allowed the Executive and the minister responsible for education,

Labour’s Sam Galbraith, to attempt to avoid direct responsibility for the disaster.

Although this generated much bad publicity the crisis actually reflected quite well on the devolved system. First, the key decisions which led to the crisis were taken prior to devolution; further, they were taken in a less than open way. Second, the committee system of the parliament undertook a speedy and thorough investigation into the problems. The committee subjected key officials, such as the head of Her Majesty’s

Inspectorate of Schools in Scotland, and the most senior permanent official in the

Education department, to a public grilling, and offered a voice to the victims of the disaster, the unfortunate school pupils whose certificates were delayed or erroneous.

This would have been unlikely under the Westminster system. So this might be seen not only as an example of the openness and accountability that stemmed from devolution, but also an example of the parliament challenging one of the key institutions of Scottish civil society, in this case the formerly unaccountable educational establishment. 1 A variant of this case, more often heard from right-wing

voices, is to argue that the parliament provides a potential vehicle for achieving a

break from the existing broadly left of centre consensus in Scottish politics. 2 It is

unfortunate for those who hold such an opinion that the electorate have shown little

1 Paterson, Crisis in the classroom , 109-10, 117, 132, 139, 154-5, 175, 183; Raffe, et. al. , ‘The Scottish educational crisis of 2000’, 167-85 2 Mitchell, ‘New parliament, new politics’, 619 interest in such strategy. Another tangible issue in the first year of devolution was the so-called ‘lobbygate’ affair. This centred on allegations in the Observer that employees of a PR firm, Beattie Media, amongst whose former employees was Jack

McConnell, suggested that their personal friendships and relationships with senior figures in the Scottish Executive were an important asset of their firm. One of those implicated was the son of the then Scottish Secretary John Reid. This seemed to go against initial hopes for an open system of access to devolved institutions and politicians. It also led to a tussle between the Executive and the Standards Committee of the parliament as to the best locus for an enquiry into the affair. In the event

McConnell was invited to give evidence before the Committee and the Executive issued a rather bland report about its links with lobbyists. 1

Among the most insidious approaches of the critics of devolution has been to heap

opprobrium on the system rather than, or to a greater extent than, the Executive.

When a political controversy ensues at Westminster it is the government, rather than

parliament, which is criticised by the press and public. Delivery of the policies which

affect people’s lives is the criterion upon which the parliament is likely to be judged

but, despite ‘blurring of this distinction’ in the eyes of the public, this is in the hands

of the Executive. 2 This may be a result of the fact that the focus of the long campaign for home rule concentrated on the creation of a parliament rather than giving a great deal of thought to policy, other than in the negative or conservative sense of avoiding a repeat of Thatcherism or some other approach which Scotland was deemed not to have voted for. 3

1 Schlesinger et. al. , Open Scotland? , 226-44; Davidson, Lucky Jack , 106-114 2 Brown, ‘Designing the Scottish parliament’, 555 3 Mitchell, ‘Scotland: expectations, policy types and devolution’, 17 Although the first eight years of devolution have generally been characterised by continuity and political stability, an exception arose from the fact that there were three first ministers in the before the second election to the Scottish parliament in 2003. The first change occurred as a result of the death of Donald Dewar in October 2000.

Dewar, although he deprecated the epithet, came to be regarded as the ‘father of the nation’ and, more convincingly, as the architect of devolution. His reputation went through something of a reassessment as the nature of the decision-making over the new parliament building became public, an unfortunate symbol of this was the repeated vandalism of his statue in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street. Dewar was the single senior Labour figure who was a consistent and unequivocal supporter of devolution.

He had first entered parliament in 1966 although he lost his Aberdeen South seat in

1970, before returning in 1978 at the Garscadden by election. That this punctured the

SNP bubble was highly appropriate, as his attitude to nationalism was unremittingly hostile—a hostility which was returned with interest by the SNP, especially when he referred to them as the ‘Scottish Nationalist Party’—for Dewar was, above all, a highly assertive advocate of partisan interests. He was one of a group of leading politicians to emerge from the University of Glasgow in the 1950s—John Smith and

Menzies Campbell were others—and was rare in the Scottish political class, almost unique in Scottish Labour circles, in having a deep cultural and intellectual hinterland.

Although his estate revealed that he was comfortably off, he led an ascetic and solitary personal life and occasionally seemed detached from the hurly-burly of day- to-day-politics and was certainly uncomfortable with the media manipulation which was the stock-in-trade of New Labour. 1 Anecdotes about Dewar’s outlook are legion and include the discovery that when he became Secretary of State for Scotland he did

1 Schlesinger et. al. , Open Scotland? , 53, 93-5, 127, 167 not possess a passport. The Chairman of an important Scottish organisation returned from an event at which he had extensive access to the first minister to tell his bemused staff that he had not had the opportunity to discuss economic development policy as

Dewar was more interested in William Gladstone and the Crofters Act of 1886, a topic in which they had a mutual historical interest! 1 His replacement, Henry

McLeish, was a different kind of politician, a dull technocrat, but he did not last long,

having to resign in 2001 over a scandal about declaration of income gained from sub-

leases of his constituency office in Glenrothes from his days as a Westminster MP. 2

Jack McConnell, Scotland’s third first minister represented something of a new

departure in that, unlike his predecessors, he had no Westminster experience. He had

served as Finance Minister in the Executive and before that he had been a party

official. He began brutally, sacking most of McLeish’s cabinet, and proceeded with

low key administrative competence but little inspiration. 3 His principal problem has

been the increasing unpopularity of Tony Blair’s Labour government at Westminster.

The fixed date of the 2007 Scottish election posed a serious problem for his

administration. He was well aware that, coming at Westminster mid-term, this was

likely to be an opportunity for the Scottish electorate to express further displeasure

about a government whose Westminster majority had been cut at the 2005 general

election. The success or otherwise of his administration was likely to be an

irrelevance, providing more evidence that devolution has not fully restored a Scottish

political dimension in the minds of the voters: their minds remain on events at

Westminster even as they approach the voting booth in a Scottish election.

1 Personal information. A colleague who worked in the Edinburgh antiquarian book trade in the 1980s recalls Dewar purchasing a set of Susan Ferrier first editions. 2 Taylor, Scotland’s parliament , 47-60 3 Mitchell, ‘Third year, third first minister’, 119-39 What have been the legislative landmarks of the devolved parliament? While the

Scottish parliament has passed ??? bills since its creation there have been a number which stand out. These should, perhaps, be entered in an audit of the Executive rather than the parliament, but they indicate both the possibilities for divergence inherent in devolution, and serve to remind that the parliament remains constrained by events and structures at a UK level. Land reform is an interesting case in the sense that it can be portrayed as an atavistic endeavour, harking back to the politics of Victorian and

Edwardian Scotland. This was the point of view of one Conservative opponent of the

2003 Bill on this topic: ‘… the bill is not so much about land reform as about a crusade by those who are fighting 200-year-old battles …’. 1 Radical conceptions of

Scottish politics have included the concentration of landownership and restricted access to land for recreation as classic examples of the long running sores which were left to fester by Westminster, but which could be dealt with by a Scottish parliament.

Donald Dewar provided a classic statement of this case in 1998:

The creation of the Scottish parliament is a huge step forward for Scotland.

But it is in itself only a means to an end; and it is what the parliament will do

rather than what it will be that matters …it is clear that we need an integrated

programme of land reform legislation – sweeping away outdated land laws,

properly securing the public interest in land use and land-ownership,

increasing local involvement and accountability – to fit Scotland for the 21 st

century. Such a programme needs to deal, not just with the highly publicised

1 Official Report, Scottish Parliament , 20 Mar. 2002, col. 10398 (Bill Aitken) circumstances of the big Highland estates, but with land related problems in

all their diversity throughout Scotland. 1

The Land Reform Act which was passed in 2003 created a right of responsible access

to land; allowed rural communities to buy land when it is put on the market; and

allowed crofting communities to buy land at any time. As might be expected this

piece of legislation was controversial and disappointed some advocates of land reform

but it did represent something which could only have been put on the statute book in a

devolved context. It was the Scottish parliament which created the conditions for this

issue to be repackaged for modern political conditions. 2 One odd by-product of this process was the fact that the Scottish parliament, in one of its first enactments, abolished feudal tenure, thereby ending one element of Scottish distinctiveness and a legal concept which had played an important part in the form of the Scottish urban landscape and property relations more widely.

A second key area of activity for the Scottish parliament came as a result of the coalition negotiations between Labour and the Liberal Democrats after the 1999 election. The Liberal Democrats had fought the election with a commitment to end the payment of up-front tuition fees in Scottish universities. An independent commission chaired by a prominent businessman, Andrew Cubie, concluded that no fees should be extracted from students during their studies, but that they should pay an ‘graduate endowment’ when their earnings reached a certain level, £25,000 was suggested. This was far from straightforward since the money could only be collected by the Inland

Revenue, which was part of the system of general taxation, a reserved matter. Similar

1 Donald Dewar, ‘Land Reform for the 21 st century’, The Fifth John McEwan Memorial Lecture on Land Tenure in Scotland, 4 Sept. 1998. 2 Cameron, ‘“Unfinished business”’, 83-114 issues emerged in the discussions between the same parties which followed the 2003 election. This time the specific question was that of ‘top-up fees’. These had been established by Westminster, with the support of Scottish Labour MPs, and gave universities the power to levy fees up to £3000 per student to bring them closer to the full cost of tuition. A consensus emerged in the Scottish parliament that they ought not to be charged in Scottish universities, despite a feeling in some quarters, that this would put them at a disadvantage. Although higher education is a devolved issue and a Scottish Higher Education Funding Council has existed since 1993, administrative functions like assessment of teaching quality and research, the latter with profound funding implications, are organised at a UK level. Research Councils which provide a growing proportion of the funding for Scottish universities, especially the older ones, are also UK wide institutions. While there is not the same apprehension about devolution in the Scottish universities as in 1979 it ought to be noted that they do exist in national and international contexts and the Scottish parliament is not the only body which governs their activities. 1

Health issues are a third area in which the Scottish parliament has been very active and where there is also qualified divergence from policy at a UK level. Health is a classic issue under the West Lothian Question as Scottish MPs can vote on English health matters but English MPs cannot reciprocate since this is devolved. A good, or bad, example of this was seen in 2003 when Scottish Labour MPs were instrumental in the passage of a bill to establish ‘Foundation hospitals’, with a degree of autonomy from the NHS and the power to borrow money. By contrast there was consensus in the Scottish parliament not to adopt this market led approach to health policy. In

1 Keating, ‘Higher education in Scotland and England’, 423-35; Paterson, Scottish education , 164-75 Scotland—where there is a powerful and internationally influential medical establishment based in the four medical schools and the Royal Colleges—professional expertise, administrative initiative and policy direction have been integrated to a much greater degree. 1 A tangible example of divergence was seen, for example, in the striking position on funding free personal care for the elderly taken in 2001 by Henry

McLeish during his brief tenure as First Minister. In contrast to the Westminster government he agreed to implement the findings of the Royal Commission on this subject chaired by Lord Sutherland, then principal of the University of Edinburgh.

Since there was no English equivalent of this expenditure it was not covered by the

Barnett formula and the money would have to come from the block grant given to the

Scottish Executive by the Treasury. Again this appears to be a strikingly independent policy, no doubt influenced by a new First Minister keen to make an impact and with a nod towards the importance of the ‘grey vote, but it is not as simple as it seems.

Because the cost of free personal care has to be set against other benefits from the social security system, a reserved matter, complexities abound, aside from the difficulties of applying this policy in myriad of individual cases and distinguishing between personal and other kinds of care. This was a clear area of hostility between

London and Edinburgh and the former chose to extract a financial penalty, in the form of refusing to pass on the savings, amounting to £22m, consequent on those receiving free personal care no longer being entitled to Attendance Allowance. Despite the complexities of the funding arrangements for care for the elderly ‘the public perception is that … Scottish pensioners are now better off than their peers in

England, Wales and Northern Ireland.’ 2 The final innovation, also in the general area of health policy, and points up some of the ways in which devolution compelled the

1 Greer, ‘Territorial bases of health policymaking’, 504-6; Keating, Government of Scotland , 174-8 2 Simeon, ‘Free personal care’, 215-35, quote at 220; Cairney, ‘Venue shift following devolution’, 433 Scottish Executive to be almost creative in its presentation of policy. Drawing on the

Irish example, and after initial reluctance, a desire emerged within Jack McConnell’s

Executive to initiate a ban on smoking in public places in Scotland. This was eventually carried in 2005 despite opposition from the Department of Health in

Whitehall and an initial feeling that because such areas as health and safety and employment law are reserved matters it would not be possible for the Scottish parliament to legislate. The political will remained, however, and once the idea emerged that if the ban was presented as a public health measure and the objective was to ban smoking in public places, rather than work places, the competence of the parliament was clear. 1 This placed Scotland and England in different positions regarding this issue. Railway companies which ran services across the Scottish border decided that banning smoking entirely on their trains would be easier than forcing northbound smokers to stub out at Berwick. In addition, future coalitions will no longer be deals made in ‘smoke filled rooms’. The anomaly lasted until July 2007 when a similar ban was introduced in England; so this might be adduced as an example of Scottish devolved legislation leading the way for subsequent English legislation.

The Scottish parliament stretched its wings in debates on Iraq in early 2003. 2 The first, in January, was opened by John Swinney, the then leader of the Scottish

National Party, and he was almost immediately interrupted by a Labour member to question the right of the Scottish parliament to debate the issue, a point which was echoed by other Labour MSPs later in the debate. The Scotland Act places no limit on the subjects which can be debated in the Scottish parliament and Labour worries

1 Cairney, ‘Using devolution to set the agenda?’, 73-89 2 Official Report, Scottish Parliament, 16 Jan. 2003, cols 17013-86; 13 Mar. 2003, cols 19425-96 about the competence of the parliament were probably connected to their own divisions on the substantive issue being discussed. In the event, the parliament divided with Labour and the Tories on one side and the Liberals and SNP on the other. 1 An

irony which was pointed out in the debate, and by Tam Dalyell (hardly a fan of the

Scottish parliament), was that Westminster had not at that time had an opportunity to

debate this issue, despite its national importance. This was an interesting debate, but it

was not an example of the blurring of the lines between devolved and reserved issues

which can be seen in other elements of the brief history of the parliament. There was

no pretence that any power relating to this issue resided in Holyrood; indeed, a

journalist remarked that, on this occasion, ‘the Scottish parliament eloquently

expressed its own irrelevance’ and that the debate was ‘little more than ventilation of

hot air’. 2 It might be added that the Westminster parliament has not been a key player in the decisions which led to war either. The debate indicated that devolved institutions can, on occasion, provide alternative political spaces for discussion of issues which have, for whatever reason, been squeezed off the Westminster order paper.

The 2007 Scottish Parliament election

If an argument can be made that there are strong elements of continuity in post- devolution politics from 1999 to 2007, especially since Labour have dominated in

Edinburgh and London, does the 2007 election offer evidence for a break with the past? The results would seem to indicate that this is so. As can be seen in table ? this was the SNP’s best election since 1974 and the proportional system used for Scottish elections gave them a far better return of seats. Even without the top-up element their

1 Herald, Jan. 2003, 9; Scotsman , 12 Mar. 2003, 10 2 I. McWhirter, ‘Enemies gassed to little effect’, Sunday Herald , 19 Jan. 2003, 9 twenty-one constituencies represents 28.8 per cent of the total from 32.9 per cent of the vote, a similar vote in October 1974 gave them only 15.2 per cent of the seats. A contrast with 1974 is that eleven of the twelve gains which they made in 2007 came from Labour. The exception was Alex Salmond’s victory in Gordon, previously held by the Liberal Democrats. Salmond, restored to the party leadership, was returning to the parliament after a gap of six years and, in a manner faintly reminiscent of

Gladstone at Midlothian in 1880, had to surmount a clear challenge to emphasise his credentials. It would have been embarrassing if he had crept in under the radar on the regional list for North East Scotland. A continuity with 1974 and other SNP performances was the emergence of an east/west split in Scottish politics. The SNP won only one seat in Glasgow, Nicola Sturgeon’s success at the third attempt in

Govan, and only two further seats, Cunninghame North (by forty-eight votes), and

Kilmarnock and Loudoun, in the west. They crept into new territory in central

Scotland by winning seats like Falkirk West, Livingston, and Edinburgh East and

Musselburgh. Nevertheless, it remains the case that fifteen of their seats are in the east and the highlands, often in areas where there is a history of SNP representation. Also reminiscent of October 1974 is the fact that the SNP are the second place party in thirty-three seats to Labour, many of them in the west of Scotland. 1 This was clearly a very bad election for Labour. It was the third consecutive Scottish election at which their share of the vote had declined and it continued the trend of their Scottish performance falling short of that for Westminster elections. The SNP made much of the fact that Labour had lost a Scottish election for the first time in nearly fifty years.

Was it, however, a reflection on Labour’s performance in government in Scotland or a positive endorsement of the SNP’s ultimate objective of independence? Labour

1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2007/scottish_parliment/html/region_99999.stm accessed 7 May 2007 ; Scotsman , 5 May 2007. supporting newspapers alluded to this issue. On the morning of the election the front page of the Daily Record was taken up with the following injunction:

Today’s election is not about war in Iraq. It is not about Tony Blair. It is about

who will run Scotland. It is about schools, hospitals and law and order. Do not

sleepwalk into independence. Do not let a protest vote break up Britain. Think

about it. 1

We have already discussed the theme of voters using Scottish elections to comment on national issues and the Scottish election result was strongly influenced by the deepening unpopularity of the Labour government at Westminster. The Scottish parliamentary results were mirrored in local government elections in Scotland and

England and in the election for the Welsh Assembly, all of which saw reverses for the

Labour party in the middle of their third term of office. Indeed, the Prime Minister announced the date of his much trailed resignation on 10 May, only a week after the election. Despite the strong performance of the SNP the unionist consensus in

Scottish politics remained evident at this election. Opinion polls indicated that independence was not the preferred constitutional option of the Scottish electorate.

Just before the election a poll found that only 35 per cent agreed with the statement

‘The Scottish parliament should negotiate a new settlement with the British government so that Scotland becomes a sovereign and independent state’, 55 per cent disagreed and 10 per cent didn’t know. 2 The results, looked at in another way, demonstrated that nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted for unionist parties and over 60 per cent of the MSPs are from unionist parties. This may well influence the

1 Daily Record , 3 May 2007 2 Scotsman , 7 May 2007, 2 make-up of the Executive, with the SNP’s promise of an independence referendum providing a deterrent to any of the unionist parties entering a coalition with them.

It will be recalled that Turnbull’s lion turned away from devolution in 1979 because he was ‘feart’. Fear was abroad in 2007, but among different political animals. Labour ran a relentlessly negative campaign, focussing not on their largely competent, although uninspiring, record in government in Edinburgh, but on the awful events which would unfold if the SNP ‘won’ the election. This was a theme in tabloid journalism. The Scottish Sun , for a brief period in the early 1990s a supporter of the

SNP and independence, presented ‘10 reasons to be fearful’. These were:

Out of NATO

Income Tax up 3p

Super-rich pay nothing

£5,000 bill per family

Brain drain

Independence

…and its price

Westminster conflict

Jobs on the line

Public services threat.

Its front page ‘argued’: ‘Vote SNP today and put Scotland’s head in the noose’, the noose in question on the graphic bore a close relationship to the SNP’s symbol.

Political analysis was even forthcoming from the topless models on page three: Louise encouraged voters to turn out ‘to back the union’ and Vikki from Essex opined that it would ‘be a disaster if the Nats win’. 1

The election results, however, were only part of the story in the days after the poll.

During the campaign there had been much optimism that turnout would be up on the

disappointing 48 per cent of 2003. The poll was slightly up, at 51 per cent (not

including the spoiled papers?). This was held to compare badly to the French

presidential election on Sunday 6 May, at which 84 per cent of voters turned out, but it is not appropriate to compare the Scottish parliament election with that for a national head of state. Even this issue of turnout was overtaken by events. A decision had been taken by the Scotland Office, endorsed by the Executive and the Parliament, to hold Scottish local government elections, under a new single transferable vote system, on the same day as the elections to the Scottish parliament. Further, a new electronic system of counting was introduced and to facilitate this a new ballot paper was designed with the constituency and regional list votes to be recorded on the same paper. Although there had been some warnings about the potential for confusion this was not a major feature of the campaign. In the event, through a combination of technical failure and human confusion, a shambles ensued. This saw large numbers of votes being discounted as ‘spoiled’, perhaps as many as 140,000 or 7 per cent of the total. In some seats, Cunninghame North being the most notable, the spoiled ballots vastly exceeded the majority of the winning candidate. Counts in many seats were suspended and the final results of the election were not known until the late afternoon of 4 May. The Scotland Office promised an investigation by the Electoral

Commission, but since the Commission had been partly responsible for the

1 Scottish Sun 3 May 2007. implementation of the new system this did not please everyone and there were calls, especially from the SNP, for an independent enquiry. These were unprecedented events in a British election and one journalist argued that the election was an ‘affront to democracy’, even drawing parallels with the disputed US presidential election of

2000. 1

The most sensible conclusion to draw on the experience thus far of devolved politics

is to note that although there are more continuities than might be immediately evident

and that the lines between devolved and reserved are more blurred than is obvious

from a glance at the Scotland Act of 1998, that the system has restored a consensus on

the legitimate means of governing Scotland. As we have seen, part of the argument

for the creation of a parliament stemmed from a feeling which emerged in the 1980s

that the government of the day did not have a ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland.

Although, strictly, this was not the case in constitutional terms in the real world of

politics it was a powerful perception and did the Conservative party much damage.

The eradication of this view is an important result of devolution. 2 Expectations were

initially very high, possibly unrealistically so. The parliament is not only established

but it is accepted across the political spectrum, including the Conservative party who

had campaigned against its creation, and by the public. It is true that the turnout for

elections could be higher, but this is the case in other political contexts as well, and it

is to be hoped that the shambles over rejected ballots in the 2007 election will not

have the effect of eroding the legitimacy which has been built up since 1999.

Ironically, in the context of the voter education campaign in 1998, Donald Dewar had

warned: ‘Nothing would more damage the credibility of this new parliament than an

1 Anne Johnstone in the Herald , 10 May 2007, 15 2 Bradbury & Mitchell, ‘Devolution and territorial politics’, 314; Mitchell, ‘Third year, third first minister’, 137 election in which people did not understand the voting mechanism or misunderstood the significance of the votes they cast.’ 1 The election of 2007 might be important in another way: in normal political systems governments change, oppositions gain power and different parties experience the stresses and strains of office. From 1999 to 2007 devolved government was run by the party which was responsible for the creation of the parliament. This could not continue indefinitely and it would not have been healthy for it to do so. The fact that the SNP have gained power, albeit in a minority administration, and despite the fact that none of the unionist parties could bring themselves to coalesce with them, is significant, it may even be ‘historic’. It is also an entirely uncontroversial, even highly predictable, consequence of the creation of a

Scottish parliament. 2

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