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.