Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland since 1880 9781474481014

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The New Edinburgh History of Scotland volu me 10

Impaled Upon a Thistle

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The New Edinburgh History of Scotland General editor: Roger Mason, University of St Andrews Advisory editors: Dauvit Broun, University of Glasgow; Iain Hutchison, University of Stirling; Norman Macdougall, University of St Andrews; Nicholas Phillipson, University of Edinburgh 1 From Caledonia to Pictland to 795 James Fraser, University of Edinburgh 2 From Pictland to Alba 789–1070 Alex Woolf, University of St Andrews 3 Domination and Lordship 1070–1230 Richard Oram, University of Stirling 4 The Wars of Scotland 1214–1371 Michael Brown, University of St Andrews 5 The First Stewart Dynasty 1371–1488 Steve Boardman, University of Edinburgh 6 Scotland Re-formed 1488–1587 Jane Dawson, University of Edinburgh 7 Empire, Union and Reform 1587–1690 Roger Mason, University of St Andrews 8 Nation, State, Province, Empire 1690–1790 Ned Landsman, State University of New York, Stony Brook 9 Industry and Unrest 1790–1880 Iain Hutchison, University of Stirling 10 Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland since 1880 Ewen A. Cameron, University of Edinburgh

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Impaled Upon a Thistle Scotland since 1880 Ewen A. Cameron

Edinburgh University Press

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For Thomas and Olivia

© Ewen A. Cameron, 2010 Transferred to digital print 2012 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 1314 4 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 1315 1 (paperback) The right of Ewen A. Cameron to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Publisher’s acknowledgement Edinburgh University Press thanks Mercat Press, publishers of the Edinburgh History of Scotland, for permission to use The New Edinburgh History of Scotland as the title for this ten-volume series.

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Contents

Tables and Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations General Editor’s Preface

vii ix xi xiii 1

Introduction PART ONE Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Progress and Poverty: Scottish Society, 1880 to 1914 Enterprise and Initiative: The Scottish Economy, 1880 to 1939 ‘An Exuberant Verbosity’: Scottish Politics in the 1880s ‘Volcanic Upheavals’: Scottish Politics before the Great War ‘Ower the Hill’: Scotland and the Great War Poverty without Progress? Scottish Society in the Inter-war Period ‘Miracles and Politics Don’t Mix’: Political Change in the Inter-war Period Total War, 1939 to 1945

9 35 54 79 102 125 150 175

PART TWO Chapter 9 The Social Revolution: Scottish Society since 1945 Chapter 10 The End of Industrial Scotland: The Economy since 1945

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201 236

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vi im p a l e d upo n a this t l e Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Bibliography Index

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Unionist Scotland: Politics, 1945 to 1970 The 1970s: A Decade of Scottish Politics Mothering Devolution: Scottish Politics, 1979 to 1997 New Labour, New Parliament, New Scotland?

263 289 320 349 372 421

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Tables and Illustrations

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 9.1 Table 9.2 Table 10.1 Table 10.2 Table 11.1 Table 12.1 Table 12.2 Table 12.3 Table 13.1 Table 13.2 Table 13.3 Table 14.1 Table 14.2

Distribution of employment in Scotland by industrial order compared to UK, 1881 and 1921 Changes in employment in Scotland by industrial order, 1881–1921 General elections, 1900–10 Scottish recruitment, August 1914 to December 1915 General elections, 1918–29 The National Government and the general elections of 1931 and 1935 Scottish population growth, 1931–2001 Fertility and mortality, 1941–5 to 2001–5 Structure of employment in the Scottish economy, 1951–2000 GDP by economic sector, 1950–2006 General elections, 1945–70 General election results in Scotland, 1970–9 General election results in the UK, 1970–9 Results of the Referendum on Scotland Act, 1 March 1978 General election results in Scotland, 1979–97 General election results in the UK, 1979–97 Changes in share of the vote in seats lost by Conservatives at the 1997 general election Results of Scottish and UK general elections, 1999–2007 Results of the devolution referendums of 1979 and 1997

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43 43 80 108 151 151 203 205 238 238 264 291 291 311 321 322 347 350 350

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viii imp a l e d upo n a this t l e Table 14.3 Table 14.4

Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2

Regional support for devolution and tax-varying powers at the referendum of 1997 Seats won at Scottish Parliament elections, 1999–2007

Regional distribution Modern working-class housing in the early twentieth century Figure 2.1 Workers from A & J Stewarts Clydesdale Steel works at Mossend Figure 3.1 Gladstone lamenting Dalkeith’s faggot voters at Midlothian in 1880 Figure 4.1 The ‘Turra Coo’ on her way to be sold, 9 December 1913 Figure 5.1 A cartoon on the grievances which led to the rent strikes of 1915 Figure 6.1 Hunger marchers from the Vale of Leven, Dunbartonshire, c. 1935 Figure 7.1 Leading figures of the early Scottish nationalist movement Figure 8.1 Women working on the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine assembly line at Hillington Figure 9.1 Agnes McLean, the first female shop steward at Hillington Figure 10.1 A completed oil rig being floated out from Kishorn, 1978 Figure 11.1 Winnie Ewing addressing floating voters in Blantyre Figure 13.1 Conservative share of the vote, Scotland and England, 1945–2005 Figure 13.2 Labour share of the vote, Scotland and England, 1945–2005 Figure 13.3 Gordon Wilson MP and the broadcaster Colin Bell Figure 13.4 One interpretation of Thatcherite policies Figure 14.1 The HQ of the Vigil for a Scottish Parliament

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352 353 12 21 40 57 97 120 133 169 186 217 253 283 321 321 323 333 359

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Acknowledgements

The writing of this book has been a stimulating and challenging experience. It has forced me to move beyond my ‘comfort zone’ of monographs and research articles to attempt something more general and covering a longer chronological span. I am very grateful to John Davey (formerly of EUP) and Professor Roger Mason, the general editor of this series, for commissioning the volume. At EUP Roda Morrison and latterly Esmé Watson, whose seemingly inexhaustible reserves of patience and politeness I must surely have tested to the limit, have been unfailingly helpful. Dr Iain Hutchison of the University of Stirling read my text at various stages and shared generously his encyclopedic knowledge of Scottish political history. My debts to my colleagues at the University of Edinburgh are considerable. This book is the product of the intellectual atmosphere – generous, collegial and disputatious – generated by the staff and students at 17 Buccleuch Place. Dr Annie Tindley, now of Glasgow Caledonian University, provided practical assistance at an earlier stage in her career. I have received advice from not one but three Fraser Professors of Scottish History at Edinburgh. Professors Barrow and Devine will not, I am sure, mind if I pay particular tribute to Professor Michael Lynch who has supported my career and been such a constant source of encouragement since I moved to Edinburgh in 1993. The research and writing of this book has been supported by awards from the University of Edinburgh, the British Academy and the Strathmartine Trust and I am grateful to them all. I have received excellent service from all the libraries and archives which I have used, especially the National Library of Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and Edinburgh University Library. Further afield The National Archives of the United Kingdom, the British Library and the Bodleian Library provided pleasant working environments. Although its founder was much against its

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x imp a l e d upo n a this t l e use by ‘antiquarians’ the Carnegie Library in Dunfermline has been a vital port in a storm on a number of occasions. First Scotrail have often provided extended periods for contemplation and reading on the Fife Circle. There were occasions on which I felt that the period covered by this book was very long. When my son Thomas (born 1 January 2001) met his revered relative Mrs Mary Conn (born 27 September 1899) the relative shortness of the period was brought home to me. There have been many other occasions when my family have brought me back down to earth during the extended composition of this text. Thomas and Olivia have provided ever widening possibilities for displacement activities, ranging from penalty shoot-outs to surprisingly frequent birthday parties for ‘Spotty Dog’. My wife Sally could probably have seen this project far enough at times, not least during a series of romantic evenings spent checking the bibliography. Her love, support and continued forbearance are my most important source of strength.

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Abbreviations

APRS ASE BL CBH CPGB CSA CWC DSBB ECBC Econ. HR Eng. HR HJ HLRO HR ILP IMR IR JBS JSHS JSLHS LRC MOH NAS NAVSR NLS

Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland Amalgamated Society of Engineers British Library Contemporary British History Communist Party of Great Britain Campaign for a Scottish Assembly Clyde Workers Committee A. Slaven and S. Checkland, eds, Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography, 1860–1960 (2 vols, Aberdeen, 1986–90) Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company Economic History Review English Historical Review Historical Journal House of Lords Record Office Historical Research Independent Labour Party Infant Mortality Rate Innes Review Journal of British Studies Journal of Scottish Historical Studies Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society Labour Representation Committee Medical Officer of Health National Archives of Scotland National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights National Library of Scotland

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xii imp a l e d upo n a this t l e NPS NSHEB NSS NTS NUWM OBL OCSH

National Party of Scotland North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board National Shipbuilders’ Security Ltd National Trust for Scotland National Unemployed Workers’ Movement Oxford, Bodleian Library M. Lynch, ed., Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford, 2001) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography PD Parliamentary Debates PP Parliamentary Papers RSCHS Records of the Scottish Church History Society SA Scottish Affairs SCUA Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association SDF Social Democratic Federation SDP Social Democratic Party (1981) SEC Scottish Economic Committee SED Scottish Education Department SER Scottish Educational Review SESH Scottish Economic and Social History SGM Scottish Geographical Magazine SGY Scottish Government Yearbook SHR Scottish Historical Review SHRA Scottish Home Rule Association SJA Scottish Journal of Agriculture SLL W. Knox, ed., Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918–39: A Biographical Dictionary SNDC Scottish National Development Council SNP Scottish National Party SNWM Scottish National War Memorial SSHA Scottish Special Housing Association SWRC Scottish Workers’ Representation Committee TCBH Twentieth Century British History THASS Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland TNA: PRO The National Archives: Public Records Office UFC United Free Church of Scotland

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General Editor’s Preface

The purpose of the New Edinburgh History of Scotland is to provide up-to-date and accessible narrative accounts of the Scottish past. Its authors will make full use of the explosion of scholarly research that has taken place over the last three decades, and do so in a way that is sensitive to Scotland’s regional diversity as well as to the British, European and transoceanic worlds of which Scotland has always been an integral part. Chronology is fundamental to understanding change over time and Scotland’s political development will provide the backbone of the narrative and the focus of analysis and explanation. The New Edinburgh History will tell the story of Scotland as a political entity, but will be sensitive to broader social, cultural and religious change and informed by a richly textured understanding of the totality and diversity of the Scots’ historical experience. Yet to talk of the Scots – or the Scottish nation – is often misleading. Local loyalty and regional diversity have more frequently characterised Scotland than any perceived sense of ‘national’ solidarity. Scottish identity has seldom been focused primarily, let alone exclusively, on the ‘nation’. The modern discourse of nationhood offers what is often an inadequate and inappropriate vocabulary in which to couch Scotland’s history. The authors in this series will show that there are other and more revealing ways of capturing the distinctiveness of Scottish experience. For the period from 1880 to the present such a brief poses uniquely difficult challenges. For a start, while the vocabulary of nationalism may no longer be anachronistic, it must still be used with caution in relation to a Scotland where the vast majority of the population has shown little interest in separatism and the creation of an independent nation state, but has preferred instead to articulate Scottish distinctiveness within the context of a united if not necessarily unitary British state. Secondly,

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xiv im pa l e d upo n a this t l e particularly for the decades up to and including the early years of the twenty-first century, the historian has the peculiar problem of establishing perspectives that explain current events but are not driven by them – that do not lead, in other words, to a reading of the past founded on immediate and contingent circumstances. Ewen Cameron has risen to these challenges with aplomb. Covering a lengthy chronological span, he is able to place the history of the past few decades in the context of a ‘long twentieth century’ that allows for a nuanced and finely balanced interpretation of the interplay of nationalism and unionism as it has impacted on Scottish and British politics in the modern era. At the same time, however, he is able to explore the various ways in which such processes as industrialisation and de-industrialisation, the expansion and contraction of empire, have shaped both Scottish civil society and the ways in which the Scots – women as well as men – have defined themselves in the twentieth century. The result is a compelling study of recent social and political developments – not least the processes that led to the establishment of a Scottish parliament in 1999 – in the context of more than a century of British history. Judicious and illuminating to the end, this book is a signal contribution to our understanding of contemporary Scotland and Britain.

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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 impaled1

H

ugh MacDiarmid’s protagonist in his epic ‘A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle’ warned of the painful consequences of grappling with Scottish culture and identity. The historian of modern Scotland – a relatively new species, since in the nineteenth and part of the twentieth century it was assumed that Scottish history stopped in 1707 – faces similar dangers. We are caught between the ‘livin tomb’ of Scottish distinctiveness and the ‘doom’ of sacrificing Scottish history to an artificial ‘British’ framework. The trap has sometimes been laid by the suggestion that there have been few Scottish events which ‘mattered vitally to the history of mainland Britain during the last hundred years or so’.2 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 Scotland, and not only when Scottish history seems to take a different turn from that of England, whether in the rent strikes of the Great War, the demand for devolution or opposition to the 1 2

Taken from the text in Grieve and Aitken, Complete Poems of Hugh MacDiarmid, i, 165. Stevenson, ‘Writing Scotland’s history’, 111.

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2 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e ‘poll tax’ in the 1980s. A monoculture of thistles is as problematic as a savage eradication of their persistent growth. Many studies of modern Scotland begin around 1914; this one stretches back to 1880 and this chronology requires some introductory comment. Although at first sight the Scotland of 1880 was a distant and irrelevant memory by the aftermath of the Great War, there were many continuities. Although the Liberal party, which had dominated politics since 1832, was divided and marginalised by the inter-war period its legacy survived in a number of ways. Its triumph in 1906 provided a framework of welfare and constitutional reform which later governments grappled with and built on. Liberalism provided important political ideas which influenced Unionism in Scotland until at least the 1950s and there was a strong Liberal strand in the development of Scottish nationalism. As late as 2007 the apparent inheritors of the tradition of Liberalism played a part in the government of Scotland. Further, it is difficult to understand the recent debates on constitutional matters without returning to the roots of the discussion present in Gladstone’s Irish home-rule schemes of the 1880s and 1890s. Most of the issues which have troubled both opponents and supporters of devolution in the late twentieth century – such as what has come to be called the ‘West Lothian Question’ – first arose in the Gladstonian period. Similarly, this period has bequeathed the Unionism which has had such an important part to play in the development of Scottish politics over the period covered by this book. Finally, in the political field, there is much evidence to argue that the radical Liberalism of the 1880s was the handmaiden of the Labour party. Although there was more limited cooperation between Liberals and Labour in Scotland than in England many of the concerns of Victorian radicals – land reform, temperance, Scottish and Irish home rule – animated the pioneers of the Labour movement, and there was much crossover of personnel. Clearly the two traditions had parted company by the 1920s, especially with the emergence of issues, such as the housing question, which seemed to demand a more interventionist state than Liberals were willing to concede. Although this is unambiguous the subsequent success of the Labour party in Scotland cannot be properly understood without some reference to the late nineteenth century. Finally, if one turns to economic and social themes the utility of starting this account in the 1880s can be seen clearly. One important theme in modern Scottish history has been dealing with the consequences of the industrial development of the late nineteenth century. Although this period seemed to be one of economic optimism many of the innovations proved to have problematic consequences in later years, not least during the 1920s and 1930s. As late as the

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i n t r o du c t i o n 3 1970s the ‘new’ industries which had developed a century earlier – steel and shipbuilding – continued to play an important part in the Scottish economy and in the debate over its future. If in the nineteenth century a paradoxical element of Scottish identity was the emphasis in an urban and industrial nation on rural society and the highlands, something similar has developed in contemporary Scotland with elegies for the recent industrial past now that it has been wiped from the landscape – literally so in some cases. Interestingly, compared to writing about the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, there does not seem to be an extensive explicit or selfconscious ‘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.3 Equally, it is too simplistic to dismiss all historians writing from a mainly English perspective as ‘Anglocentric’ – a word mostly used in a pejorative way by Scottish historians. 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 Richard Finlay implied that gaps in the literature meant that it was impossible to write a ‘synoptic’ history of modern Scotland.4 Even more authoritative was the opinion of T. M. Devine, who, in a recent interview, damned research and writing on twentieth-century Scotland with faint praise.5 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 3

Colley, Britons; although Ward, Britishness and Weight, Patriots should be noted in this context. 4 Finlay, Modern Scotland, vii. 5 In History Scotland, May/June 2006, 50.

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4 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 Second World War.6 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 more 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 and an economy exposed to all the dangers of globalisation. 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. Unlike many of the recent single- and multi-authored attempts to synthesise modern Scottish history this book, like the others in the series, has politics at its core. This works especially well in the period up to 1945, the first part of this book, when the dominance and then the decline of Liberalism can be charted alongside the rise of the Labour movement, although the latter was a long and slow process in Scotland. In the second part of the book, although there are important political changes, not least the rise, fall and rise again of nationalism and the divergence between Scottish and English voting patterns, the biggest changes have come in the social and economic field. This, in addition to the shift in the nature of the historiography discussed above, has contributed to the sectional See the useful remarks in Finlay, ‘Does history matter?’, 243–50; McGarvey, ‘New Scottish politics’, 427–44.

6

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i n t r o du c t i o n 5 division of the text at the end of the Second World War. The relationship between recent social and economic changes and the shape of political debate in Scotland is of fundamental importance in the post-war period. This involves the rise and fall of the state as an actor in social and economic policy, notably in the field of housing. It is also closely linked to the vexed question of Scottish home rule. It is important not to work back from the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1998–9 and assume that this was the inevitable culmination of political development since 1945 (or 1880, or even 1707). Nevertheless, the case for home rule became strongest when there was a close link between its political and economic dimensions, as in the mid-1970s or the 1990s. Thus, although this book is built round a discussion of politics (if not quite a political narrative as would be understood by a medieval historian) it also contains detailed treatment of economic and social themes. The principal analytical theme which runs through the text is the relationship between Scotland and the United Kingdom but the book also seeks to convey such material about modern Scotland as will inform the reader new to the topic. The coverage continues up to the Scottish election of May 2007. The text offers no assessment of the record of the SNP minority administration which formed the Scottish ‘Government’ after that election, although an attempt is made in the final pages to assess the historical context of the election. It is difficult enough to understand the past, especially the very recent past, without trying to analyse the present or second-guess the future.

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Part One

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ch apter 1

Progress and Poverty: Scottish Society, 1880 to 1914

F

or the century after 1750 Scotland changed rapidly: the population increased, towns expanded, the countryside was transformed and heavy industries – textiles, metals and mineral extraction – became the economic driving forces. This 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 1841 and 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 this revolution. Important thresholds of population expansion, urbanisation and industrialisation had been crossed by 1850. The subsequent period was one of consolidation, deeply affected by the social and political challenges posed by the revolution: crowded cities, polluted industrial landscapes, a countryside drained of population. 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. There is also a cultural point here. The literature of the ‘kailyard’ (literally the cabbage patch, but intended as a metaphor for parochialism) achieved a huge popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This body of work, much of it produced by Presbyterian ministers such as John Watson (writing as Ian Maclaren) or S. R. Crockett, presented a sentimental and gendered image of small-town and rural Scotland untouched by such symbols of modernity as the railway, extremes of poverty and wealth, or political debate. It celebrated a safe and predictable Scotland, where bright boys could advance through the inherent democracy of the education system with the patronage of the

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10 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e dominie (headmaster), the minister or the laird.1 Maclaren, secure in a wealthy Presbyterian charge in Liverpool, produced in 1894 the archetype of the form in the title story of his best-selling collection Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush. That this literature elided social and political challenges is fairly obvious, but there was more to the kailyard than the lucrative literary output of a small group of Presbyterian ministers. Although Robert Louis Stevenson, writing from Samoa to the author, praised some of Crockett’s stories for ‘being drowned in Scotland, they have refreshed me like a visit home’, critics such as J. H. Millar worried that it presented a deeply distorted image of Scotland.2 Nevertheless, the kailyard touched on a series of topical issues, relating to religion and education, the balance between rural and urban Scotland, and the extent to which Scotland was still shaped by traditional Liberal values based around self-regulating communities free from the malign interference of the secular state. That a society which had experienced such traumatic social change, but which was so loyal to Liberalism and resistant to socialism should shun a literature of realism is not surprising. Nevertheless, the kailyard produced a reaction more extreme than anything seen in the political sphere. George Douglas Brown’s The House with the Green Shutters, published in 1901, presented an image of small-town Scotland as unrepresentative as anything by Barrie, Maclaren or Crockett: ‘a brutal and bloody work’, in the words of its author.3 Of course it is easy to lament the influence of the kailyard and it has been conclusively demonstrated that there was a huge body of fiction, published in serialised form in provincial newspapers, which dealt with more ‘realistic’ themes in Scottish life, especially in the towns, but it cannot be written off so readily.4 It was a carefully packaged product which had strong support among evangelical London publishers, especially Hodder and Stoughton. It was heavily patronised by Sir William Robertson Nicoll (a former Free Church minister and Gladstonian Liberal), editor of the British Weekly and biographer of Maclaren, who viewed it as a force for ‘tenderness, for purity, for a higher standard of life’.5 That the kailyard was published by London publishers with global reach is indicative of the way in which it was designed for an international market. Campbell, Kailyard, 12–16, 86–92. RLS to Crockett, c. 15 Aug 1893, in Booth and Mehew, Letters of RLS, vii, 152; Millar, ‘Literature of the Kailyard’, 384; Millar, Literary History, 657. 3 In a letter of October 1901 to Ernest Barker, quoted in Campbell, Kailyard, 7–8. 4 Donaldson, Popular Literature. 5 Nicoll in the British Weekly, Jan. 1897, quoted by Knowles, Ideology, Art and Commerce, 60. 1 2

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 11 Nevertheless, echoes of the ideal of Scotland presented by Maclaren et al. can be seen in many of the debates about social questions in the generation before the Great War.

p o p u la t i o n gr o w t h The population grew from 2.89 million in 1841 to 4.76 million in 1911, but the rate of growth was lower than it had been in the early nineteenth century.6 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 onefifth 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. 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 and 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.7 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 302. Anderson, ‘Population patterns since 1770’, 489; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 306. 6 7

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12 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 50 highlands 45 western lowlands 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1939

Figure 1.1 Regional distribution (%)

d e m o gr a p h i c t r a n si t i on Crudely put, 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’.8 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.9 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; smallpox had been eradicated by vaccination, compulsory after 1863; a host of other conditions – measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough – became markedly less dangerous by the early twentieth century. Improved medical 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 cost 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, rural and urban, highland and 8 9

Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, 45; Teitelbaum, British Fertility Decline. Anderson and Morse, ‘Scotland’s demographic experience, part I’, 8.

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 13 lowland.10 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, however, the picture had become more homogeneous with Orkney’s death rate at 17.0 higher than Renfrew’s at 15.7.11 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 regional exceptions, such as 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 spectrum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in respect of the marriage rate of its potentially fertile population. This generalisation is complicated by regional differences.12 This pattern was closely related to adjustments in family attitudes made for economic rather than cultural reasons. 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 fifty in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland were married according to the censuses of the late nineteenth century, compared to around 80 per cent for the western lowlands, all towns and cities and Scotland as a whole. This was caused by 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.13 The industrial areas of Flinn, Scottish Population History, 387–420. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 381. 12 Anderson and Morse, ‘Scotland’s demographic experience, part I’, 5–25. 13 Anderson and Morse, ‘Scotland’s demographic experience, part II’, 319–43; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 326–7. 10 11

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14 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e Scotland remained the growth points of the Scottish population even at the lower levels of fertility and mortality that prevailed after 1861. 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.14 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.15 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.16 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 where there was a more open and cheaper higher-education system.17

e m i gr a t i o n 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 Teitelbaum, British Fertility Decline, 160–1, 214–15; Morse, ‘The decline of fertility in Scotland’, 96–7, 120. 15 Seccombe, ‘Starting to stop’, 165. 16 Kemmer, ‘Marital fertility of Edinburgh professionals’, 82–117. 17 Walker, ‘Occupational expansion, fertility decline and recruitment to the professions in Scotland’, 243–313. 14

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 15 of the period. Scottish participation in this exodus extended to around 2 million people. 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.18 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.19 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 1860.20 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 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.21 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.22 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 18 19 20 21 22

Cage, ‘Scots in England’, 34; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 442. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 449. Murdoch, British Emigration, 111–12; Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy, 60–1. Guinnane, ‘Coming of age in rural Ireland’, 443–72. Devine, ‘Paradox of Scottish emigration’, 1–15.

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16 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 1880.23 242526

Migration from Europe A new flow of migration from Europe began in the 1880s and continued until the outbreak of the Great War, but it was not on the same scale as the great mid-century movement from Ireland. There were around 25,000 people of European birth living in Scotland at the census of 1911, most of whom had arrived from Italy, Russia, Poland and Lithuania in the years since 1880.24 Some of these people, especially the large Jewish contingent, were refugees from persecution in eastern Europe. Most of them settled in Glasgow, especially in the Gorbals, where by 1914 they had formed an upwardly mobile group of some 7–10,000 people with their own community support network and religious infrastructure. After London, Leeds and Manchester this was one of the largest Jewish communities in Britain. Although the historical consensus has been of a relatively calm relationship with Scottish society there is some anecdotal evidence of a latent anti-semitism.25 Some of this can be seen in the Oscar Slater case, a miscarriage of justice in 1909, when a man of German Jewish origin was convicted of the murder of an old woman in the West End of Glasgow. Slater, who had some Rabbinical support in his campaign to prove his innocence, referred to himself as the ‘Scottish Dreyfus’. This was a slight exaggeration, but his religion and nationality, as well as his alleged connections to gambling and prostitution, contributed to a racial stereotype and did not help his case. A quite different picture of Jewish life in Scotland, however, can be seen from the memoir of David Daiches, the son of Rabbi Salis Daiches. This evokes the life of his family in Edinburgh just after the Great War, a life dominated by his movement back and forth between the ‘two worlds’ of his Jewish domestic life and his school and university life in the Presbyterian city.26 An immigrant group with a different history was that of the Lithuanian

Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy, 82–4; Erickson, ‘Who were the English and Scots emigrants?’, 101–2; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 454. 24 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 457–9. 25 Devine, Scottish Nation, 518–22. 26 Braber, ‘Trial of Oscar Slater’, 262–79; Toughill, Oscar Slater; Daiches, Two Worlds. 23

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 17 Catholics, often referred to as ‘Poles’, who settled in Lanarkshire in the period from 1880 to 1914. Most gained employment in the mining and steel industry where they were sometimes treated with hostility by the native workers and the Labour movement for their alleged lack of skill, accident proneness and willingness to work for low wages. This ‘community’ was often divided politically and was traumatised by the difficult history of their homeland and by the Anglo-Russian Military Convention of July 1917 which gave men of Russian nationality a ‘choice’ of conscription into the British army or deportation to Russia for military service. A majority of Lithuanians in Scotland chose the latter. This induced official suspicion of the Lithuanian community and brought further difficulties for them.27

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. 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 financial assistance for the long and expensive voyage.28 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. It is too simple to argue that emigration was influenced by ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, but ‘information’ was central to the process.29 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 27

27

Lunn, ‘Reactions to Lithuanian and Polish immigrants in the Lanarkshire coalfield’, 308–42; Rodgers, ‘Political developments in the Lithuanian community in Scotland’, 141–56. 28 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 451. 29 Baines, ‘European emigration, 1815–1930’, 526–33.

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18 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 extensive links with the dominions was fertile ground for the cultivation of emigrants. 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.30 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. 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.31 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 – even seasonal movement by building workers – suggests the existence of a coherent transatlantic labour market in which Scots were well placed to participate. Emigration did not always represent an irreversible desertion of Scotland.

u r b a n i sa t i o n Patrick Geddes pointed out the oddity that although ‘most people, even in Scotland, still think of the Scots as in the main a nation of hardy rustics, no population in the world is now so predominantly urban, and, as sanitary reformers know, none so ill-housed at that’.32 By 1911 almost 50 per cent of Scots lived in towns of more than 20,000 inhabitants: Scotland was one of the most urbanised societies in Europe.33 There were seventy-five burghs with populations greater than 5,000 in 1901 and a number of other smaller urban areas whose regional importance in otherwise rural areas outweighed their small populations.34 Scotland 30 31 32 33 34

Erickson, ‘Who were the English and Scots emigrants?’, 105–11. Lee, ‘Scotland 1860–1939’, 434–5. Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 39. Weber, Growth of Cities, 58–64, 144–5, 450. Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 73–83.

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 19 had a tradition of urban government which promoted a sense of local independence augmented by the parish structure of the established Church, an important agency in social welfare before 1845.35 The legal regime helped to shape the built environment of Scottish towns and cities and produce a townscape of tenements.36 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 search of profit maximised the number of households in each building.37 However, the character of Scottish towns and cities cannot be explained deterministically by the legal framework; demography played a part and the ‘impersonal forces of markets in land and capital’ predominated.38 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 they left behind housing which could readily be ‘made down’.39 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 pressures on working-class budgets.40 The Scottish economy was characterised by low wages and there was a cyclical element in the urban economy (not least the building trade itself) and heavy use of casual labour who could not afford better housing. The relatively high price of provisions created further pressure. Most leases were entered into for a year, and a commitment 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 often fluctuated over a 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.41 The vast majority Best, ‘Scottish Victorian city’, 329–58; Best, ‘Another part of the island’, 389–411. Daunton, ‘Urban Britain’, 58–60; Gordon, ‘Status areas’, 172; Rodger, Transformation of Victorian Edinburgh, 305. 37 Rodger, ‘Speculative builders’, 226–46. 38 Daunton, ‘Public place and private space’, 214; see also Rodger, ‘The invisible hand’, 190–211. 39 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. 40 Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 84. 41 Rodger, ‘Crisis and confrontation’, 31–5. 35 36

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20 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e of working-class townspeople rented their houses from private owners. The landlord and his factors were objects of fear and dread for urban tenants as much as for their rural counterparts. Overcrowding was an enduring problem in Scotland. The statistics are horrific: 26.2 per cent of all Scottish dwellings in 1861 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 90 per cent of those living in one room in Edinburgh and Glasgow had to share water closets. 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. Pessimism seems inescapable in this aspect of Scottish history.42 One element of social engineering, and also a response to mounting squalor, was slum clearance. Beginning in the late 1860s in Edinburgh and Glasgow, town councils used their powers and the resources of ratepayers to demolish the worst urban ‘slums’, and replace them with new streets and better houses. The overly simplistic ambition was to excise slums, like ‘plague spots’, from the urban landscape.43 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. In Edinburgh’s first major slum clearance scheme – which ran from the mid-1860s to the late 1880s – around 2,700 houses were demolished and 340 new ones were built, with the most enduring symbol of the scheme the construction of Chambers Street, an eighty-foot-wide thoroughfare replete 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 and protection against ‘disease and vice’.44 Rodger, ‘Victorian building industry’, 152–3, 165–9. Daunton, ‘Urban Britain’, 54. 44 Smith, ‘Planning as environmental improvement’, 123; see also Smith, ‘Rehousing/ relocation’, 109; Begg, Happy Homes, 19–22. 42 43

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 21

Figure 1.2 Modern working-class housing in the early twentieth century. © Edinburgh College of Art. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

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 1,200 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 if those cleared from the inner city found accommodation in these new houses.45 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 of Glasgow in 1866 and recurred in 1902 when the victim was Provost Samuel Chisholm. He had been elected with the support of the Fraser and Maver, ‘Tackling the problems’, 421; Allan, ‘Genesis of British urban redevelopment’, 598–613.

45

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22 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e ‘Stalwart’ group of Labour councillors, but the Glasgow Herald identified excessive municipal expenditure as the reason for his defeat.46 Slum clearance 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 with the following reflection: 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, 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.47 Even for someone aware of the realities of urban Scotland the slumdweller 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.48 Under the inspiration of the leading Free Kirk minister, Rev. James Begg, the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company aimed 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 ‘colonies’ flats, 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 2,000 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 46 47 48

Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 51–3, 66; Maver, Glasgow, 159–61, 172–4. Russell, Life in One Room, 29. Butt, ‘Working-class housing’, 79.

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 23 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 were beyond the pockets of most working men and the mortgage system, with its long-term commitment, was not attractive to those in irregular employment. For these reasons this remarkable experiment was not widely emulated and no great dent was put in the hold of the private landlord over the Scottish working class.49

r e s po ns e s 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.50 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. Others argued that these problems arose from immutable, pathological characteristics and were evidence of racial distinctions. Certain ‘races’ – the Irish, for example – were perceived as inferior, although this was often overlaid with political and religious prejudice. The Scots, or at least lowlanders, saw themselves as part of the AngloSaxon group alongside the English.51 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 Begg, Happy Homes, 7–64; Rodger, Transformation of Victorian Edinburgh, 353–414. Searle, Eugenics and Politics, 26–7. 51 Kidd, ‘Race, empire and the limits of nineteenth-century Scottish nationhood’, 873–92. 49 50

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24 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e An urban visionary? Although Patrick Geddes had a deep concern with the deleterious effects of urban congestion he was not interested in tearing down the historic fabric of the Scottish town, but in making improvements which were rooted in its history. 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, repopulated and restored to its position as a centre for intellectual endeavour. The significance of Geddes’s ideas lies not in their immediate impact on the Scottish urban landscape. He 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. He received only one town planning commission in Scotland and that, from the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, was not acted upon. It did, however, bequeath a classic exposition of his 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. 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. Further, his thinking was influential for the planners engaged with reconstruction during and after the Second World War.52 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 52

Meller, Patrick Geddes, 6, 68–84, 102–13, 161–9, 201–84; Geddes, ‘Edinburgh and its region’, 302–12; MacDonald, ‘The patron, the professor and the painter’, 135–50; Geddes, City Development, esp. 215–16; Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 38–41, 104–5, 132–41, 151, 158, 203, 206–7, 212–13, 225–6.

52

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 25 or the condition of the crofters, 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.53 In the generation following the Disruption there was a period of introspection in Scottish Presbyterianism, but also shifting emphases in the vigour of the denominations. In particular, the initial energy of the Free Church was not sustained.54 There was also a more general problem within Scottish Presbyterianism which restrained innovative thinking on social questions: tremendous energy had been dissipated on theological liberalisation, sectarian competition and discussion of disestablishment. With the conclusion of these 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. The demise of the Liberal government in 1886 pushed disestablishment 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.55 Churches spent much less time disciplining their members for moral transgressions. After procedural changes in 1902 the emphasis was on ‘counselling’ rather than punishment.56 This indicated the loss of status of the Church of Scotland; it could no longer influence those who did not volunteer to participate in its activities. Further, it was 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 suggested 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. Leading figures in the Kirk Brown, ‘Reform, reconstruction, reaction’, 489–517 and Cheyne, Transforming of the Kirk, 18–28, 110–53 review the shifts in emphasis. 54 Cheyne, Transforming of the Kirk, 138–40. 55 Withrington, ‘The churches in Scotland’, 162; Brown, ‘Reform, reconstruction, reaction’, 500. 56 Brown, ‘No more “standing the session” ’, 447–60. 53

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26 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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.57 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.58 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 without success to borrow from the new religion of mass leisure. The biggest irony, however, was that the Churches were not as weak in urban areas, nor among the working classes, as they thought. The skilled working class 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.59 Why did the perception of a crisis arise? 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.60 Similar challenges faced Scotland’s 340,000 Catholics and their 350 priests. There was a sizable infrastructure of churches, schools and missions. The hierarchy of the Church had been restored in Scotland in 1878 with comparatively little fuss, in contrast to the English restoration in 1851. The anti-Catholicism which had characterised elements of Presbyterianism, led by such as James Begg, was on the wane by the Lang, The Church and its Social Mission, 162; Cheyne, Transforming of the Kirk, 142– 3; Withrington, ‘Non-church going’, 200; Withrington, ‘From Godly commonwealth to Christian state’, 103–24. 58 Brown, Religion and Society, 124–32; Edinburgh Courant, 24 May 1882. 59 Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 92; Brown, ‘Did urbanization secularize Britain?’, 1–14. 60 Gray, ‘Religion, culture and social class’, 134–58; Brown, ‘Religion, class and church growth’, 326–9. 57

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 27 1870s. Debates over disestablishment, reunion and 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’.61 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) on the anniversary of Columba’s death, events which firmly included him in a Catholic tradition.62 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 with socialism for the attention of the mass of the population. 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.63 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 to the way in which the movement was developing in Scotland at the time.64 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 1908. These 61 62 63 64

McCaffrey, ‘The Roman Catholic Church in the 1890s’, 430. McCaffrey, ‘The Roman Catholic Church in the 1890s’, 435–6. Lang, The Church and its Social Mission, 268, 275. Flint, Socialism, 425–98; Smith, Passive Obedience and Prophetic Protest, 290–313.

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28 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 attempted to put their stamp on debates about unemployment, child welfare and old age pensions.65

education Growing awareness that the ‘parochial’ system, whereby single institutions attempted to provide all levels of education, was under strain 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 as a rational system of education. Different forms of idealisation 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 necessary for university entrance, was central to the 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.66 It is not difficult to contrast ‘myth’ with ‘reality’, by pointing out its patriarchal nature or its uneven geographical coverage for example,67 but a more interesting question is to ponder why such a belief was prevalent. Stewart, ‘ “Christ’s kingdom in Scotland” ’, 1–22. W. J. Gibson, Education in Scotland: a Sketch of the Past and the Present (London, 1912), quoted in Anderson, ‘In search of the “lad of parts” ’, 82. 67 Corr, ‘Where is the lass o’ pairts?’, 220; Gordon, ‘Women’s spheres’, 213. 65 66

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 29 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’.68 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, and its results, especially in popular literacy and university entrance, were pointed to as impressive. The implicit comparison 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 of the parochial system harked back to pre-industrial Scotland. The rapidity and intensity of these experiences led to a 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 the way in which the parochial schools were a small minority of the total provision.69 Urban industrial Scotland seemed to be less inclusive than English cities like Liverpool or Newcastle. 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. The new Act introduced compulsory attendance at school for children between the ages of five and thirteen. It 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.70 Thus by a combination of social change and legislation the defining principles of the traditional system had been eroded. This 68 Report of the Committee of Council on Education in Scotland, 1902–3, quoted in Anderson, Education and Opportunity, 229. 69 Cruickshank, ‘The Argyll Commission report, 1865–8’, 133–47. 70 Withrington, ‘Towards a national system’, 107–24; Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 50–72, 165–75.

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30 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 reforms of 1872, the new system retained important elements of the traditional ethos of Scottish education. Local control and Church influence, through the election of clergy to the School Boards, were the most obvious continuities. Church influence also continued through the expansion of the role of the Presbyterian Churches in teacher-training. Their role also 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, 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.71 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 1890.72 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. Academically inclined pupils attended ‘Higher Class’ schools, mostly urban institutions of long standing. ‘Higher Grade’ schools offered a more modern and commercial curriculum but one which also offered a route to the universities. The least academic path through the system was provided by the basic forms of secondary education grafted onto the parochial schools.73 Problems of funding and access overlaid this structure and stifled the ambition to 71 72 73

Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 181–2, 188–91. Simon, ‘Joseph Chamberlain and free education’, 56–78. Anderson, Education and Opportunity, 226–8.

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 31 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 forgoing 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.74 Prior to the Great War secondary education was dominated by middle-class intellectual concerns and social aspirations. 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 university75 – 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.76 Fee-paying schools, especially in Edinburgh with Heriot’s 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.77 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 74 75 76 77

Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 263. Anon., Union of 1707 Viewed Financially, 18. Anderson, ‘Secondary schools’, 192. Anderson, Education and Opportunity, 172–201.

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32 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e of Edinburgh. His experience of German universities were there was a 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.78 The new structure also facilitated developments in history (and Scottish history), modern languages, economics, and commercial and scientific subjects. 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 was provided in the same decade by the much delayed entrance of women to the Scottish universities, mostly in the arts faculties. Women were allowed to matriculate and graduate but 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 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.79 Although some articulations of the myth of Scottish education extended to female pupils, the reality was rather different. Exclusion from universities until the 1890s meant that their school curriculum was quite different from that of their male counterparts. This was controversial, Wallace, John Stuart Blackie, 223; Anderson, ‘Scottish university professors’, 32, 38. Krass, Carnegie, 423–6; Anderson et al., University of Edinburgh, 142, 173; Moss et al., University, City and State, 76–8, 86–7.

78 79

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p r o g r e s s a n d p o v e r t y 33 however, with much opposition from parents who regarded such activities as sewing and domestic economy as a waste of time. Counterintuitively some feminist activists, such as Flora Stevenson who was a member of the Edinburgh School Board, were in favour of it, provided that it was taught by properly trained teachers.80 Nevertheless, only a tiny proportion of girls had access to Latin, less than 1 per cent in the middle of the century compared to around 6 per cent of boys.81 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 70 per cent of the Scottish teaching profession by 1911 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.82 These unequal power relations within the Scottish school further contributed to a need for a mythic history of education to emphasise a progressive and inclusive ethos. Late-nineteenth-century Scotland was 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 homogeneous conditions away from the central areas of the city with their mix of social classes.83 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 Moore, ‘Educating for the “women’s sphere” ’, 10–41; Corr, ‘ “Home-rule” in Scotland’, 38–53. 81 Corr, ‘Exploration into Scottish education’, 304. 82 Corr, ‘Sexual division of labour’, 137–50; Corr, ‘Politics of the sexes’, 186–205. 83 Hutchison, ‘Elite society’, 380–2. 80

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34 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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.84 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: ‘a sense of fragile identity, of insecurity, of much gained, but much more to lose’.85 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 and helped to create pressure for educational reform which created enclaves of middle-class pupils in suburban institutions.86 The dynamism, the 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. One major vehicle for this was the Liberal party, dominant in Scottish politics since the Whig reforms of 1832. A wider section of the middle class had been brought into electoral politics with the reform of 1868 which expanded the urban electorate. Nevertheless, as the 1880s approached the party was out of power, directionless and suffering a vacuum of leadership. This was not to continue.

Nenadic, ‘Victorian middle classes’, 283–7; for clutter see the illustration in Fraser and Morris, People and Society, 225. 85 Nenadic, ‘Victorian middle classes’, 295. 86 Withrington, ‘Aberdeen’, 10. 84

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ch apter 2

Enterprise and Initiative: The Scottish Economy, 1880 to 1939

O

n 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 had taken the business community of the west of Scotland by surprise and put the Scottish economy in grave jeopardy. In the event the crisis was contained, but the collapse had important consequences.1 A number of the bank’s directors were convicted of fraud, striking a blow at the reputation of the Free Church: 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 crisis almost ensnared Sir William Mackinnon of the British India Steam Navigation Company, another zealous Free Kirker. Mackinnon had connections with two prominent debtors, but he regarded the attempts by the liquidators to hold him responsible for some of the debts as malicious and it required lengthy litigation to disentangle himself from the affairs of the bank.3 The bank balances of these men were diminished by the failure. The unlimited liability upon which the bank was based extended the responsibility for its massive debts to its shareholders, many of them small investors, who now faced considerable financial demands, amounting to nearly £3,000 for every £100 invested. As a result hundreds of investors and small businesses (twothirds of Glasgow builders, for example) were bankrupted and business confidence was damaged.4 Collins, ‘Banking crisis’, 504–27. Michael Connal quoted in Munro, Maritime Enterprise and Empire, 255. 3 Munro, Maritime enterprise and empire, 263–77. 4 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. 1 2

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36 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e The failure of the bank arose from injudicious lending rather than a shortage of deposits or lack of confidence and, although the expansion of the Scottish banking sector had been reined in since the mid-1840s, it remained an important source of capital for industrial enterprise. Indeed, despite earlier crises a dichotomy had emerged in the Scottish banking sector. The long-established Edinburgh banks adopted a much more cautious approach than their more aggressive western counterparts. The City of Glasgow Bank was among the most aggressive of these. 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’.5 The imperial and American investments of the bank and its general willingness to speculate in a way which the more cautious and stable Edinburgh banks did not have to, were part of the wider process of tying the Scottish economy into international financial activity. This has to be set against the loss of confidence resulting from the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank. This affected other banks as well as private investors and may have been a limiting feature of Scottish economic development. The crisis also indicates the limited economic role of the state 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 limited liability, the commitment to have accounts independently audited and an agreement to desist from trading in their own shares.6 The collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank was a highly significant event in Victorian Scotland, but it has the potential to be misleading, but no more so than a celebration of Victorian industrial success. At the end of the period covered by this book, although Scottish banks had lost their independence, the financial sector remained an important part of the economy. The same cannot be said for heavy industry, which expanded in such a spectacular manner in this period.

i nd u st r i a l e x p a n s i o n The most obvious new economic developments in Scotland in the final quarter of the nineteenth century lay in the connected enterprises of 5 6

Checkland, Scottish Banking, 476. Checkland, Scottish Banking, 477–81.

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 37 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 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.7 Although this picture may have changed in the late Victorian period with the decline of the textile sector, which contained many large enterprises in 1851, the Scottish economy remained diverse. The small family firm was an important element of the Scottish economy, especially in the east of Scotland where they dominated industries such as publishing and associated trades. They were also an important arena for female business activity, not only as underpaid, or unpaid, workers, but also as owners of such firms, especially in the garment trade. Neither was it uncommon for widows to continue trading in the family business after the death of their husbands.8 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 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 around 30 per cent of women were ‘economically active’ according to the imperfect evidence of the census, which tended to under-record female employment. The principal ‘industries’ which employed women included domestic service, textiles, agriculture and clothing. The place of women in the workforce underwent important changes in this period. There was a significant expansion of female clerical work, for example, with nearly 30,000 women in such jobs in 1911 compared to fewer than 200 only a generation earlier. Although this provided income and independence it did not offer a career ladder. Office work, especially after the advent of the typewriter, became a female enclave separate from the male-dominated areas 7 8

Rodger, ‘Concentration and fragmentation’, 190. Nenadic, ‘The small family firm’, 86–114.

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38 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e of the business where the decisions were taken.9 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 workplace, worked for lower pay and tended to retire on marriage.10 Female agricultural work underwent a contraction over the same period, with 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 one in which the census under-recorded female work.11 The large army of female workers who worked at home, taking in washing, or sewing, and those 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 were perceived as best fitted for a domestic environment and the ‘traditional’ roles of child rearing, housekeeping and providing a stable environment for the male breadwinner. This began as a middle-class ideal, but it permeated the male skilled working class; a non-working wife was central to the respectability to which they aspired. The presence of women in the workplace was deprecated, 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 breeding immorality among female workers. 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 extreme, a link was posited between maternal employment and neglect of family responsibility. This also had political implications. 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 supplementary wage. To argue for higher wages for women would compromise the demand for a ‘living wage’ for men.12 These attitudes meant that women were concentrated in the lowest-skilled and lowest-paid sectors of the economy, those jobs which were subject to the Guerriero Wilson, Disillusionment or New Opportunities?, 37, 67, 238–45; Simonton, ‘Work, trade and commerce’, 218–21. 10 Reynolds, Britannica’s Typesetters, 50–66. 11 Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement, 25. 12 Quoted in Lee, British Regional Employment Statistics, 9; see also Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement, 79–101; Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 156–62. 9

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 39 greatest levels of instability, something which was especially evident in the deep depressions of the Edwardian period.13 Women were defined by their gender in the workplace; they were not labelled in the apparently gender neutral, but really masculine, language as ‘workers’. They were certainly not ‘skilled workers’ because apprenticeships were not open to them. Even women, such as compositors, who went through a ‘training’ were not regarded as ‘time-served’ and accepted a subordinate position and lower pay.14 Even when they did break into professions such as teaching or nursing, women remained in relatively poorly paid positions which were extensions of their maternal and domestic roles.15 Nostalgia for the Victorian economy, in contrast to the inter-war depression, should be resisted.16 The positive elements of the period – the rise of the steel industry, the increasingly sophisticated Clyde-built ships – are 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 entrepreneurs like William Mackinnon and Charles Tennant, titanic figures with massive authority in their firms. Tennant’s massive wealth, over £3 million at his death in 1906, was used to improve his country seat, ‘The Glen’ in Peeblesshire, in extensive purchases of pictures and in Liberal politics. The Victorian economy, however, was not successful in creating civilised living conditions for the workforce. 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), a 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.17 Neither was the economy capable of producing high levels of continuous employment; heavy industries ‘created widespread unemployment . . . through their normal functioning’.18 Indeed, far from being seen as a success to be contrasted with the gloom of the 1920s and 1930s many late Victorian developments contributed to later problems. Treble, ‘Unemployment in Glasgow’, 16, 20. Reynolds, Britannica’s Typesetters, esp. 136–8. 15 Simonton, ‘Work, trade and commerce’, 217–18. 16 Devine, ‘Industrialisation’, 64; Devine, Scottish Nation, 249–72 and Lee, ‘Scotland 1860–1939’ resist nostalgia. 17 For Tennant see ODNB and DSBB, i, 285–9; Overtoun, DSBB, i, 293–5. 18 Southall, ‘Origins of the depressed areas’, 257. 13 14

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40 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e

Figure 2.1 Workers from A & J Stewarts Clydesdale Steel works at Mossend. Soon after this picture was taken the firm relocated much of their production to Corby in Northamptonshire. © North Lanarkshire Council. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

How can the individual successes be squared with wider failures? First, the wages of Scottish industrial workers were often quite low, especially in the textile sector with its army of female workers.19 Differentials varied between sectors and over time, and a degree of convergence between Scottish and UK wages had taken place by the interwar period. The earnings of Scottish agricultural workers, especially in the south, 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. This picture does not account for irregular or casual employment which reduced earning capacity. Periods of depression with higher rates of ‘unemployment’, a concept of which contemporaries were becoming increasingly aware, were especially noticeable in the mid-1880s, 1904–5, 1907–8, 1920–2 and from 1929 until the mid-1930s.20 The attitudes of government and society towards the unemployed altered over this 19 20

Lee, ‘Economic progress’, 142; Devine, ‘Industrialisation’, 66. Treble, ‘Unemployment and unemployment policies’, 147–72.

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 41 period. Whatever the inadequacy of policy in the 1930s it represented a change from the Victorian and Edwardian assumption that the unemployed were a distressed group to be relieved and improved by charity, sometimes to be dispatched to labour colonies to break stones or reclaim peat bogs.21 The problem was compounded by the fact that the cost of living, especially rent and food, was 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.22 There were also 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. Second, the bulk of Scottish heavy industrial output was basic and destined for export. Although there were sophisticated export products, such as locomotives and ships, the products of the iron and jute industries were classic examples of this trend. 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 protection was of little help as imperial preference allowed Indian producers to access the ‘home’ market. This export orientation, however, was evident in the UK as a whole and the Scottish economy merely demonstrated a more extreme version of a wider British problem, rather than a truly distinctive profile.23 The Scottish population was not growing particularly quickly in the later nineteenth century and its relative poverty meant that there was little incentive for the production of higher-value consumer goods. Finally, the limitation of the service and professional sector in the Scottish economy restrained the spread of prosperity. This was particularly noticeable in areas of heavy industrialisation like Fife and west central Scotland. Edinburgh and the Lothians, on the other hand, had more in common with the south-east of England in the strength of 21

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. 22 Campbell, Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry, 76–99; Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, 47–57; Anthony, ‘Scottish agricultural labour market’, 558–74. 23 Flinn, ‘Exports and the Scottish economy’, 279–93; Campbell, ‘North British Locomotive Company’, 201–34.

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42 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e employment in the professional and service sectors. Although not all jobs in the service sector were well paid, domestic service being an obvious example, the significant shortfall in these forms of employment in the most populous areas of Scotland diminished demand and suppressed consumer-orientated 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 £1.4 million 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 supports the conclusion that ‘for long-run prosperity . . . the service/ consumer economy must be judged clearly superior to the industrial export-orientated economy’.24

a s c o t t i sh e c o n o m y? To what extent did a ‘Scottish’ economy exist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Such an entity is difficult to discern because of the absence of separate statistics. Some evidence relating to the structure of the economy can be gleaned from the 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 amongst regional diversity? If we examine the structure of employment in Scotland in 1881 and 1921 (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2), the pattern does not diverge from the British pattern to a significant degree. There were, however, four important variations which can be seen from Table 2.1.25 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. Although this sector of the economy lost over 80,000 workers in the period to 1921, by the latter date its size was closer to the national average. Another tale of woe can be found in the textile Lee, ‘Regional growth’, 452; Lee, ‘Modern economic growth’, 5–35. The following points are based on the statistics in Lee, Regional Economic Growth, Appendix C, 220–47.

24 25

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 43 Table 2.1 Distribution of employment in Scotland by industrial order compared to UK, 1881 and 1921 (per cent)

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

1881

1921

+4.5 +0.5 -0.1 = +0.6 +0.4 +0.5 -0.3

+2.3 +1.7 +0.6 -0.3 +2.6 +0.8 +3.6 -1.1

IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI

1881

1921

-0.7 +2.5 -0.1 -1.8 -0.4 +0.1 +0.4 -0.1

-1.2 -0.1 -0.1 -1.3 -0.5 +0.4 +0.1 -0.1

XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV

1881

1921

+0.3 = -0.2 +0.4 = -0.6 -5.1 -0.5

-0.2 -0.1 +1.2 +1.0 -0.3 +0.3 -1.3 +0.3

Table 2.2 Changes in employment in Scotland by industrial order, 1881–1921 (thousands)

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII

1881

1921

Change

291.9 76.9 15.3 6.1 68.9 36.1 18.5 3.6 5.6 189.9 6.0 110.6

208.1 177.7 81.8 18.5 95.0 113.3 123.7 18.2 12.7 151.2 6.0 66.9

-83.8 +100.8 +66.5 +12.4 +26.1 +77.2 +105.2 +14.6 +7.2 -38.7 – -43.7

XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV I–XXIV

1881

1921

Change

10.8 24.2 26.0 5.7 111.8 2.7 86.3 113.8 9.9 46.7 194.7 20.2 1,612.7

15.3 42.1 44.2 17.1 74.4 16.5 155.6 260.8 28.6 65.8 212.1 143.2 2,191.2

+4.5 +17.9 +18.2 +11.4 -37.4 +13.8 +69.3 +147.0 +18.7 +19.1 +17.4 +121.0 +578.5

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 was ‘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

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44 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 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 between urban and rural Scotland. If one considers the four main cities of Scotland considerable diversity was evident. Prior to the Great War there was a clear contrast between Glasgow and Dundee, where around 70–75 per cent of the total labour force were employed in industrial occupations; and Aberdeen and Edinburgh where the figure was about 10 per cent less. These contrasts have important consequences for the social and economic development of the four cities. Edinburgh’s occupational structure shows a high level of professional employment, among both men and women – 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 strongly represented; these were high-prestige and well-remunerated occupations and gave Edinburgh a much more stable economic structure than the other Scottish cities. 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 Richard Rodger has remarked, ‘Greater stability of demand . . . meant improved opportunities for regular manual work in the lee of Edinburgh’s professional middle-class expenditure patterns.’26 The industrial sector of Scotland’s capital should not be forgotten, however. Edinburgh had carefully built its image as a nonindustrial 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 26

Figures from Rodger, ‘Employment, wages and poverty’, 25–63; quote from 39.

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 45 dominated by large-scale works such as breweries, distilleries and rubber factories.27 The most marked contrast to Edinburgh came from Dundee. 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 official statistics underplayed 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 housing conditions which afflicted the city.28 Although it is a truism to say that there was more to regional diversity in Scotland than the contrasts on either side of the highland line, it is important not to neglect this aspect of Scottish rural history. The Scottish agrarian economy was dominated by livestock with a very small arable sector. What arable farming there was – in East Lothian, Fife and parts of Tayside – was distinctive in that the principal cereal was barley rather than wheat. The north-east of Scotland 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. The crops which were grown here – swedes and turnips – were destined for stockfeeding rather than human 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. Exceptionally good grazing conditions were found in Caithness and Orkney. The latter should not be thought of as part of a uniform area called ‘the northern isles’ as its Gray, Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh, 21, 24–30; Rodger, ‘Landscapes of capital’, 86–100. 28 Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement, 20, 141–6. 27

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46 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e landscape and agriculture were entirely different from the crofting and fishing economy of Shetland. 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 extensive sheep-farming more in common with the central highlands. Highland distinctiveness was unambiguous in the matter of land tenure, although the economic impact of this was debatable. The passage of the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886 provided for security of tenure for small tenants, or crofters, in the seven most northerly counties and gave them the right to appeal to a Crofters Commission to regulate their rent and other aspects of their relations with their landlords. 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. Even the extensive land settlement of the 1920s, because it created a large number of very small holdings, did little to change the economic structure of the crofting economy.29 Throughout the twentieth century there has been a paradox at the heart of the agrarian history of the highlands. Agriculture remained important in the crofting areas, but their contribution to the output of Scottish agriculture was minimal: the arable acreage was tiny, sheep-farming unprofitable and large areas of land were devoted to sport.30 At the end of the Great War the complex structures which had controlled the price of food during that conflict were withdrawn. A commitment to guarantee the price of corn was retained for a short period before government realised the political and financial costs in a period of falling prices when other industries were being exposed to market conditions. Scottish farmers seemed not to be too concerned about this change of policy, finding government subsidy to be ‘inimical to enterprise and initiative’.31 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 the altar of cheap food. 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. 29 30 31

Cameron, Land for the People? Campbell, ‘Too much on the highlands’, 58–75. Douglas, ‘Policy of the Agriculture Act’, 1–20; Anthony, Herds and Hinds, 40.

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 47 Chasing the deer The grazing economy which had been created by the first phase of the highland clearances in the early nineteenth century collapsed in the aftermath of the mid-century famine. Huge tracts of land were taken out of sheep-farming and given over to the manufactured solitude desired by sportsmen. The crofters’ movement of the 1880s argued that these sporting estates were the principal cause of depopulation and squalid congestion. 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.32 These economic benefits were limited, however. Deer forests were hardly labour intensive and the wealthy sportsmen contributed little to the highland economy, bringing most of their provisions with them from Edinburgh or London.33 This development 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 – was excluded. Anything which predated on game birds – birds of prey, polecats, pine martens or wild cats – 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 200 were killed on one west highland estate in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.34 Whatever else can be said about the results of the highland clearances it is a supreme irony that sheep-farming, held to be so superior to what had preceded it, collapsed so quickly and was replaced by commercialised sport. The introduction of protection was one part of the general turn away from free trade in the early 1930s, and was augmented by support for agricultural commodities. Scottish farmers were not particularly well served by this new regime. They grew little wheat, the main crop to be subsidised, and support for Scottish oats, barley and sheep was modest and belated.35 This policy did not appease Scottish farmers; in 1939 323334

32 33 34 35

PP 1895 XXXVII–XXXIX, Royal Commission (Highlands and Islands, 1892). Orr, Deer Forests; Hume and Moss, Beardmore, 53, 243. Smout, Nature Contested, 131–8. Anthony, Herds and Hinds, 42–53; Cameron, ‘Modernisation’, 195–6.

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48 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e one referred to the wheat subsidy as ‘giving money for growing hen’s food’.36 Another way of identifying a Scottish economy is by its deficiencies. If the figures for income are examined Scotland seemed to be lagging behind the rest of Great Britain. Studies of the period from the mid1920s to the late 1940s indicate that income per head in Scotland was consistently lower (by between 4 and 13 per cent) than the UK average and during the worst years of the depression, 1929 to 1933, it fell much faster than that of the UK. Scotland had a lower proportion of its workforce in salaried employment, more stable in the long term if not necessarily more remunerative in the short term. This was 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, but when placed alongside Scottish high unemployment, especially during the depression, it points to a structural weakness.37 This was characterised by concentration of economic activity in a narrow range of declining heavy industries and a failure to develop the newer highvalue 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 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 Great Britain, augment the evidence of the bald national income evidence. Scotland’s industrial structure was heavily skewed towards ‘traditional’ industries such as coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, engineering and textiles, 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 – vehicles, electrical engineering, non-ferrous metals, synthetic textile production – in Scotland grew from 6 to 10 per cent over the inter-war period.38 A number of reasons can be identified for the emergence and consolidation of this economic structure. First, given the apparent modernity and cutting-edge technology of the steel, shipbuilding and engineering 36 37 38

NAS, AF43/124/70a. Campbell, ‘Changes in Scottish income’, 225–40; Campbell, ‘Income’, 46–64. Buxton, ‘Economic growth in Scotland’, 541–50.

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 49 industries in the late Victorian period it was 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. The Scottish economy, and the heavy industrial region of the west of Scotland in particular, responded energetically to the opportunities presented by wartime demand. This consolidated the Victorian pattern and was deepened by the demand for replacement products in the immediate aftermath of the war, a trend which was particularly evident in shipbuilding and steel. 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 exportorientated 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 were aware of the extent of the problems and there was vigorous debate as to possible means of mitigating the consequences, although the suggestions for providing long-term solutions were inadequate. Government intervention was contemplated more readily in the 1930s. 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 was not 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 towards these initiatives and, although Scottish Unionist enthusiasm was greater, they made only a marginal difference to unemployment.39 The most tangible result was the Hillington industrial estate in Renfrewshire, by 1938 the site of nearly 80 factories with 1,500 employees.40 Running against this attempt to recognise regional economic diversity was the fact that national economic policy 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 Garside, British Unemployment, 240–77. Campbell, ‘Scottish Office and the Special Areas’, 167–83; Saville, ‘Industrial background’, 1–18. 39 40

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50 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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. Further, 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.41 These problems seemed increasingly clear to contemporaries, across the political spectrum, in the 1930s. The Scottish Economic Committee, an offshoot of the Scottish National Development Council and composed of businessmen, trades unionists and academics, published a number of analyses in this decade. They identified structural problems and argued for diversification and stimulation of the home market for consumer goods through government planning.42 The starting point for the SEC 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 at stake’.43 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 were part of this more general crisis, but these features had been part of Scottish economic history prior to the interwar period. As we have seen, the depressions of the mid-1880s and the Edwardian period had been especially severe. What was it that produced such pessimism in the 1930s? The 1920s were the decade of emigration; for the first time in an intercensal period the years between 1921 and 1931 saw emigration exceed the natural increase of the population. Although it might be argued that unemployment may have been higher but for the outflow of people, this was not obvious at the time; neither was it clear that those who emigrated were those most at risk of unemployment. The dominions, emigration to which was encouraged, were less than enthusiastic about accepting large numbers of unemployed emigrants. As had been the pattern in the nineteenth century, those most inclined to emigrate were skilled tradesmen who could transfer to another industrial economy. Further, some of this emigration was encouraged and assisted by the government, 41 42 43

Jones, ‘Regional impact of an overvalued pound’, 393–401. SEC, Scotland’s Industrial Future; SEC, Light Industries in Scotland. SEC, Scotland’s Industrial Future, 19.

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 51 through the Empire Settlement Act of 1922 which was aimed at people with capital. Although the scale of emigration in the 1920s was novel it was deeply engrained in Scottish history and its economic effects were a worry before the Great War. The virtual cessation of emigration in the 1930s did not indicate economic health. Many disappointed emigrants from the 1920s fled from economic environments, such as the industrial regions of the north-east of the United States, which were themselves in depression. 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.44 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. 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 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 steel industry 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. This became problematic when the edifice of Kylsant’s empire began to crumble in the late 1920s.45 The pace of change accelerated and these takeovers seemed to emasculate some of the leading symbols of the Scottish economy, but 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 1899.46 The most corrosive problem, however, was unemployment. Not only did employers lose productive capacity and profit but those in local and national authority worried about the social consequences and even the potential threat to order. Female unemployment was chronically underestimated since many women worked in casual jobs, were outside the Garside, British Unemployment, 179–200, Harper and Evans, ‘Socio-economic dislocation’, 529–52. 45 Scott and Hughes, Anatomy of Scottish Capital, 54–88; Payne, Colvilles, 184–7; Davies and Bourn, ‘Lord Kylsant’, 103–23. 46 Peebles, ‘A study in failure’, 22. 44

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52 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e National Insurance schemes and were not registered for unemployment benefit. Economic historians are divided on most matters relating to the definition, extent and causation of unemployment, but a number of points can be made with certainty.47 The problem varied over time, with the depressions of 1920–1 and 1929–33 seeing the worst conditions; at other times unemployment may not have been much higher than in the pre-1914 period, although our data for that period is sketchy. The raw figures do not 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: coal-mining had 34 per cent unemployment in 1932, pig-iron 44 per cent, iron and steel 48 per cent and shipbuilding an astonishing 62 per cent.48 New industries, such as chemicals, car and aircraft production and electrical engineering, under-represented in Scotland, had much lower unemployment, 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 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 forty-seven weeks; both indicators were the highest in the UK.49 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. 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 shocking housing conditions. There was extensive concern over the eclipse of Scottish national identity and social unrest. 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 saved the Scottish economy from continued depression. The estimated annual expenditure on rearmament increased from £103 million O’Brien, ‘Britain’s economy between the wars’, 109–10. Figures quoted in Booth and Glynn, ‘Unemployment in the interwar period’, 619, 632 and by Dewey, War and Progress, 261. 49 Garside, British Unemployment, 13, 17. 47 48

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e nte r p r i s e a n d i n i t i a t i v e 53 to £400 million from 1933 to 1939, although the real acceleration came after 1935. Expenditure on the navy, which might be deemed to have had the greatest effect on Scottish industry, increased at a much faster rate, from £12.1 million to £81.6 million, over the same period. That the overall increase in defence expenditure had a positive effect on employment in the industrial areas of Scotland is suggested by the fact that 8.3 per cent of the rearmament-induced employment in 1935–8 was located in that area, compared to only 7.1 per cent of the working population.50 The outbreak of an international conflict can scarcely be the cause of celebration, but its immediate contribution to the Scottish economy was positive. The benefits, however, were fairly short lived since they merely enhanced the relevance of the prevailing, and problematic, industrial structure.51 Problems were stored up which would return to haunt workers and policy makers in the post-war period.

50 51

Thomas, ‘Rearmament’, 555, 569. Lenman, Economic History, 231; Peden, ‘The managed economy’, 244.

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ch apt e r 3

‘An Exuberant Verbosity’: Scottish Politics in the 1880s

the mi d l o t h i a n c a m p a ig n

O

n 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’. W. E. 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 2,947 votes.1 During two visits Gladstone gave a series of wide-ranging speeches in the constituency and elsewhere in Scotland. Although Gladstone’s oratory was not devoid of Scottish content, with notable emphases on Church, land and temperance issues, his primary purpose was to address public opinion on wider issues.2 Nineteenthcentury Liberalism was 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 danger to India’. Taken together, Gladstone declared in a letter to a leading Liberal in Midlothian that 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’.3 Although there was much that was novel about Gladstone’s Midlothian 1 2 3

Morley, Gladstone, ii, 160–7. Shannon, Heroic Minister, 236–7. BL, Add. MS 44137, fo. 389, Gladstone to Sir John Cowan, 30 Jun. 1879.

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 55 campaigns they are as redolent of continuity as of change. Indeed, the speeches were an attack on novelty. The first continuity is represented by Gladstone, who first entered the House of Commons as a Tory in 1832. Although many Liberals reserved a unique level of adulation for him, his Conservative political opponents purchased chamber pots adorned with his image.4 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’.5 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.6 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 maintained the traditional veneration of the establishment principle, felt that Gladstone’s purpose in seeking out a prominent Scottish constituency was to provide a base to disestablish 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.7 Gladstone did not advocate strongly the idea of Scottish disestablishment, 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.8 This raises the question of 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 Matthew, Gladstone, 1875–1898, illustration 5(c). Anon., ‘Mr Gladstone’s pilgrimage’, 138; Times, 29 Nov. 1879, 9. 6 Ferguson, Scotland, 325; Matthew, Gladstone, 1875–1898, 42; Clayton Windscheffel, ‘Gladstone and Scott’, 69–95. 7 Begg, Scottish Public Affairs, 26–7. 8 Stratheden and Campbell, Mr Gladstone and Midlothian, 27. 4 5

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56 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e of the ‘Khaki election’ of 1900, would continue to do so up to 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.9 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. A second continuity was the nature of the political system within which the contest took place. At the Union of 1707 Scottish representation in the House of Commons 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 seats in 1832 and to fifty-eight in 1868, the distinction between counties and burghs remained.10 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 3,260 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 through the creation of fictitious or ‘faggot’ votes. Midlothian was perceived as having been in the pocket of the Buccleuch interest. The aristocracy was prominent in the Midlothian seat 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.11 Equally, however, the evidence for the changes represented by the Midlothian campaign can be heralded. It was the first time this style of political campaigning had been seen in the United Kingdom, although Brooks, ‘Gladstone and Midlothian’, 42–8. McLean, ‘Are Scotland and Wales over-represented in the House of Commons?’, 250–9. 11 Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 88–9; Foot, ‘Introduction’, 15–16. 9

10

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 57

Figure 3.1 Gladstone lamenting Dalkeith’s faggot voters at Midlothian in 1880; little did he know Rosebery was hard at work on his behalf. © Midlothian Council, Local Studies. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

there had been single-issue campaigns on moral issues.12 Gladstone reached an audience much wider than those who listened directly to him in Dalkeith and the other places where 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’: 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 12

Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 89; Biagini, Gladstone, 66.

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58 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e speeches.13 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.14 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.15 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 local press.16 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, provided a distinctive element of Scottish civil society as well as a buttress to Liberalism. 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 others see us’.17 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 constituency to raise 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 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, 406–9; Harvie, ‘Gladstonianism’, 160. Matthew, Gladstone, 1875–1898, 48; Kinnear, ‘Trade in great men’s speeches’, 439–44. 15 Meisel, Public Speech, 270. 16 Jones, Powers of the Press, 4; Lee, Origins of the Popular Press, 155; Donaldson, Popular Literature, 1–34. 17 Scotsman, 26 Nov. 1879, 6. 13 14

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 59 Gladstone that the ‘intensity required was only to be found in Scotland and yourself’.18 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 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.19 Midlothian seemed to demonstrate the abiding strength of Scottish Liberalism.

liberal and tory Gladstone’s speeches at Midlothian represented his attempt to emphasise a clash between Liberal and Tory; 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 1881.20 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 18 19 20

BL Add. MS 44288, Rosebery to Gladstone, 9 Apr. 1880. Scotsman, 26 Nov. 1879, 6. Hutchison, Political History, 141–9.

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60 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e parlous state, especially in urban areas. In contrast to later periods it faced severe handicaps in the nature of Scottish society, especially the absence of newspaper support and the overwhelming Liberalism of the Presbyterian Churches. Despite the presence of a number of aristocrats, 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 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.21 It would take more than organisational change to improve the prospects for the Tories in Scotland, however: the memory of the Disruption, the fault of an 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’.22 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 rabbits and birds.23 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 nationwide mass politics which came with the expansion of the electorate and the redistribution of seats in 1884.

Fraser, ‘The press’, 456; Hutchison, Political History, 113–25, 193–9; NAS, GD296/156, Innes and Mackay MSS, James Baird to Donald Cameron of Lochiel, 11 Jul. 1875. 22 Hodgson, ‘Why Conservatism fails in Scotland’, 235. 23 Hutchison, Political History, 105–6; Carter, Farm Life, 165–6. 21

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t he g o ve r n me n t o f s c o t l an d Before 1885 Scotland sent fifty-eight MPs to the Westminster Parliament, leading to claims of under-representation, especially compared to Ireland with its falling population and 100 Members. 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 satisfactory officers: the Home Secretary had other calls on his time and ‘Parliament House Rule’, as the regime of the Lord Advocate was derided, was compromised by a heavy burden of legal duties. These points were not arcane; they had a real impact on the lives of the Scottish people. The editor of the Scotsman, Charles Cooper, felt that Scotland was ‘discontented’ and ‘badly used’, and this was a widely held view.24 It was, for example, increasingly evident in the aftermath of the Disruption in 1843 that the administration of the education system by the Church of Scotland was anomalous, but it was 1872 before reform could be secured; sectarian squabbles among Presbyterians, however, contributed as much as Whitehall neglect. In the 1850s the better government of Scotland was one of the objectives of 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.25 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.26 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.27 There was probably a mixture of ambition and sincerity in Rosebery’s efforts NLS, Rosebery Papers, MS 10010, fos. 20–1, Cooper to Rosebery, 11 Mar. 1881. Hanham, ‘Mid-century Scottish nationalism’; Morton, ‘Scottish rights’. 26 Gladstone, Midlothian, 1879, 67–9, 86–90. 27 Hanham, ‘Scottish Office’, 208; BL Add. MS 44288, fos. 85–176; 44197, fos. 158– 76; 44198, fos, 53–6; 44199, fos. 46–55, 121–7. 24 25

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62 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e and it is important to appreciate the extreme regard in which he was held in Scotland.28 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.29 The creation of the post in 1885 took place 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’.30 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 which 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. The structure chimed with the prevailing ideology of the mid-nineteenth century which emphasised the demoralising effect of an interventionist 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 land ownership. The poor quality of land in most of rural Scotland meant that the tax base Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 244. Hanham, ‘Scottish Office’, 206; Akroyd, ‘Rosebery’, 257. 30 West Sussex Record Office, Goodwood MS 871, Salisbury to Gordon, 7 Aug. 1885; Gordon to Salisbury, 9 Aug. 1885. 28 29

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 63 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 advanced: 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 Scotland-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 early 1900s its most expansionist phase was past.31 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.32 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. 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’.33 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 independence. The developing administrative structures were staffed by Scots – this was true of most of the Boards and especially of the Scottish Office after 1885 – which meant that what was perceived by some as neglect could be reinterpreted as a form of administrative autonomy.34 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. Maver, ‘Glasgow’s civic government’, 441–85. 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. 33 Morton, Unionist Nationalism. 34 Levitt, Scottish sentiment’, 35. 31 32

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64 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e

pr e sb yt e r i a n i sm a n d pol it ic s 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 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.35 There were lengthy, but fruitless, 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. 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.36 The clergy of the Church of Scotland had no special status and there were no inherent disabilities involved in adhering to another Presbyterian 35 36

Fry, Patronage and Principle, 94. Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and reunion’, 221–2.

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 65 Church. It was a decentralised Church with most of its power and authority being exercised at a local level and its national institutions relatively weak.37 This argument peaked at the general election of 1885.38 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.39 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’.40 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 divided: 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 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 – were Liberals.41 These factors help to explain the tergiversations of leading Liberals. 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.42 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.43 Tulloch, ‘Disestablishment’, 766; Hutton, Case for Disestablishment, 12–13; Brown, ‘Myth of the established Church’, 48–74. 38 Simon, ‘Church disestablishment’, 791–820. 39 Kennedy, Disestablishment Movement in the Free Church, 7, 17–18. 40 Hutton, Case for Disestablishment, 5. 41 Cheyne, ‘Church reform and church defence’, 139–64. 42 Kellas, ‘Liberal party and Scottish church disestablishment’, 31–8. 43 Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and reunion’, 224. 37

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66 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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.44 Church defenders argued that disendowment was tantamount to robbery and part of a general threat to property.45 The Church had 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 had been invested in the purchase of feudal superiorities in expanding urban areas, especially Edinburgh, a safe form 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 politics in the 1880s.

po p ul a r p o l i t i c s 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 44 45

Anon., Disestablishment and Free Education, 7–8; Rainy, ‘Disestablishment’, 435. Cited in Cheyne, ‘Church reform and church defence’, 155.

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 67 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.46 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’ trades unionism, was a militant respectability and teetotalism. 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 helped to gain and retain good jobs and to ensure the maintenance of good housing conditions for their families. Word of mouth and reputation were crucial in these social transactions, especially in the very fluid rented housing market: a man who was 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.47 The ideas of reform, respectability, independence Fraser, Scottish Popular Politics, 91–106; Knox, Industrial Nation, 94–103, 122–6, 163–83. 47 Smout, Century, 248–9.

46

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68 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 in certain respects they added Scottish flavour. 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 émigrés such as the Austrian Andreas Scheu and Leo Millet from France, but by very few workers, in an organisation which aimed to be non-hierarchical.48 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.49 Their vulnerability crippled their political confidence and 48

University of Liverpool, Glasier MSS, GP/1/1/17, Andreas Scheu to J. B. Glasier, 29 Dec. 1884; Knox, Industrial Nation, 164. 49 Devine, Great Highland Famine; Hunter, Crofting Community; MacPhail, Crofters’ War.

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 69 it took the work of an extraordinary retired exciseman, John Murdoch, and his newspaper, the Highlander, to begin the process of rousing the crofters.50 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 and attracted the attention of Gladstone’s government.51 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 (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’.52 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 land ownership 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, were 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 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. The general election of 1885, the first to be held under the extended franchise, exposed a number of problems for the Liberal party in Scotland. 50

Hunter, For the People’s Cause; University of Liverpool, Glasier MSS, GP/1/1/19, John Murdoch to J. B. Glasier, 17 Mar. 1885. 51 Cameron, Land for the People?, 16–28. 52 Newby, ‘Edward McHugh’, 74–91.

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70 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e The Scottish electorate had increased from 270,000 to 560,000, most of whom qualified under the householder franchise, newly extended to the counties. 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. 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 (2,015 electors) and South Ayrshire (15,109) lay at the extremes.53 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 per cent 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.54 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.55 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 franchise worked against younger men, including many from the middle-classes – unlikely to be Labour voters – who remained in the parental home to a relatively late age. The overall effect of the Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885–1918, 521, 529; Dyer, Capable Citizens, 27–30. 54 Blewett, ‘Franchise in the United Kingdom’, 27–56. 55 McCaffrey, ‘Irish vote in Glasgow’, 30–7. 53

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 71 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.56 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.57 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 per cent) than in England (48 per cent) or Wales (39 per cent). The true extent of the Liberal vote is difficult to measure, and is probably greater than the 240,000 (53.3 per cent) 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 1885.58 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 Gladstone’s agent in Midlothian.59 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.60 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 56 57 58 59 60

Matthew, McKibbin and Kay, ‘Franchise factor’, 723–52. Hutchison, Political History, 159–60. Dunbabin, ‘Electoral reforms’, 314–15. BL Add. MSS 44116, fo. 61, P. W. Campbell to Gladstone, 2 Dec. 1885. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885–1918, 491–563, 575.

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72 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e men from the professional middle classes.61 Another notable feature of 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. In the years before the Great War Liberal security was not disturbed by Labour politics, although the initial moves 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 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 came bottom of the poll with only 617 votes. The Scottish Labour party 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’.62 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 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’.63 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 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. There was another political culture which had the potential to disrupt Dyer, Capable Citizens, 82–3. Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 6; see also Kellas, ‘The Mid-Lanark by-election’, 318–29. 63 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 41–9. 61 62

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 73 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, an Ulster Protestant who had come to Scotland in the early 1860s and had a successful business career as a printer and publisher.64 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 Parnell, an Irish Protestant landowner who subordinated everything to the campaign to achieve home rule. 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.65 As politics increasingly divided 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 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 ‘mighty news and features syndicate’ with a consequent diminution of its ‘Scottish identity’.66 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 Liverpool, where the working class was firmly Conservative and the concentrations of Irish voters were such 64 65 66

McFarland, John Ferguson, 1–73 deals with his early years. Hutchison, Political History, 262; Wood, ‘Irish immigrants’, 81. Edwards, ‘Catholic press in Scotland’, 164–74, quote at 171.

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74 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e Parnell and Irish Home Rule The Liberal government which had been elected in 1880 fell in June 1885 when the Irish MPs supported the Conservatives on an amendment to the budget. Due to the recent reforms, however, the electoral registers were not ready and an election could not begin until mid-November. Lord Salisbury was called on to head a ‘caretaker’ administration’ (to which the first Scottish Secretary was appointed) to govern until the election. The balance of parties at that election placed the eighty-six members of the Irish party in a position of great power as they held the balance between the Conservatives (249 seats) and the Liberals (319 seats). They could have conspired to wreck a Conservative administration or put the Liberals in with a solid majority. Parnell, the leader of the Irish party, had issued a ‘manifesto’ during the 1885 election instructing the Irish community in Britain to vote Conservative as they seemed the more likely to grant home rule. Once it became known, in midDecember 1885, that Gladstone had been converted to a home-rule position the way was clear for the Irish to support the Liberals and eject the Conservative administration. This event took place in mid-January 1886 on an amendment to the Queen’s speech. The new Liberal government, Gladstone’s third administration, and the short 1886 Parliament was dominated by Irish home rule which, ultimately, split the party and brought the government down in June, precipitating another election, at which Conservatives and Liberal Unionists (opposed to home rule) cooperated to defeat the Liberals. that the Scotland division of the city was the only British constituency to elect an Irish nationalist MP, T. P. O’Connor.67 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.

u ni o n i st p o l i t i c s Disagreements over the question of Irish home rule would introduce a new idea – Unionism – into Scottish politics. 67

Gallagher, ‘Tale of two cities’, 106–29; Smith, ‘Class, skill and sectarianism’, 157–215.

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 75 Three factors facilitated this: a 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 committed to home rule. The debate over Irish home rule raised in a serious way for the first time the question of Scottish home rule. 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 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’.68 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 the 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 do not show the same Liberal domination of Scottish politics as the period from 1868 to 1885, neither did they 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 marquis of Hartington, 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 the duke of Argyll. 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.69 It would be 1906 before the Liberal party could build a nationwide Parliamentary majority NLS, A. R. D. Elliot Papers, MS 19487, fo. 153, Elliot to A. C. Sellar, 18 Dec. 1885. 69 Burness, ‘Strange Associations’, 46–50; Hutchison, Political History, 163. 68

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76 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 – at which Conservatives and Liberal Unionists tended not to oppose each other – Scotland provided seventeen of the seventyseven Liberal Unionists, eight for west of Scotland constituencies. Indeed, with the addition of six Conservative MPs a distinct message seemed to be emerging from the region. 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 Thomson (later Lord Kelvin). There was a certain level of base anti-Irish and antiCatholic views at the foundation of unionism in Scotland – and even worries about the military threat to the west of Scotland from an independent Ireland – but there were also wider commercial and constitutional concerns.70 Nevertheless, the relative success of Liberal Unionism was heavily dependent on Conservative support and their willingness to stand aside in favour of Liberal Unionists, something which was not always easy to arrange.71 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’.72 It remained the case that the ‘Union’ which these ‘Unionists’ were defending was the British-Irish Union of 1801 rather than the AngloScottish Union of 1707. This can be seen in the apparently contradictory attitude of some Unionists to Scottish home rule. This idea appeared on the political agenda in the mid-1880s on the coat-tails of Irish home rule and a Scottish Home Rule Association was established in 1886. 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 UK. Furthermore, the proposed exclusion of Irish MPs from the House of Commons in McCaffrey, ‘Origins of Liberal Unionism’, 47–71; Burness, ‘Strange Associations’, 44–68. 71 NAS, Lothian muniments, GD40/16/7/25–34, correspondence between Reginald MacLeod and Lord Lothian, 15, 21, 22 Jul. 1886. 72 NAS, Lothian muniments, GD40/16/745, Salisbury to Lothian, 14 June 1886. 70

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‘an e x u b e r a n t v e r b o s i t y’ 77 the 1886 home-rule scheme seemed to revive the dangerous spectre of ‘taxation without representation’ and threaten the Empire. The idea of ‘Home Rule All Round’, involving a Scottish Parliament – and perhaps Welsh and English regional legislatures – would 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 Parliament would help to deal with perceived Scottish grievances in education and contributions to the national exchequer, but was not thought of as a vehicle for national independence.73 If the views of the SHRA are seen in this way it is evident that they have more in common with the romantic ‘nationalists’ of the mid-nineteenth century, than their more assertive successors of the twentieth.74 Thus it was possible for Liberal Unionists to appear as office bearers in the SHRA. This was not a general rule and other Liberal Unionists were strongly opposed to 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’.75 This is an argument which would be heard again in the period covered in 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 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 Anon., Union of 1707 Viewed Financially; 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. 74 Morton, ‘First home rule movement’, 113–22; Ferguson, Scotland, 317, 329. 75 Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh, 167; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 93; Finlay, Partnership for Good, 9; NLS, A. R. D. Elliot Papers, MS 19487, fos. 273–4, Elliot to A. C. Sellar, 16 Oct. 1886. 73

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78 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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. By the mid-1890s it was the Conservatives, rather than the Liberal Unionists, who seemed the more progressive and modern political force. They 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.76 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 creation of County Councils. These were classic Conservative policies, designed to create order and spread the benefits of the ownership of property. ‘Unionism’ was less relevant in Scotland in the 1890s than it had been in the 1880s. Liberal Unionism had been important in seeing off the immediate threat of Irish home rule and imperial disintegration in 1886 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 lay in a new political agenda which followed the debates over reform and Irish home rule which had dominated the 1880s and early 1890s.

76

Hutchison, Political History, 192–212.

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ch apter 4

‘Volcanic Upheavals’: Scottish Politics before the Great War

I

f 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 enlivened by new questions. Traditional issues remained current – tariff reform, Empire, land reform, temperance – while others with a shorter pedigree – old age pensions, housing, health and unemployment insurance – were driven by the impetus towards social reform which the Liberal government developed after 1908. There was not a clear dividing line between these ‘old’ and ‘new’ issues: 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, 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 MPs returned to their position as power brokers. As in the 1880s Irish home rule affected debate on 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 after 1910 to 1912 that it was returned to. The election results in this period are shown in the following table (4.1). The principal themes to be noted are, first, the consistently strong Liberal performance in Scotland, even in elections where the party performed relatively weakly in the UK, such as the 1900 and both 1910 elections. Second, Unionism (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists), with

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80 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e the exception of 1900, found the going hard in Scotland and, third, it is clear that Scotland was an area of weakness for Labour. Table 4.1 General elections, 1900–10 Election

1900

Sco UK 1906 Sco UK 1910 (January) Sco UK 1910 (December) Sco UK

Cons/LU

Lib

Lab

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

36 402 12 156 9 272 9 272

49.0 50.3 38.2 43.4 39.6 46.8 42.6 46.6

34 183 58 399 59 274 58 271

50.2 45.0 56.4 49.4 54.2 43.5 53.6 44.2

0 2 2 29 2 40 3 42

1.0 1.3 2.3 4.8 5.1 7.0 3.6 6.4

empire and free trade The 1900 election was held at the height of the Boer War in the autumn of 1900. This was an attempt to re-establish imperial control over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the ‘Boer Republics’, but involved subtexts about the gold which had been discovered in the mid-1880s and, for some, a desire to demonstrate the vitality of the British Empire in the face of new challenges from Germany and other powers. The election was called at a moment at which a favourable resolution seemed to be in sight. 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 (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 drew attention to a perceived lack of patriotism on the Liberal side where a small number of candidates and newspapers had opposed the war. To this group was attached the abusive label ‘Pro-Boer’; the leading figures included G. B. Clark, the MP for Caithness, whose extremism 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 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’

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 81 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 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.2 This ‘manifest difference of opinion . . . among the more prominent and trusted leaders of the party’ caused great anxiety among local activists.3 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 . . . Dr Clark. The whole body would be wagged by the tail, and they would have a mongrel of the very vilest description’.4 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. Some of the seats which changed hands in 1900 saw vigorous debate over the war, notably Caithness where Clark was defeated by another Liberal, R. L. Harmsworth, brother of Lord Northcliffe, the founder of the imperialist Daily Mail.5 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 it was this 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.6 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 the ideology of that party: 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. 2 Matthew, Liberal Imperialists, 98–9. 3 OBL, James Bryce MSS, 178, fo. 19, G. B. Esslemont to James Bryce, 9 Mar. 1900. 4 Quoted in Readman, ‘Conservative party, patriotism, and British politics’, 116. 5 Brown, ‘ “Echoes of Midlothian” ’, 171; Boyle, ‘Liberal imperialists’, 56–7. 6 Readman, ‘Conservative party, patriotism, and British politics’, 109–16, disagreeing with Price, An Imperial War, 97–131. 1

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82 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e . . . 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 . . .7 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 contrasted the positions of ‘Boers’ and ‘Britons’.8 Unionists claimed a monopoly on national loyalty, sentiments which the Liberals had lost the right to voice through their ambiguous attitude to the fight in South Africa. Their opponents found this difficult to counter.9 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. For this reason, although the Liberals polled more votes than they had in 1895, their share of the vote was down. 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 of 5.2 per cent. This was a very bad result for Scottish Liberals, exemplified by events in Glasgow where the Unionists made a clean sweep in emulation of the Liberal result in 1885.10 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 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’.11 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 Anon., ‘The general election’, 539. Burness, ‘Strange Associations’, 151–2. 9 Cunningham, ‘Language of patriotism’, 8–33; Thompson, ‘Language of imperialism’, 147–77. 10 Burness, ‘Strange Associations’, 159; Price, An Imperial War, 101–5. 11 BL, Henry Campbell-Bannerman Papers, Add. MS 41222, fo. 331, R. C. MunroFerguson to Campbell-Bannerman, 24 Oct. 1900. 7 8

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 83 Aberdeen. Contemporaries were clear in their view that it was the divisions and confusion over the leadership which had compromised the Liberal case in Scotland. These divisions continued after the election and can be seen most clearly in a by-election in North East Lanarkshire, a solid Liberal seat, which took place 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 1904.12 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 manifestation of Scottish imperial identity.13 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. 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. Thus, although the results of the 1900 election appear to provide evidence for an imperialist triumph in Scotland the position is not so straightforward. The 1900 result is significant in that it broke a seemingly established pattern, but it did so only fleetingly and ought not to be seen as a portent of later Unionist strength in Scotland. 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 over the best way to pay the astronomical cost of the Boer War. Some options sailed dangerously close to breaking the sixty-year BL, Viscount Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 45995, fos. 16–21, John Sinclair to Gladstone, 28 Aug. 1901; Hutchison, Political History, 177, 229. 13 Boyle, ‘Liberal imperialists’, 61–2. 12

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84 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 – ‘the most extensive popular debate in the history of British politics’ – they embraced novel techniques, including films.14 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 the Edwardians, whether they accepted this justification for tariff reform or not. Confidence in the strength of the Empire and the British economy was faltering as competition from Germany and the USA increased. The Boer War had tarnished the public perception of the Empire: tariff reform offered an antidote. It also offered protection to farmers. It was hoped that this would stimulate domestic production, maintain the rural population and 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 the markets from which British goods had been excluded.15 Tariff reform came to dominate the Unionist electoral appeal, culminating in 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 Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England, 231; Chamberlain, Imperial Union and Tariff Reform; Asquith, Trade and the Empire. 15 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, 184–263; Fforde, Conservatism and Collectivism, 88–96; Thompson, ‘Tariff reform’, 1033–54. 14

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 85 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 as Secretary for Scotland in 1903.16 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 out the electoral dangers of alienating the working class through the ‘dear loaf’.17 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 little support for it. The principal newspapers – especially the businessman’s Glasgow Herald – 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. 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. Not without reason has tariff reform in Scotland been described as ‘the crucial destroyer of the recently cemented Unionist strength . . .’.18 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 1906 Blewett, ‘Free fooders, Balfourites, whole hoggers’, 95–124. BL, A. J. Balfour Papers, Add. MSS 49859, fos. 131–6, Parker Smith to Balfour, 28 Jan. 1907; Add. MSS 49860, fos. 44–51, Stirling Maxwell to Grant, 18 Jan. 1909; HLRO, Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 21/1, W. A. Arrol to Bonar Law, 19 Jan. 1906. 18 Hutchison, Political History, 218. 16 17

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86 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 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. Liberalism favoured taxing the landlords’ ‘unearned increment’ rather than the breakfast table of the working class.

the e a r t h q ua ke o f 1 90 6 Exhausted by internal divisions and bruised by the vehemence of attacks from an increasingly confident Liberal party, A. J. Balfour’s Unionist government resigned in December 1905, Campbell-Bannerman formed a new government and called a general election for January 1906. Across the UK the main issue 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.19 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 manage only ten seats. The massed ranks of the Liberal party after the election amounted to 400; to this should be added a further twenty-nine Labour members, mostly elected in England, and eightythree Irish MPs. 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 Dumfriesshire, 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 pact with the Liberals which operated in England. The Scottish Liberals did not require assistance to decimate the Unionists. Contemporaries believed the 1906 election to be of immense significance. A senior Liberal Unionist described it as a ‘volcanic upheaval’. A trades unionist in Aberdeen was confident that the ‘old country will get shaken to its very 19

Scotsman, 26, 29 Jan. 1906.

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 87 foundations’. 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.20 This was not evident in Scotland, even in the two further general elections prior to the Great War. With fiftyeight Scottish seats and over 56 per cent of the vote the Liberal party seemed to have returned to its dominant position in Scotland. 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 picture is complicated by the perception that a new form of Liberalism was in evidence.

l a b o u r mo v e me n t 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 the Scottish Workers’ Representation Committee and was at the root of considerable cross-border tensions before it achieved dominance. 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 newspaper in 1906, the Labour movement showed signs of rude health. The LRC, after 1906 called the Labour party, was an umbrella organisation to which other parts of the broad movement – trades unions, socialist societies, cooperative organisations – adhered. In Scotland political muscle was provided by the Independent Labour Party. It had been formed in 1893 and the following year had absorbed Keir Hardie’s Scottish Labour Party. The ILP was central to the spreading of the Labour message; by the eve of the Great War there were 130 Scottish branches with over 2,000 members.21 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 HLRO, Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 21/1, Robert Bird to Bonar Law, 19 Jan. 1906; NLS, Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc. 5490(1)/38, Duncan to Mabel, 21 Jan. 1906; Scotsman, 26 Jan. 1910. 21 Fraser, ‘The Labour party’, 38–51; Hutchison, Political History, 246. 20

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88 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e of assuming that all those excluded from the vote were 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 the 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’.22 Nevertheless, there were signs that Labour was making some progress: the establishment of Forward in 1906 was an important event. 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 with radical Liberalism. In other ways this may have been a problem for Labour, making the establishment of a distinct identity more difficult, but it gave the pages of Forward great intellectual richness. There is a deterministic and reductionist view of Scottish radical politics which portrays the Irish community’s adherence to the Liberal party 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 Labour’s slow progress in Scotland compared to other areas with similar social and industrial structures, such as south Wales. 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 franchise system worked to exclude many Irishmen from the vote. Sectarianism was a convenient argument for ILP activists, such as Joseph Duncan, who were faced with daily evidence of the difficulties of proselytising on behalf of the Labour movement. They were prone to idealising the skilled worker and demonising the unskilled: Duncan condemned the workers of Lanarkshire (‘the scrapheap of Scotland’) as ‘a cross between bad Irish and bad Scots . . . Catholics and Orangemen’.23 NLS, Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc. 5490(1)/59, Duncan to Mabel, 2 Jul. 1906; /64–5, Duncan to Mabel, n.d. (but Aug. 1906); see also /94, Duncan to Mabel, 28 Sept. 1906. 23 NLS, Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc. 5490(1)/199, Duncan to Mabel, 5 Aug. 1907; /202, Duncan to Mabel, 11 Aug. 1907. 22

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 89 A similar view was taken by Thomas Johnston who was proud that Forward did not circulate in the slums. More positively, many in the Labour movement recognised the importance of reaching out to the Irish community. The principal worker in this endeavour was a man from an Irish background who was the most influential Scottish Labour politician of the century – 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 Fr Leo Puissant, in the Glasgow Observer, attempted to reconcile socialism and Catholicism. Puissant was not a reactionary, but like many Roman Catholics (and Presbyterians) he was concerned about the anti-clericalism of continental socialism. This stimulated the Papal Encyclical of 1891, Rerum Novarum, which condemned ‘socialism’ and commended ‘social reform’. Wheatley argued 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 1912.24 Although the Labour movement did encompass figures who were hostile to religion, like Robert Blatchford or John Bruce Glasier, they were outnumbered in Scotland by others who drew their inspiration from the Covenanters rather than the Paris Commune.25 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, despite their moral conservatism, a deep concern for the poverty of the population to whom they ministered. 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. 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 Gilley, ‘Catholics and socialists in Glasgow’, 160–200; Gilley, ‘Catholics and socialists in Scotland’, 218–30; Wood, Wheatley, 29–31. 25 Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish labour movement’, 609–30. 24

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90 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e tendency for the latter to be more active than, distinct from and hostile to Liberalism.26 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. The Liberal leadership was more impressed by Labour’s readiness than were activists like Joseph Duncan, and they aimed to counter Labour propaganda with good Liberal speakers.27 In January 1910 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 1910 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 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.28 To understand this divergence 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?

la nd r e f o r m: n e w l i ber a l ism a n d ol d If free trade helps to explain the Liberal victory in 1906 a more specifically Scottish crusade was on the land question. This was embedded in NLS, Elibank MSS, MS 8801, fos. 145–51, Memorandum on the Socialist and Labour Movements in Scotland, . . . [Feb. 1908]. 27 NLS, Elibank MSS, MS 8801, fo. 92, Winston Churchill to Murray, 29 Sept. 1906; fos. 130–1, J. P. Croal to Murray, 9 Jul. 1907; fos. 99–102, Murray to Lord Knollys, 7 Nov. 1906. 28 Scotsman, 20 Dec. 1912. 26

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 91 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, 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 smallholdings 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 of 1908. 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 its policy of land nationalisation proved unpopular.29 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 in land law.30 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 large farmers who felt that the riches of lowland Scottish farming were to be spoliated by a policy designed for feckless crofters. Landlords were also apoplectic about intrusions on their rights and stimulated to action by the prospect of land taxes, the second strand of Liberal policy. If one of the features of the Victorian debate on the land question had been the supine response of landlords, this was put right in 1906 by the formation of the 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 Forward, 4 Sept. 1909; Walker, Johnston, 10–13; Hunter, ‘Gaelic connection’, 195. NAS, AF43/6/1, Memo to Captain Sinclair, by Sheriff David Brand, Edinburgh, 25 Aug. 1903.

29 30

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92 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e lack of support within the Cabinet for the Scottish land proposals.31 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 gave County Councils responsibility for creating new smallholdings; 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.32 This meant that the land question remained a potent issue in Scottish politics during and after the Great War.

social reform 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. The Liberals, however, 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 it 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 Cameron, Land for the People?, 124–43. 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.

31 32

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 93 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 – with only a very small majority provided for ‘indoors’ – in a poorhouse, while 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 shift in the way social welfare was organised. The Liberal governments were influenced by the debates of the early 1900s about the health of the urban population which had been revealed by the poor physical condition of army volunteers. In the hands of imperialists, like 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 and the introduction of free meals and medical inspection for Scottish schoolchildren, all controversial issues.33 The reforms passed by the Liberal government fell into four areas: the labour market; National Insurance; old age pensions; and education. 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 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. In 1908 and 1909 the government guaranteed 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.34 These changes, some of which arose from cooperation with Labour, suggested that the Labour MPs elected in 1906 could have some influence and that, despite their massive majority, the Liberals continued to take the Labour threat seriously. More positively, they demonstrated a greater degree of sympathy for the interests of the working class than Velek, ‘Industrial and commercial efficiency’, 242–83; Stewart, ‘ “This injurious measure” ’, 76–94; Levitt, ‘The state, the family and the Scottish health problem’, 55–72; Glasgow Herald, 25 Jan. 1907. 34 Reid, United We Stand, 262–3; Searle, A New England?, 369–70. 33

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94 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e had been displayed by Liberal governments of the 1880s and 1890s. It is also evidence of the fruitful nature of the relationship between Labour and the Liberals since the electoral pact (not operative in Scotland) of 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.35 There had been a long-running campaign in favour of the introduction of old age pensions throughout the 1890s and they lurked in the corners of Chamberlain’s tariff reform campaigns. 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 changes began to cleanse 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 than expected, as a very large proportion of the aged population claimed it. 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.36 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. 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 35 36

Smith, ‘Taking the leadership’, 64–5. Thane, Old Age, 228–9.

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 95 claims, a reminder that although this was a central government initiative it was not undertaken by a fully centralised 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. Some on the left were suspicious of social welfare reform, characterising it as a 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.37 There were, nevertheless, weaknesses in the pensions scheme.38 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 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 was ‘socialism pure and simple’ and that it eroded family life in that it absolved relatives of caring for the elderly.39 In fact, there is evidence that it strengthened family links by bringing more money into the household. Despite its limitations, the pension was the closest the Liberals came to introducing welfare received as a right. 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 politically disinterested, most pensioners were non-voters, especially since a majority 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 benefits for those who would qualify for the pension. This provides a marked contrast with the National Insurance schemes 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 The debate can be followed in Pelling, ‘Working class’, 1–18; Thane, ‘Working class’, 877–900; Pugh, ‘Working-class experience’, 775–96. 38 NLS, Joseph Duncan MSS, Acc. 5490(1)/149, Duncan to Mabel, 21 Apr. 1907. 39 Thane, Old age, 225. 37

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96 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e 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 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. Farmers in the north-east of Scotland – like employers of servants in the West End of London – were certainly resistant to contributing to their employees’ welfare. Less convincing is the 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 not of their fellow feeling with him, but of their weakness, even in one interpretation their lack of class consciousness.40 Further evidence for a more critical perspective is to be found in the contemporaneous foundation of the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union in Turiff, with Joseph 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 more controversial.

benefit. The schemes were administered through ‘approved societies’ – friendly societies, trades 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 medical profession and the insurance industry – which had to be coopted in order to make 40

Fenton, ‘Popular culture and the Turra Coo’, 76–86, quote at 78; Carter, Farm life, 172–3.

40

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 97

Figure 4.1 The ‘Turra Coo’ on her way to be sold, 9 December 1913. © National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

them work.41 Amongst the working class the most controversial aspect of National Insurance was the requirement to contribute from their own resources. Labour leaders argued that this was unfair and some, like Keir Hardie, argued that it should be non-contributory.

u nf i ni s h e d b us i n e s s : p o l i t ic s a ft er 1 9 1 0 The results of the 1910 general elections changed the focus of politics at both a UK and a Scottish level. 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 the revival of the Irish question. A third Irish Home Rule Bill was introduced to the House of Commons in 1912 after inconclusive debate in Cabinet about its implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. Serious consideration was given to ‘homerule all round’ as a means of avoiding the problems encountered by earlier (and later) home rule bills. The difficulty, according to Winston 41

Searle, A New England?, 367–8; Thane, Foundations, 84–7.

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98 imp a l e d upo n a this t l e Churchill, was not how to accommodate Scotland, Wales or Ireland in this structure, but to find a way of isolating 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; and 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.42 With the power of the House of Lords reduced by the Parliament Act of 1911, this Bill had a greater chance of reaching the statute book than its illstarred 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. 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 was 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 mitigated by 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.43 Although most Liberals could agree that there was a logical case for considering the questions in tandem, it was difficult to persuade the government to act. Asquith, indeed, seemed uninterested when a deputation of his fellow Scottish MPs visited him in May 1912 to press the subject.44 This demonstrated not only the weakness of the political 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]. 43 Liberal MP, The Constitutional Crisis, 5, 9–10, 23; Searle, A New England?, 429; Jalland, ‘U.K. devolution, 1910–14’, 762–75. 44 OBL, Asquith MSS, 89, fos. 1–12, Deputation from Scottish Liberal M.P.s, 6 May 1912. 42

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‘vo l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 99 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 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 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 Bonar Law, by now leader of the Unionist party, took up the cause of the land of his forebears with vehemence, the Ulster question was not an important 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. Fewer than 10,000 people came to hear him in Glasgow and the Scottish Presbyterian Churches, at the time exploring the extent of their social conscience, were not willing to become involved in a Protestant campaign to defend Ulster.45 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.46 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 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 Smith, ‘Taking the leadership’, 77; Smith, ‘Commonsense thought’, 401, 431–2. HLRO, Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 30/3/59 and 73, George Younger to Bonar Law, 27 and 30 Oct. 1913.

45

46

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100 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.47 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’. 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.48 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 their own course. In England and Wales there is much evidence to point to the conclusion that Labour was poised to mount a serious challenge. As we have seen, Labour was not well organised in Scotland in this period: trades unionism was weak and the identity of the movement was uncertain. Politics were still dominated by issues on which the Liberal party made the running: land, temperance and Ireland.49 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 long-standing 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 Smith, ‘Commonsense thought’, 183, 186. HLRO, Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 32/3/30, Confidential memorandum to Candidates: Scottish Home Rule, c. May 1914. 49 Fraser, ‘The Labour party’, 59. 47 48

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‘v o l c a n i c u p h e a v a l s’ 101 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 Unionists triumphed with only 38 per cent. There is no evidence that a 1915 general election would have been approached with confidence by Labour and we must look to events during and immediately after the war to explain the Labour breakthrough of 1922.50

50

Hutchison, Political History, 256–65.

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ch apt e r 5

‘Ower the Hill’: Scotland and the Great War

T

he 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 over a century for which Britain had raised a mass army. 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 revenue 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 notable 1

Lee, ‘Scottish economy’, 29–30, 34; Rubin, War, Law and Labour, 17.

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 103 improvements in infant mortality, an indicator especially sensitive to changes in social welfare.2

a m ar t i a l t r a d i t i o n 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. If these events were antique, recent military experiences of Scots were problematic. The eighteenth-century army was disproportionately Scottish, but by the Boer War Scots were underrepresented in the British armed forces, in contrast to the Irish.3 The Crimean War was scarcely a glorious theatre and it 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 opportunities to triumph over unsophisticated enemies.4 The Boer War saw a number of these themes come together. The recruiting process was difficult because of the shocking physical condition of many volunteers, a revelation which induced anxiety about the future of the Empire and stimulated social reform. The Boers were difficult to subdue, and Scottish regiments figured prominently in the reverses of ‘Black Week’ in December 1899. Even the kilt, the 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’.5 Considerable literary and cultural effort had to be expended to maintain the myths of the Scottish martial tradition. The raw materials existed Young, ‘Voluntary recruitment’, 392; Winter, Great War, 103–53. Hanham, ‘Religion and nationality’, 162–7. 4 The Times, 21 Sept. 1855; but see Scotsman, 24 Sept. 1855; Streets, Martial Races, 55–62, 69–75, 173–85. 5 Spiers, ‘Scottish soldier in the Boer war’, 158. 2 3

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104 impa l e d upo n a this t l e in the distinctive Scottish, and more especially highland, regiments. The ‘highlandism’ of these regiments resided in their uniforms and 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.6 Even modest proposals in 1881 for regimental reform caused howls of protest and the suppression of highland regimental identities was headed off. The highland regiments had 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 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’. The survival of these local regimental identities was crucial to the success of the recruiting drive at the beginning of the Great War in 1914.7 Even the Navy, traditionally seen as the most English of the services, was repackaged in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods to take account of national sensitivities in the United Kingdom. Although there were Scottish protests against the apparent Englishness of the White Ensign there was also a conscious policy of naming warships to reflect Scottish and Irish identities. These ships, including HMS Glasgow, were sent to their eponymous cities for ‘show purposes’. In the case of Glasgow the event was a fantastic success with thousands of people wishing to inspect the ship forming a queue half a mile long, despite the inevitable downpour.8 The visibility of Scottish regiments meant that the Scottish element of the British army was far more prominent than the numbers of Scots in its ranks would suggest. 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.9 Despite this the war was interpreted through a Scottish lens by contemporaries and in the aftermath of the conflict the notion of a Scottish sacrifice became prominent. This was evident among socialists and nationalists, 6 7 8 9

Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 127. Strachan, Politics of the British Army, 204–5; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 126–7. Rüger, ‘Nation, Empire and Navy’, 167–73. Royle, Flowers of the Forest, 35; Spiers, ‘Scottish soldier at war’, 314–55.

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 105 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 r u s h t o t h e c o l o ur s ? The outbreak of war during the harvest season led to concern that food supply would be interrupted if large numbers of agricultural labourers joined up but in the event this did not occur. 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-mute. Other scares involved stories of soldiers being drugged after being offered smokes by strangers.10 This was evidence of a feverish atmosphere induced by novel circumstances, as there had been no national mobilisation for over a century. 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 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 1,700 the number of regiments remained the same.11 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 . . .12 Elgin Courant and Courier, 7 Aug. 1914; Perthshire Constitutional and Journal, 23 Sept. 1914; see Strachan, First World War, 106–7; Royle, Flowers of the Forest, 24, 35–6. 11 Strachan, Politics of the British Army, 208. 12 Inverness Courier, 12 Mar. 1915; Cameron and Robertson, ‘ “Fighting and bleeding for the land” ’, 81–102.

10

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106 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Pulpit patriotism The Presbyterian clergy indulged in strident rhetoric at the outbreak of the war despite strong intellectual links with German Protestantism. Many had studied in Germany making wartime bellicosity difficult to reconcile with their academic experiences.13 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’.14 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’.15 Although ministers and 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. As losses mounted simplistic hopes of religious revival were dashed by declining church attendance. Fears deepened as the war seemed to be in a stalemate and evidence of irreligion among 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. In the face of the advance of the state and socialism 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. AntiCatholicism, suppressed in the pro-Belgian rhetoric of 1914, came to the fore and the Churches retreated into a narrow patriotism.16 Strachan, First World War, 1119; Brown, ‘ “A solemn purification by fire” ’, 84; Newlands, John and Donald Baillie, 36–9, 50–4. 14 Elgin Courant and Courier, 21 Aug. 1914; Nairnshire Telegraph and General Advertiser, 11 Aug. 1914. 15 Orcadian, 26 Dec. 1914. 16 Brown, ‘ “A solemn purification by fire” ’, 82–104; Brown, ‘Piety, gender and war’, 170–91; De Groot, ‘ “We are safe whatever happens” ’, 193–211. 13

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 107 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. Although both Lovat and Lochiel had Jacobite traditions, by 1914 they were leading figures 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. Although locality was important in this kind of appeal it was by no means exclusive; a regiment like the Cameron Highlanders recruited in its home territory of Inverness-shire, but also in Glasgow and even in Canada. Indeed, over time these wider territories became much more important for such a regiment which became less dependent on its locality as recruits were dispersed through the army. 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 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 less employer enthusiasm for recruiting. 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 an 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.17 There were three ways in which the diversity of the recruiting experience can be identified: time, place and occupation. The number of 13141516

13 14 15 16

Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, 63, 72–3, 127; Young, ‘Voluntary recruitment’, 144, 218–19, 222–3, 240, 247.

17

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108 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Table 5.1 Scottish recruitment, August 1914 to December 1915a

August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December

Monthly recruitment

Cumulative monthly recruitment

Monthly percentage increase

40,138 58,255 19,748 25,106 18,635 17,853 8,492 11,439 10,738 15,779 14,387 10,959 12,020 8,218 9,909 13,090 6,988

98,393 118,141 143,247 161,882 179,735 188,232 199,671 210,409 226,188 240,575 251,534 263,554 271,772 281,681 294,771 301,754

145.13 20.07 21.25 13.0 11.02 4.72 6.07 5.37 7.49 6.36 4.55 4.77 3.11 3.64 4.64 2.36

Note: a Young, ‘Voluntary recruitment’, 368–9

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, as is suggested in Table 5.1. The first few weeks of the war saw large numbers of recruits, but this was not sustained. 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 mounted 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 1916.18 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. 18

Winter, Great War, 41.

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 109 The geography of recruitment was highly variable at a UK and a Scottish level. In Scotland just over 41 per cent of the male population aged between fifteen and forty-nine 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. Because of emigration and migration Irish society was deficient in numbers of young men and 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 trend as the male population as a whole. They were encouraged to join up by the Roman Catholic Church and 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. The industrial counties of Lanark and Ayr, with only 37 per cent of the population, produced 57 per cent of recruits in the voluntary period. 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 3,284 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 1914.19 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 Statistics from Winter, Great War, 28; McFarland, ‘ “How the Irish paid their debt” ’, 261–84; and the tables in Young, ‘Voluntary recruitment’, 407–37.

19

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110 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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, such as the varying age and gender structure of industries; there was, for example, 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 here 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 compared to other sectors, such as the metal industries, which had high levels of enlistment despite a poor health record.20 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.21 This is obviously impressionistic, even prejudiced, but does it say something about recruiting in the early part of the war? Throughout the United Kingdom there was 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 the lack of patriotism suggested by the Hawick correspondent. Although 20 21

Dewey, ‘Military recruiting’; Young, ‘Voluntary recruitment’. Hawick News, 16 Oct. 1914.

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 111 farm labour was an occupation populated by young people 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.22 Farmers did not encourage recruiting in the same way as commercial employers; few, surely, went so far as the Perthshire farmer who sued a labourer for breach of contract when he enlisted.23 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’.24 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. During that period the brunt of the conflict was borne by the professionals and the reserves, and 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 9th and the 15th, composed of highland and lowland regiments, featured prominently.25 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.26 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.27 Losses afflicted 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 camaraderie. One soldier, sent as replacement to

Carter, Farm Life, 108–9; Anthony, Herds and Hinds, 66–7. Dewey, ‘Military recruiting’, 204–5; Young, ‘Voluntary recruitment’, 137. 24 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/13/4, Diary [of John Gilmour], 11 Aug. 1914. 25 Warner, Battle of Loos, 226, 230; Royle, Flowers of the Forest, 83. 26 Scotsman, 30 Sept., 9 Oct. 1915; Buchan, History of the Great War, ii, 313–28. 27 Historical records of the QOCH, iv, 79; Inverness Courier, 1, 5 Oct. 1915; Anon., Cameron Highlanders. 22 23

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112 impa l e d upo n a this t l e the 7th 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’.28 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, the battles of the Somme in 1916 and Arras in 1917, the latter seeing ‘the largest concentration of Scots ever to have fought together’, had a huge effect at home.29 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 its 16th battalion, 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 November 1915. The Hearts players and officials sought to counter the perception of footballers as unpatriotic by enlisting in ‘McCrae’s battalion’.30

ba t t l e s o n t h e h o me f r on t 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, 28 29 30

Pte C. Stewart quoted in MacDonald, 1915, 559. Royle, Flowers of the Forest, 96. Alexander, McCrae’s Battalion, 155–80.

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 113 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.31 The dominant images of Scotland in the Great War provide a contrast: the fearless recruit and the 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.32 There were several strands to the events on Clydeside: engineering strikes over ‘dilution’ – the use of unskilled labour, often female, 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.33 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 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).34 None of these events, perhaps especially the last, was taken lightly by the government. The intervention of the state in industrial relations took three 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 forgo strike action and accept dilution while the government Nairnshire Telegraph and General Advertiser, 2 Mar. 1915. Contrast McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside with Foster, ‘Strike action and workingclass politics’, 33–70; Brotherstone, ‘Does Red Clydeside really matter any more?’, 52–80 and OCSH, 499–500. 33 Reid, ‘Dilution’, 46–74. 34 For lucid overviews see Knox, Industrial Nation, 216–20 and Reid, United We Stand, 177–85 31 32

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114 impa l e d upo n a this t l e The march of John Maclean The popular memory of left-wing politics on the Clyde celebrates the role of John Maclean (1879–1923) and the continuing tradition of a Scottish Marxist left has also kept his ideas alive. John Maclean’s name has also echoed through popular culture, notably in Hamish Henderson’s ‘The Ballad of John Maclean’ or Matt 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, 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 advocate of 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 imprisoned 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 on the first occasion, but gaining only 13 per cent in 1922. His death in 1923 prevented a third candidature and was followed by a

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 115 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.36 undertook to work through the unions, to 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 structure actually assisted the formal recognition of trades unions.35 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. 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 engineering. It is fashionable to point out the divisions in the 36

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. 36 ODNB; Howell, A Lost left, 157–225; McShane and Smith, No Mean Fighter, esp. 102–4, 123–5, 150–2; Brotherstone, ‘John Maclean’, 15–29. 35

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116 impa l e d upo n a this t l e working-class movement in Scotland during the stressful conditions of the Great War, but it is also worth remembering that the employers were similarly divided.37 A further series of strikes occurred after the Munitions Act and demonstrate the variety of responses from the government. A shipwrights’ strike in late 1915 over the issue of leaving certificates (dilution was less common in shipyards) occasioned the dispatch of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, former Unionist Secretary for Scotland, and an Ulster-born lawyer and former engineer, Lynden Macassey, to report on the background to the strike.38 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 Dilution Commission was appointed in 1916, with Macassey as its leading figure, and represented another form of state intervention – attempts to manage industrial relations. Its operation 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’.39 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 shock and the mishandling of its aftermath produced paranoia in some elements of the British government. 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 war effort.40 Melling, ‘Scottish industrialists’, 119–25. For Weir see DSBB, i, 197–200; see ODNB for Macassey (1876–1963). 39 NLS, Elibank MSS, MS 8804, fo. 8, Lloyd George to Murray of Elibank, 14 Feb. 1916. 40 Balfour, Memoir of Lord Balfour, 209; OBL, MS Addison dep. c. 87, fo. 62, Memorandum by Lynden Macassey K.C. on industrial situation on the Clyde, n.d. but c. 10 Feb. 1916. 37 38

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 117 These perceptions existed alongside 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 at the St Andrews Hall on Christmas day. Among his reactions was to suppress the ILP 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.41 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 shop steward at Parkhead, David Kirkwood. 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 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.42 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.43 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 as 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, Brotherstone, ‘Suppression of the “Forward” ’, 5–23; McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside, 49–62. 42 McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside, 78–85; Hume and Moss, Beardmore, 103, 110–11, 118–23. 43 OBL, MS Addison dep. c. 87, fos. 180–1, Macassey to Hubert Llewellyn Smith, Ministry of Munitions, 20 Feb. 1916; HLRO, 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. 41

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118 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Macassey and William Beveridge.44 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’ and ‘sentimental grievances’ but if ‘the workman was in truth and fact working for the state and not for the private employer [this] would infuse fresh vigour and enthusiasm into his efforts’.45 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.46 One area where the advance of the state was more difficult to roll back was in housing and the rent strikes of 1915 were among the most significant events of the domestic history of the Great War in Scotland. The rent strikes originated in 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 pay (not generous) and separation allowances. The structure of the 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 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 precipitated industrial action in shipyards and munitions works, and threatened to turn this property dispute into a general crisis.47 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. Helen Crawfurd (a Communist and leading activist on the housing question) remarked that the rent strike was ‘essentially a woman’s fight’.48 It Morgan and Morgan, Portrait of a Progressive, 39–41; Harris, William Beveridge, 212–23. 45 OBL, MS Addison dep. c. 87, fos. 244, 247, Memorandum on proposed scheme for establishment of efficient relationship between the government and controlled establishments by Lynden Macassey, 1 May 1916. 46 Knox, Industrial Nation, 218. 47 Morgan and 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. 48 Quoted in Melling, Rent Strikes, 92. 44

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 119 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’.49 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’.50 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, Mary Laird and ‘Mrs Ferguson’, were women already active in Labour politics, such as Helen Crawfurd and Agnes Dollan.51 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. 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 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 historians as an exemplar of class solidarity.52 The wartime housing ‘famine’ and its consequences, including the rent strikes, Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 175. 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. 51 See SLL, 81–6 and 89–92 for Crawfurd (1877–1954) and Dollan (1887–1966); for Barbour see Melling, Rent Strikes, 110. 52 Photograph in Melling, Rent Strikes, 84–5; Smyth, ‘Rents, peace, votes’, 174–96; Damer, ‘State, class and housing’, 73–112. 49 50

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120 impa l e d upo n a this t l e

Figure 5.1 A cartoon on the grievances which led to the rent strikes of 1915, from the ILP newspaper Forward, 5 June 1915. © Gallacher Memorial Library – Glasgow Caledonian University Library. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

allowed Labour, and especially the ILP, 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 ILP. One of his most important contributions was to ensure that accusations of unpatriotic behaviour could not be levelled against the rent strikers. He accused landlords and factors of being unpatriotic war profiteers; families whose menfolk were serving with the armed forces were portrayed

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 121 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 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.53 What were the results of the rent strikes? The escalation of the dispute encouraged the government to restrict rent increases for the duration of the war.54 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.55 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 was clear that it was the need to maintain munitions production which was behind this unusual intervention in relations between urban landlords and tenants.56 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.57

l o s s , d e a t h a n d m o ur n i n g 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.58 These, Wood, Wheatley, 54–7; Melling, Rent Strikes, 66–7; Cooper, ‘John Wheatley’, 80–1. Melling, Rent Strikes, 77. 55 Stevenson, ‘Writing Scotland’s history’, 111. 56 See the Cabinet papers on the subject at TNA: PRO, CAB37/137/29 and CAB37/138/3, both from Nov. 1915; PD, lxxxvi, 42, 25 Nov. 1915. 57 Melling, ‘Clydeside housing’, 151–60; Melling, Rent Strikes, 102–3; Wheatley, Eight-pound Cottages. 58 Census of Scotland, 1921, preliminary report, v; Royle, Flowers of the Forest, 35. 53 54

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122 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 for Scots deaths as a proportion of those mobilised. This may reflect casualties in Scots regiments, which included many nonScots, 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.59 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 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 1917.60 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.61 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 this to the forefront of Scottish life. 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 Ferguson, Pity of War, 298–9, suggests 26.4 per cent but provides no clue as to a source; Wood, Scottish Soldier, 88; see also Winter, Great War, 75. 60 Winter, Great War, 253–4; Sixty-fourth report of the Registrar General for Scotland, 1918, xv. 61 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. 59

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‘o w e r t h e h i l l’ 123 even compared the sacrifice of the war dead to that of Christ.62 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 urban sites – workplaces, educational institutions, places of worship. Although the end of the Great War saw a greater effort than previous conflicts, there was a tradition to build on from the nineteenth century and the Boer War. 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, however, were seen as volunteers from all corners of society, especially in Scotland where they outnumbered conscripts. 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.63 Sir Robert Lorimer’s Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle opened in July 1927.64 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 this national symbol of Scotland’s sacrifice was a committee headed by the duke of Atholl which began work at the end of 1917. By 1922 there was enough money for the project to commence, a single donation of £50,000 having been supplemented by a host of smaller donations from around and beyond Scotland.65 The realisation of this project was far from straightforward, however; the committee had been attacked by Lord Rosebery who objected to the use of Edinburgh Castle – and the alteration of its skyline – for this purpose. Others felt that local projects – of which a multitude were under way – were more appropriate. The large expenditure at a time of economic difficulty was deprecated. A final group resented the fact that Scottish artists and craftsmen were not given a sufficient role.66 The SNWM was devoid of triumphalism; it was a shrine to the dead and an attempt to express a sense of indebtedness, MacLeod, ‘ “Greater love hath no man than this” ’, 70–89. Spiers, Late Victorian Army, 132–3; Bushaway, ‘Name upon name’, 137, 139–40 makes the general point; Winter, Sites of Memory, 82. 64 Lorimer (1864–1929), ODNB; McFarland, ‘Introduction’, 1; Royle, Flowers of the Forest, 288–91; Weaver, Scottish National War Memorial. 65 See TNA: PRO, CAB24/96/149–50 and CAB24/139/277. 66 Scotsman, 18 Jan. 1919, 6; 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; TNA: PRO, CAB24/161/349, Scottish National War Memorial, 24–5 Jul. 1923. 62 63

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124 impa l e d upo n a this t l e rather than an aggressive proclamation of victory.67 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’.68 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.

67 68

Heffernan, ‘Forever England’, 312; Winter, Sites of Memory, 95, 98. Scotsman, 14 Jul. 1927, 8.

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ch apter 6

Poverty without Progress? Scottish Society in the Inter-war Period demography

T

he 1920s were the first decade since the availability of proper data to show a decline in population. 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; in addition many Scots went to the United States and, overall, it was primarily an outflow of skilled workers, 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, attempting to beat US 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 returned home; 77,000 entered Scotland from abroad, compared to only 33,600 who left.3 The emigration of the 1920s has mostly been interpreted as a ‘haemorrhage’, but for policy makers there were advantages: 1 2 3

Richards, Britannia’s Children, 236; Harper, Emigration from Scotland, 6–7. Evans, ‘The emigration of skilled male workers’, 255–80. Harper, Emigration from Scotland, 7.

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126 impa l e d upo n a this t l e relieving pressure in urban society, moving people to healthier environments, peopling the Empire. Socialist and nationalist opinion deprecated emigration as defeatist, hostile to Scottish development and evidence of the deleterious results of London government. The Presbyterian Churches, worried about the loss of Scottish virility, contrasted it with immigration from Ireland: a figment of the racist imaginations of leading clergymen.4 A number of factors lie behind 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.5 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 the expense of the process of emigration; the likelihood of gaining higher wages in one among a choice of destinations; and preexisting links to particular destinations. Adding these variables to the equation explains why emigration dried up in the 1930s.6 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. The movement in the 1920s 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 was part of that tradition.7 Infant mortality rates (IMR) were another depressing Scottish demographic feature. The IMR measured the number of children per 1,000 live births who died before their first birthday. Contemporaries were aware that this was uniquely sensitive to social conditions, especially 4 5 6 7

Harper, Emigration from Scotland, 199–210. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 451. Marr, ‘United Kingdom’s international migration in the inter-war period’, 571–9. Murdoch, British Emigration; Harper, Adventurers and Exiles.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 127 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 and in 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 Netherlands (thirty-nine) and New Zealand (thirty-two). 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.8 Why was this distinct pattern evident in Scotland? Infectious disease had halved as a cause of infant mortality over the period since 1840; immaturity, diarrhoea, dysentry and respiratory disease were more significant, as was the nutrition of mother and child. Overcrowding, poor nutrition, unemployment and low income were indicators of poverty, to which IMRs were especially sensitive.9 The new army of child health professionals of the early twentieth century encouraged breast feeding and pestered working-class mothers with frequent home visits and condescending advice. This was palliative in the absence of a serious assault on housing conditions and other problems, and it implied that the childcare techniques of poverty-stricken mothers were a factor in high IMRs.10 Further, the Great War represented a distinct improvement in Scottish and British IMRs, despite the fact that overcrowding was scarcely diminished. 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 8 Department of Health for Scotland, Infant Mortality in Scotland, 8–18; Cage, ‘Infant mortality rates and housing’, 81. 9 Department of Health for Scotland, Infant Mortality in Scotland, 28–33. 10 Searle, A New England?, 378–81.

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128 impa l e d upo n a this t l e force.11 The most important reason for the wartime improvement was better nutrition for women and young babies.12 This evidence helped to confirm the views of progressive doctors, such as W. L. Mackenzie and 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. 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.13 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.14

ho u s i n g From the end of the Great War to the late 1970s the public sector overtook the private landlord in housing provision with the foundations for this 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.15 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 Royal Commission on housing which reported in 1917 argued, almost certainly conservatively, that to reach a satisfactory position 236,000 houses would have to be built immediately. This Commission recommended the primacy of state action: private enterprise was the problem, not the solution.16 Glasgow, Kemmer, ‘Investigating infant mortality’, 14–17. 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. 13 Lee, ‘Regional inequalities in infant mortality in Britain’, 63–4. 14 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 418. 15 Rodger, Scottish Housing, appendix A, 236–7. 16 PP 1917–18 XIV, Housing of the industrial population of Scotland. 11

12

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 129 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 6,000 houses, but by the time the housing programme fell victim to cuts in public expenditure in 1921 only 700 had been commenced.17 This was not the land fit for heroes which had been promised. Were the reforms of the inter-war years a success? The answer must be, depressingly, that not enough was done. New houses were beyond working-class pockets and were built in estates which descended into 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, whereas 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.18 Clearly, the consequences of rapid industrialisation, feudal tenure, low wages and high cost of living meant that James Burn Russell’s Life in One Room remained relevant.19 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 through the exploitation of steel and concrete, the results were uninspiring. Some problems resulted from the attempt by the egregious Lord Weir to undermine the building unions through the use of non-union labour to assemble 2,000 steel houses, but this did not make a significant contribution to a large-scale renewal of Scottish housing.20 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’ was lacking in Scotland.21 Most Scottish local authorities, including Glasgow, were controlled by antisocialist coalitions for whom working-class housing was not the priority. Edinburgh was distinctive in that over two-thirds of new houses were TNA: PRO, CAB24/126/380, Dundee and the housing situation, 20 Jul. 1921; Morgan, ‘ “£8 cottages for Glasgow citizens” ’, 125. 18 PP 1943–4 IV, Report on the distribution of new houses in Scotland, 11. 19 See Chapter 1, p. 22. 20 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. 21 John E. Highton, quoted in Morgan, ‘ “£8 cottages for Glasgow citizens” ’, 143. 17

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130 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 a thousand 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.22 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 new ones arose. 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 2,000 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 statute in this burst of legislation, however, was Labour’s 1924 Housing Act. Its architect was John Wheatley, who as a Glasgow City Councillor before the Great War had recognised the importance of the housing question. 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.23 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: those who endured the worst housing conditions could not afford the new houses, although they may have been able to inhabit houses vacated by those who could.24 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 rehoused. 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 1933, a substantial number of houses were built under Wheatley’s provisions. Across the 22 PP 1943–4 IV, Report on the distribution of new houses in Scotland, 42–3; O’Carroll, ‘Tenements to bungalows’, 221–41. 23 Wood, Wheatley, 131–45; Morgan, ‘Problem of the epoch?’, 231–2. 24 McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside, 231; Cooper, ‘John Wheatley’, 220–1.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 131 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.25 From 1938 central government provided houses through Walter Elliot’s Scottish Special Housing Association. This created 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 house-building.26 One indication that the surface had barely been scratched was the view of a government committee in 1944 which suggested that the total housing need was around 500,000.27

u ne m p l o yme n t , p o v e r t y a nd h u n g er Decay was a frequent theme of commentators who wrote about Scotland during the depression. Edwin Muir noted that ‘. . . unemployment makes up such a large part of the present life of Scotland there can be no ignoring it’.28 It also figures in the polemics of nationalists like Alexander MacEwen, 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’ and the ‘complacency’ of the wider community.29 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, he 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 Rodger, Scottish Housing, appendix B, 238–45. Rodger and Al-Quaddo, ‘Scottish Special Housing Association’, 186–8. 27 PP 1943–4 IV, Report on the distribution of new houses in Scotland, 12. 28 Muir, Scottish Journey, 134; Smout, Century, 115. 29 MacEwen, The Thistle and the Rose, 46–7; Findlay, Scotland at the Crossroads, 10–12; Bowie, The Future of Scotland, 133. 25 26

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132 impa l e d upo n a this t l e mile 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.30 Brown’s reference to the ‘dole’ and the ‘Labour Exchange’ suggests that this was a problem for 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 provide 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.31 The National Insurance system was extended in 1927 – although claimants had to be ‘genuinely seeking work’ – and an Act in 1934 extended National Insurance and catered for the uninsured through an Unemployment Assistance Board.32 This was part of a growing recognition that unemployment was a 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 postwar period, but represented progress from the 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 participation in the hunger march contradicts 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 and ILP activists.33 There were also a series of Scottish marches, five to Edinburgh 30 31 32 33

MacDougall, Voices from the Hunger Marches, ii, 367. Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, 107–41. Dewey, War and Progress, 261–4. McShane, No Mean Fighter, 172, 188.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 133

Figure 6.1 Hunger marchers from the Vale of Leven, Dunbartonshire, c. 1935. © National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

and one to Glasgow.34 The 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.35 There was also the suspicion of ‘respectable society’ towards these gatherings; a Scottish Office civil servant remarked that the arrival in Edinburgh of the 1933 marchers was not ‘edifying’.36 Despite 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 disorder. This reflects the power of the political mainstream in Scotland in these years; neither the Communist party (not predisposed to random disorder in any case) nor the British Union of Fascists gained a foothold among the Scottish working class. The evolving welfare structure in an era of falling prices also played a part in the preservation of stability. Unemployed workers 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. 35 McShane and Smith, No Mean Fighter, 169; Knox, Industrial Nation, 227–8. 36 J. L. Jack, quoted by Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, 137. 34

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134 impa l e d upo n a this t l e evolved personal strategies to cope with the difficulties they faced. These included 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.37 The first half of the 1920s were, however, characterised by a series of strikes, which posed problems for the Labour movement and compounded the pressure on the poor law. The Scottish dimension of these events is limited, however, since the proportion of the Scottish workforce which was unionised was lower than that for Britain as a whole, with the industrialised west of Scotland showing a greater density than the east and north-east. This was not a surprising pattern as over 70 per cent of coal-miners and over 50 per cent of metal workers were unionised, compared to less than 30 per cent of textile workers.38 The main battlefield in post-war industrial relations were the coalfields. There were two major events: a 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, called by the TUC in solidarity with the miners.39 Both ended in painful defeat for the miners and encouraged a sense of betrayal as they seemed to be deserted by their comrades. Not until the 1970s would miners take national industrial action again. 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.40 This stance was a necessary part of the shift in Labour’s approach from class solidarity to a bureaucratic outlook. 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.41 The strikes also placed additional pressure on the social welfare system. There was no prospect of relieving strikers, 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’ and ultimately payments were made.42 This was only one of a series of debates about MacDougall, Voices from the Hunger Marches, ii, 239–40, 248, 277. Knox, Industrial Nation, 220–1; Bell, ‘Trade unions’, 280–96. 39 Reid, United We Stand, 312–18. 40 Knox, Industrial Nation, 224–6. 41 Skelley, General Strike, 111–39, 140–59, 315–29; Morris, General Strike, 394–410; Kibblewhite and Rigby, Aberdeen in the General Strike, 6–8, 14, 23–4. 42 Quoted in Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, 130. 37 38

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 135 social policy which were stimulated by the economic crises of the interwar 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 longterm unemployed.43 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 ‘ablebodied’. 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 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. Prior to the Second World War there was no safety net for the unemployed, although there was a recognition that they were distinct from those reduced to destitution by drunkenness or dissolution. Strategies were devised within the limitations of the poor law to relieve these groups separately lest the respectable unemployed be contaminated by ‘close association . . . with men of bad character’.44 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.

t he m ar gi n a l i sa t i o n o f p r esb y t er ia n ism In contrast to earlier and later periods Scottish Presbyterians took a step back from these debates. Although the number of Scottish churchgoers did not increase rapidly between the wars, neither did it decline precipitously, as it would from the late 1950s. Further, Church–state relations remained an important political issue in the 1920s, maintaining the prominence of leading clergymen as they sought 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 43

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. 44 Annual Report of the Department of Health for Scotland, 1929 quoted in Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, 135.

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136 impa l e d upo n a this t l e of the principles of 1843 and declined to participate in the union. They did not leave the matter there. 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 bête noire of the 1843 Free Church. 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.45 The ultimate ambition of leading figures in the new UFC and the Church of Scotland, however, was a complete Presbyterian reunion, although the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church were contemptuous of the compromises involved.46 Some in the United Free Church were worried that the spiritual independence of their Church would be sacrificed. Others in the Church of Scotland, protective of the establishment principle, did not wish to slide into voluntaryism. 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.47 Prior to Union Church–state relations had to be clarified. The culmination of a lengthy debate came in 1921 with a recognition of the spiritual independence of the Church of Scotland.48 The process was complicated by the vexed question of the endowments of the Church of Scotland. 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 (a tax on agricultural produce used to pay ministers) to yield 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 the ministry. This was confirmed in a 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.49 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 45

TNA: PRO, CAB37/73/166, Rainy to Andrew Graham Murray (Secretary for Scotland), 18 Nov. 1904. 46 Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and reunion’, 229–33. 47 Bogle, ‘James Barr’, 189–207; Murray, Rebuilding the Kirk, 45–6, 249–54. 48 Murray, Rebuilding the Kirk, 63–114. 49 Murray, Rebuilding the Kirk, 115–42.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 137 powerful agency for national spiritual renewal. If the creation of a new infrastructure had been the sole test of the union project then the matter could rest there, but recent historians have been pessimistic.50 That the reunited Church was more right-wing than the pre-war Church of Scotland and UFC seems beyond doubt. During the 1920s 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 UFC, that the defeat of the general strike was a ‘victory for God’ was extreme.51 The personnel of the Church in the inter-war years, both in pulpit and pew, was dominated by the middle classes, remote from the lives of urban workers and mining communities, the latter viewed with suspicion as vice-ridden dens 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 in 1926. This contrasted with the coolness of that afforded to a deputation of miners, despite the fact that they included James Brown, an 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 1922.52 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 ecclesiastical historians. Right-wing nationalists, such as Andrew Dewar Gibb, also argued that unemployment and crime were caused by a racially inferior Irish community, a pollutant in Scottish society.53 Yet another strand of antiIrish thinking could be found in urban demagoguery. 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. 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.54 What made the Church Brown, ‘Social vision of Scottish presbyterianism’, 78. Brown, ‘ “A victory for God”’, 606. 52 William Main quoted in Brown, ‘Social vision of Scottish presbyterianism’, 92. 53 Finlay, ‘Nationalism, race, religion’, 46–67. 54 Rosie, Sectarian Myth, 126–43; Wheeler, ‘No popery’, 203–89; Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 194–207; Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided. 50 51

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138 impa l e d upo n a this t l e campaigns different was that they were not the splenetic rantings of minor populists, but the considered opinions of national leaders. They presented themselves as rescuers of Scotland from dissipation and racial contamination, although emigration, depression and unemployment lay in the background. There was little support in the political community and sustained hostility from the national newspapers.55 This episode reveals 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’.56 Although the Church of Scotland continued to recruit well in the inter-war years, the new national Church was at odds with Scottish political culture. 57 The racist thought embarrassed the Church in the later 1930s as these views were associated with Fascism. 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 for by more progressive ministers such as George Macleod, then a minister in Govan.58 After 1929 Presbyterianism squandered the political capital and goodwill acquired during the union process.59

la nd , l a n d o w n e r s a n d t h e l a n dsc a p e Away from the difficulties and challenges of urban society there were significant changes taking place in rural Scotland. The farming economy was assailed by the depressions of the early 1920s and changes in government policy. 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 Brown, ‘ “Outside the covenant” ’, 19–45. HLRO, ABL MSS, 109/1/26a, George Younger to ABL, 21 Oct. 1922; see also NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/17/16, Younger to John Gilmour, 20 Oct. 1922. 57 Brown, ‘Religion and secularisation’, 48–55. 58 Brown, ‘Campaign for the Christian commonwealth’, 212–16. 59 See the positive views of the Secretary for Scotland in TNA: PRO, CAB24/115/294 prior to the 1921 bill. 55 56

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 139 earl of Erroll – as over 20 per cent of Scottish land changed hands.60 The fiscal demands of the pre-war Liberal government paled into insignificance compared to the 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 was also active: the Board (later Department) of Agriculture had the power under legislation of 1919 to purchase estates and rent the land to tenants.61 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.62 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.63 Additional complications resulted from the plans of Lord Leverhulme to turn Lewis into a centre of industrialised fishing in which crofting would have no place.64 Overall, land settlement was backward-looking; it reeked of nineteenth-century and Edwardian concerns rather than contemporary issues, 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.65 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 land ownership 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. Established Churches in Ireland and Wales had been disestablished and Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 107–10; Hutchison, ‘Nobility and politics in Scotland’, 138. 61 Leneman, Fit for Heroes?, 20–52. 62 Hunter, Crofting Community, 206; Cameron, Land for the People?, 166–90. 63 Robertson, ‘Governing the highlands’, 109–24; Harper, Emigration from Scotland, 71–112. 64 Nicolson, Lord of the Isles. 65 SEC, Highlands and islands; Hunter, Claim of Crofting, 23–47; Birnie, ‘ “New deal or raw deal?” ’, 15–29. 60

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140 impa l e d upo n a this t l e the Church of Scotland was reformed in the 1920s. 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 land ownership 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, Lochiel – could offload extensive 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.66 The reinvention of land ownership as the protector of the rural environment and landscape was significant. This was an extension of traditional forms of control over the countryside, 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 66

The 8th duke of Argyll was an exception; see Mulhern, ‘The intellectual duke’.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 141 gawp at them.67 There was significant overlap in the leadership of these organisations through landowners such as Sir John Stirling Maxwell, Colquhoun of Luss and the earl of Crawford and Balcarres.68 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 hydroelectric power required to develop the aluminium and carbide industries in the highlands in the 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 interwar 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 the wider use of the countryside for leisure pursuits. This was not merely a middle-class pursuit. The ILP 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 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.69 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 lobbies along with angling and game interests, not the natural allies of the likes of David Kirkwood who also spoke out against it.70 Access to 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 67 68 69 70

Smout, Nature Contested, 156. Lorimer, ‘ “Your wee bit hill and glen” ’, 74–90. Knox, Industrial Nation, 198; Weir, Weir’s World, 17, 21. Luckin, Questions of Power, 118–37.

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142 impa l e d upo n a this t l e potentially profitable. This was a cause taken up by radical Liberalism in the Victorian period, the leading advocate of freedom to roam being James Bryce, MP for Aberdeen South, later Ambassador to the United States. One of his principal arguments was that landed property carried with it a responsibility to act in the interest of the community as a whole. Exclusion was taken to be an abdication of that responsibility and an indication that ‘Scotch proprietors . . . exceed all bounds in their domineering and grasping action’.71 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 1936.72 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 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 magnates like Beardmore and the Lithgows sought the trappings of landed wealth, as had Baird of Gartsherrie and Sir James Matheson in the nineteenth century.73

le i s ur e a n d r e c r e a t i on Away from elitist sporting activities the general trend was from widespread participation in distinctive sporting activities towards spectating at commercialised venues. For the more active 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 – Queen’s Park (1867) – retained its amateur ethos, the game OBL, James Bryce MSS, 169, fos. 177–8, William Fisher to Bryce, 11 Mar. 1884; Smout, Nature Contested, 155. 72 TNA: PRO, J. R. MacDonald MSS, PRO30/69/1525. 73 DSSB, i, 92–3, 222, 228. 71

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 143 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 the unpleasant tribal rivalry between Scotland’s biggest football clubs and their supporters, although like many strong rivals there was also mutual dependence, in this case reflected in the term the ‘Old Firm’. Football clubs sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 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 twenty clubs in its first division by 1914 and had formed a second division 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’.74 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, conveyed the hordes to and from the ground. Ibrox was particularly well connected, a source of angst for Celtic whose ground was less accessible. These new forms of transport steadily took over from the horse-drawn ‘brakes’ (long wagonettes) 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.75 Finally, football was cheap entertainment: admission cost between 3d and 6d in this period, well within the pocket of the workingclass supporter.76 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, 74 75 76

Holt, Sport and the British, 256. Murray, Old Firm, 41–5; Moorhouse, ‘Professional football’, 298–9. Vamplew, ‘Economics of a sports industry’, 552.

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144 impa l e d upo n a this t l e swearing, drinking and large unregulated gatherings associated with spectating.77 Across the social and geographical divide similar trends were evident in the case of rugby with the formation of the Scottish Football Union in 1873 (renamed the Scottish Rugby Union in 1924). 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, farmer 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 landed influence.78 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 in which XIs and XVs represented 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 players who faced them. 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 77 78

Fraser, ‘Developments in leisure’, 255–6. MacLennan, Shinty, 69–70.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 145 arenas for female physical activity in that they were mostly devoid 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.79 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 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 the panic 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.80 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.81 A more 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. 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. The myth that these gangs fought amongst themselves and presented no threat to public safety is countered by recognition of their involvement in theft, racketeering, gambling and intimidation.82 Lowerson, ‘Golf and the making of myths’, 75–90. Smout, ‘Patterns of culture’, 270. 81 Brown, ‘Popular culture’, 220–3. 82 Davies, ‘Street gangs’, 251–67, quote at 252; Davies, ‘Glasgow’s “reign of terror” ’, 405–27. 79 80

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146 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 distinctively Scottish example of this trend. Smith and other BB leaders created a youth organisation with Protestant, muscular and militaristic overtones with the objective 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 and the education system aimed to inculcate 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 the working class, 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.’83

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 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 83

Quoted in Brown, ‘Popular culture’, 224.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 147 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.84 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.85 These authorities had a short shelf life, however: they were abolished in 1929 and their function assumed 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?’86 The 1918 Act seemed clear that the former was the ambition of the state, but its agent in administering Scottish education, the SED, had different ideas. The Act was clear that the school-leaving age should be raised to fifteen.87 The achievement 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. 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 Rosie, Sectarian Myth, 118–20; Paterson, Scottish Education, 58–9; McPherson, ‘Schooling’, 87–8. 85 McCaffrey, ‘Irish issues’, 126–31. 86 McPherson, ‘Schooling’, 86. 87 Paterson, Scottish Education, 61. 84

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148 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 fourteen were the same group who were unfit for secondary education confused social and academic selection. The Circular was enormously unpopular among the education authorities, as some did not have the facilities to separate 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.88 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 52 per cent, were in secondary education; a much smaller proportion, less than 15 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 3 per cent went on to this level.89 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. Neither the secondary nor the higher-education sector were free from the impact of demographic changes and social and economic problems. Demographic problems arose from the changes in the birth rate 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 of it, 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 an able working-class fourteen year old. 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 88 89

Stocks, ‘The people versus the department’, 48–60. Paterson, Scottish Education, 67, 81.

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po v e r t y w i t h o u t p r o g r e s s ? 149 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.90 The idea of the ‘inter-war period’ is a construction from a later period. Those living through the traumas of the 1920s and 1930s did not appreciate that 1939 would provide such an important punctuation mark, although from around 1936 it was fairly clear that another war was on its way. If the experience of this period transformed the way in which the Great War was remembered and the theme of a vain sacrifice emerged, then it was strengthened by the onset of a new global conflict which seemed to provide a stark conflict between good and evil. By contrast the enemy in the Great War became a more equivocal figure and the sense deepened of the war as a pointless waste of young life.91 This may not have been the way it seemed in 1914 but the impression increasingly took hold in later periods, not least because of the political and economic failures of the 1920s and 1930s. The inter-war period was important in another way, however. Although it is possible to construct an argument which plays down the depth of the depression, and there is much evidence to support this point of view, the social problems of the 1920s and 1930s cast a long shadow. Many politicians on either side of the political debates of the post-war period were scarred, and possibly scared, by the spectre of unemployment. Without accepting uncritically the notion that there was a cosy consensus in post-war politics, a generation of politicians and policy makers who could remember the pessimism of the inter-war period were profoundly affected by it.

90 91

Stocks, ‘Social class and the secondary school’, 26–39. Gregory, The Last Great War, 1–8.

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ch apt e r 7

‘Miracles and Politics Don’t Mix’: Political Change in the Inter-war Period

A

lthough the features of the political landscape of the inter-war period are fairly clear – 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. These vicissitudes lay behind the fluctuations of the Labour and Liberal votes in the interwar 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 and the death of John Wheatley, to the monochrome corporatism of the 1930s.2 The major beneficiaries of these changes were the Unionists. Although the false dawn of 1900 was followed by defeats in 1906 and 1910, the inter-war period saw the Unionists put down deeper roots. In the early post-war period a sense of the fragility of the social order was part of the mindset of politicians. The forty-hours strike, which resulted in a riot in George Square in Glasgow, in January 1919, and 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 remaking of Scottish Labour’, 174–93. 2 Knox, Industrial Nation, 227, 244–6; Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 46–9; but see Wood, ‘The ILP and the Scottish national question’, 63–74. 1

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 151 Table 7.1 General elections, 1918–29 Election

1918 1922 1923 1924 1929

Cons

Sco UK Sco UK Sco UK Sco UK Sco UK

CL/NL

Lib

Lab

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

28 332 13 344 14 258 36 412 20 260

32.8 38.5 25.1 38.5 31.6 38.0 40.8 46.8 35.9 38.1

25 127 12 53

19.1 12.6 17.7 9.9

4 36 15 62 22 158 8 40 13 59

15.0 13.0 21.5 18.9 28.4 29.7 16.5 17.8 18.1 23.6

7 57 29 142 34 191 26 151 36 287

22.9 20.8 32.3 29.7 35.9 30.7 41.1 33.3 42.3 37.1

Table 7.2 The National Government and the general elections of 1931 and 1935 1931 UK

National Government Conservative National Liberal National Labour Labour Liberal ILP Communist

1935 Sco

UK

Sco

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

518 470 35 13 52 32

60.2 55.0 3.7 1.5 30.8 6.5

57 48 8 1 7 7

55.3 49.5 4.8 1.0 32.6 8.6

0

0.3

0

1.4

418 387 33 8 154 21 4 1

53.0 47.8 3.7 1.5 38.0 6.7 0.7 0.1

43 35 7 1 20 0 4 1

49.6 42.0 6.7 0.9 36.8 6.7 5.0 0.6

the less well-known race riot on the Glasgow waterfront in the same year seemed especially threatening.3 Also troubling were hebridean land raids by vocal ex-servicemen. 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’, surely shorthand for ‘troublemakers’.4 More tangibly, Sinn Fein drilling in the west of Scotland was a worry to coalition politicians.5 The fear was that a HLRO, 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; Jenkinson, ‘Black sailors on Red Clydeside’, 29–60. 4 NAS, AF67/152, John MacDonald to Skene, Edwards and Garson, 27 Jan. 1921; Cameron, Land for the People?, 166–90. 5 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/14/6, Gilmour to Munro, 18 Nov. 1920. 3

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152 impa l e d upo n a this t l e generation of men, brutalised by the war and with military training and familiarity with firearms, could threaten social stability. Nevertheless, these fears were not borne out and a pervasive image of Britain as a peaceable nation characterised the inter-war period.6 In Scotland the politics of disorder never took hold: Communists did not embrace violence and populist bigots 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.7 It is possible that those who might have been attracted by Fascism found Protestant Action and the Scottish Protestant League more attractive. These movements, however, were also marginal, despite the strong performance of the SPL 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’.8 Although racism was not entirely absent 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, however; as the Second World War would show, different circumstances could produce hostility towards ethnic groups, especially Italians. Lawrence, ‘Forging a peaceable kingdom’, 557–89. Milligan, ‘British Union of Fascists’ policy’, 1–17; Maitles, ‘Fascism in the 1930s’, 7–22; Maitles, ‘Blackshirts across the border’, 92–100. 8 The Vanguard, 8 Jan. 1936, 7; 22 Jan. 1936, 3; 29 Jan. 1936, 2, 5. 6 7

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 153 The expansion of the Scottish electorate from 760,000 in 1910 to 2.2 million in 1918 gave politics a greater claim to the description ‘democratic’. Urban industrial areas, where the expansion was of the order of 250 per cent, saw the greatest increases. Full male enfranchisement in 1918 may have had a disproportionate effect on Scotland since the level of enfranchisement prior to 1918 had been lower but its impact was less evident in the 1918 election than in later contests because of the low turnout.9 The enfranchisement of some women (around 80 per cent) over the age of thirty added a new factor to elections. Property qualifications were retained for this class of voters and their definition in relation to their husbands and discrimination against unmarried women were regressive features which probably favoured the established parties rather than Labour. These problems were dealt with in 1929 when full female enfranchisement was granted.10 As well as the extension of the franchise in 1918 and 1929 there was significant redistribution. In geographical terms the beneficiary was Glasgow – which acquired a further eight seats – and the central lowlands. These changes disadvantaged the Liberal party, since almost all of the thirteen seats which were abolished had a Liberal history, and favoured Labour.11

t he e c l i p s e o f l i b e r a l i s m The dominance of Liberalism in Scotland before 1914 was not merely statistical. They were the ‘significant other’ against whom parties defined themselves and 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 continued, 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 survived the cull at the general election of 1918, whereas 9 10 11

Hutchison, A Political History, 285. Dyer, Capable Citizens, 113–17. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 30; Dyer, Capable Citizens, 104–12, 118–21.

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154 impa l e d upo n a this t l e only three of the twenty-eight coalition Liberals were defeated.12 The travails of independent Liberalism were exemplified by the fate of their leader, Herbert Asquith, who was defeated in East Fife in 1918 and then in Paisley in 1924.13 That he could not hold on to East Fife was worrying because the rural fringes of Scotland were the last bastions of his party. That they could not retain Paisley was symptomatic of their failure to break into 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, reunified Liberals to rally round free trade. Even this was an indication that times had changed: from 1903 to 1906 this propelled the party to their greatest victory, whereas in 1923 it could only induce the corpse to twitch. 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.14 The Liberals attempted 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 ‘Yellow Book’ on unemployment. The former may have been 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’.15 After 1929 the position for the Liberals was even worse: a period of ‘disaster and ultimate despair’ according to one account.16 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, and further splintering occurred in 1932.17 Brown, ‘The Labour party and political change in Scotland’, 95–6. Ball, ‘Asquith’s decline’, 44–61; Kelley, ‘Asquith at Paisley’, 133–59; Macdonald, Radical Thread, 254–66. 14 HLRO, Lloyd George MSS, F/1/7/56, Robert Munro to Lloyd George, 25 Mar. 1922. 15 Dawson, ‘The Liberal land policy, 1924–1929’, 272–90. 16 Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition, 83. 17 De Groot, Liberal Crusader, 75–103 provides a clear narrative. 12 13

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 155 Not surprisingly this was unpopular with voters: a massacre occurred in 1935, 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.’18 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 startling: it was not that the policy was unpopular, but that the electorate did not realise its potential. Herein lies another 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 political spectrum and including the major newspapers, no such coalition emerged to defend it in the 1930s.19 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 their crops and livestock, 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.

l a b o u r b r e a kt h r o ugh In the years before 1914 Labour performed poorly in Scotland, and the party seemed to have much in common with radical Liberalism. This picture was altered in the inter-war years. First, Labour made a breakthrough at the general election of 1922, gaining almost a third of Churchill College, Cambridge, Thurso MSS, 71/2/284–90, Sinclair to James Scott, 19 Nov. 1935. 19 Baines, ‘The survival of the British Liberal party’, 21. 18

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156 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 over 100 per cent and remained there until 1951.20 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.21 The dominant image of Labour from the inter-war period comes from the ‘Red Clydesiders’ elected in 1922. Aside from John Wheatley’s distinguished participation as Minister of Health in the Labour government of 1924, the achievements of this group were minimal. 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. The Red Clydesiders were certainly not imbued with anti-clericalism.22 According to one who knew them well they did not possess ‘homogeneity of outlook and action . . .’.23 Further, on 20 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 124th Psalm, a covenanting favourite:24 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: Hutchison, Scottish Politics, Appendix II, 157. Wood, ‘Hope deferred’, 45; Macintyre, Little Moscows, 52, 54. 22 Wood, ‘Hope deferred’, 45; Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice, 80; Bogle, ‘James Barr’, 189–207; Walker and Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 98. 23 Paton, Left Turn!, 110. 24 Knox, ‘ “Ours is not an ordinary Parliamentary movement” ’, 154; Knox, ‘Red Clydesiders’, 92–5. 20 21

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 157 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.25 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’.26 What were the reasons for the distinctive Labour performance in Scotland in the inter-war period? 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.27 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.28 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. These problems afflicted all the parties, Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice, 77; see also Paton, Left Turn!, 143–5. Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 36. 27 Tanner, ‘Class voting and radical politics’, 114–16; Tanner, Political Change, esp. 1–16; McKibben, Evolution of the Labour Party. 28 Especially by McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside, 154–201. 25 26

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158 impa l e d upo n a this t l e but Labour, concentrating its appeal in urban areas where the difficulties were greatest, was the most seriously affected.29 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 national appeal.30 Labour were not able to make such an appeal immediately. By the general elections of 1929 and 1935, however, they had candidates in most seats, were victorious in the Western Isles in 1935 and produced strong, if rarely victorious, performances in by-elections. Nevertheless, the party remained dependent on its support in the industrial areas of the west and found it particularly hard to break into rural and highland areas.31 One of Labour’s problems was the tendency of the other parties to form pacts to resist its advance, especially at local elections, but also resorted to on occasion in Parliamentary elections. In 1924 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 increased compared to 1922 or 1923. 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 the 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.32 The politics of housing played a more important part in Labour’s breakthrough, a point recognised even by hostile contemporaries.33 The pre-war activities of John Wheatley and the wartime rent strikes HLRO, 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), Robert Stewart to J. C. C. Davidson, 27 Dec. 1918. 30 Dawson, ‘Money and the real impact of the fourth reform act’, 375–81. 31 Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 42, 44. 32 Smyth, ‘Resisting Labour’, 375–401; Miller, ‘Politics in the Scottish city’, 199. 33 ‘Socialism on the Clyde’, The Times, 28 Dec. 1922, 9–10. 29

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 159 raised the profile of Labour’s distinctive message.34 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 Labour’s advantage.35 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 this issue would help Labour in the west of Scotland; this would not have been possible without a strong tradition of propaganda and activism.36 Irish politics were also relevant to Labour’s improved performance in the 1920s. The period between 1918 and 1922 saw the ‘resolution’ of the Irish question and a rapprochement between Irish and labour organisations in urban Scotland. 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.37 Irish suspicion was allayed by the ILP’s diminished emphasis on the temperance question and support in the new Education Authorities for state-supported denominational education for Roman Catholics from 1918.38 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.39 The perception of the Irish as fodder for a crude machine politics was even evident among Labour MPs such as Emanuel Shinwell.40 The evidence does not support this notion. 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 seats, although their impact on local politics may have been greater.41 Dundonian politics were more complex; the constituency was an oddity in that a single election produced 34

Wheatley, Eight-Pound Cottages. Moorhouse et al., ‘Rent strikes’, 136. 36 HLRO, Andrew Bonar Law MSS, 110/1/2, P. J. Blair to Malcolm Fraser, 8 Nov. 1922. 37 Walker, ‘Dundee’s disenchantment with Churchill’, 99. 38 McKinlay, ‘ “Doubtful wisdom and uncertain promise” ’, 131–2. 39 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. 40 Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice, 31. 41 Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, 148; McCaffrey, ‘Irish issues’, 133, 137. 35

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160 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.42 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.43 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. Thus while the Irish community were strong supporters of the Labour movement they were not sufficient to facilitate a breakthrough. Labour had to build a wider coalition of voters, and they were successful in so doing. 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. The ILP provided the bulk of the activists and its newspaper, Forward, was the intellectual meeting ground for a host of radical causes.44 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 positions on unemployment or industrial relations. Throughout the 1920s the ILP presented itself as the radical conscience of the Labour movement. According to a leading official the ILP ‘evoked much of the fervour of a religious order.’45 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.46 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 Walker, ‘The Scottish Prohibition Party’, 353–79; Walker, ‘Dundee’s disenchantment with Churchill’, 85–108. 43 Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish Labour movement’, 621–2; Gallagher, ‘Scottish Catholics and the British left’, 25–6. 44 ‘Socialism on the Clyde’, The Times, 28 Dec. 1922, 9–10. 45 Paton, Left Turn!, 84; see also Maxton, Roads to Socialism, 2–3, 5–6, 8; Maxton, Twenty Points for Socialism. 46 Howell, ‘Traditions, myths and legacies’, 204–32 and Howell, ‘Beyond the stereotypes’, 17–49. 42

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 161 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 destruction of vested interests. Others still, such as Thomas Johnston, saw its likely, but glorious, defeat as the prelude to a stronger position in the future.47 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 ‘eight-pound 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.48 This was a triumph of politics and legislation rather than a practical solution since the very quality standards built into the scheme made the houses too expensive for most working-class families. 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 group led by MacDonald, who advocated retrenchment to deal with the economic crisis, joining a coalition government which, despite MacDonald’s continued premiership, 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

47 48

Walker, Johnston, 64; Wood, Wheatley, 118–20. Morgan, ‘The problem of the epoch?’, 231–4.

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162 impa l e d upo n a this t l e role in the party resulted in its disaffiliation.49 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.50 The ruptures of 1931 and 1932 were not inevitable, although ILP programmes were to the left of the Labour party.51 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 two features of Labour politics in the 1930s: centralisation and the ideological isolation of the left meant that a new consensus emerged on the utility of economic planning as a response to the economic crisis.52 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 were different. Expectations had been ramped up in 1929 only to be dashed in 1931. 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. 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 Cohen, ‘The Independent Labour Party’, 200–21. NLS, Woodburn MSS, ‘Some recollections’, Acc. 7656/4/1/68–85. 51 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. 52 Knox and McKinlay, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour’, 175–81. 49 50

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 163 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.53 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.54 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.55 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. 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. A casualty of the new approach was Scottish home rule; indeed, Labour would remain quiet 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 to advance the cause. This caused 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.56 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.

u ni o ni s m The Unionists had probably the best claim to be a nationwide 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 Macintyre, Little Moscows, 184–7. Walker, Johnston, 125; Knox, Industrial Nation, 243–4. 55 The phrase is Knox and McKinlay’s, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour’, 187; Worley, Labour Inside the Gate, 155. 56 Macdonald, ‘Following the procession’, 47. 53 54

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164 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 ‘hegemony’ is repeated at a high political level with Conservative dominance of government in the inter-war period. 57 Unionist strength in Scotland, although impressive, was less than Conservative strength in England, a contrast with Labour support. The cultural alienation from Conservatism seen in Wales was not a feature of inter-war Unionism in Scotland and would not be so until the 1980s. 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.58 In Scotland voters were invited to join a coalition against the ‘socialists’, as the Unionists determinedly referred to Labour.59 This was evident during the coalitions in 1918, 1931 and 1935, and in arrangements between the Unionists and the National Liberals in 1922 and 1923.60 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 was another explanation for Unionist success: the party reached out to women and the young, the latter through the Junior Imperial League. This is not, however, a sufficient explanation for their increased representation in the inter-war period.61 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.62 More important was the unambiguously rightward shift of Presbyterian leadership in the 1920s. This is clear in attitudes to the first Labour government, the general strike of 1926 (the conclusion Jarvis, ‘Shaping of the Conservative electoral hegemony’, 131–52. Pugh, Tories and the People, 177, 184–8; Jarvis, ‘Conservatism and class politics’, 59–84. 59 Quoted in Jarvis, ‘Shaping of the Conservative electoral hegemony’, 140. 60 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, GD383/18/2, J. P. Croal (editor of the Scotsman) to Sir John Gilmour, 4 Jun. 1923. 61 Hutchison, Political History, 316–18; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 42–4. 62 HLRO, 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. 57 58

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 165 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.63 This point should not be taken too far, however. The campaign against the Irish in Scotland cut little ice with the Unionist party, which generally eschewed religious politics, or with Unionist governments. Sir John Gilmour, Scottish Secretary from 1924 to 1929, and a leading Orangeman, was unimpressed by the arguments presented by the Churches.64 Oddly, it can be argued that the diminution in importance of the Irish question in British politics, far from eroding the raison d’être of the party, favoured the Unionists. The removal of the large cohort of nationalists from the House of Commons from 1918 did so when other changes, such as mass enfranchisement, were 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.65 What these general explanations have in common is their scant regard to the ideas of the party. While the Labour party was reformulating 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 around corporatism. One example was the ‘Special Areas’ legislation of 1934 and 1937, which identified areas of high unemployment for industrial development. These policies were not 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 63 64 65

Brown, ‘ “A victory for God” ’, 596–617; Brown, ‘ “Outside the covenant” ’, 19–45. Walker and Officer, ‘Scottish Unionism and the Ulster question’, 20–2. Jarvis, ‘Mrs Maggs and Betty’, 129–52, esp. 140–2.

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166 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.66 Further evidence for this interventionism can be seen in agricultural policy. As well as protection, the government introduced price support in 1932 and extended it in 1937.67 If the Clydesiders were the awkward squad of the Labour left, then there was also a group of Scottish Unionists who provided a distinctive voice for their party.68 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. The progressive nature of Scottish Unionism can be exaggerated; nevertheless, the Scottish Unionist Party was not the least progressive element of Conservativism. At 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 allparty government.69 The group also included Noel Skelton (Perth and East Perthshire), Robert Boothby (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.70 Of this group Elliot achieved the greatest prominence, as Minister for Agriculture and Health as well as Secretary of State for Scotland in the 1930s. 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 Campbell, ‘Scottish office and the special areas’, 167–83. Anthony, Herds and Hinds, 42, 53; Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 196. 68 See Fry, Patronage and Principle, 181. 69 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, 150–5. 70 Ball, ‘Politics of appeasement’, 49–83. 66 67

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 167 provision of housing; and the establishment of the Hillington Industrial Estate, a limited attempt to reorientate the Scottish economy.71 Elliot’s book, Toryism in the Twentieth Century (1927), has received mixed reviews – ‘atavistic’ or ‘scarcely influential’.72 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 of industrial wealth’. Although his ministerial career occurred in unpropitious times, a genuine attempt to engage with this question can be discerned in his policies.73 As Secretary of State for Scotland in the late 1930s Elliot was strongly of the view that 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 dissatisfaction 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.74 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 wageearner 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 to the demands of the inter-war period.75 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 subsidy for house-building 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 retained a prominent role, not least through Elliot’s SSHA.76 Thus, 71

Overviews of his career are provided by Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom, 19–40 and Harvie, ‘Walter Elliot’, 122–31. 72 Fair and Hutcheson, ‘British Conservatism’, 557; Harvie, ‘Walter Elliot’, 126. 73 Elliot, Toryism, passim, quote from 1. 74 NAS, HH50/189, Walter Elliot, ‘The state of Scotland’, 18 Dec. 1937. 75 Skelton, Constructive Conservatism, esp. 24–31. 76 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.

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168 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Unionists should not be thought of as a reactionary force; they could not afford to be hostile to the interests of the working class or unwilling to grapple with the industrial problems of the inter-war period.

nat i o n a l i sm Perhaps the most obvious novelty of the inter-war years was the absence of the Irish question from Scottish politics. British politicians were convinced that the Irish problem had been solved, or at least that it was no longer their problem. 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 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 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 1927.77 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.78 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. 77 78

PD, 5th ser., 173, 789–874, 9 May 1924; 206, 865–78, 13 May 1927. Finlay, Independent and Free, 1–28.

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 169

Figure 7.1 Leading figures of the early Scottish nationalist movement, including the duke of Montrose, Compton MacKenzie, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Hugh MacDiarmid and John MacCormick. © Gordon Wright Photo Library. Licensor www. scran.ac.uk

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 its best result. 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 been described as a ‘pressuregroup strategy’ which made the nationalists’ ‘effect on Scottish politics more apparent’.79 Unfortunately, this strategy was as futile as electoral intervention: Scottish home rule was off the political agenda in the late 79

Finlay, ‘Pressure group or political party?’, 275.

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170 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. 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.80 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 pragmatism of John MacCormick, the young Glasgow solicitor who would become such an important figure in Scottish nationalism, but also with the right-wing views of people like Professor Andrew Dewar Gibb. A right-wing, even imperialist, nationalism was 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.81 MacCormick, while not an advocate of these views, took the NPS to the right in an attempt to secure a merger with the Scottish Party. Many cultural nationalists who took a more ‘fundamentalist’ approach – including Christopher Murray Grieve (who sometimes used the pseudonym Hugh MacDiarmid) – were shed along the way.82 None of this convinced the public that Scottish nationalism was a serious force. Despite the formation of a nationalist party the politics of unionism were too strong 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.

80 81 82

Finlay, Independent and Free, 67. Finlay, ‘Nationalism’, 46–67; Finlay, ‘ “For or against?” ’, 184–206. Finlay, Independent and Free, 71–161.

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a d m i ni s t r a t i v e d e v o l ut i o n Whilst the Unionists had no truck with Scottish home rule they were not anti-Scottish. 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 presided over an investigation into the machinery of Scottish government. He attempted to bring rational and modern principles to Scottish administration. This was 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 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 administration: 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 and Agriculture, for example. These were populated by a miscellaneous group often appointed by patronage. 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.83 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 the Scottish Secretary’s Cabinet colleagues that he was not in complete control.84 Further, and this was exacerbated by the limited amount of time for Scottish business at Westminster, 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 83 NAS, Gilmour of Montrave MSS, Sir George MacDonald to Gilmour, 16 Mar. 1937. 84 Levitt, Scottish Office, 12–13.

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172 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Renaissance? The undoubted ‘leader’ of this ‘movement’ was Christopher Murray Grieve (1892–1978). His own poetry was complemented by editorial work which did much to bring together writers both established and new. Grieve included older writers such as John Buchan and Neil Munro in early anthologies such as Northern Numbers in 1920.85 Buchan as a Unionist did not share Grieve’s nationalism. Although Grieve’s propaganda and self promotion was vital to the project this is not a sufficient explanation of its wider recognition. Neither was the ‘renaissance’ an invention of later critics; the Glasgow Herald published a broadly nationalist interpretation of the renaissance as a reaction against metropolitan neglect of Scottish writing.86 The combination of economic depression and literary revival was closely related to the way in which a section of Scottish political opinion reacted against Whitehall centralism in the inter-war period. Of course nationalism did not monopolise Scottish cultural life. Grieve’s principal protagonist was the Orcadian Edwin Muir, a major figure in Scottish poetry and criticism and the English translator of major works of European literature. It was, however, in his Scott and Scotland published in 1936 that the fault line with Grieve is most clearly seen. Muir argued that the substance of Scottish literature had been irrevocably lost with the ‘disintegration of the language of Scottish literature’ through the Reformation, the adoption of the King James Bible and the Union of 1603. There was no point in a Scottish literature without a linguistic foundation upon which to base it.87 Grieve regarded this as a betrayal and henceforward Muir and his wife Willa were treated with contempt. By the early 1930s Grieve’s Communism was more prominent than his formal nationalism. This facilitated cooperation with James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon), not least over Scottish Scene, published in 1934. The final significant figure of the politics of the Scottish renaissance was Neil M. Gunn (1890–1973). His output was dominated by writing about rural Scotland, especially his homeland among the fishing communities of the Moray Firth. Although the renaissance has sometimes been criticised for descending into rural mysticism, and there was some of this in Gunn, his work also dealt with

85 86 87

Bold, MacDiarmid, 127. Glasgow Herald, 31 Dec. 1923, 6. Muir, Scott and Scotland, esp. 17–18.

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‘mir a c l e s and po l i t i c s do n’t m i x’ 173 grinding poverty, emigration, land grievances and depressed agriculture which afflicted rural Scotland, as well as his historical epics about the Vikings and the highland clearances and their aftermath, culminating in his masterpiece The Silver Darlings (1942). Gunn was a key figure in the NPS. Despite his friendship with Grieve he was closer in politics to John MacCormick and he remained in the SNP after 1934. During the war his political role model was Thomas Johnston.88 Thus it is not easy to conscript the ‘literary renaissance’ into the nationalist dimension of inter-war politics; it was too diverse and, some would argue, too remote from the day-to-day concerns of the Scottish people and the politicians who represented them. Nevertheless, it was representative of a widespread feeling that Scotland’s identity was under threat in this period and that its problems were distinctive and not necessarily well understood in London. of the Great War. While Unionist governments in the 1920s were not worried about demands for Scottish home rule, even after the creation of the NPS, they were aware of the need for administrative reform. The Re-organisation of Offices Act of 1928 replaced the autonomous boards with the departments – Agriculture and Fisheries, Home and Health. As far as this excited any public interest it was attacked as centralisation and an assault on the autonomy 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 provision of a physical presence for the Scottish Office in Edinburgh on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, opened in 1939. 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 was ‘the culmination of over fifty years of haphazard incrementalism and was an attempt to recognise Scottish distinctiveness and simultaneously professionalise and consolidate the public 85868788

85 86 87

88

Hart and Pick, Neil M. Gunn.

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174 impa l e d upo n a this t l e service’.89 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’.90 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. The Unionist government had carried off an important change without the negative reaction evident in the 1920s. Although the Scottish Office was immeasurably strengthened, the absence of a Scottish Parliament to scrutinise the work of the various departments was more obvious. This was not a widely held view, although Thomas Johnston did feel that an administrative reform had been implemented in an attempt to deal with a political problem.91 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.

89 90 91

Mitchell, ‘The Gilmour report’, 173. Levitt, Scottish Office, 94–100; Mitchell, ‘The Gilmour report’, 186. Levitt, Scottish Office, 16–17.

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ch apter 8

Total War, 1939 to 1945

T

he Second World War hit Scotland in mid-October 1939. On the 16th 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 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, perhaps because a train was crossing. Due to a mistaken sounding of the ‘all-clear’ at North Queensferry the train was allowed to proceed from Dalmeny and the passengers had an uncomfortably close view of the action. 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 Despite contemporary fears, however, Scotland did not become an important theatre of combat. The Second World War saw greater state intervention than the Great War: military conscription and conscription of the workforce (too 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.

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176 impa l e d upo n a this t l e controversial to be contemplated in 1914) was on a new scale. This was ‘total war’. 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. The Glasgow Herald commented caustically; ‘the parents of over 106,000 Glasgow children are, apparently, less afraid of air raids than of sending their children to the country’.3 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.4 One of the reasons for the failure to make evacuation stick was complacency. Scotland did not escape bombing, but it was not affected in the same way as London and the ports on the south coast.5 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 1,000 deaths.6 Tragically, some of those who died were 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 1941.7 The authorities encountered huge problems in dealing with the damage and, although other raids caused more fatalities, the Department of Health for Scotland noted that ‘Clydebank, relative to its size was “blitzed” to an extent which no other town in the country has yet suffered’.8 The military experience also provides contrasts. Although Scottish soldiers had fought in the Middle East as well as Europe in the Great Quoted in Lloyd, ‘Scottish school system’, 90. Lloyd, ‘Scottish school system’, 35–119. 5 Davies, Europe, 1328. 6 Dewey, War and Progress, 310–11; Hume and Moss, Beardmore, 251–2; MacPhail, Clydebank Blitz; Kay, ‘The Clydebank blitz’, 1–11. 7 Stewart, ‘Evacuation of children’, 107. 8 NAS, HH36/5, A note on the department’s activities, Apr. 1941; see HH50/3. 3 4

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t o t a l wa r 177 War, the Second World War 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 from 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, exemplifies this. Tentatively exploring the jungle near his camp in Burma he was nearly attacked by a group of ‘baboons’ before he had had any opportunity to engage the Japanese.9 As the armed services in the Second World War were a conscript force there was not the same opportunity for 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 9th and the 15th 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 continued in the twentieth century. Even more marked was the paradoxical identity of the 51st (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 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. 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 POW camps in Germany. Given the stress on the highland martial tradition, there was a particularly humiliating element to the surrender at St Valery.10 The Division was reformed in Britain and fought through North Africa and Italy before being involved in the Normandy landings, liberating St Valery in 9 10

MacDougall, Voices from War, 233. David, Churchill’s Sacrifice.

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178 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 decreed that it was unsuitable for mechanised warfare) and highland regiments were ordered to surrender their kilts. One officer of the Gordon Highlanders, regarding the directive as in the same spirit as the banning of tartan after Culloden, oversaw the ceremonial burning of a kilt in protest.11 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 exaggerated the distinctiveness of Scottish military identity in the Second World War when the universal elements of the experience can be emphasised with equal justification.12 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, their bravery and occasional cowardice, 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.13 The experience of Scottish soldiers in North Africa points in the opposite direction. 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.14 Scottish representation in Montgomery’s Eighth Army came from the reformed 51st 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 backs 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 11 12 13 14

David, Churchill’s Sacrifice, 11. Lovat, March Past, 310, 322–3. White, With the Jocks. Latimer, Alamein, 1–2.

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t o t a l wa r 179 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!15 The war in the desert also produced some of the most 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.

domestic politics 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 inconsiderable, but the government became worried about Scottish morale and belligerency.16 The ‘Red Clyde’ was not so easy to forget. The official history of wartime factories 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’.17 Like the Great War, the Second World War provides a challenge to Scottish historians and we should not discount the possibility that a distinctive Scottish experience is a chimera.18 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. Latimer, Alamein, 182–3, 235. Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish government’, 1–2. 17 Hornby, Factories and Plant, 290; Nockolds, Magic of a Name, 169. 18 Macdonald, ‘ “Wersh the wine o’ victorie” ’, 105–12; Morgan, ‘England, Britain and the audit of war’, 151. 15 16

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180 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 crossed the parties. The rise of European dictatorships 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.19 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 from Parliament of the duchess of Atholl in 1938 and the subsequent byelection which she fought, and lost, as an independent anti-appeasement candidate.20 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 with Robert Boothby, the MP for East Aberdeenshire, who was on the left of the party, a passionate opposition to appeasement. Walter Elliot, on the other hand, was a progressive who became tainted with the accusation that he was an appeaser. He was excoriated by 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.21 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 the impression Scotsman, 17 Mar. 1936, 8. Ball, ‘Politics of appeasement’, 49–83, Stewart, ‘Fellow travellers’, 348–54, 364–71. 21 ODNB (1888–1958); James, Bob Boothby, 183–4; Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom, 19–40; Harvie, ‘Walter Elliot’, 122–31.

19 20

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t o t a l wa r 181 of a virtuous left-wing campaign against the Fascist threat.22 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. 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.23 Despite the response of local activists which helped to invigorate the party in the aftermath of the 1935 election, the war brought difficulties.24 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. 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.25 The situation was made worse by John McGovern, the ILP MP for Shettleston – a maverick in his politics and his Catholicism – who denounced the support for Franco of the Catholic Church in Spain, and the attitude of the Church and Catholic press in Scotland for peddling ‘false propaganda’.26 The ILP was generally pragmatic in its response to the war, however.27 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 rearmament and argued for non-aggression and League of Nations activity. Rearmament was seen as a capitalist and imperialist conspiracy and German aggression explained by the injustice of the Versailles Treaty.28 The left of the Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish Civil War, 121–45, esp. 126. MacDougall, Voices from the Spanish Civil War, esp. 47–55. 24 Worley, Labour Inside the Gate, 205–7. 25 Gallagher, ‘Scottish Catholics and the British left’, 35–8; Knox, ‘Religion and the Scottish Labour movement’, 623–5. 26 McGovern, Why Bishops Back Franco, 11; Buchanan, ‘ “A far away country” ’, 8; Stewart, ‘Fellow travellers’, 231. 27 Buchanan, ‘Death of Bob Smillie’, 435–61. 28 Forward, 2 May 1936, 6; 1 Oct. 1936, 7. 22 23

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182 impa l e d upo n a this t l e movement, especially the ILP, supported appeasement from a pacifist point of view.29 By 1939, and the incontrovertible evidence of German aggression, this line had softened, but some Labour activists were vocal in their opposition to war: 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.30 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 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, recognising that ‘war makes it necessary to plan society’ which represented ‘great tribute to the foresight of socialists to see that their ideas [were] being resorted to by those who formerly opposed them’.31 These divisions were evident at the Clackmannan and East Stirling by-election in October 1939 where Woodburn (Labour) was unopposed by the Unionists under the wartime political truce, in which the main parties agreed not to oppose each other if seats became vacant. There was a pacifist candidate – supported by Forward – but a crushing victory for Woodburn exemplified Labour’s role as a supporter of the national cause rather than as a pacifist critic of it.32 Woodburn used Forward to drive this message home: ‘to advocate acceptance of Hitler’s demands is to become the accomplices of his aggression’.33

s c o t l a n d a n d t h e s t at e in wa r t ime 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 Stewart, ‘Fellow travellers’, 355. Forward, 9 Sept. 1939, 1. 31 Forward, 16 Sept. 1939, 3. 32 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. 33 Forward, 14 Oct. 1939, 4. 29 30

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t o t a l wa r 183 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 wellequipped 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 (1.98 million per year throughout Britain compared to 5.36 million). Disputes tended to be short, localised and mostly confined to industries with long records of bad industrial relations, including mining and shipbuilding.34 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, Scottish workers were not 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 7,000 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 disappear 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 1941.35 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. There was resentment at the way in which Scotland was expected to contribute to the war effort. Some of this was at a low level, such as irritation about the interruption to work caused by frequent soundings of air 34 35

Fielding et al., ‘England Arise!’, 31–3; Dewey, War and Progress, 306. Johnman and Murphy, British Shipbuilding, 65–72; Rose, Which People’s War?, 41–4.

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184 impa l e d upo n a this t l e raid sirens in false alarms.36 There was unease 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.37 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.38 That large proportions of Scottish factory space were 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 – 13.5 per cent by 1945 – to be awarded to Scotland.39 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.

e co n o m i c a c t i v i t y The principal economic objective was to increase production. 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.40 The principal difficulty 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 achieve this.41 An important change took place in the 36 37 38 39 40 41

O’Brien, Civil Defence, 318 quoting Scotsman, 31 Oct. 1939. Calder, The People’s War, 333. Rose, Which People’s War?, 225–8. Harvie, No Gods, 53. Johnston and McIvor, ‘The war and the body at work’, 113–36. Nockolds, Magic of a Name, 170; Hornby, Factories and Plant, 290.

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t o t a l wa r 185 structure of the workforce: women made up only 20 per cent in 1939 but 40 per cent in 1945.42 The process of introducing women proceeded apace in some sectors, such as engineering, but in others traditional attitudes presented problems. Only 7 per cent of the workforce in the shipbuilding industry in 1944 were female. 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 stress and noise. Although the Ministry of Labour helpfully pointed out that ‘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 regarded as skilled work.43 Rolls-Royce claimed to have found that married women had difficulty with twelve-hour shifts as they had ‘to prepare meals for their husbands’.44 There were also worries that placing large numbers of women in the workforce threatened family breakdown and contributed to juvenile delinquency. Indeed, official responses to this problem reflected a desire to keep women in the home, rather than in the workplace.45 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.46 Wartime employment of women was not 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 undermines ‘an idealised image of social harmony’ in wartime.47 Some Scottish industries were better able to respond to the technical demands of war than others. Even ‘successes’, 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 Devine, Scottish Nation, 549; Harvie, No Gods, 53. Murphy, ‘ “From the crinoline to the boilersuit” ’, 82–104, quote at 92. 44 NAS, DD10/497, Denholm (Ministry of Labour) to Anderson (Scottish Home Department), 5 Mar. 1942. 45 Smith, ‘Official responses to juvenile delinquency in Scotland’, 87. 46 Smith, ‘The problem of “equal pay for equal work” ’, 663–5. 47 Smith, ‘The womanpower problem’, 625–45, quote at 645; see also McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 157. 42 43

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186 impa l e d upo n a this t l e

Figure 8.1 Women working on the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine assembly line at Hillington. © Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

its 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.48 While mercantile output of 6 million tons was achieved from 1940 to 1945, the construction of over 1300 naval vessels 48

Johnman and Murphy, British Shipbuilding, 77, 91–3.

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t o t a l wa r 187 amounting to over 1.9 million 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 – indicates that rearmament and war revived shipbuilding.49 The extent of war production increased because of Tom Johnston’s activity and the recognition that Scotland was relatively safe from the German bomber. The North British Locomotive factory at Springburn produced munitions and light tanks; J and G Weir made field artillery; Sunderland flying boats were manufactured at Dumbarton; and Barr and Stroud’s factory at Anniesland turned out 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 20,000.50 Although this story of expansion was predicated upon war conditions, Hillington was in a Special Area (as defined by the Acts of 1934 and 1937); the factory was planned before the war and construction began in the summer of 1939.51 This story of increased production – matched by high wages – 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 were difficult, with 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, from 30 million tons in 1939 to 21 million tons in 1945.52 Osborne and Armstrong, Glasgow, 160; Jeffrey, This Time of Crisis, 179. Osborne and Armstrong, The Clyde, 111; Osborne and Armstrong, Glasgow, 173–5; Jeffrey, This Time of Crisis, 182. 51 Hornby, Factories and Plant, 218, 257–62; Nockolds, Magic of a Name, 169–70, 198. 52 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. 49 50

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188 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Scottish farmers faced a daunting task: to increase the food supply with a small labour force. 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 1 million in 1939 to 1.4 million in 1942, most of it devoted to 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 seemed to be a ‘direct intervention of providence’ for the arable farmer.53 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.54 Labour was a problem for Scottish farmers during the war, although farm labour was not pressed into military service in large numbers. Even the 6,500 men 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.55 ‘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.’ Is this view justified? The impact of the war on the Scottish economy was superficially positive. Unemployment, the scourge of the inter-war period, was dealt with. The examples of ‘high-tech’ production cited previously, however, were the exception rather than the rule.56 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-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.

53 54 55 56

SJA, 25 (1944–6), 194–5. Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 197. Marshall, ‘Scottish agriculture’, 58–62; SJA, 23 (1940–2), 246–52. Lenman, Economic History, 232–3.

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t o t a l wa r 189

a s co t t i sh w a r t i m e s t a t e ? Thomas Johnston regarded himself as Scotland’s man in the Cabinet, but it was political circumstance which gave him greater latitude than his predecessors. Since Scottish politics and administration were a sideshow Churchill could afford to grant licence 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’.57 With one possible exception, the establishment of the North of Scotland Hydro Electricity Board in 1943, his record does not match his rhetoric.58 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, formation of a ‘Council of State’ composed of former Scottish Secretaries, ‘acting as a sort of Scottish equivalent to the coalition cabinet’ or even ‘a sort of informal home rule’ according to one historian.59 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 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 not clear that it was influential.60 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 bi-partisan 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. 57 58 59 60

Johnston, Memories, 147. Walker, Johnston is superior to Galbraith, Without Quarter. Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish government’. Campbell, ‘The committee of ex-Secretaries of State’, 1–10.

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190 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Power from the Glens The highlands had for long attracted the attention of lowland politicians who felt that they had solutions for its problems. Gladstone and Lloyd George were both prone to this view and Johnston, perhaps influenced by the latter, took a similar approach. He had been in Parliament in the inter-war period when land settlement and assisted emigration had been expensive failures. Further, he had observed 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 (North of Scotland Hydro Electricity Board) which aimed to supply electricity to remote areas without passing on the costs of transmission to the consumer. Johnston saw the ‘Hydro Board’ as ‘an instrument for the rehabilitation of the highlands’, so it had to do more than supply domestic consumers. 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.61 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.62 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.63 Although the NSHEB presided over the flooding of large areas of scenic land, Glen Affric for example, its dams and powerhouses attracted aesthetic plaudits; indeed, they soon became tourist attractions and drew as many visitors as the now inundated glens.

61

NAS, SEP12/94, memo on developments in the highlands and islands; Payne, The Hydro, 3–49; Walker, Johnston, 157–8. 62 Cameron, ‘Special Policy Area’, 204–6; Johnston, Memories, 180. 63 Miller, The Dam Builders and Wood, The Hydro Boys.

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t o t a l wa r 191 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.64 This Red Clydesider had 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: born in 1881 and active in politics since the Edwardian era, his politics owed as much to the radical Liberalism of that era as to the socialism of the 1920s. 616263

a p o l i t i c a l t r uc e ? Scottish by-elections provide more evidence for an awkward wartime relationship between Scotland and Whitehall. The principal reason for this was the fact that the SNP was not privy to the political truce between the main parties. Neither was the ILP, which had its base in the west of 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 less volatile, political conditions were abnormal. The register, unaltered since early 1939, was inaccurate, was 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 a 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. Government candidates sought to portray their opponents as necessitating frivolous and unnecessary contests in a time of dire national emergency.65 For example, the government candidate in Argyll in April 1940 suggested that William Power, his SNP opponent, was unpatriotic.66 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 61 62 63

Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 938. Addison, ‘By-elections’, 130–50; Fielding, ‘Second World War and popular radicalism’, 48–52. 66 Scotsman, 30 Mar. 1940, 11. 64 65

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192 impa l e d upo n a this t l e the war effort.67 In other by-elections, such as Kirkcaldy in February 1944, the SNP took a slightly different line. On this occasion their candidate, Douglas Young, had opposed conscription on the grounds that it was a breach of the Treaty of Union, and was imprisoned as a result. 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’.68 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, Labour regained the seat at the general 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. There is less to say about the other parties because of the truce. The Unionists, as might be expected, were the most self-denying, shutting down their organisation. They had the easiest task during the war, wrapping themselves in the flag and fielding candidates with military backgrounds. Relative party strength at the outbreak of war favoured them and was preserved by the truce. Johnston’s prominence hid the fact that Scotsman, 5 Apr. 1940, 5. Scotsman, 19 Feb. 1944, 4; 22 Feb. 1944, 4; Finlay, Independent and Free, 224–32; Harvie, ‘Labour and Scottish government’, 8–10.

67 68

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t o t a l wa r 193 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 1932.69 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 practical measures and his own stature as a viable alternative to a Scottish Parliament. The 1941 document Plan for postwar Scotland presented a sketchy and confused scheme for home rule which was not taken seriously by the party authorities.70

t he 1 9 4 5 ge n e r a l e l e c t i o n 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 per cent of the vote. Despite this Attlee 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 new seats – of the gains only Edinburgh North and Glasgow Kelvingrove had not seen recent Labour representation. Thus the result in Scotland was not so shocking as in other parts of the country which felt overrun by socialist hordes. Labour had not burst out of the strongholds of 1929, their best inter-war result, but recovery from the defeats of 1931 and 1935 was no mean feat. There did not seem to be the enthusiasm evident in other parts of the country, or which could be remembered from 1922. 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 trades 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.71 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.72 69 70 71 72

Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 929. Keating and Blieman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, 132–3. ODNB. Healey, Time of my Life, 106.

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194 impa l e d upo n a this t l e The experience of the Italian community The Italian community in Scotland was not large: originating in emigration during the 1880s it amounted to fewer 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.73 They were a visible community, distinct in language and religion and often identifiable as owners of barber shops, cafes and ice cream parlours. Whilst individuals were often subjected to slights and abuse based on their origins, 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 in Edinburgh and Greenock.74 The memory of the Italian community stresses the sudden and shocking nature of the hostility. Dominic Crolla, later to become a well-known businessman in Edinburgh, felt that ‘the work of fifty or sixty years vanished into thin air’. 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. 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 into a highly decorated chapel.75 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.76 The trauma caused by the chaotically organised internment – which ‘collared’ not only Fascists but also anti-Fascists and men who had spent their lives in Britain – should not be underestimated and many played down their Italian identity in the post-war period. The experience of Italian women was especially 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 Colpi, ‘The Scottish Italian community’, 153–67; Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozzia’, 13–21. 74 Colpi, ‘Impact of the Second World War on the British Italian community’, 172–3. 75 The subject of a novel by Jessie Kesson, Another Time, Another Place, published in 1983. 76 NAS, AF59/3/4, Minutes of Home Defence (Security) Executive, 21 Jan. 1941. 73

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t o t a l wa r 195 friends who attacked their premises and stole their property.77 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.78 The Unionists were depressed by the outcome in 1945; they lost fifteen seats and 8 per cent of the vote compared to 1935. They used the defeat as motivation to overhaul their organisation and with 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 1955.79 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. Indicative of Liberal weakness was their inability to 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.80 The 1945 election result has been explained with reference to important shifts of opinion 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 737475767778

73 74 75 76

Quoted in Ugolini, ‘Memory, war and the Italians in Edinburgh’, 428. Ugolini, ‘Internal enemy “other” ’, 137–58. 79 NLS, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association MSS, Acc. 11368/4, Central Council Executive, 2 Sept. 1947; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 72–6. 80 Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 79–82. 77 78

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196 impa l e d upo n a this t l e condition of these poor children from the towns.81 Many of the issues arising from the social implications of evacuation are dealt with in a 1956 novel by 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. Such experiences helped to move the social and political agenda back onto the territory of housing and welfare reform which was favourable to Labour. Government intervention in the economy and in 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 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.82 The Scottish picture provides some evidence for an alternative explanation of the 1945 result as one driven by apathy and a belief that Labour were the best of a bad lot. 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 social reform.83 A rightwards drift in Scottish public life has been cited as a contributory factor in the strength of Unionism in the 1930s, and a 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.84 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: ‘It is widely felt that Scotland has not only a very unsatisfactory record in the past . . . there rests upon a national Church a special obligation to consider the present state of the nation’.85 Stewart, ‘Evacuation of children’, 116–19; quote from Lloyd, ‘Scottish school system’, 44. 82 Addison, Road to 1945. 83 Fielding, ‘What did “the people” want?’, 623–39; Fielding et al., ‘England Arise!’, 27–31, 64. 84 Brown, ‘The campaign for the Christian commonwealth’, 216–21. 85 Church of Scotland, God’s Will for Church and Nation, 63, see also 154–5; this report sold 14,000 copies; Walker and Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 98–9; Newlands, John and Donald Baillie, 234–5. 81

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t o t a l wa r 197 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 less cautious. 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. 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 Scottish issues and around 40 per cent advocating home rule, although it was not top of their list.86 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.87

86 87

Harvie, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 938. Fielding, ‘Second World War and popular radicalism’, 38–58, esp. 55.

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Part Two

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ch apter 9

The Social Revolution: Scottish Society since 1945

I

n the years between the wars the failure of traditional industries, high unemployment, massive emigration and intractable social problems led to pessimism and a time of sectarian animosity.1 Since 1945 Scottish identity seems to have recovered from this crisis, Scottishness has asserted itself over Britishness and this has been reflected in a consensus on devolution in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, discussion of post-war social change reveals insecurity and concern originating in the rapid pace of change. Falling fertility, reduced rates of marriage, the apparent social acceptability of cohabitation and increased female participation in the workplace have, for some, undermined the ‘traditional’ family with its clearly defined gender roles. Rural depopulation and subsequent repopulation, increased mobility, 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 fractured older class structures. Occupational changes have eroded male traditions of craft and skill, and left large groups unsure of their place in society. Compared to the period with which this book began, 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: ‘social capital’, the activities and involvement which maintain civil society and community, has been lost.2 Nevertheless, the insecurity which has been generated Finlay, ‘National identity in crisis’, 242–59. Putnam, Bowling Alone; Paterson, ‘Social capital’, 5–32; Paterson, ‘Civil society’, 39–55; Schuller, et al., ‘Social capital’, 29–30. 1 2

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202 impa l e d upo n a this t l e by this perceived loss of community identity is contemporaneous with the increased choice of individualist modes of living, travelling and recreation. Some argue that television and the internet have destroyed the culture of participation and diminished social capital. Others argue that their informative capacity and connectivity mean that such pessimism is overstated.3 The perceived decline in social capital has been related to declining levels of political participation, but it is social changes and the debate about community and identity which they have stimulated which is the principal theme of this chapter.4

d e m o gr a p h y 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.5 This view reflected confidence in economic planning, demographic redistribution and the creation of new towns.6 In contemporary Scotland, by contrast, there is fear of a ‘demographic time bomb’ primed by a low birth rate, continuing migration and a falling population. The comparison with Ireland is instructive here. Since the 1970s the Scottish population has been falling while the Irish population increases and a tradition of emigration which has been embedded in Irish society for at least 150 years has been overturned. The population of Ireland was 3.2 million in 1901; it declined to 2.8 million as late as 1961, but has risen sharply to 4.2m.7 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 3 4 5 6 7

Putnam, Bowling Alone, 216–46; Lin, Social Capital, 214. Field, Social Capital, 118–23. Kyd, ‘Third Statistical Account’, 316; Scotsman, 31 Oct. 1949, 3. Glasgow Herald, 24 Nov. 1948. http://www.cso.ie/statistics/Population1901-2006.htm

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 203 Table 9.1 Scottish population growth, 1931–2001 Year

1931 1939 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001

Population (000s)

Percentage change per decade

Scotland

Scotland

England

4843 5007 5096 5184 5236 5180 5107 5064

-0.8 3.4 2.6 1.7 1.0 -1.1 -1.4 -0.8

6.0 5.0 5.6 5.9 1.7 2.3 2.7

Scottish Executive of 1999 to 2007 it lay in the background to policies on education, employment opportunities and health.8 The first point to consider is the overall size of the population and the rate of change. Table 9.1 gives the picture since 1931 and compares the rates of growth with England. Two points are clear: first, the Scottish population peaked in 1971 (since 2003 modest growth has taken the total to 5,094,800 in 2005, but it is not clear whether this is an established trend).9 Second, even from 1931 to 1971 the rate of growth was slower than in England. This is also noticeable in a European context: compared to other small European countries (Benelux, Scandinavia and Finland), Scottish growth over the twentieth century has been slow. The Netherlands, for example, with a population similar to Scotland in 1870, now has 16 million people.10 Since 1971 population decline has been 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 in 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 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.11 Although mortality is not a significant component of population change, elements of Scottish distinctiveness remain, not least that for the over-50s mortality 8 9 10 11

Joshi and Wright, ‘Starting life in Scotland’, 166–85. Scotland’s Population, 2005, 2. Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 11. Anderson, ‘Population and family life’, 20; Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 158.

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204 impa l e d upo n a this t l e is higher than in 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 – under-diagnosed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – and heart disease, although death rates from both have declined in recent years, especially among men. Nevertheless, in a European context Scotland’s record 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 65.12 In language reminiscent 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 . . . and culminates at life’s termination with the gradients in mortality being steepest in younger adults but nevertheless continuing into older ages.13 These problems were most in evidence in Scotland’s cities and especially in Glasgow. Of the most deprived postcode sectors 63 out of 117 were in that city (compared to 9 in Lothian) and 50 per cent of its population lived in these areas, compared to only 9 per cent in Lothian.14 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. 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 expectancy in Scotland, at 78.2, was thirty-first 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 12 13 14

The Scottish diet: report of a working party to the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland. Carstairs and Morris, Deprivation and Health, 214. Carstairs and Morris, Deprivation and Health, 28.

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 205 Table 9.2 Fertility and mortality, 1941–5 to 2001–5 Year

Birth rate

Death rate

Year

Birth rate

Death rate

1941–5 1946–50 1951–5 1956–60 1961–5 1966–70 1971–5

19.4 20.0 17.9 19.2 19.7 17.9 14.4

13.8 12.6 12.1 12.0 12.2 12.1 12.2

1976–80 1981–5 1986–90 1991–5 1996–2000 2001–5

12.6 12.9 12.9 12.5 11.2 10.4

12.3 12.4 12.3 12.0 11.7 11.3

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 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 the 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 illnesses take time to show up.15 Smoking is more prevalent among lower socioeconomic 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.16 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, fertility (births/1,000 of the population) has gone into precipitate decline. In the context of stable mortality and net out-migration this has led to population decline.17 To put this in context, in the early 1900s, the peak years in the twentieth century, there were an average of 132,400 annual births, compared to only 51,270 in 2001, the year with the lowest figure since then. Most EU 15

This section is based on the grim data in Leon et al., Understanding the Health of Scotland’s Population. 16 Carstairs and Morris, Deprivation and Health, 229. 17 Webster, ‘Political economy of Scotland’s population decline’, 47, 67.

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206 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 15.5.18 Just as Ireland’s recent economic growth has pulled population growth in its train, Scotland’s weak demographic performance can be seen as a function of its economic performance.19 Currently, the fertility rate is insufficient to reproduce the population, leading to population decline and, perhaps more 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 people over seventy-five.20 This will get worse if fertility continues to fall and as the large cohort born in the late 1940s reach retirement age. An ageing population will place enormous stress on the public services, especially health and housing, with knock-on effects in pension provision.21 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. This reduces the years available for childbearing and 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 2001.22 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. 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 Scotland’s Population, 2005, 78, 80. Webster, ‘Political economy of Scotland’s population decline’, 47. 20 Scotland’s Population, 2005, 9. 21 Graham and Boyle, ‘Low fertility in Scotland’; Wright, ‘Can Scotland afford to grow old?’, 15–18; Wright, ‘Impact of population ageing’, 41–5. 22 Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 15. 18 19

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 207 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 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 1,000 people since 1995, but net migration, measured in the same way, at 3.3 per cent 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.23 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.24 Migration and emigration have been consistently important in Scottish demographic history, but the pattern has changed in the post-war period. Studies 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 of Scotland as 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.25 Prior to 1945 Scottish emigration patterns were distinctive in a British and Irish context. In the post-1945 Scotland’s population, 2005, 13; Cameron, ‘Scottish highlands’, 155. Stockdale, et al. ‘The repopulation of rural Scotland’, 243–57; Hague and Jenkins, ‘Changing image and identity’, 223. 25 Scotland’s Population, 2005, 34–41. 23 24

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208 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. 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. 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.26 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. After 1945 Scots and Britons were only one element of a very diverse stream and the ‘Britishness’ of countries like Australia and New Zealand markedly declined.27 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 much reduced it remains a structural problem. Historic emigration from Scotland was dominated by the skilled working class and modern emigrant streams are rich in highly educated younger people. Just as miners, builders and granite workers operated in a transatlantic labour market in the nineteenth century, the highly mobile ‘creative workers’ in the ‘knowledge economy’ are crucial to prosperity in contemporary Scotland.28 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’ Hatton, ‘Emigration from the U.K.’, 149–69; Constantine, ‘British emigration’, 16–35; McCarthy, ‘Personal letters’, 59–79. 27 McCarthy, ‘Personal accounts’, 206–7; Constantine, ‘British emigration’, 25–31. 28 Rogerson et al., Progress Report on the Fresh Talent Initiative, 11, 33–4; Lindsay, ‘Migration and motivation’, 154–74. 26

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 209 was launched in 2004 with the objective of preventing the Scottish population from falling below 5 million. 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, however, 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 Scottish migration flows.29 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 numbers 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’. Some statistical foundation has been provided by attempts to enumerate ‘ethnic groups’ in the censuses of 1991 and 2001, although it is not entirely firm as the information gathered in the census is based on self-description. 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 prior to legislative restriction in Commonwealth immigration 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’.30 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 the age structure of the population contrasts 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 and the figure for the 29 30

Rogerson et al., Progress Report on the Fresh Talent Initiative, esp. 18, para. 2.19. Bowes et al., ‘Changing nature of Glasgow’s ethnic minority community’, 106.

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210 impa l e d upo n a this t l e whole population 36.7 per cent.31 Other notable characteristics include relatively large multi-generational households and a preference for owner-occupation of housing and self-employment.32 These characteristics might be evidence of a prospering and self-reliant community, or they could represent more worrying trends in Scottish society. Has, for example, what was described as the ‘institutional racism’ in the administration of council housing in Glasgow in the 1980s affected attitudes among the Pakistani community?33 Nevertheless, in the late 1990s there was a growing sense of confidence among some ethnic minority communities in Scotland. The opening of the new Edinburgh Central Mosque 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 the opportunity to express commitment to ‘the concepts of community and the inclusion of the rich variety of faith groups, who contribute so much to life in Scotland’.34 This apparent confidence 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 and there was 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 Muslim community meant that this was a reference point for those who felt threatened. The Scottish president of the UK Muslim Association was pessimistic about community relations in the aftermath of 11 September.35 Research conducted among young Muslim men in Scotland found that perceptions of racist and Islamophobic 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.36 To move beyond social and demographic characteristics to explore Census Scotland 2001, tables 7 and 8, 29–30; Bailey et al. ‘Chinese community in Scotland’, 66–75. 32 Bailey et al. ‘Pakistanis in Scotland’, 39–42. 33 Bowes et al., ‘Racism and harassment’, 89; Bowes et al., ‘Changing nature of Glasgow’s ethnic minority community’, 106. 34 Scotsman, 1 Aug. 1998, 5. 35 Herald, 6 Oct. 2001, 7; Scotland on Sunday, 7 Oct. 2001, 11. 36 Saeed et al., ‘New ethnic and national questions in Scotland’, 821–44; Hopkins, ‘Young Muslim men in Scotland’, 257–72. 31

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 211 the identity of these communities, and 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 often been an uncritical celebration of Scottish tolerance. Anti-racist political activity and grass-roots organisations have been relatively slow to develop north of the border.37 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.38 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 is not helpful. At the very least, however, the issue is emerging from the shadows. Research by local authorities also provides evidence of racism, often at the level of graffiti, but also incidents of violence and harassment. Whereas 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 has not really prompted similar public debate in Scotland. Nevertheless, the case has prompted recognition of institutional racism in the Scottish legal system; one study has suggested that the system has regressed in its willingness to recognise the racial dimension of crimes.39 An exceptional case in the history of migration to Scotland is movement from England. Contiguity, absence of a border, a common language and shared social and cultural traits have facilitated this movement. The Dunlop, ‘A united front’, 89–101. Cant and Kelly, ‘Why is there a need for racial equality activity in Scotland?’, 9–26. 39 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. 37 38

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212 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Asylum 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 poorquality housing stock. Much of the infrastructure and expertise which had been developed with the Kosovars seemed to have been lost and tensions arose between the host community and the asylum seekers, many of whom reported racial harassment and abuse. The murder of a young Kurdish man from Turkey, Firsat Yildiz Dag, in August 2001 provoked a reaction from local politicians, churchmen like Cardinal Thomas Winning and writers like William McIllvanney. Although the murder was not found to be racially aggravated they argued that there were wider questions over the way in which racist and negative attitudes to asylum seekers had been tacitly encouraged by the nature of political debate about the issue.40 English, who are relatively privileged in educational and socio-economic terms, cannot readily be compared to other immigrant groups.41 In the period from 1951 to 2001 the number of English-born residents in Scotland has doubled to over 400,000, while the number of Scots in England has increased from about 566,000 to 796,000.42 The English in Scotland are the biggest migrant group, but despite popular perceptions 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.43 A perception, 40

Kelly, ‘Asylum seekers’, 1–26. McIntosh et al., ‘ “We hate the English” ’, 44, 55. 42 Dickson, ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot?’, 112–34; Watson, Being English in Scotland, 28. 43 Watson, Being English in Scotland, 104–25. 40 41

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 213 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 homogeneity on the English in Scotland. The mid1990s saw ephemeral organisations such as ‘Scottish Watch’ and ‘Settler Watch’ produce anti-English rhetoric. However, they attracted a great deal of media coverage and almost universal public condemnation, and remained on the fringes of Scottish public life.

f a m i ly A recent historian has argued: ‘the view that the traditional family is disintegrating is based on the misconception that it ever existed’.44 There is also an image of the working-class family strictly divided by gender roles with all childcare duties adopted by the mother and a perception of the absent father. Autobiographies and oral history evidence do not confirm this image, but it is an area of Scottish social history which is under-explored.45 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. 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 contrasts with the cramped home life prior to the Second World War. Second, no social or demographic change can be as welcome as the decline in the rate of infant mortality which has brought an end to 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 traditional gender roles, with much domestic work still undertaken by women. Nuclear families have become less prevalent in society – 20 per cent of all households compared to 30 per cent a generation ago.46 44 45 46

Gordon, ‘The family’, 259. Abrams, ‘ “There was nobody like my daddy” ’, 219–42; Smout, Century, 139. Paterson, et al., Living in Scotland, 31.

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214 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. 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 fertility has declined and marriage is less prominent (there were around 30,000 marriages in Scotland in 2005, 10,000 fewer than in 197147) but the link between these changes is not causal. The first major change has been the diminution of marriage in favour of cohabitation, either as a prelude to marriage (sometimes second marriages) or as an alternative to marriage. Civil marriage was introduced in July 1940 and until the 1960s the gap between the numbers of civil and religious marriages was very wide, 10,000 of the former compared to over 30,000 of the latter. The gap has disappeared altogether in the early twenty-first century. Deference to the clergy in matters of personal relationships has virtually disappeared and the contrast with the position at the beginning of our period, when kirk sessions still attempted to dispense punishments for pre-marital sex, is one index of the changing position of the Church in Scottish society.48 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, but all of these changes took place in the age range 25 to 26 for women and 26 to 28 for men. Since the mid1990s this has climbed, reaching 31 for men and 29 for women.49 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, but by 2001 this had dropped to 57 per cent.50 If the Scots seem to have become less enthusiastic about getting married they have also 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. Scotland’s Population, 2005, 42. Hinds and Jamieson, ‘Rejecting traditional family building?’, 33–64; Barlow, ‘Cohabitation and marriage in Scotland’, 65–91. 49 Flinn, Scottish Population History, 331; Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 14, 161. 50 Paterson, et al., Living in Scotland, 13, 163. 47 48

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 215 Until the 1960s, with the exception of post-war peaks, there were fewer than 2,000 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. 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. The debate was characterised by broad agreement that a change was long overdue, even if some Conservatives did express worries about permissiveness.51 After further legislation in 1983 and 1985 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-cohabitation is the ground for nearly 80 per cent of all divorces in Scotland.52 This history does not signify the erosion of marriage: one contributor to the 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’.53 This was 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.

g e nd e r a n d w o r k The post-war period, especially the years since the 1960s, has seen the majority of women enter the workplace and the concept of the ‘housewife’ has become marginalised. This is an important change in a formerly heavily industrialised economy where the workplace culture was strongly masculine and attitudes to women were regressive. Whether male attitudes have changed is open to question, but the data shows that the gender composition of the workplace is much more balanced, although male status and authority has been considerably more difficult to break down, despite the existence of legislation on equal pay and discrimination in the workplace since the 1970s.54 For the first half of the twentieth century the female participation rate PD, Commons, 5th ser., 906, cols 768, 786, 798–9, 25 Feb. 1976. Smith and Black, Laws of Scotland, x, 527–8 and Reissue 3, 507; Scotland’s Population, 2004, 74–6. 53 PD, Commons, 5th ser., 338, cols 1238–9, 12 Jul. 1938. 54 Simonton, ‘Work, trade and commerce’, 199–234. 51 52

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216 impa l e d upo n a this t l e in the workplace was stable at around a third of the total female population of 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: agricultural work – although statistics under-record family labour on small farms – and domestic service, employing over 180,000 women in 1901, almost disappeared. 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 their major occupations 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 work, mostly male, which was dominant in the early part of the twentieth century has shrunk to a minority position in the early twenty-first century. This, in combination with increasing economic activity by women, has undermined the masculine workplace.55 Oral evidence from the early part of the century suggests that the comfort, nutrition and status of the male worker was carefully nurtured by his wife and daughters, to the detriment of the education of the latter. Now that family incomes are no longer the sole product of male work and secondary education is universal this is unthinkable.56 Women have spread through the workforce in a new way, although traditional male bastions – mining, quarrying, construction, manufacturing – remain so despite their economic decline. Expanding sectors – retail, hotels and restaurants, finance and public administration – have workforces which are more gender balanced. Occupations which have a majority of female workers include education, health and social work, evidence of the survival of the earlier pattern which consigned women to occupations concerned with care of the sick and of children.57 To leave the discussion there would be misleading. 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’.58 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 employed on a full-time basis, by 1985 the division was nearly McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 139; Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 42. Stephenson and 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. 57 McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 139; Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 49. 58 McIvor, ‘Women and work’, 164. 55 56

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 217

Figure 9.1 Agnes McLean (1925–94), the first female shop steward at Hillington and a lifelong campaigner for ‘equal pay for equal work’, 1967. © National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

50/50 and, although the picture has altered since then, part-time work still predominates for women. 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 twofifths 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 workplace, of the continuing role of women as the principals in the task of childcare and of lingering inequality. Although the differential between male and female pay has declined over the past twenty years, especially for non-manual work, men still earn 50 per cent more than women. This gap is the result of female time out of the workplace to have children and direct discrimination. 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. If recent changes have done a little to undermine references to ‘gender apartheid’ in contemporary society the term is valid in the historical

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218 impa l e d upo n a this t l e context.59 Substantial areas of heavy industry were off limits to women and the majority of married women were excluded from the workplace. This arose from the male defence of craft privileges, evident even in occupations, such as printing, where there was some history of female involvement. Historians of women in the workplace have been critical of the male-dominated nature of trades unions: ‘they still think that the status of labour as a whole is sustained by the protection of the position of male workers’.60 This may be unfair in that trades unions would see their role as to protect the interests of their members, mostly male industrial workers. 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’.61 The nature of trades unionism changed 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.

cl a ss a n d s o c i a l m o b il it y Class is at the heart of one version of the 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.62 The structure of housing and 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 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 of political uses, 59 60 61 62

McIvor, ‘Gender apartheid?’, 188–209. Mitchison, ‘The hidden labour force’, 187. Knox, Industrial Nation, 287. Foster, ‘A proletarian nation?’, 201–40.

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 219 both nationalist and unionist.63 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. Anti-landlordism and deprecation of the concentrated nature of land ownership in Scotland remain part of Scottish political rhetoric, 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 survival of the traditional landowning classes.64 One of the most marked features of recent social change in Scotland has been the demise of the manual working class: the disappearance of heavy industry and the expansion of secondary and higher education has altered the class structure of Scotland. The most recent definition of socio-economic classification has charted change over the period between 1991 and 2001 and demonstrates the expansion of the middle classes in professional and managerial occupations from 27 to 36 per cent of the adult population, a feature common to the rest of the UK and western Europe. Using a slightly older definition, the working class amounts to 41 per cent of the adult population, compared to 74 per cent in 1921 and 63 per cent as recently as 1961.65 Thus the pace of change has accelerated markedly in recent years. This is interesting in a political context; over this period the Labour vote in Scotland has increased as the proportion of the electorate which is working class has declined. The changes in occupational structure, especially the decline of the manual working class, and in access to education can be presented as social mobility. Recent economic change is more important than ‘Scottish democracy’ in this shift. 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 recent Scottish and English economic history has been similar.66 This is not reflected, however, in the way in which Scots perceive themselves. A marked feature of surveys is the continuing self-identification McCrone et al., ‘Egalitarianism and social inequality in Scotland’, 127–47. Cameron, ‘ “Unfinished business”’, 83–114; McCrone, ‘Land, democracy and culture’, 73–92; McEwan, Who Owns Scotland?; Wightman, Who Owns Scotland?. 65 Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 84–5. 66 McCrone, Understanding Scotland, 86–90. 63 64

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220 impa l e d upo n a this t l e of a high proportion of Scots as ‘working class’. In 1999 even a majority of the professional and managerial group identified themselves as working class, despite, or because of, the decline of the working class in ‘real terms’. Why does this distinctive Scottish trait exist? As sociologists have noted this is related to social mobility.67 A large group of those firstgeneration middle-class professionals, perhaps brought up in a council house and the first members of their family to have extended secondary and higher education, are reluctant to abandon the identity of their family background. 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.

ho u s i n g In the thirty years after the Second World War there was a bipartisan consensus and a confidence that investment in replacing old housing stock would eradicate historic problems. From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s 25,000 to 40,000 new houses were built each year, the majority in the public sector. This was very unusual in a European context; Belgium, for example, had less than 1 per cent of its stock in the public sector.68 This reshaped urban Scotland, even in Edinburgh, a bastion of private building in the inter-war years.69 The new government in 1979 interpreted this as evidence of a stultifying dependency culture, but only the state had the resources and will to tackle Scotland’s housing problems. In the mid-1970s the Labour government cut subsidy for building, public-sector completions fell and owner-occupation advanced as 450,000 council houses were, under Conservative legislation, sold to sitting tenants. In the twenty-year period to 1999 owner-occupation grew from 35 per cent to 62 per cent of housing stock while the public sector contracted from 54 per cent to 25 per cent. Given the 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. Scots now spend around 15 per cent of their income on housing costs, a rise from 10 per cent only twenty years ago.70 Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 98–101. Glendinning, ‘Twentieth-century social housing’, 193. 69 Glendinning, ‘Housing and suburbanisation’, 155. 70 MacLennan, ‘Public cuts and private sector slump’, 171–97; Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 131, 197. 67 68

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 221 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 2006.71 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.72 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 saw a shift in the nature of Scottish housing away from the state is indicated by the policy of transfer. It represents a rejection of the notion that the state should subsidise cheap public-sector rents, although this has caused political difficulties as was the case in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The overcrowded inner city of the nineteenth century has given way to a more dispersed pattern, although this has brought new problems. The process began in the aftermath of the Second World War, during which the scale of Scotland’s housing problem had been confirmed 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. The existing cities were important vested interests, not keen to lose population and revenue from the rates, if they could help it. Documents like the Clyde Valley Regional Plan recognised that industrial communities would have to change. The authors of the plan were most worried about the decline of the mining industry – long associated with hideous housing conditions – and the fate of the ‘redundant’ population.73 Industrial diversification was the objective and Glasgow, June 2002, 14; Herald, 16 Dec. 2005, 11; 22 Dec. 2005, 4; 19 Oct. 2006, 1; 25 Oct. 2006, 7. 72 Scottish Executive, The Right to Buy in Scotland: Pulling Together the Evidence, 2006, iv–v, 2–3, 12–13, 63–8. 73 Abercrombie and Matthew, The Clyde Valley, 73–8. 71

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222 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 important in the process of redistribution. The objective was to move population and economic activity to new places and to develop housing free of the historic problems and architectural styles. Five Scottish New Towns were ‘incorporated’: East Kilbride (1947), Glenrothes (1948), Cumbernauld (1956), Livingston (1962) and Irvine (1966). They may have been successful in drawing population but 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 successful in attracting new industries in the 1960s after the mine had to be abandoned because of flooding.74 A major problem was the attitude of the city authority in Glasgow. In the late 1940s the City Engineer, Robert Bruce, defended Glaswegian independence. He wished to retain population and build within the city, if necessary on ‘green-belt’ land. Inner-city ‘slum’ areas were to be redeveloped. The objective was the financial health and political status of the city, rather than regional planning.75 The city adopted different approaches over the post-war period: huge peripheral housing schemes were constructed on land which many felt should have been 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). These policies are now seen as architectural and social failures, but in the context of the problems of their time the view was different. In the Gorbals, for example, a population of 55,000 was crammed into less than 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 unsound. These were problems of a unique scale in urban Britain, and the much derided policies of the post-war period were the first to make any progress towards dealing with them.76 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. 75 Horsey, Tenements and Towers, 28–33. 76 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. 74

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 223 The Holyrood slum Politicians like John Wheatley used the housing question to advance the cause of the Labour movement in the early years of the century and this persisted after 1945. Edinburgh Labour councillor Pat Rogan represented the Holyrood ward, whose streets contained some of the worst housing in the city. The council had to issue information to prevent outbreaks of dysentry. Rogan faced a difficult task as Edinburgh local politics were dominated by the ‘Progressives’, a parsimonious anti-socialist coalition. Eventually he gained the Chair of the Housing Committee and was active in pushing forward a programme of public housing and drawing attention 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 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.77

e d u ca t i o n

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Scottish education is central to myths of egalitarianism and social mobility. Scottish secondary schooling continues to be based on a relatively broad curriculum compared to England, although perhaps not to other parts of western Europe. The relative profusion of university places and the continued existence of the four-year honours degree also point 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 has resulted in the continuation of a distinctive system. Further, since education is a key area of policy devolved to the Scottish 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.

77

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224 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. 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. This was hardly the basis for a twentieth-century version of the ‘democratic intellect’. Expansion took two forms. In secondary schools the introduction of the ‘Ordinary grade’ certificate in 1962, taken after four years, gave more structure to the education of pupils not aiming for university. The structure provided by these new examinations 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 expansion came in the universities. Since the establishment of the University Grants Committee in 1919 the four ancient universities – St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh – were administered from London and took a 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 in 1964.78 The ancient universities, operating as a tight network, tried their best to frustrate this and argued that they could cope with the necessary expansion. This 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 78

TNA: PRO, UGC7/237–44.

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 225 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 government funding was cut. In secondary schools the same government gave parents a degree of choice over where to send their children to be educated. Although this was controversial in some quarters there was little overt resistance. More controversial, although ultimately 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.79 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 Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paisley. These new universities had a quite different ethos from the ancient institutions or the foundations of the 1960s, emphasising not only science and technology, but also vocational and applied subjects. What was once a form of education for a tiny male elite, notwithstanding notions of intellectual democracy, is now within the realm of expectation for most families. 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 present in Scotland since the end of the Great War.80 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.81 79 80 81

Pickard, ‘History of Scottish education’, 230. Paterson, Scottish Education, 177–89. Keating, ‘Higher education in Scotland and England’, 423–35.

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226 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Alongside the increase in vocational postgraduate education and the need for flexibility and retraining in the workforce, formal education is a lifelong experience for many Scots. This has had an effect on the school system. Formerly 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, however, the social and economic experience of adulthood seems to require the flexibility and critical thinking which critics of the Scottish education system argue it has traditionally neglected.82 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 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, social capitalists argue that educational attainment encourages civic participation and a wider sense of community.83

re l i gi o n 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, although 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 materialism. This has also had an 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 Smout, Century, 223, 229; McPherson, ‘Schooling’, 102–3. Lloyd, ‘Tom Johnston’s parliament on education’, 109, 113; Putnam, Bowling Alone, 55–8, 296–306.

82 83

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 227 young, and encourage participation.84 These organisations have withered as their parent Churches have declined. A qualification to be entered here is that Churches are 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 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. There has been a discussion about the longevity of decline in religious attendance, some arguing that the roots can be found in the Victorian period, others replying that the decline dates from the immediate post-war years, or even the 1960s.85 The Scottish example provides some evidence for the latter case in that the drop in attendance has set in since the 1950s and, perhaps influenced by the renewed assertiveness of grassroots initiatives like ‘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. Graham largely preached to the converted and many felt that his revivalism undermined the activities of the ‘Tell Scotland’ campaign.86 Despite the statistical decline of Churches society may be less secular than it appears: 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 the basic principles of Christian belief seem to be held by a dwindling proportion of the population.87 The evidence pointing to decline in religious observance is clear. The proportion of Church of Scotland communicants in the population declined from just under 30 per cent in the early 1950s to less than 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 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 Putnam, Bowling Alone, 65–79. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, esp. 170–93; Bruce, God is Dead, esp. 60–74; Morris, ‘Strange death of Christian Britain’, 963–76. 86 Allan, Crusade in Scotland, 112; Bardgett, ‘The Tell Scotland movement’, 105–50. 87 Wolffe, ‘Religion and “secularization” ’, 427–41; Gilbert, ‘Secularization and the future’, 503–21. 84 85

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228 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 the recent schisms. 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 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.88 This is 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 sceptical Scots less susceptible to the influence of the Churches. Generally conservative views on matters relating to gender, relationships and sexuality have not contributed to the attractiveness of the Church among a liberal generation.

s e c t a r i a n i sm 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 part of a wider malaise. 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 88

This debate runs through Reid, Outside Verdict, esp. xxxv.

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 229 assertions directed against the prejudices and bigotry which allegedly scar Scottish society and culture he concluded: In many walks of life – in the workplace, in the 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 . . . 89 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 is that there is little evidence that sectarianism – although undoubtedly present – is systemic in Scotland. It has not, for example, been reflected in politics or voting patterns. Political parties have not developed around religious identities. There is evidence that the Labour party attracted the loyalties of Catholic voters from the early 1920s, the Unionist party was perceived as a ‘Protestant’ party and there was once 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.90 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. 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.91 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: 89 90 91

MacMillan, ‘Scotland’s shame’, 15. Rosie, Myth of Sectarianism, 3–4, 8, 29, 49–71. McGinty, This Turbulent Priest, 388–420.

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230 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.92 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 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.93 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. A Mass 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 only received its first address from a Catholic clergyman in 1975. The small group of protestors were marginal, regressive and out of sympathy with public opinion.94 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.95 It is odd then that the minority of ‘sectarianists’ within the Scottish Catholic community seem to cringe from the change in status of their community, deny their place in the mainstream and crave a marginal and victimised position.96 Evidence relating to feelings of identity further erode a sectarian Quoted in Stewart, ‘Gordon Joseph Gray’, 180; Gordon Joseph Gray (1910–93), ODNB. 93 Colin MacPherson (1917–1990), ODNB. 94 Turnbull, Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray, 109–17; McGinty, This Turbulent Priest, 224–43; Maver, ‘Catholic community’, 282. 95 Herald, 24 Oct. 1992. 96 See Reilly, ‘Kicking with the left foot’, 29–40; Bradley, ‘Catholic Distinctiveness’, 159–74, challenged from a Catholic point of view by Devine, ‘A Lanarkshire perspective’, 99–104. 92

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 231 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’.97 It is curious that this process of imagination emulates that of those who imagined an Irish threat to Scottish identity between the wars.98

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, Scottish achievement tends to come under a British flag.99 The rather quaint Commonwealth Games – held in Edinburgh in 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 revenue for Scottish football, especially through lucrative European competition, has 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 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.100 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 97 98 99 100

Rosie, Sectarian Myth, 150. Kelly, ‘Challenging sectarianism’, 32–56. Walker, ‘Nancy Riach’, 142–53. MacPherson, Jock Stein, 157–77.

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232 impa l e d upo n a this t l e prior to the professional era in 1991 and winners of the ‘Grand Slam’ in the then Five 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 in January 1971. This event brought Rangers into public disrepute – not helped by the inept performance of club officials at the 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 supporters. It also provided an opening for those who wished to berate the club for its sectarian identity and employment practices.101 This tragedy led to the Safety of Sports Grounds Act in 1975 and the club constructed 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.102 The Scottish Rugby Union also redeveloped 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 and 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 attendance was 5.1 million at Scottish Football League matches, a figure which had declined to 2.5 million in season 1984– 5.103 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 an Old Firm cup 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. 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 obsessive detail.104 In the 1960s 101 Walker, ‘Ibrox Stadium disaster’, 169–82; Inglis, Football Grounds, 32–3, 294; Murray, Old Firm, 223–6. 102 Webster, The Dons, 14–16, 281; Maver, ‘Leisure and social change’, 440–2. 103 Lambert, ‘Leisure and recreation’, 261. 104 Blain and Boyle, ‘Battling along the boundaries’, 125–41.

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 233 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.105 Much more significant now, 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 with a tartan rug 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 twenty-eight per week on average in Scotland, the highest figure in the UK – spent in front of ‘the box’, especially in the passive consumption of light entertainment, has been presented as having a very close link with the decline in participation in communal and civic activities.106 Communing with the Scottish landscape – clambering over it, pointlessly sliding down it, observing its fauna – is another important form of recreation. 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 even 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 HLRO, Beaverbrook MSS, H/232, Ian MacColl to T. Blackburn, 8 Jan. 1964. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 216–46; Paterson et al., Living in Scotland, 146–7; Scottish Social Statistics, 2001, 155–7. 105 106

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234 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 is muted compared to its Victorian and Edwardian heyday. The National Trust for Scotland was a product of the inter-war 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 NTS or the more statutory version provided by the tidy sites managed by Historic Scotland. Recreation, the final theme considered in this chapter, mirrors the others in the scale and pace of change in the last forty years. The rapid changes in leisure patterns which have taken place since around 1970 have increased the diversity of the activities which Scots undertake in their spare time. The era of vast attendances at football matches and the cinema has receded as a wider range of activities and entertainment are offered. The fact that more leisure is pursued in the home reflects the improvements in housing which have taken place in this period as well as the advances in technology which have placed a huge range of media at the fingertips of the consumer. The economic changes which have broken down the traditional class structure of Scotland have created the affluence which has made it possible for a wider section of society to travel in their own cars to enjoy the countryside and the ‘heritage’ of Scotland. Secularisation and the diminution of lingering deference towards the clergy have changed the face of the Scottish Sunday and have increased the range of activities undertaken on the Sabbath. Universal secondary education and mass higher education have changed Scots’ perceptions of society and made it possible for people from a wider spectrum of social backgrounds to aspire to professional and managerial employment. Gender roles have been altered but not transformed by this process. Female educational achievement has diversified many traditional male professions and although there have been changes in patterns of fertility and marriage, the process is far from complete. There is much evidence to suggest that the period since around 1970 has been one of revolutionary social change in Scotland, perhaps even exceeding the scale and intensity of the transformation of the period between 1760 and 1830. Historians often instinctively emphasise change and sometimes ignore the evidence for continuity but this does seem to be a period of Scottish history where such emphasis is justified. Nevertheless, one paradoxical

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t he s o c i a l r e v o l u t i o n 235 survival has been a strong sense of working-class identity in the face of social change. Another survival is the connection between deep inequality, persistent poverty and poor health. An analysis of economic change in modern Scotland is required to bring these points to the surface.

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ch apt e r 10

The End of Industrial Scotland: The Economy since 1945

T

here are three prominent themes in Scottish economic history since 1945.1 The first is the decline of heavy industry and the rise of the service sector and electronics: ‘from ships to chips’.2 The second theme is the role of government.3 This shades into politically inspired accusations of Scottish dependency and special pleading. ‘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 The third theme – alleged failure of entrepreneurship – is related to the discussion of government activity; indeed, it is often presented as the natural result of reliance on ‘subsidy’. Further, 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.5 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 the early part of this period the Board of Trade was at least as important as the Scottish Office in microeconomic policy. The long-standing suspicion that London did not know best, present in the economically impotent Scottish Office in the 1930s, was not eradicated as that department gained more power and expertise after 1945. The ‘Scottish’ perspective also elides the regional diversity of the Peden, ‘Agenda’, 5–26. Knox, Industrial Nation, 254. 3 Peden, ‘The managed economy’, 233–65. 4 Alexander et al., ‘The political economy of Scotland’, 13; ‘joke’ quoted in Smith, Paper Lions, 127. 5 Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 114–17. 1 2

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 237 Scottish economy.6 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 reappeared in a slightly different guise in the post-1945 era as the nature of work changed. Scotland continued 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. 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 Norway or the Netherlands.7

i nd u s t r i a l st r uc t ur e There has been a massive shift in the structure of the Scottish economy in the post-war period and especially since around 1965. 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 workforce 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. If one looks at Gross Domestic Product (GDP) the same picture of the decline in manufacturing and the rise of services can be seen. The overall result of this shift is that Scotland’s economy is more like that of the rest of the UK and, indeed, western Europe, than it has been at any point in the post-war period. What does this mean for the individual heavy industrial sectors which once dominated the Scottish economy? The precipitous decline in manufacturing encompasses the wellknown 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, there were fewer than 6 Campbell, ‘Too much on the highlands’, 58–75; Newlands, ‘Regional economies’, 159–83. 7 Pike, ‘The impact of north sea oil and gas’, 207–20.

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238 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Table 10.1 Structure of employment in the Scottish economy, 1951–2000a Industry group

1951

Agriculture, Fishing, Forestry 7.3 Mining, Quarrying 4.4 Manufacturing 35.9 Construction 6.2 Gas, Electricity, Water 1.4 Services 44.7 TOTAL (000s) 2,195

1960

1970

1980

4.7 4.3 35.0 7.6 1.4 47.0 2,096

2.8 1.9 35.6 8.3 1.4 49.9 2,077

2.2 2.1 26.7 7.7 1.4 59.9 2,072

1990

2000

1.6

2.1

18.6 6.9 2.5 70.4 1,988

14.1 5.9 2.1 76.1 2,040

Note: a Leser, ‘Manpower’, 35–45; Hunter, ‘The Scottish labour market’, 168; Scottish Economic Statistics, 2001, 104

Table 10.2 GDP by economic sector, 1950–2006a

Agriculture, Fishing, Forestry Mining, Quarrying, Manufacturing, Energy production Construction Services

1954

1964

1971

1986

1996

2006

7.2

5.4

5.1

3.4

3.0

1.8

42.0 5.9 42.2

39.3 8.3 44.1

35.3 8.4 51.2

28.3 7.0 61.3

27.8 6.0 63.1

19.0 7.1 72.0

Note: a Lythe and Majmudar, Renaissance of the Scottish Economy, 26; Peat and Boyle, Scottish Economy, 15, 17, 121; Scottish Economic Statistics, 2006, 33

20,000 miners and output had shrunk to 7 million tons. Scottish mining employment and output had 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 1984–5 strike the decline was rapid and terminal; by the end of the 1980s the 4,000 remaining miners produced only 2 million tons of coal and a decade later deep mining had ceased.8 The small size of Scottish pits and the geological difficulty of extracting coal from them drove up prices compared to easier areas such as Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Further, in the 1940s the British economy was literally coal-fired: it was a prime source of industrial energy and domestic heat, and shipping and the railways depended on it. In 1952 nearly 90 per cent of the heat supplied to Scotland came from 8

Payne, ‘Decline of the Scottish heavy industries’, 80; Lee, Scotland and the UK, 83.

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 239 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 electricity two vital markets were lost. 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. Former coal-mining communities have faced difficult times since they were so dependent on the pit and were often located in isolated places, making them difficult to modernise or integrate into a new industrial structure. Until the 1970s, however, the rundown of the industry was achieved without industrial relations conflict and perhaps even without a great deal of unemployment because of 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 recalled: ‘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.’9 It cannot be said, however, that this was unexpected. The plans for 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, 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. The steel 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 this was carefully considered by Colvilles as the steel industry emerged from nationalisation in the early 1950s. Other elements were forced on the firm for political reasons by the Conservatives in the late 1950s, especially the £50 million loan to build a strip mill at Ravenscraig. In contrast to the management of the National Coal Board in Scotland, who were optimistic about the future output of their industry, the fact that the government had to force this unwanted loan onto a reluctant Colvilles indicated their more realistic approach. Their management knew there was not a sufficient market in Scotland for the products of the mill, despite the opening of the vehicle plants at Linwood and Bathgate.10 The paradox of the history of Ravenscraig is that although it distorted the structure of the steel industry in Scotland 9 10

McDowall, ‘Coal, gas and oil’, 292–311; Joe Campbell of Kelty in Owens, Miners, 68. Payne, Colvilles, 303.

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240 impa l e d upo n a this t l e and contributed to its downfall, it was such a totemic symbol, not of antiquity but of intervention, that it had a political significance which prolonged the life of the Scottish steel industry.11 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. The privatised British Steel Corporation gained a bad reputation in Scotland, not least in the shape of its vituperative chief executive, Sir Robert (‘Black Bob’) Scholey. It was not simply a story of changing political circumstances, however; the inland location of Scottish steel-making, the failure of the vehicle industry to establish itself in Scotland and increasing international competition, especially from Korea and Japan, provided the justification for closure.12 The results in terms of output and employment were clear: the 3,330 million tonnes of steel produced in Scotland in 1970 represented over 12 per cent of UK output, compared to only 571 million 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.13 Unlike steel where the decline in Scotland has been marked compared to south Wales or Teesside, in the case of shipbuilding the story of decline has been a British one. In 1947 57 per cent of the world’s tonnage was launched in Britain, but this had declined to around 1 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 – 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’.14 These conditions led some European countries, such as Sweden, to abandon shipbuilding. Two considerations prompted the sometimes desperate attempts to sustain British shipbuilding: the perceived need to retain capacity for naval building; and the fact that shipbuilding was centred in politically sensitive areas of high unemployment – Clydeside, the north-east of England and Belfast. Although government was an important agent in post-war shipbuilding, the caution of the shipbuilders also played an important part in the industry’s collapse. 11 12 13 14

Payne, ‘The end of steelmaking’, 78. Stewart, ‘Fighting for survival’, 40–57; Smith, Paper Lions, 137–44. Payne, ‘The end of steelmaking’, 71, 78. Johnman and Murphy, British Shipbuilding and the State, 231.

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 241 The post-war period began with full order books fuelled by the need for stock to replace that damaged or forgone during the war. Behind the optimism there were a number of trends: the decline of coal-fired steam ships and their replacement with increasingly large diesel-driven tankers; the need to adopt welding in place of riveting; and the importance of low costs. If bulk carriers and tankers were the new factor in international maritime trade there was an even more important competitor: international air travel. This 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 depression. Marketing was minimal and many yards relied for their orders on long-standing 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 product delivery.15 The principal recommendation of the enquiry was that yards should be grouped together to try to achieve economies of scale and greater efficiency. On the lower Clyde Scott Lithgow was the product of mergers; 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.16 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. Edward Heath’s 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 British yards had a monopoly.17 The Parliamentary 15 16 17

Johnman and Murphy, ‘Norwegian market’, 55–72. Payne, ‘Decline of the Scottish heavy industries’, 106. Johnman and Murphy, British Shipbuilding and the State, 203.

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242 impa l e d upo n a this t l e progress of the Bill to nationalise the shipbuilding industry was almost as drawn out as the devolution Bills and the end result, in 1977, was equally pointless. The new creation, British Shipbuilders, which must have made James Lithgow turn uncomfortably in his grave, returned to the task of the National Shipbuilders’ Security of the 1930s and devoted itself to the reduction of capacity. Another initiative was to grasp the opportunities 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 problems with industrial relations, and the yard was sold in 1979. In addition, the platforms built at Clydebank were not suitable for 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 Ardersier and Nigg in the north of Scotland on more open sites. Another problem was the inflexible attitude of trades unions towards demarcation, although industrial relations proved reasonably peaceful. Nevertheless, this compared unfavourably to MacDermott’s at Ardersier where the management controlled industrial relations by recognising only the Amalgamated Engineering Union.18 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 the ‘strike-prone’ nature of an industry marred by ‘restrictive practices’. Management had not challenged trades union practices in the years of profitability and it took nationalisation in 1979 to cut through antiquated practices and impose a system of national bargaining. In turn, privatisation, and the 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.19 The overall picture of heavy industrial decline is clear enough: but what are the implications? The male-dominated manufacturing, mining, fishing and forestry sectors have all declined in favour of whitecollar employment, which has a more diverse gender composition. The McKinstry, ‘Transforming John Brown’s shipyard’, 33–60; Mackie, The Klondykers, 169–91, esp. 178. 19 McKinlay and Taylor, ‘Privatisation and industrial relations’, 293–304, quote at 297; see also McGoldrick, ‘Industrial relations’, 197–220. 18

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 243 number of employed men, at 1.3 million, has not grown over the course of the twentieth century as a whole – although it rose to a peak of nearly 1.6 million in 1921 before falling back – whereas the number of women at work has doubled to 1.1 million over the same period.20 Many of these new jobs are in poorly paid occupations, often dominated by women, although others are very highly paid financial sector jobs. 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 and in the 1970s and 1980s unemployment returned to haunt the Scottish economy. 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, when 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 further 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 was much higher unemployment among men, although female joblessness was under-recorded. There was also regional diversity with unemployment among men in Strathclyde being nearly three times the rate of that in Grampian.21 In contrast to the 1930s, when unemployment was due to a slump in demand for Scottish goods, the problem in the 1980s 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. It ought to be noted here that the enumeration of the unemployed is a very controversial subject and it is difficult to compare rates over time. In particular, there has been a deliberate policy of moving people from unemployment benefits onto sickness benefits and those on a variety of government training schemes or the beneficiaries of early-retirement packages would once have been included among the ‘unemployed’.22 The structural changes induced long-term Lee, ‘Unbalanced growth’, 212–13; Scottish Economic Statistics, 2001, 102. Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom, 67. 22 Peden, ‘The managed economy’, 248, 259; Webster, ‘Political economy of Scotland’s population decline’, 43, 49–50. 20 21

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244 impa l e d upo n a this t l e unemployment in the old industrial areas of which the west of Scotland was an archetypal example. The changes in the Scottish economy since the 1970s have exacerbated regional inequality despite a generation or more of intervention by governments designed to eradicate this. The principal contrast is not between the highlands and the lowlands but between the east and the west. The economy of Edinburgh, with its service, financial and administrative sectors, generates high average earnings: £480 per week in 2002, compared to £355 in Inverclyde and a Scottish average of £427.23 In the west of Scotland the picture is entirely different. In Glasgow over two-thirds of manufacturing employment – 200,000 jobs – has been wiped out since the early 1970s. The rise of the service sector has not increased commensurately and few of those who lost out in the decline of manufacturing had the skills to profit from the rise of services. To compound these problems Glasgow suffered from population decline – driven by out-migration, falling fertility and high mortality – greater than any other comparable British city. By 2002 nearly 20 per cent of the population of the city was on sickness benefit, a fourfold increase over two decades and an almost uniquely high level in the UK. Any attempt to assess the geography of poverty in Scotland comes back to the singular position of Glasgow. One study from the mid-1990s showed that there were twice as many people in Glasgow on income support as in Edinburgh – 42 per cent and 20 per cent – and that even these figures underestimated the extent of poverty in the city. Another study found that 58 per cent of the most deprived postcode sectors in Scotland were in the city of Glasgow, and especially the large peripheral estates. Edinburgh had only 6 per cent of the most deprived areas and Aberdeen none.24 These statistics help to place in context the change in the image of the city. The City Council may have declared in the 1980s that ‘Glasgow’s miles better’, a marketing campaign furthered by its status as European City of Culture in 1990, and the centre of the city may have been revitalised, but huge problems remain in the former ‘Second City of the Empire’. As Ian Jack remarked in a 1984 essay on the subject, ‘It is the best of times and the worst of times and there are two Glasgows.’25 McQuaid, ‘Edinburgh and its hinterland’, 18–34; Newlands, ‘Changing nature of economic disparities’, 12. 24 Bramley et al., ‘Benefit take-up’, 507–19; Kearns et al., ‘Area deprivation’, 1535–59. 25 Turok, ‘Glasgow’s recent trajectory’, 35–9; Jack, Before the Oil Ran Out, 214. 23

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 245

e nt r e p r e n e ur s h i p o r d e p e nden c y ? These structural changes are not unique to Scotland, but they are given particular form by the former concentration on heavy industry and the alleged weakness of entrepreneurship. Data from the 1980s, when the pace of change was at its hottest, indicates that Scotland was distinctive. 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 hesitant in suggesting reasons for this apparent weakness, but one study 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’.26 In the late 1980s Conservative politicians berated the Scots for dependence on the state and their support for other political parties. Three points are prompted by this. First, the pattern of public housing leads to the 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. Second, although the apparent lack of dynamism in the economy cannot be simply explained away by the former industrial structure, similar areas in the north of England also have low rates of new firm formation. 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.27 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, seemed to be a success story. Since the incoming multinational corporations brought few research and development functions to Scotland and even within Britain strategic management functions are 26 27

Ashcroft et al., ‘New firm formation’, 405. Newlands, ‘Oil economy’, 138, 143.

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246 impa l e d upo n a this t l e centralised in the south-east of 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’.28 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. Second, the role of the education system – especially the expansion of higher education and the modest commercialisation of research in universities – has changed. Although more than 50 per cent of Scottish school leavers now enter some form of tertiary education this has not yet filtered through to high numbers of graduates in the workforce. Third, there are parts of Scotland where rates of new firm formation were reasonably healthy, suggesting that the problem was not attributable to some unique ‘Scottish factor’. In the 1980s the Grampian and Lothian regions performed much better than the older industrial regions. This was to be expected, as these are areas with more diverse economic structures, including substantial rural districts. They also have relatively high levels of smaller firms and low levels, for Scotland at least, of local-authority housing.29 There is also recent evidence that this pattern is shifting and that the older industrial areas are beginning to increase their per capita rate of business start-ups. Edinburgh is performing best but Glasgow is not far behind and areas like Lanarkshire and West Lothian are also performing better than the average. Although business fertility in Scotland is 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 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.30 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 28 Ashcroft et al., ‘New firm formation’, 395–409; Beesley and Hamilton, ‘Births and deaths’, 281–8; Storey and Johnson, ‘Regional variations in entrepreneurship’, 161–73. 29 Beesley and Hamilton, ‘Births and deaths of manufacturing firms’, 286. 30 Peat and Boyle, Illustrated Guide to the Scottish Economy, 72–8.

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 247 of new products and processes show Scottish enterprises in a good light, providing further evidence against the accusation of a culture of dependency in Scotland.31

t he r o l e o f go v e r n me n t i n t h e ec on omy In 2005 the chairman of Scottish Enterprise argued that the scale of government spending in Scotland ‘crowded out’ private-sector activity. Although there is no 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. This data suggests that there is no necessary link between growth and public spending. In 2005 official comparisons between levels of public expenditure and expansion of employment and economic growth across Europe noted that the ‘size of the public sector . . . is not the fundamental impediment to stronger growth in employment or output’. It is difficult to argue that Scotland’s relatively large public sector has hampered growth in the private sector when the vast bulk of the recent growth in employment has been in the private sector.32 It was certainly the case that government was more interventionist prior to the mid-1970s. 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 aimed to 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’.33 The heyday of this policy came in the 1960s and 1970s with governments of both parties committed to the idea, although using Scottish Economic Statistics, 2006, 52–72. Birch and Cumbers, ‘Public sector spending’, 36–56; Scottish Economic Report, Dec. 2005, 85–6, 88. 33 PP 1943–4 VIII, Employment policy Cmd 6527; Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 198. 31 32

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248 impa l e d upo n a this t l e different tactics. Between 1967 and 1976 UK regional policy expenditure peaked at £1.5 billion (1983 prices) compared to less than £200 million prior to this period. The Conservative government of 1970–4 was as enthusiastic as its Labour predecessors and successors. Since the election of the Conservative government in 1979 the political commitment and expenditure devoted to regional policy, widely deemed to have been a failure, have collapsed. The economic crisis and appeal to the IMF in 1976 began the process, and a new infrastructure created around the idea of ‘enterprise’ has replaced older institutions based on ‘development’.34 The division between these concepts is not entirely clear-cut, however, as the troubled history of the Scottish Development Agency suggests. This was founded in 1975, possibly as the partner of devolution in Labour’s package to keep the SNP at bay. Although the word ‘development’ appeared in its title it carved out a role as an agency designed to provide investment rather than to prop up ‘lame ducks’. Nevertheless, it was sucked into providing support to geographical areas – Dundee, Motherwell, the Garnock Valley, the East End of Glasgow – as much as it worked to stimulate prosperous economic sectors. It worked hard to attract foreign investment, although it had its wings clipped in this area by the creation of ‘Locate in Scotland’ in 1981. These strategies helped the SDA to survive in the 1980s when similar bodies were abolished by a government hostile to corporatism, but this may have come at the price of the downgrading of its social objectives.35 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 was 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 clear is that regional policy expenditure diminished markedly in the 1980s, from £369 million to £103 million, according to one calculation.36 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 O’Hara, ‘Journey without maps’, 1183–95; Scotsman, 12 Apr. 1982, 7; 13 Apr. 1982, 7. 35 Keating and Boyle, Re-making Urban Scotland, 21–5, 85–114. 36 Lythe and Majmudar, Renaissance, 119–39, esp. Table 5.1 on 121; Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom, 186. 34

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 249 Linwood and the Hillman Imp The history of the Rootes car plant at Linwood in Renfrewshire in 1963 is a barometer of the industrial policies of governments from the 1960s to the 1980s. Its opening had been encouraged by the Conservative government who wished to create a market for Ravenscraig steel. The location was entirely due to government policy; left to their own devices the company would have gone to the English midlands as was also the case with British Leyland’s Bathgate factory.37 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 problems with industrial relations – short-lived disputes over local issues rather than politically motivated action – 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 Secretary of State for Scotland Willie Ross, was left with little option but to subsidise it. He was not keen to preside over the addition of 7,000 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 which would have decapitated the new Scottish Development Agency before it had begun its work. The plant was taken over by Peugeot and when closure was threatened in the early 1980s a Conservative government opposed to regional policy, hostile to subsidising the car industry and uninterested in the Scottish constitutional question made no effort to intervene and Linwood was closed in 1981 with significant implications for Ravenscraig. A sign of the changed times was that there was no assistance for the area from the SDA – now in search of ‘potential not problems’ – when the factory closed.38 authorities were cut and expenditure on public housing was reduced. That this represented a shift in priorities can be gauged by the fact that this was a time of rising unemployment and manufacturing decline, two processes which regional policies had been designed to mitigate. Regional policy was not confined to Scotland but traversed most 3738

Scotsman, 12 Apr. 1982, 7. 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; Gilmour, ‘The trouble with Linwood’, 75–93; Keating and Boyle, Re-making Urban Scotland, 89.

37 38

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250 impa l e d upo n a this t l e industrialised areas of the UK. 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 and in 1965 with the creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board. This, like the Crofters Act of 1886, was trailed as an initiative to salve the conscience of Scotland over the highland clearances and emigration. These expectations were not fulfilled and it became evident that the Board had few powers to deal with festering grievances over the land question. It became associated, perhaps unfairly, with a series of large projects – a pulp mill near Fort William and an aluminium smelter at Invergordon – in the very areas which had been identified for growth in 1948.39 Both plants had failed by the early 1980s causing massive employment problems in areas which had few alternative industries. The oil industry had an important effect in the highlands, through the construction yards sited in or around the region and the potential for temporary migration to work offshore, a modern adaptation of a very old strategy. 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 now very vocal, as it seemed to provide a model of low-impact, environmentally sensitive agriculture which, with security of tenure, could provide an antidote to demographic decline. Some evidence of localised reversal of the longstanding trend of highland depopulation seems to be apparent, but this is due to in-migration. Low rates of natural growth, an ageing population, continuing out-migration and a very serious housing problem continue to be evident.

ag ri c ul t ur e Agriculture has declined as an area of employment and its contribution to Scottish GDP has shrunk from over 5 per cent to around 1 For the late 1940s see TNA: PRO, BT106/45, BT177/93, 192; Levitt, ‘Regenerating the Scottish highlands’, 21–39.

39

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 251 per cent over the period since 1945. Nevertheless, the importance of domestic food production in the 1940s and 1950s meant that farmers 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.40 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. 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. In the 1990s there were attempts to reduce the intensity of farming and diminish food surpluses. This paid subsidies directly to the farmer, especially to arable farmers, and attempted to control the level of production, even making payments to farmers to ‘set aside’ land. This was a reversal of the policy of paying farmers to produce and changed the balance of the relationship between farmers and the public.41 As one farmer put it: ‘farmers were previously used to having the nation dependant on them for supplies of food, now they find themselves dependant on the public for their support’.42 The shift in policy emphasised farmers’ environmental responsibilities, something which they argued that they had always paid attention to. These trends have marginalised farmers and dislocated them from the consumers who purchase their food in supermarkets.

oil No aspect of post-war economic history is as controversial as the impact of the oil industry. The peak of its influence came in the decade from June 1975, when the first oil from the North Sea was brought ashore in the UK.43 A decade of vast investment, huge construction projects and a new form of work in a hostile environment was altered in late 1985 when the oil price fell – as Middle Eastern countries abandoned their strict policy of limiting supplies – from $27 per barrel to a low of only $6–8 per 40

NAS, AF45/454/1, Minute by Mr [Matthew] Campbell on postwar agricultural policy, c. 1945. 41 Scottish Economic Bulletin 53 (1996), 21–30; Scottish Economic Report (Jan. 2001), 78–83. 42 McHenry, ‘Understanding the farmer’s view’, 80; Scottish Farmer, 10 Oct. 1992, 16. 43 Harvie, Fool’s Gold, 132; Mackie, Oilmen, 132.

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252 impa l e d upo n a this t l e barrel the following year. There had been oil price crises before, but they were of a different nature. In 1973 the Organization of the 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 additional political leverage. More positively this period of high prices opened the door to development of the North Sea sector, the costs of which were astronomical because of 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.44 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. 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.45 Contrary to most of the industries which have driven the Scottish economy, oil exploration and production is more capital intensive than labour intensive. The bank loan of £370 million for the development of the Forties field in the mid-1970s was then the biggest granted in Britain.46 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’.47 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 44 45 46 47

Pike, ‘Oil price crisis’, 56–7. Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom, 103. Mackie, Oilmen, 134. Dunnett, Among Friends, 171.

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 253

Figure 10.1 A completed oil rig being floated out from Kishorn, 1978. © Newsquest (Herald & Times). Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

platforms took place in yards on the east coast, notably at Methil in Fife, Ardersier near Inverness and Nigg in Easter Ross. This introduced new population, high wages and the novel patterns of large-scale industrial work to new areas. 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 3,000 workers had a disturbing impact on a small crofting community. Nevertheless, the principal site of the economic impact of the oil industry in Scotland was Aberdeen. 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 ‘dependent’ on the oil industry. Oil also had a positive impact on male earnings in the city and led to a steep rise in property prices. 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 a ‘displacement effect’ which made it difficult for enterprises in other areas of the economy to compete in terms of wages, leading to a shortage of labour in

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254 impa l e d upo n a this t l e some sectors.48 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 made 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.49 50

Piper Alpha Compared 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 was of 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 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 reported horrific stories from men who had 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. In the view of one experienced worker, Bob Ballantyne, ‘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.’50 The aftermath of the disaster also exposed the myth of the well-paid offshore worker. Although only a minority of the victims came from Aberdeen it is in the ‘oil capital’ that the memory of the disaster is most potent, notably through a memorial in Hazlehead Park. A judicial enquiry chaired by Lord Cullen 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

48 49 50

Harris et al., ‘Who gains from structural change?’, 271–83. Newlands, ‘The oil economy’, 140, 151. Quoted in Mackie, Oilmen, 183.

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 255 assessment of the risk of a major hazard’.51 Compared to the scale of the disaster the outcomes seemed prosaic. The most significant was that the Health and Safety Executive took over responsibility for inspection from the Department of Energy, thereby ending a conflict of interest between safety and production. 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 organised strikes in 1989 and 1990. 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 the shipyards or the engineering industry. 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.

a b r a nc h - p l a n t e c o n o my?

51

Concern over foreign economic control in Scotland is not new: in the inter-war period, with the takeover of Scottish banks, insurance companies and, most of all, railway companies, economic power seemed to be slipping south. Nevertheless, the once tight Scottish business elite remained recognisable, although less coherent. Recently this has disappeared. Major Scottish companies and financial institutions are now largely dominated by external institutional investors and their lines of accountability run principally outside Scotland. This is combined with two other structural changes: the increased size and centrality of the Scottish financial sector and, at the same time, its much closer integration with the City of London.52 Throughout the twentieth century there have been several panaceas for the revival of the Scottish economy. The electronics industry, which 51 52

Quoted in Harvie, Fool’s Gold, 334. Baird et al., ‘Scottish capital’, 3–4.

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256 impa l e d upo n a this t l e had its roots in the 1940s and 1950s as Ferranti and IBM established factories in Scotland, was one.53 Indeed, there was a wave of US investment in Scotland in the 1940s and 1950s attracted by government incentives such as Industrial Development Certificates, which were used to control the pattern of industrial distribution, and the prospect of access to the growing European market. In addition to IBM, other multinationals appearing in Scotland included NCR, who set up in Dundee, and Burroughs. By the 1970s there were over 150 factories employing nearly 100,000 workers. After Canada, Scotland was the most popular location for US foreign investment in this period.54 These firms brought additional employment, and other potential benefits in the form of new skills and business practices, transfers of technology, access to new research and stimulation of local entrepreneurship. The issue of economic sovereignty, however, was a significant one, especially when there is considerable evidence that such firms viewed the Scottish factories as ‘branch plants’ to carry out fairly low-level assembly and distribution work. Nevertheless, in a context of long-term heavy industrial decline this area of economic expansion was largely under foreign control. Indeed, the Scottish manufacturing sector is quite remarkable in this respect. Foreign-owned manufacturing in Scotland in the mid-1990s employed only 29 per cent of the workforce but produced 51 per cent of the output. Employment in foreign-owned manufacturing was similar in comparable areas such as Wales or the west midlands, but output was much less at 39 per cent and 22 per cent respectively. In Scotland the electronics sector dominated foreign-owned manufacturing with 75 per cent of the output. Labour productivity was four times as high in foreign firms compared to domestic firms in the electronics sector in Scotland, a contrast much greater than in any other sector of the Scottish economy or in comparable areas.55 It might be argued that in the mid-1990s, prior to the extreme difficulties encountered by electronics, there was a profound dichotomy in Scottish manufacturing: a sluggish domestic-owned sector and an expanding and prosperous foreign-owned sector. The culture of industrial relations was very different to that which Scottish workers and trades unions were used to. In 1953 shop stewards of the AEU reported that industrial relations at IBM Greenock were ‘vicious’ and that there was ‘regimentation of workpeople by Young, ‘Foreign direct investment in Scotland’, 159–74. Knox and McKinlay, ‘Working for the Yankee dollar’, 1–6; Hood and Young, ‘US investment in Scotland’, 279–94. 55 Brand et al. ‘Assessing the impacts of foreign manufacturing’, 348–9. 53 54

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 257 management amounting to terrorism’. Company propaganda argued that trades unions were not necessary; the firm required no external pressure to look after its employees. American firms were also hostile to employers’ organisations, as they were perceived to be as malign as trades unions in the matter of imposing restrictive practices.56 A new wave of inward investment occurred in the 1980s as Japanese electronics firms came to Scotland. They were also attracted by government intervention, not the blunt instrument of Industrial Investment Certificates, but the more subtle blandishments of Locate in Scotland and the Scottish Development Agency. Like their American predecessors, they did not relocate front-line research and development to Scotland. They were attracted by low construction and property costs and relatively cheap labour, as well as proximity to lucrative markets in Europe. A comparison of Scottish and foreign firms in the electronics sector revealed that the employees of the former included 30 per cent in low-skilled manual jobs and 22 per cent in managerial executive positions; the picture in the latter was quite different, with 58 per cent low-skilled manual workers and only 9 per cent managerial-executive.57 The major problem which disappointed the high expectations of the transformative potential of inward investment was the ‘footloose’ attitude of foreign firms. The decisions of firms like Timex (Dundee) and Caterpillar (Lanarkshire) to close their Scottish factories provoked bitter, but ultimately futile, responses from the trades unions and the workforces. There have been contrasts in this matter of longevity in Scotland, NCR and IBM being such examples. Nevertheless, the perennial search for lower costs and more attractive inducements has often taken Japanese firms – such as Motorola who closed their Bathgate factory in 2001 with the loss of over 3,000 jobs – away from ‘Silicon Glen’. In this case the problem was the slowdown in the market for mobile phones which undermined recent expansion in the firm.58 International economic conditions have also placed obstacles in the way of inward investment. The most recent manifestation of this problem – not a new one in Scottish economic history, of course – is the vast empty factory on the north-east edge of Dunfermline. This was constructed in 1997–8, with investment from Scottish Enterprise, for the Korean firm Hyundai who intended to employ nearly 2,000 people there. Because of the downturn in the Asian Quoted in Knox and McKinlay, ‘Working for the Yankee dollar’, 16–17. Haug, ‘US high technology multinationals’, 108; Turok, ‘Contrasts in ownership and development’, 374. 58 Herald, 12 Apr. 2001, 17; 25 Apr. 2001, 16; 30 Apr. 2001, 16; Scotsman, 3 May 2001, 5. 56 57

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258 impa l e d upo n a this t l e economy in the late 1990s it was not kitted out for production and was sold to Motorola in 2000. Unfortunately, market conditions meant that its new owners were no more enthusiastic about entering production than their predecessors and they put it on the market in 2004, sparking a local debate about re-use or even demolition of the ‘white elephant’.59 While the downturn in the Asian economy has not helped the cause of inward investment in Scotland, the pessimism in the early part of this century had its roots closer to home. Motorola closed another factory at South Queensferry in 2002 and other plants at Erskine, Livingston and Glenrothes were downsized by companies such as NEC, Compaq and ADC Communications.60 In the period of expansion of foreign investment Scotland was on the periphery of Europe, offering a relatively cheap, well-educated and flexible workforce. The expansion of the European Union has created a new periphery in eastern Europe with cheaper and more flexible labour which has prompted a number of firms to relocate to Poland or the Czech Republic.61 It is easy to lapse into a pessimistic interpretation of this aspect of Scottish economic history. A recent study has, however, reached a more optimistic conclusion: On the positive side it has been possible to persuade some of the world’s leading-edge electronics companies to take root in Scotland and to set up technologically sophisticated processes. This has involved the training of generations of Scottish workers in advanced engineering and management skills; it has also provided one of the few remaining sources of Scottish manufacturing export growth.62 Recent developments have produced a much more realistic view of the prospects of an inward investment strategy and the development in the software industry might be more fruitful than in the hardware sector. This has been trailed as part of the ‘knowledge economy’ which is the most recent panacea for Scottish economic salvation. A key sector of the ‘knowledge economy’ is the biotechnology industry which has clustered in several areas of Scotland, especially in the environs of Edinburgh. Already this industry has produced a product, Dolly, the first cloned sheep (b. 1997), which has the global resonance of the Herald, 19 Dec. 1997, 4; 20 Jun. 1999, 17; Dunfermline Press, 16 Aug., 8 Nov. 2007 Scotsman, 8 Aug. 2002, 8; see also 1 Nov. 2002; 7 Jan. 2003. 61 van Egeraat and Jacobson, ‘Rise and demise of the Irish and Scottish computer hardware industry’, 824–5. 62 Young, ‘Foreign direct investment’, 173. 59 60

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 259 great liners of the Clyde shipbuilding industry in its heyday: from ships to sheep! The Scottish Executive has laid great stress on the importance of such industries. This area of the economy might account for around 25,000 jobs, with around a third of them in the Edinburgh area. Scotland is relatively well served with higher-education institutions producing well-trained postgraduate scientists, and the push of government organisations, such as Scottish Enterprise, has complemented support from UK and European structures to encourage investment in this aspect of the economy. Interestingly, some sources from the biotechnology sector have argued that the ‘overheated’ nature of the Edinburgh economy – the expensive housing market and transport congestion – present difficulties in recruiting staff. The diversity and specialisation of this area mean that ‘clusters’ of biotechnology firms do not bring especial benefits and the linkages with the local economy are relatively weak. Finally, companies in this sector are very prone to takeovers and shifts in location; in fact they may be as footloose as the electronics firms in which so much hope was once placed.63 Closely connected to the idea of the ‘knowledge economy’ is an issue which has been described recently as ‘the greatest threat that Scotland has ever faced’.64 This is the alteration in the global balance of business and commerce away from the west and towards Asia. In one sense this is not a new challenge. An earlier manifestation lay behind the collapse of the Scottish shipbuilding industry. Even further back is the depression of the inter-war period which saw the Scottish economy, with its export dependence, prostrated by changes in the worldwide terms of trade. Going further back still it might be argued that Scotland profited from the shift in trade away from northern Europe and towards the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. Despite this the Scottish Executive has presented it as a unique and novel challenge in Scotland’s economic history. The Framework for Economic Development in Scotland (2004) argued ‘the prospects for the Scottish economy have become intimately tied to the development of the global economy and our ability to compete in both domestic and international markets’.65 It is not that the global economy is unimportant, but that it has always been so. Although ‘communications’ is reserved to Westminster it is notable that in broadband penetration and speed Scotland certainly lags behind the acknowledged world leaders, such as Singapore. More worrying is 63 64 65

Liebovitz, ‘ “Embryonic” knowledge-based clusters and cities’, 1133–55. Sunday Herald, 9 Dec. 2007, Business section, 78. Framework for Economic Development in Scotland, 20.

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260 impa l e d upo n a this t l e A tartan tiger? A prominent Labour politician, writing in 2003, argued that Scotland needed to cast off its obsession with constitutional politics and develop new levels of national self-confidence in order to be able to undergo an economic transformation. With hindsight one sees the importance of a new Irish story reflecting the new Irish psyche. Scotland can do likewise by consigning her inferiority complex to history and crafting a new Scottish story which draws upon her immensely usable past, a cultural and historical legacy of scholarship and invention which stands comparison with any on earth. Already, thirty years of both constitutional constipation and painful economic transition are receding. Scotland is a natural home for knowledge-based businesses.66 This is clearly a partisan view and there is little evidence for a causal link between debate over independence and economic failure, but it raises the question of whether Scotland can emulate Ireland’s recent economic history. There can be no doubt about the changes which have taken place in Ireland since the 1970s. In 1973 when Ireland entered the European Community her GDP per capita was 60 per cent of the EU average; by 2005 the figure was 137.5 per cent. This turnaround was achieved with growth of nearly 10 per cent per annum in the 1990s. Formerly an agrarian-based economy, Ireland is now exportorientated, highly penetrated by foreign investment attracted by low corporate taxes and is experiencing historically low levels of unemployment and an unprecedented rate of in-migration. This success has been driven by services and high-technology industries.67 This would seem to be the very model of ‘knowledge economy’ which is aspired to in Scotland. Scotland contrasts with Ireland, a relatively blank canvas in this respect, in the presence of a relatively recent history of industrialisation and de-industrialisation overlaid with nostalgia for manufacturing. Scotland is also part of Britain and this makes the comparison even more difficult to sustain. Even taking into account the changes in the Welfare State in the 1980s Scotland still has a stronger tradition of a safety net than Ireland and critics of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ have argued

66 67

Alexander, Chasing the Tartan Tiger, 8. Scottish Economic Report, December 2006, 48

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the e nd o f indu s t r i a l s c o t l a n d 261 that the rampant growth has come at a cost and that prosperity has been socially and geographically exclusive. Thus, in a variety of ways it does not seem that the Celtic Tiger is an especially appropriate model for Scotland to aspire to follow. the Scottish performance relative to countries like Finland, Norway and New Zealand. The latter, in particular, has been developing a national ICT strategy at a time when the Scottish Executive decided not to increase investment in high-speed broadband.68 Pessimism in this area might be a reaction to exaggerated optimism about the prospects for internet-based activities to change the nature of economic activity in Scotland. At one point in the 1990s it was thought that Scotland, and especially the peripheral regions, could use internet technology to break down the traditional barriers of distance which have resulted in economic disparities. While this has happened to a certain degree, especially in Shetland where there has been significant investment in infrastructure, Scotland has certainly not been able to emulate the Pacific North West of the USA, as some of the more optimistic predictions hoped.69 The concept of an economy based on ‘thin air’ has not quite transpired. The technology required for the ‘knowledge-based economy’ is extremely complex, is rapidly developing and requires constant investment. This is an even greater challenge than the nineteenth-century task of constructing a railway network or the twentieth-century task of distributing electricity. Scotland as a country with sparsely populated rural areas is expensive to service, and demand for internet services, especially peerto-peer video which places enormous stress on the current system, will only grow. This makes the current task of upgrading the 1,070 exchanges in Scotland to equip them to handle broadband services of 24Mb/s ever more urgent. This work is scheduled to be completed in 2011, which may be too late, and the Scottish Executive has been criticised for not treating this issue with sufficient urgency.70 So, in one sense the historical context is important for an understanding of the economic challenges facing Scotland in the contemporary world. In another way, however, the historical context may be utterly irrelevant. The key element in meeting this challenge is Information and Communications Technology 6667

66 67

Sunday Herald, 9 Dec. 2007, 78. Hunter, ‘The Atlantic North West’, 1–17, quote at 6. 70 Sunday Herald, 11 Dec. 2005, 15; 28 Jan. 2007, Business section, 4; 4 Feb. 2007, Business section, 12; 11 March 2007, Business section, 12; 30 Sept. 2007, Business section, 80. 68 69

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262 impa l e d upo n a this t l e and, indeed, education and infrastructure provision in this area is an important objective of the Scottish Executive. It has been argued that Scotland has already fallen significantly behind the leading players. It might be said that technological innovation is nothing new and that this has been a crucial element in economic change for a long period. This may be the case but the speed of development in this area is astonishing and historical contextualisation difficult.

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ch apter 11

Unionist Scotland: Politics, 1945 to 1970

I

f the Second World War has been neglected by Scottish historians the same may be said for political history from 1945 to the late 1960s. This seems an uninteresting landscape compared to what came before and after; politics appeared mundane and a ‘moment of British nationalism’ was apparent.1 The period falls into two phases: from 1945 to 1959 Scottish election 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.2 Although the nature of divergence changed in the 1970s with the advance of the SNP and the later decline of the Conservatives, 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.3 The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald represented 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, prior to its purchase by the Mirror group in 1956, was a Tory organ, albeit a dull one. More exciting was the 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 views. For example, in 1957 he responded to proposed 1 2 3

The title of an article by Harvie which is critical of the concept. McCrone, Understanding Scotland, 104–14. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 100–1.

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Seats

215 298 321 345 365 303 252 330

Election

1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970

40.2 43.4 48.0 49.7 49.4 43.3 40.5 46.4

Vote

UK

27 32 35 36 31 24 20 23

Seats

Conservative

Table 11.1 General elections, 1945–70

41.1 44.8 48.0 50.1 47.2 40.6 37.7 38.0

Vote

Sco

393 315 295 277 258 317 363 287

Seats 47.9 46.1 48.8 46.2 43.7 43.8 47.6 42.6

Vote

UK

37 37 35 34 38 43 46 44

Seats

Labour

47.6 46.2 47.9 46.7 46.7 48.7 49.9 44.5

Vote

Sco

12 9 6 6 6 9 12 6

Seats

9.0 9.1 2.6 2.7 5.9 11.0 8.6 7.5

Vote

UK

0 2 1 1 1 4 5 3

Seats

Liberal

5.0 6.6 2.7 1.9 4.1 7.6 6.8 5.5

Vote

Sco

1

Seats

Sco

SNP

11.4

Vote

u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 265 changes in the Church of Scotland and rapprochement with the Church of England by raising a scare about ‘Bishops in the Kirk’.4 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; Protestantism was at the centre of an ideology of Unionism which chimed with Scottish identity in the 1950s.5 While there is evidence that the Unionists were the party for voters with a strong connection to the Church of Scotland, this does not mean that the Conservative vote was primarily composed of active Protestants.6 Teddy Taylor, the populist MP for Glasgow Cathcart from 1964 to 1979, did not believe that his party was supported by an ‘Orange vote’, but he worried that people thought it was and this prevented the party from building support among Roman Catholics.7 There were areas of the country where there was a strong Protestant connection with the Labour party. Seats like Glasgow Govan and Bridgeton, with strong popular Protestant cultures, were not happy hunting grounds for the Unionists. 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 ministers included George Macleod and Murdo Ewen MacDonald, whose political outlook was progressive. The Church of Scotland, although reluctantly, was even prepared to sanction an experimental ministry aimed at dealing with the social problems of young people in the Gorbals. This was led by Geoffrey Shaw who became a Labour councillor and leader of Strathclyde Regional Council in the 1970s.8 This was not the same Church over which White had presided in the 1930s. So, although 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, when the almost institutional 4

HLRO, Beaverbrook MSS, H/193, H/201; Gallagher, ‘The press and protestant culture’, 193–212. 5 Kellas, ‘The party in Scotland’, 677–8; Finlay, ‘Scottish Conservatism’, 122; Kendrick and McCrone, ‘Politics in a cold climate’, 595–6. 6 Seawright and Curtice, ‘Decline of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’, 325–31; Bochel and Denver, ‘Religion and voting’ was an early example of a sceptical view. 7 Walker and Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 92. 8 Ferguson, George MacLeod; MacDonald, Padre Mac, 103; Ferguson, Geoff, 49–154.

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266 impa l e d upo n a this t l e connection between the Kirk and the Unionists which existed in the 1920s had melted away. By the late 1960s the Unionists came to be regarded as an English party, which contrasted with their outlook in the 1950s. Although they were opposed to Scottish home rule, they favoured the extension of administrative devolution.9 They were also more adept 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 from 41 per cent to 50 per cent and their number of Scottish seats from twenty-seven to thirty-six. Labour presided over a period of extreme austerity from 1945 to 1951. The continuation of rationing and the fuel crisis hampered their appeal and despite the creation of the Welfare State the Labour majority was whittled away in 1950 and 1951. Although their Scottish vote held up it was not enough to contain Unionist advance. 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: not every council-house tenant was an automatic Labour voter. The Unionist party in the 1950s did much, a very great deal in the case of housing, to create this powerful public sector.10 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. 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 9 10

Seldon, Churchill’s Indian Summer, 131. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 114–15; Paterson, Scottish Education, 140–2.

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 267 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 the 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.11 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.12

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 in 1946. The Communists, in the shape of Willie Gallacher, had taken the 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 antiroyalism, 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. Whereas in 1945 there had been nearly 75,000 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. 12 McLean, ‘Rise and fall’, 357–72; Bochel and Denver, ‘Decline of the SNP’, 311–16. 11

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268 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Communist and ILP voters, by 1959 only 12,000 Communists voters were left. The leading figure in the Scottish party exemplified the way in which Labour 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.13 This suited the centralism of the 1945–51 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 sense that the 1945 government, despite its achievements in health and welfare policy, had not quite lived up to expectations led to defeat in 1951. Woodburn’s fate was even worse than that of the government: his unimaginative and aggressive attitude to Scottish issues led to his replacement by the smoother Hector McNeil in 1950.14 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. Attlee, however, as his Musselburgh speech in 1945 and his dispatch of two Scottish Secretaries showed, was not an uncritical admirer of the party in Scotland.15 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 victory in 1945, or in the achievements of Attlee’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 backbenches were not likely participants in the Bevanite rebellions of the 1950s. Whilst this docility 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 was hostile. Scottish Labour was particularly ineffective at political cooperation. The post-war home-rule movement was controlled by elements 13 14 15

NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc. 7656/4/1/145. Levitt, ‘Britain, the Scottish Covenant movement and devolution’, 48. NLS, Woodburn MSS, Acc. 7656/6/4, Dollan to Woodburn, 9 Mar. 1950.

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 269 which were perceived as non-Labour and, by implication, anti-Labour, and to be opposed as a reflex.16 This was evident in the devolution debates in the 1970s and only overcome with reluctance in the late 1990s. Labour’s difficulties in Scotland in the late 1940s were compounded by austerity. Although Labour gained more votes in 1950 and 1951 than in 1945, they fell behind the Unionists in votes and seats. It would be 1959 before they caught up in the latter category and 1964 in the former.17 The achievements of the Labour government of 1945 to 1951 were impressive, but they have to be set against the problems which came with the difficult environment in which the government was operating. The continuation of rationing – meat, butter and cheese were not derationed until 1954 – the fuel crisis of February and March 1947 and the harsh winter weather made the daily grind extremely grim, especially for women, and contributed to Conservative recovery.18 In Scotland the Unionists did not have so far to go since they had not, as in London and the English midlands, lost a raft of middle-class and suburban seats. Scottish life, however, was no less austere, perhaps more so given the housing conditions and the relative failure of the government’s building programme.19 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 force 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 unique in Britain.20 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 made political capital by attacking ‘centralisation’ this had a massive effect on the Scottish economy. Nationalisation did not change the 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.21 In Scotland the change may have been a little more profound; 16 17 18 19 20 21

Keating and Blieman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, 137. Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 331–5. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Rationing’, 173–97. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 76. Keating, ‘Labour party in Scotland’, 84–94; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 87–96. Morgan, People’s Peace, 33–4.

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270 impa l e d upo n a this t l e because of the economic structure inherited from the inter-war and war years Scotland was heavily reliant on those sectors which were nationalised – coal, iron and steel, the railways – although the shipyards were left in private hands. This created a 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, eventually headed off, to the NSHEB.22 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. 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.23 It has been suggested that the Health Service in Scotland, established by separate legislation in 1947, can be traced back to 1936 when a committee chaired by Professor Edward Cathcart examined the disorganised and incoherent state of Scotland’s health services. These were variously provided by the poor law, voluntary and charitable activity and the private sector. In contrast to England, local authorities in Scotland were not especially active in this field. Cathcart also paid a great deal of attention to the social context of Scotland’s health problems. This tradition remained relevant in the creation of the NHS in 1947–8. There was to be no equivalent of the exemptions given to the large London teaching hospitals and the NHS in Scotland was much more comprehensive. Further, given the distribution of population in Scotland there could be no question of aligning the administration of the NHS with local authorities, as was the case in England. Five regional Health Boards were created and the whole structure was topped by the Department of Health for Scotland (Scottish Home and Health Department after 1962). This meant that health services in Scotland were relatively autonomous from Westminster but, in a Scottish context, quite highly centralised. The tight network of medical administration in Scotland meant that this was sensitive centralisation. This autonomy survived reorganisations in the early 1960s and the mid-1970s, but whether it contributed much to dealing with Scotland’s appalling health record is unclear.24

Johnston, Memories, 180; Cameron, ‘Special policy area’, 205–6. Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, 170–2; Levitt, Scottish Office, 60–5, 355–75. 24 McCrae, National Health Service in Scotland, 30–128, 199–240; Stewart, ‘National Health Service in Scotland’, 389–410. 22 23

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 271

u ni o ni s m i n t h e 1 9 5 0 s 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.25 Scottish politics in the 1950s, however, were not a placid consensus. To start with there was the question of language: Unionists referred to their opponents as ‘Socialists’, rather than the more dignified ‘Labour’. The latter was seen as a pretence that ‘Labour’ represented the interests of the working class.26 Nevertheless, the ‘Unionist’ label also had flexibility, useful at times but increasingly problematic. Its origins lie in the defence of the Anglo-Irish Union from 1886 to 1922. The Anglo-Scottish Union was not an explicit component of Scottish Unionism, but 1707 was assumed to be the founding of the United Kingdom and the basis for Parliamentary sovereignty, revered by Unionists and which would govern their attitude to Scottish devolution.27 The Unionists had to devise a strategy 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: . . . 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.28 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 include Kendrick and McCrone, ‘Politics in a cold climate’, esp. 592–6; Seawright and Curtice, ‘Decline of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’, esp. 323–37; Seldon, Churchill’s Indian Summer, 130–40; Fry, Patronage and Principle, 193, 197–200, 223–6; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 72–9, 104–15. 26 OBL, 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. 27 Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 8–14; Mitchell, ‘Contemporary unionism’, 124–5. 28 OBL, CPA, CCO2/5/20, P. J. Blair to Secretaries, Divisional Councils, 7 Dec. 1950. 25

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272 impa l e d upo n a this t l e ‘National Liberal’ or even, in a small number of cases – such as West Fife – ‘Liberal Unionist’.29 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 was most obvious in arguments against nationalisation. At the Aberdeen South by-election of 1946, Lady Grant (later Tweedsmuir), the Unionist candidate, pointed out: 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.30 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.31 The Unionists were willing to raise the issue of home rule as a warning against the 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 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.32 This strand in Unionist rhetoric was effective in Scotland but it was also deployed in Wales, where the Unionists were marginal, and over OBL, CPA, CCO1/8/566, P. Ensor Walters to T. F. Watson, 16 May 1951; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 76–8. 30 NLS, Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 11884/1/3/56, Aberdeen South by-election, 1946, political notes: nationalisation. 31 NLS, Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 11884/1/4/29, Aberdeen South by-election, 1946, political notes: home rule. 32 Scotsman, 15 Feb. 1950, 6; Glasgow Herald, 15 Feb. 1950, 7. 29

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 273 Labour reforms in English local government. It has been argued that this represents a response to Labour’s tendency towards centralisation.33 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 difficulty. They had regressed to the pre1914 position where their Scottish share of the 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’.34 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 and 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 the 1950s.35 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.36 Conservative credit for the relative prosperity in Scotland in the 1950s became a fading asset by the early 1960s. There was a self-satisfaction in Unionist reflection on election results in 1951 and 1955, a confidence in organisation, candidates, leadership and policy.37 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 Cragoe, ‘ “We like local patriotism” ’, 965–85. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 72. 35 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. 36 Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, 148. 37 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. 33 34

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274 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 localauthority 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.38 Local associations in seats which had been lost were more direct in their criticisms. The Executive Committee in Central Ayrshire remarked in 1959 that 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’.39 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. After a slow start Labour began to make some headway by 1950, 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.40 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. There were important differences between the Labour and Conservative approaches to the housing question. Labour policy had been to provide public housing for the good of the community, not merely ‘the working classes’ as had been the case in the inter-war period. The NLS, SCUA MSS, Acc. 11368/12, Minutes of the General Committee of the Glasgow Unionist Association, 26 Oct. 1964; Hutchison, ‘Scottish Young Conservatives’, 120–35. 39 NLS, Central Ayrshire Conservative and Unionist Association, Acc. 9079/3, Executive Committee minutes, 29 Oct. 1959. 40 Gibb and Maclennan, ‘Policy and process’, 273–8. 38

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 275 Conservatives were suspicious of this emphasis and wanted to involve the private sector to a greater degree.41 This policy had some success in England and Wales, where private building increased, but it had only 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. Nevertheless, the Unionists shared with Labour a major change in Scottish society as it seemed that progress was being 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 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, 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: 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.42 By the late 1950s 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 GDP per head began to fall behind the UK average and unemployment began to rise. Even though the rise in the latter was modest by the standards of the 1930s, or the 1980s, this 41 42

Jones, ‘ “This is magnificent!” ’, 99–121; Weiler, ‘Rise and fall’, 122–50. NLS, Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 11884/3/1, 1955 General Election: Housing.

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276 impa l e d upo n a this t l e was something which scared those politicians (of both parties) who had memories of the agonies of the 1930s. 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 evidence of a bi-partisan commitment to full employment, but also indicative of a high degree of confidence that government intervention could and should influence the movement of capital and 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 was also a series of high-profile initiatives in partnership with individual companies. The most striking was the assistance given in 1958–9 to Colvilles 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 Unionist seats to be defended in Scotland, unlike Wales or the north-east of England, and it was argued the new factory would stimulate 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 Colvilles’ activities in Scotland, including the retention of skilled staff. The result was a loan from the Ministry of Power for £50 million and the construction of a state-of-the-art strip mill at Colvilles’ Ravenscraig site. McCance had pointed out that shortage of coal and lack of local markets for its products was likely to prove unprofitable, and the construction of a second strip mill in Wales further handicapped its prospects.43 Further government intervention saw assistance given 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, for example, the government assisted the paper manufacturers Wiggins Teape to build a pulp mill. These projects were evidence of the government’s confidence 43

Payne, Colvilles, 368–405.

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 277 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. This was not a structured attempt to move 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 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’.

t he na t i o n a l q ue s t i o n If the appeal of Labour in the early post-war years was unionist and the Unionists were willing to play the Scottish card to counter this, then the SNP was peripheral despite evidence of wide popular interest in the Scottish question. There was a superficially attractive side to nationalism, but it amounted to little. The Scottish Convention which John MacCormick had formed after leaving the SNP in 1942 tried to build a widely based pressure group to push for home rule.44 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 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’. His enthusiasm and commitment was extraordinary, but there were a number of problems with the Covenant. The most important was its vagueness: We the people of Scotland who subscribe to this Engagement, declare our belief that reform in the constitution of our country 44

Mitchell, Strategies, 87–99, 144–53; Brand, National Movement, 243–9.

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278 impa l e d upo n a this t l e is necessary to secure good government in accordance with our 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.45 There was nothing here which a Unionist could not sign up to. 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 SNP this detracted from nationalist credibility. Chief among these stunts was the removal of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950. 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. Further, at a by-election at Paisley in February 1948, John MacCormick, the Liberal candidate, persuaded 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 previous year had seen a virtual amalgamation of 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.46 The Scottish Liberal Association (the descendants of the Liberals who had opposed the National Government) was 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 being fewer than the combined vote for the Unionist and Liberal candidates in 1950.47 This by-election proved to be unique, not a harbinger of realignment, either in MacCormick, Flag in the Wind, 128, 133. NLS, SCUA MSS, Acc. 11368/4, Central Council Executive Committee minutes, 2 Sept. 1947. 47 Dyer, ‘ “A nationalist in the Churchillian sense” ’, 285–307. 45 46

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 279 the sense of building a coalition to advance home rule, or an anti-socialist amalgamation. The latter was perhaps a more realistic proposition in Scotland in the fifteen 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.48 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.49 This was designed to deflate nationalist propaganda by demonstrating the extent of Scotland’s dependence on the UK. The welter of uncoordinated nationalist activity had created a good deal of noise, but did not have much effect on Scotland’s economic or political structures.

s co t t i s h p o l i t i c s i n t h e 1 9 6 0 s The election of a Labour government in 1964, and its confirmation with a working majority in 1966, brought changes to Scottish politics. The Levitt, ‘Britain, the Scottish Covenant movement and devolution’, 33–57. TNA: PRO, T222/1048, J H Woods (Board of Trade) to David Milne, 24 Nov. 1948.

48 49

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280 impa l e d upo n a this t l e A nuclear citadel? One area in which Scottish events intersected with UK and international processes related to the decisions taken in the late 1950s and early 1960s which resulted in the basing of nuclear weapons in Scotland. This transformed Scotland from a ‘military outpost’ to a ‘citadel and a nuclear citadel at that’.50 There were two aspects to this. The first related to the United States’ need to have a forward base to put its missiles within range of the USSR, at that time around 1,200 miles. A formal request was made to the UK to provide such a base and in 1960 research into likely sites was undertaken. The majority of possible locations were in Scotland and were eventually whittled down to two: Loch Linnhe near Fort William and Holy Loch near Dunoon on the Firth of Clyde. The latter was chosen, largely because Loch Linnhe was felt to be inaccessible. Polaris submarines began operating from Holy Loch in 1961 and the base soon grew to become a substantial facility with over 2,000 US servicemen. This had a significant impact on a quiet area of the Scottish west coast. The area soon became of even greater strategic significance when Britain sought to develop its own missile-launched nuclear deterrent. After the abandonment of attempts to design and build a system it was decided in 1962 to purchase the Polaris system from the United States. The submarines were to be constructed in the UK and a base was required for these vessels, as was a separate storage facility for the missiles. After a further search for locations, many of which were in Scotland, it was decided to base the submarines at Faslane on the Gareloch and the missiles at Coulport on Loch Long, relatively close by. The importance of these facilities has shifted over time. As the US developed the longer-range Trident system the value of the base at Holy Loch was much reduced, and with Cold War tensions in decline the base was closed in 1992. The same events increased the importance of Faslane and Coulport. As the UK government decided to replace Polaris with Trident, and as airborne nuclear weapons were phased out, the Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence facilities on the Clyde had to be extended and the entirety of the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent came to be based in Scotland. This contributed to Scottish political culture and gave a clear focus to a strong anti-nuclear movement north of the border. The Scottish National Party has had

50

Erickson, ‘Scotland’s defence commitment’, 73.

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 281 a long and quite consistent record of opposition to nuclear weapons in Scotland and both the Labour and Liberal parties have, at various times, been opposed to nuclear weapons. The bases at Holy Loch and Faslane have been the focus for anti-nuclear protests which have involved protestors from socialist, pacifist and nationalist traditions.51 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 arrival at Pollok and Hamilton 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. A modest Liberal revival was also evident. 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 fastnesses to which it had retreated in the 1920s. A new generation of MPs – especially David Steel and Russell Johnston – would help to shape the direction of the party. Although 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 byelection 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 take votes from the both Conservative and Labour parties; their shares fell to 12.5 and 41.5 per cent respectively. This was a disaster for Labour, especially since they had arrogantly taken the seat for granted 5051

50

51

Chalmers and Walker, Uncharted Waters, 7–28.

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282 impa l e d upo n a this t l e by appointing the sitting MP, Tom Fraser, to the Chair of the Hydro Board.52 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 more numerous SNP candidates and much improved performances: 19 per cent at Glasgow Bridgeton in November 1961 and 23 per cent at West Lothian in June 1962. An additional worry for the main parties, especially Labour, was a similar advance by Plaid Cymru in Wales, especially at the Carmarthen by-election of 1966. The firm appearance of the SNP on the Scottish political landscape was confirmed by their twenty-two candidates in 1966. At the Glasgow Pollok by-election of March 1967 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 Labour support collapsed from 52 to 31 per cent.53 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. Whether Hamilton had any deep or long-term roots is open to debate, and the 1970 result suggests that it did not. Even Winnie Ewing attributed her victory to traditional mid-term unpopularity of the government, combined with traditional Labour complacency in their ‘heartland’ despite economic problems and insensitivity by the National Coal Board in the matter of occupational health.54 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; fifty-nine candidates 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 were suggestive. The Unionists were 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 52 53 54

Allison, Guilty by Suspicion, 157. Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 338–40. Ewing, Stop the world, 92.

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 283

Figure 11.1 Winnie Ewing addressing floating voters in Blantyre during her victorious campaign in the Hamilton by-election in November 1967. © Newsquest (Herald & Times). Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

were depressing for a party which had won a 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’.55 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 appearance of ‘Conservative’ in the 55

OBL, CPA, CCO500/50/1, Opinion Research Centre, A survey on the motivations behind Scottish nationalism, carried out for Conservative Central Office, 4.

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284 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Save the Argylls! In the midst of this apparent nationalist upsurge a curious issue cropped up which emphasised the way in which Scottishness and Britishness were closely enmeshed. This was the campaign to ‘Save the Argylls’ which erupted in 1968 after the government had proposed the amalgamation of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. Long-established Scottish regiments, such as the Highland Light Infantry or the Cameronians, were either abolished or amalgamated in 1957. Although the 1957 reorganisation caused comparatively little fuss, controversy surrounded the Argylls as they had sustained losses in the withdrawal from Aden in late 1967. Under their Commanding Officer, Lt Col Colin Mitchell, the Argylls had attracted hostility in Aden and had been accused of an overly aggressive response to nationalist insurgency and police mutiny, and of harsh treatment of the Adeni population. When the regiment returned to Britain some Scottish newspapers felt that they had not received the plaudits which were due to them and the threat to their continued existence induced a stormy debate. This threw together some odd bedfellows. The newly elected Member for Hamilton was a staunch proponent of the independence of the Argylls, as were many Tories, including George Younger who had been an officer in the regiment. Mitchell resigned from the army and from 1970 to 1974 represented West Aberdeenshire as a Conservative. Whether due to the campaign or not, the Argylls, although reduced in strength, retained their independence. They were restored to full strength in 1972 as a result of the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’. This pattern was repeated when further amalgamations reduced the number of Scottish regiments to one, the Royal Regiment of Scotland, in 2004. Very often the SNP, despite its separatist agenda and its radical defence policy, were at the forefront of campaigns to maintain the visible Scottish presence in the British army. In the early 1990s when the threat was to the Gordon Highlanders, with traditional links to the north-east of Scotland, this can be partly explained by electoral considerations as the SNP held a number of seats in that part of Scotland.56 In some ways the regimental reorganisations have been the most tangible

Wood, ‘Protestantism and Scottish military tradition’, 122–31; Fry, Scottish empire, 490–1; Strachan, ‘Scotland’s military identity’, 330–2; ‘Mitchell, Colin Campbell (1925–1996)’, ODNB.

56

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 285 Scottish manifestation of the withdrawal from the Empire. Most of the regiments which survived into the post-war period were created or sustained by the expansion of the Empire and had roots in post-Union Scotland, the Cameronians being an exception, of course. Even the ‘war on terror’ and involvement in the adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have not been enough to prevent the emasculation of Scotland’s military identity. title of the party 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 recognition that Unionism needed a clearer identity, as the word was often confused in the minds of the electorate with trades unionism. 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.57 These changes aroused controversy among Scottish activists 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.58 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 predecessors. 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.59 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 56

56

57 NLS, Central Ayrshire Conservative and Unionist Association, Acc. 9079/3, Executive Committee minutes, 8 Nov. 1960; Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 1184/1/6, The Unionist party in Scotland, proposals for reorganisation, 8 Jan. 1965. 58 Seawright, ‘Scottish Unionist party’, 90–102; Seawright, ‘Scottish Unionism’, 54–72. 59 OBL, CPA, CCO500/50/1, Confidential paper [by Chris Patten], Nationalism and Regionalism, July 1966.

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286 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. 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.60 This may have seemed a good idea at the time, but the 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 singularly gauche manner.61 The ‘Constitutional Committee’, although distinguished, 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.62 Labour’s difficulties with nationalism 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 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.63 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 Paterson, Diverse Assembly, 26–30. Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 55–7; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 107. 62 Paterson, Diverse Assembly, 51–7; NLS, SCUA MSS, Acc. 11368/79(ii), /166, 177; Tweedsmuir MSS, Acc. 11884/6/13. 63 ODNB; Glasgow Herald, 31 Jul. 1978; Scotsman, 31 Jul. 1978; The Times, 31 Jul. 1978. 60 61

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u n i o n i s t s c o t l a n d 287 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’.64 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.65 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 1970.66 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 regional 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.67 The proposals 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, research on fiscal devolution and dispersal of Whitehall civil servants (predictably unpopular among the potential victims).68 This discussion was reminiscent of that which had taken place in a slightly lower key in the late 1940s. Willie Ross was as unionist as 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’.69 In some senses this was the most prescient point made in the explosion of interest in Scottish politics occasioned by the rise of the SNP in the late 1960s. This did not point to a sudden TNA: PRO, T330/185/23, Dick Crossman to Harold Wilson, 25 Jun. 1968; Morgan, People’s Peace, 268. 65 William Ross (1911–88), OCSH, 530–1; ODNB. 66 Keating and Blieman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, 155. 67 Tanner, ‘Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson and devolution’, 545–78. 68 TNA: PRO, CAB130/390, 151/45, 164/658, 165/298–9; T330/184–5. 69 TNA: PRO, CAB164/393, Ross to PM, 23 Feb. 1967. 64

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288 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 Crossman, a supporter of devolution, recognised that ‘nothing will win back votes except an economic revival’.70 Despite Crossman’s enthusiasm for devolution, or perhaps because of it, he was unable to overcome the engrained suspicion of his colleagues. 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 the appointment of a Royal Commission, which did not report until 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 largescale 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. Although devolution was a theme which exercised metropolitan politicians in the late 1960s, not least because of the rise of nationalism in Scotland and Wales, there was no real indication of the way this issue would become virtually all-encompassing in the years after 1974. The defeat of Labour in the general election of 1970 brought a new kind of Conservatism to the corridors of power and stimulated debates about the nature of economic and industrial policy.

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.

70

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ch apter 12

The 1970s: A Decade of Scottish Politics

D

uring the mid-1970s Scottish issues had an important effect on high politics at Westminster; they were prominent in the media and a considerable literature developed.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.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 precipitated 1

Webb, The Growth of Nationalism; Mercer, Scotland; Drucker and Brown, Politics of Nationalism; Dalyell, Devolution; Mackintosh, A Parliament for Scotland. 2 PD, 5th 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 February 1977 – PD, 5th ser., 926, 1241.

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290 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. The starting point was the SNP’s near 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; indeed, some of its valves worked harder than ever. Although devolution was a divisive force in all political parties 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’.4 By the 1990s the experience of eighteen years of Conservative government 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, 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 coal-mining and shipbuilding. This was particularly evident during the Conservative administration of 1970–4 and 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.

4

Tanner, ‘Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson and devolution’, 578.

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 291 Table 12.1 General election results in Scotland, 1970–9 Election

1970 1974 (February) 1974 (October) 1979

Lab

Cons

Lib

SNP

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

44 40 41 44

44.5 36.6 36.3 41.5

23 21 16 22

38.0 32.9 24.7 31.4

3 3 3 3

5.5 8.0 8.3 9.0

1 7 11 2

11.4 21.9 30.4 17.3

Table 12.2 General election results in the UK, 1970–9 Election

1970 1974 (February) 1974 (October) 1979

Lab

Cons

Lib

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

287 301 319 268

42.6 37.2 39.2 36.7

330 305 286 344

46.4 38.8 37.1 44.7

6 14 13 11

7.5 19.3 18.3 13.8

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’.5 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. 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 for the journey to four-party politics. While the Liberals had only twenty-seven candidates, the SNP 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. 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 5

Bochel and Denver, ‘Decline of the SNP’, 311–16.

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292 impa l e d upo n a this t l e cent of the vote, although Labour could take comfort from the fact that eight SNP 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.6 Michael Foot told Winnie Ewing that this disturbed him more than the eleven victories.7 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.8 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 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.9 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. The problem for the SNP was that their vote was not based on deep loyalty to the party, but was conditional and sceptical and the party’s performance in the late 1970s was not sufficient to retain their commitment. 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. A protest vote theory is attractive, but does not explain why the SNP, NLS, 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. 7 Ewing, Stop the World, 151. 8 Jaensch, ‘The Scottish vote 1974’, 313–15. 9 Brown et al., Politics and Society in Scotland, 158–9. 6

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 293 rather than the strongly Scottish Liberal party for example, benefited from this process. Further, there were two surges in SNP support, that leading to Hamilton and its aftermath and that culminating in 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 SNP voters were spread thinly across the country. Even their relative concentration in the New Towns was not sufficient to allow the SNP to 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 and some of the defeats were very close calls.

a c o ns e r v a t i v e p r e l ud e The moment which changed Scottish politics, not quite for ever 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 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.10 This would have surprised any politically aware Scot in the early 1970s. Optimistic soothsayers predicted an annual gross revenue of £4,000 million, self-sufficiency by 1980 and the transformation of Scotland into 10

Harvie, Fool’s Gold, 1.

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294 impa l e d upo n a this t l e the ‘California of Europe, weather notwithstanding’.11 The SNP was the first political party to catch on to the possibilities. The ‘It’s Scotland’s oil’ campaign was launched in 1972. The political impact of the issue was aided by the fact that no one really knew the potential value of North Sea oil to the economy. 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.12 The then leader of the party made this clear in 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.’13 Despite the attempts of the SNP to inject a note of optimism the period from 1970 to 1974 was dogged by problems with industrial relation. 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 public-sector pay restraint, since most of them remained nationalised. Further, Scottish trades unionism, especially the NUM, was 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 Scotland and Wales, which had seen contraction since the 1960s, were probably more militant than the leadership.14 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.15 This provided a convenient justification for the ruthless Fulton, ‘Scottish oil’, 310–22. Lynch, SNP, 123–7; Levy, Scottish Nationalism, 37–40. 13 Wolfe, Scotland Lives, 160. 14 Phillips, ‘The 1972 miners’ strike’, 187–202. 15 Lyddon, ‘ “Glorious summer” ’, 326–52; Taylor, ‘Heath government and industrial relations’, 161–90; Reid, United We Stand, 326–9. 11 12

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 295 industrial relations policies of the next 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 to engage in a 458day ‘work-in’. This stimulated much public support and compelled the government to act, contrary to their initial position. A diverse body of workers cultivated a wide coalition of public support for their protest which was, famously, to be conducted with ‘no hooliganism . . . no vandalism . . . [and] no bevvying’.16 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 governmental discomfiture – £70 million of public money was poured into UCS and the dispute was called off in October 1972 when its future was guaranteed.17 The principal achievement of the Heath government, although its results would haunt the party as late as the 1990s, was the entry of the United Kingdom into the European Economic Community in January 1973. This produced complicated politics, especially in the Labour party which was deeply divided. Outside the political class, however, feelings did not run especially high and an important change took place in a muted political atmosphere. The two abortive entry attempts in the 1960s had seen a certain amount of groundwork done in the Scottish Office and the area of greatest concern was the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy, designed to protect the interests of small farmers in Europe.18 A wider concern was the likely relationship between Scotland and the EEC. Although the Scottish Office was keen to develop autonomous links with the EEC it was difficult to see how this could work in practice. As a territorial rather than a functional department it was not well placed to participate in the Council of Ministers where the UK was mostly represented by Whitehall ministries, although one exception has been fisheries where the primacy of Scottish interests has been recognised by the UK government.19 The EEC was certainly not seen at the early stages of the 16

Quoted in Foster and Woolfson, ‘How workers on the Clyde gained the capacity for class struggle’, 305. 17 Murphy and Johnman, British Shipbuilding, 189; for contrasting views on the UCS dispute see Foster and Woolfson, Politics of the UCS Work-in; Thompson and Hart, The UCS Work-in; McGill, Crisis on the Clyde. 18 Cameron, ‘Modernisation of Scottish agriculture’, 200–1. 19 Wright, Who Governs Scotland?, 10–31, 51.

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296 impa l e d upo n a this t l e UK’s membership as the likely source of funding that it would become in the 1980s. Indeed, the 1975 referendum on UK membership revealed Scotland to be less than enthusiastic about ‘Europe’. Support for continued membership was 67 per cent in the UK as a whole, but only 58 per cent in Scotland, although earlier polls had suggested that Scotland had the potential to return a ‘No’ vote. While the highest level of support came in the wealthiest areas of southern England, some areas of Scotland, such as the Western Isles and Shetland where there were worries about compounded peripherality, voted against continued membership.20 Europe aside, 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 selfpreservation. Third, self-government was by no means irrelevant to the industrial politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 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.

d e vo l ut i o n d i v i si o n s 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, as well as from February 20

Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 141; Wright, Who Governs Scotland?.

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 297 1977, and relied on Scottish and Welsh nationalists and fourteen Liberals. There is a further parallel: 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.21 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.22 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 Scottish devolution and was more sympathetic than many of his colleagues to Ulster Unionism.23 John P. Mackintosh, MP 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 were strong reservations: senior ministers, like James Bogdanor, Devolution in the U.K., 170–7; Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 130. Miller, The End of British Politics?, 66–70; Keating and Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, 167–72. 23 Walker and Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 102. 21 22

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298 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Callaghan (who represented a Cardiff seat), regarded nationalism with derision and feared that devolution would compromise the authority of the government. Even Michael Foot, the Lord President, given the task of supervising the Bill’s progress, was not strongly intellectually engaged with devolution, although he was powerfully committed to the legislation.24 Labour members from the north of England, such as Bill Rodgers and Eric Heffer, 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.25 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 good home-rule proposals.26 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 rating in the opinion polls faded from 1978. The perception of decline was confirmed at the Glasgow Garscadden by-election of April 1978, which Donald Dewar comfortably won.27 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 only minority party to whom the government could turn in a time 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 Morgan, Callaghan, 361, 510, 629, 677; Morgan, Michael Foot, 350–8. McSmith, John Smith, 76–8; Stuart, John Smith, 79–81; Lang, Blue Remembered Years, 142. 26 Levy, ‘Search for a rational strategy’, 236–48; Mitchell, Strategies for Selfgovernment, 212–13. 27 Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 378–9. 24 25

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 299 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, under Mrs Thatcher’s leadership, the party moved to clear opposition to home rule, leading to the resignation of Buchanan Smith and Rifkind from the opposition frontbench.28 There were even divisions within the Liberal party, 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 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, for example proportional representation. 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 ideological fissures; some of them divided English and Scottish MPs of the same party. All parties had to perform contortions in their attempts to find a 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.29

p o we r d e v o l v e d ? 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 . . . 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 28 29

Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 69–78. Drucker and Brown, Politics of Devolution, 128.

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300 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.30 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’ – and those of the ministers most concerned with it, Michael Foot and John Smith. The latter was the most forthright; he declared in February 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.’31 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 faddish 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.32 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 ‘minimalist’ powers of the Assembly.33 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 public-sector pay, the last a crucial area of concern in an inflationary period. These meant that the Scottish Assembly – to number 142 members (2 for each of Scotland’s 71 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, since it would be unable to demonstrate that it could make 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. 31 PD, 5th ser., 922, 977, 13 Dec. 1976; 926, 1360–1, 22 Feb. 1977. 32 Clark, Hope and Glory, 356–7; Morgan, People’s Peace, 367–71. 33 Bogdanor, Devolution in the U.K., 179. 30

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 301 a difference on bread-and-butter issues. The reservation of highereducation 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 funding of the Scottish universities (in contrast with the 1998 scheme).34 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.35 Despite the weakness of the financial provisions of the Scotland Act of 1978, its passage was a significant 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 UK-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.36 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 Scotland’s share of public expenditure; it was most often deployed in education spending.37 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 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 Our Changing Democracy, 26. Our Changing Democracy, 19. 36 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 to 1971 about the formula. 37 Mitchell, Governing Scotland, 149–81, 236–40. 34 35

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302 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 identify 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 10/85ths. 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.38 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. This view was widely held among English politicians and Treasury civil servants. One of the latter scribbled on a file about Scottish health policy in 1961: ‘In matters of money the fault of the Scots/ is asking too often and asking for lots.’39 Despite the prejudice there was a rational basis to this. 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.40 The existence of large sparsely populated areas made Scotland a more expensive country to service. A 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 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.41 Scotland may not have acquired a Parliament but governments acquired a surprisingly durable formula for dealing with changes to public expenditure. Because the McCrone, ‘Scotland’s public finances’, 34–7. Stewart, ‘National Health Service in Scotland’, 404. 40 Finlay, ‘Unionism and the dependency culture’, 100–16. 41 See his deft evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Committee’s report on the Barnett formula in November 1997. 38 39

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 303 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.42 In 1886 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 UK 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 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.43 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, for opponents of devolution, a sure path to Anglo-Scottish conflict.44 Tam 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.45 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.46 Devolution also posed problems for Scottish local government. The structure which had been established in 1889 and reformed in 1929 was creaking. The haphazard system of burghs and counties with large corporations for the main cities was illogical. Many of the burghs were too small to carry out their responsibilities and services, such as policing, House of Commons Debates, 6th ser., 302, 510–13, 9 Dec. 1997. McLean, ‘Are Scotland and Wales over-represented in the House of Commons?’, 268; Tam Dalyell in the House of Commons on 13 December 1976 during the second reading of the Scotland and Wales Bill, see PD, 5th ser., 922, 1058. 44 Dalyell, Devolution, 245–51. 45 PD, 5th ser., 924, 371–5, 19 Jan. 1977. 46 Lord President of the Council, Devolution: The English Dimension. A Consultative Document (London, 1976). 42 43

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304 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. 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. Wheatley 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, which 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. 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 central government.47 The big problem was Strathclyde. This was Scotland’s largest region with over 2 million residents 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 Midwinter et al., Politics and Public Policy, 119–22; Kellas, Scottish Political System, 164–73.

47

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 305 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 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’.48 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 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 was more powerful than Labour’s proposed Assembly, 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 ended in ‘disastrous failure’.49 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, with twenty-two Labour MPs voting against the motion and a further twenty-three abstaining.50 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.51 James Callaghan’s account emphasises the difficulty caused by Labour backbenchers who felt that constitutional issues were Ferguson, Geoff, 155–285, esp. 216–17, 246; Walker and Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 102–3. 49 Healey, Time of my Life, 460. 50 PD, 5th ser., 926, 1234–366, 22 Feb. 1977; 1640–52, 24 Feb. 1977. 51 PD, 5th ser., 926, 266–455, 15 Feb. 1977. 48

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306 impa l e d upo n a this t l e a topic on which they had some expertise and authority.52 The principal example of these guerrilla raids was 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 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’53 – but it was not designed to advance the cause.54 Supporters of devolution countered by arguing that the 40 per cent provision would ‘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’.55 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 1979.56 The 40 per cent rule caused massive problems in the organisation of the referendum, especially in the 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.57 The third milestone on the road to disaster was the referendum campaign.58 The divisions within the Labour party became obvious in late 1978 and early 1979. This had been foreshadowed in the 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 between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps. The umbrella ‘Yes for Scotland’ campaign contained Callaghan, Time and Chance, 502–10. PD, 5th ser., 942, 1468, 25 Jan. 1978. 54 Bogdanor, ‘The 40 per cent rule’, 249–63. 55 NLS, John P. Mackintosh MSS, Dep. 323/147, John Smith to Mackintosh, 5 Apr. 1978. 56 PD, 5th ser., 967, 1327–462 (20 Jun. 1979). 57 Bogdanor, Devolution in the UK, 189. 58 Perman, ‘The devolution referendum campaign’, 53–63 is critical of the Yes campaigns. 52 53

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 307 people from a wide variety of political backgrounds, but few well-known figures. It was mortally 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 1976.59 The SLP was essentially his creature, supported and publicised by a group of wellconnected journalists. It sought to outflank Labour in its socialist credentials and prevent the SNP from acquiring a monopoly of ‘Scottishness’. In the event it did neither. The party was an intellectual talking shop rather than a campaigning organisation and it was severely damaged by infiltration by Trotskyists.60 The nationalistic and broadly left-wing composition of ‘Yes for Scotland’ 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’.61 In the 1950s John MacCormick had been able to advocate home rule 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.62 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 Mrs Liddell’s language: ‘we will not be soiling our hands by joining any umbrella group’.63 Labour divisions were demonstrated For ‘Yes for Scotland’ see NLS, 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. 60 Drucker, Breakaway. 61 Drucker and Brown, Politics of Nationalism, 121. 62 MacArtney, ‘The protagonists’, 14–15; McCrorie, Highland Cause, 218–19. 63 MacArtney, ‘The protagonists’, 16–18; Daily Record, 14 Nov. 1978. 59

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308 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 cooperating with Conservatives.64 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.65 The picture of confusion and division was matched in the Conservative party with rival ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns; the former was led by the former shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Alick Buchanan Smith and included Malcolm Rifkind and a number of Conservative councillors.66 ‘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 and 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.67 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 publicsector strikes which affected the daily lives of many people and knocked devolution down the news agenda.68 Thus devolution was associated with an unpopular government, as Callaghan later admitted.69 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 Balsom and McAllister, ‘The Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda’, 405. Fowler, ‘Broadcasting – Television’, 121–7; Scots Law Times, 1979, 282. 66 Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 92–3. 67 See the reproduction of campaign materials in Bochel et al., The Referendum Experience, 180–7; Harvie, No Gods, 163–4. 68 Drucker and Brown, The Politics of Nationalism, 121. 69 Callaghan, Time and Chance, 558. 64 65

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 309 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 decline in the opinion polls, confirmed by the election, also handicapped the ‘Yes’ campaign.70 The result of the referendum has been interpreted as an unenthusiastic endorsement of the Scotland Act.71 Given its parentage, difficult birth and argumentative upbringing, Scottish ‘devolution’ was more popular in 1979 than might have been expected.72 Its Welsh cousin was decisively smothered by a margin of four to one amidst division between Welshand English-speaking regions of Wales. In many ways this was not surprising: although Welsh linguistic and cultural identity was stronger than its Scottish counterpart, 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’ fear of centralisation remained strong. An additional factor in southern Scotland was the historic links with England which increased the reception of the argument that devolution would be isolationist. 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.73 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 control of Scottish affairs 70 71 72 73

Balsom and McAllister, ‘The Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda’, 405. Devine, Scottish Nation, 588; Morgan, People’s Peace, 411. Harvie, ‘Scottish politics’, 255. Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 371.

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310 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.74 The cartoonist of the Glasgow Herald, Turnbull, whose lion had been the symbol of Scotland during 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’.75 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 not impressive. MacLeod had underestimated a gifted Peruvian side which 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 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 halfway 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. Only three minutes later Johnny Rep lashed a thirty-yard shot past Alan Rough and Scotland’s World Cup dream lay in tatters. Some allege a connection between this nemesis and the deflation that led to the result of the referendum in March 1979. Unfortunately, some 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 excitement in Argentina. At

McIlvanney, Surviving the Shipwreck, 17. Three of Turnbull’s cartoons are reproduced in Bochel et al., The Referendum Experience, 198–9; quote from McIlvanney’s poem ‘The cowardly lion’, Surviving the Shipwreck, 24.

74 75

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 311 the next World 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.76 Table 12.3 Results of the Referendum on Scotland Act, 1 March 1978 (Source: Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 372) Region

Yes

No

Turnout

Borders Central Dumfries & Galloway Fife Grampian Highland Lothian Strathclyde Tayside Orkney Shetland Western Isles SCOTLAND

40.3 54.7 40.3 53.7 48.3 51.0 50.1 54.0 49.5 27.9 27.1 55.8 51.6

59.7 45.3 59.7 46.3 51.7 49.0 49.9 46.0 50.5 72.1 72.9 44.2 48.4

67.3 66.7 64.9 66.1 57.9 65.4 66.6 63.2 63.8 54.8 51.0 50.5 63.6

and 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.77 747576

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 74 75

76

Wilson, Don’t Cry for Me; McColl, ’78. 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.

77

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312 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.78 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. Whatever else might be said about the devolution debate in the 1970s it was a positive boon for the Scottish press. Never before had Scottish politics been covered in such depth and the coverage given in the Scotsman bordered on the encylopedic. They even managed to attract Neal Ascherson, a very distinguished journalist, back to Scotland to report on this issue. Occasionally even the government recognised the potential importance of the Scottish press. In 1974 the government, desperate for a good reaction, even released to the press the contents of their White Paper, Our Changing Democracy, forty-eight hours prior to its publication, an unusual event.79 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 long-standing supporter of home rule, turned against it under new ownership.80 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.81 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.82 If this is going a little far, there Miller, End of British Politics?, 98–103; Brand, National Movement, 156–65; Brand et al., ‘Birth and death of a three party system’, 464–75. 79 Drucker, Breakaway, 47. 80 Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes, 164. 81 Goldenberg, The Thomson Empire, 34, 38; Dunnett, Among Friends, 129–49; Marr, My trade, xx; Smith, Paper Lions, 30–5. 82 Reid, Deadline, 8–16, 22–3, 155. 78

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 313 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. There were alternative voices, however. 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 hands of Whitehall.83 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.84 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. 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.85 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.86 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 had played a significant part in the conference of August 1974 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 83 84 85 86

West Highland Free Press, 23 Feb. 1979. Brand, National Movement, 139–43; Dalyell, Devolution, 196–203. Brown, ‘The Scottish morning press’, 64–84. Smith, Paper Lions, 30–5.

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314 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. He was more concerned with keeping his government in office than with consulting with the STUC. The substance of the STUC’s views on devolution shifted perceptibly from 1974 to 1979. 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 and control of oil revenues, and were 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.87 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 Rev. Andrew Herron, a former Moderator of the General Assembly, was an active member of the ‘Scotland Says No’ 87

Aitken, Bairns o’ Adam, 242–58, quote from 248.

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 315 campaign and led the opposition to devolution within the Church.88 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 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.89 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.90 What seemed to be missing from the debate in the 1970s, as a result of devolution being arrived at as the least bad 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 Proctor, ‘The Church of Scotland’, 523–43; Gallagher and Walker, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 103. 89 Risk, ‘Devolution’, 124. 90 Barrow, The Extinction of Scotland, 1–16; I am grateful to Prof. Barrow and the late Dr J. W. M. Bannerman for discussing this episode with me. 88

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316 impa l e d upo n a this t l e visions, based on equally optimistic assumptions about potential share outs of North Sea oil and to argue that this would make Scotland rich.91 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.’92 A further point is that ‘It’s 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 difficulty. 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’.93 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 ‘It’s 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 on 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 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.94 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 91 92 93 94

Fulton, ‘Scottish oil’, 310–22; Lee, ‘North Sea oil’, 307–17. Harvie, Fool’s Gold, 248. Levy, Scottish Nationalism, 53. Brown, Red Paper.

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 317 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.95 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.96 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 was 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 subject of news, comment, speculation and scandal had to find a different story. Luckily, Mrs Thatcher provided it.

p o we r r e t a i n e d The final point in this sorry tale concerns the fall of the government in 1979.97 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 95 Hassan, ‘Labour’s journey from socialism to social democracy’, 197–9; Harvie, Fool’s Gold, 246–7. 96 Drucker and Brown, Politics of Nationalism, 124, 128 97 Naughtie, ‘The year at Westminster’, 42–50.

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318 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.98 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.99 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 P. Mackintosh. He told Home that his case for a tax-raising assembly, 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’.100 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.101 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 in the Munich crisis of 1938, ‘a career which had begun with the betrayal of Czechoslovakia ended with the betrayal of Scotland’.102 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 from Conservative unpopularity. In 1979 the focus had shifted: devolution was dead and voters were worried about economic matters.103 As Neal 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 Sillars, Case for Optimism, 69–73; Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 217–18. Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 91–4. 100 NLS, J. P. Mackintosh MSS, Dep. 323/147, JPM to Lord Home, 16 Mar. 1978; PD, (Lords), 389, 1215–19, 14 Mar. 1978; Scotsman, 15 Feb. 1979. 101 Balsom and McAllister, ‘The Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda’, 403, 405, 408 (Table 4a). 102 Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 197. 103 Hetherington, ‘The 1979 general election campaign’, 93. 98 99

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t h e 1 9 7 0 s 319 politics are.’104 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 ‘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 – and 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’.105 The SLP was also routed. Scottish politics thus entered a new phase. This was not immediately apparent; indeed, it would not become so until after the 1987 general election. Although there had been some restlessness in the 1970–4 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.

104 105

Quoted in Miller, The End of British politics, 254. Callaghan, Time and Chance, 560.

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ch apt e r 13

Mothering Devolution: Scottish Politics, 1979 to 1997

T

he repeal of the Scotland Act and the SNP’s decline 1979, losing nine of their eleven seats, did not signal the end of Scottish divergence from British political trends. The years 1979–97 saw the Conservative vote collapse and the appearance of sophisticated tactical voting designed to eradicate that party from Scotland’s political map, an aim achieved in 1997. This came at a time when its vote in England was increasing, so the gap between its Scottish and English performance, evident since the 1960s, became very wide. The Labour vote in Scotland in the 1980s and early 1990s also diverged from the English pattern, but with a stronger performance in Scotland. This chapter explores the immediate causes and ultimate consequences of the divergence of Scottish and English politics in the 1980s and beyond. Scottish reactions to Thatcherism were the essential building blocks for the renewed demand for Scottish home rule which slowly grew in this period. Tables 13.1 and 13.2 give the pattern of seats and votes for each party in the period covered by this chapter.

‘ t ha t w o ma n ’ 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 . . . 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 1

Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 618.

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Share of vote (%)

mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 321 60 50 40 30 20 Scotland England 10 0 1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 1974 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 Year

Share of vote (%)

Figure 13.1 Conservative share of the vote, Scotland and England, 1945–2005

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 Scotland England 5 0 1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 1974 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 Year

Figure 13.2 Labour share of the vote, Scotland and England, 1945–2005

Table 13.1 General election results in Scotland, 1979–97 Election

1979 1983 1987 1992 1997

Lab

Liba

Cons

SNP

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

44 41 50 49 56

41.5 35.1 42.5 39.0 46.0

22 21 10 11 0

31.4 28.4 24.0 25.7 18.0

3 8 9 9 10

9.0 24.5 19.4 13.1 13.0

2 2 3 3 6

17.3 11.7 14.0 21.5 22.0

Note: a Lib/SDP Alliance 1983–7; Liberal Democrat since 1992

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322 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Table 13.2: General election results in the UK, 1979–97 Election

1979 1983 1987 1992 1997

Lab

Liba

Cons

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

268 209 229 271 418

36.7 27.6 30.9 34.4 43.2

344 408 384 345 175

44.7 43.3 43.1 42.7 31.5

11 23 22 20 46

13.8 25.4 22.6 17.9 16.8

Note: a Lib/SDP Alliance 1983–7; Liberal Democrat since 1992

The Conservative electoral failure in Scotland in the 1980s was a source of consternation to the Prime Minister. Mrs Thatcher’s puzzlement over Scottish psephology masks two important areas where, it has been argued, 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. Even at her moment of greatest triumph, the completion of the Falklands War in June 1982, there was little enthusiasm in Scotland. Throughout the conflict both the tabloid and broadsheet press in Scotland were fairly muted in their approbation of the cause. They argued that the Falklands War was avoidable and the Scotsman called repeatedly for a diplomatic solution. The Labour-supporting Daily Record worked hard to try to keep social and economic criticisms of the

2 3

Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes, 165; Scotsman, 7 Jun. 1983. Mitchell and Bennie, ‘Thatcherism’, 96–7.

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Figure 13.3 Gordon Wilson MP (right, leader of the SNP) and the broadcaster Colin Bell with an SNP poster, September 1980. © The Scotsman Publications Ltd. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

government before their readers at a time of patriotic fervour.4 There was none of the shallow jingoism characterised by the Sun’s famous ‘Gotcha’ headline in response to the sinking of the General Belgrano; indeed, the Daily Record called for UN intervention at this stage of the conflict. The paper even went so far as to publish an article by the campaigning journalist John Pilger on British arms and military helicopter sales to Argentina.5 The Church of Scotland’s journal Life and Work was 4 For example Daily Record, 5 Apr. 1982; 6 Apr. 1982; Scotsman, 3 Apr. 1982; 5 Apr. 1982; 6 May 1982; 15 May 1982. 5 Daily Record, 6 May 1982; see also 31 May 1982 and 17 Apr. 1982 for the Pilger article.

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324 impa l e d upo n a this t l e critical of the government’s handling of the crisis and the matter was debated at the General Assembly which met in the midst of the war. A motion which offered support for the government was passed by only 408 votes to 335. The position of the Church was made slightly awkward by its wish to adopt an ecumenical stance in advance of the forthcoming Papal visit in which the Moderator of the General Assembly would meet the Pope.6 Although Scottish opinion was divided – many letters to the Scotsman were critical of its editorial line and many ministers of the Kirk supported the government – there was also a political edge to the debate. Both the Scotsman and the Record exemplified this: ‘How tragic if this war were to wipe out the memory of the three wasted years of the Right Honourable Margaret Thatcher! How ironic if it helped her to win the next election!’7 How ironic indeed. In the short term, though, the war did not seem to have a political impact in Scotland. Labour did well in by-elections and local-government elections in 1982 and its Scottish performance in the general election of 1983 was better than in other areas of the country. In the longer term, however, the war was crucial to Mrs Thatcher’s thumping majority across the UK at that general election. It was this divergence between Scottish and UK politics which would be such an important theme of the next fifteen years of Scottish political debate. Added to the Falklands factor and Scottish reaction to the personality of the Prime Minister, policy was clearly important. 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 are among the most prominent. Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s bemusement at her party’s poor record in Scotland arose from Scottish enthusiasm for some of her policies, such as selling ‘council houses’ to tenants at a discount. This policy had a greater impact on Scottish society compared to other parts of the country. 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: over 80 per cent in Clydebank, Monklands and Motherwell. 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 6 7

Douglas, ‘Ritual and remembrance’, 122–40. Daily Record, 4 May 1982, 2; see also Scotsman, 3 May 1982, 6.

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 325 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. 8 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. Subsidy from central government, 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.9 An earlier attempt to do this, in the late 1950s, had 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.10 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.11 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 cooperation.12 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, another contrast with England. 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’.13 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. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 623–4; Gibb, ‘Policy and politics’, 177–80. Gibb, ‘Policy and politics’, 178. 10 Thatcher, Revival of Britain, 142. 11 Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 118; this is even admitted in Stevenson, ‘Writing Scotland’s history’, 111. 12 Marr, Battle for Scotland, 165. 13 Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 521–3, 529. 8 9

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326 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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).14 There are three areas of the poll tax episode where the Scottish dimension is prominent: the political controversy over the rates in 1985; its early implementation; and 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 terrible. 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. The problem with the rates was that it was a property tax paid by relatively few people, and thus it did not contribute to a sense of individual responsibility 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’.15 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 ‘slithered’ (to use Tommy Sheridan’s description) from the brainstorming in the Department of the Environment and had received

14 15

Marr, Battle for Scotland, 178. Butler et al., Failure, 63–4; Financial Times, 28 Mar. 1985.

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 327 the endorsement of the Prime Minister.16 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 fewer than fortysix 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.17 Although Younger and Malcolm Rifkind were avid supporters of the poll tax, they were so for practical and political, rather than ideological, reasons. 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’.18 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.19 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 SNP: the latter laid particular stress on non-payment during their victorious Govan byelection campaign in November 1988. Around eighteen months after the implementation of the tax in Scotland the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) estimated that there were around 600,000 non-payers: this amounted to 15 per cent of the nationwide 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 1990–1 over 90 per cent of the tax had been collected in England compared to only 75 per cent in Scotland. Support for non-payment seems to have been even wider with polls suggesting over 40 per cent supported such tactics in September 1990.20 Tommy Sheridan, later an MSP, organised the Anti-Poll Tax 16 17 18 19 20

Sheridan, Time to Rage, 35; Butler et al., Failure, 64–5. Scotsman, 6, 7, 10 May 1985; Lawson, View from No. 11, 569–70. Lawson, View from No. 11, 580; Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 524. Butler et al., Failure, 101–2. Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom’, 522–9.

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328 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Federation and focused 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.21 Nevertheless, such activity was not the main factor in the ultimate demise of the poll tax, although it undermined its credibility in Scotland. 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’.22 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 this 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. There was, however, another more base objective: revenge. The particular target was the National Union of Mineworkers, which had inflicted humiliations on the government of Edward 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, 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 leaders 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 trades union power. The 21 22

Sheridan, A Time to Rage, 46–86, 110–48. Lawson, View from No. 11, 582.

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 329 pit closures were 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 of the strike, estimated at over £3 billion, as a loss but, extraordinarily, as an ‘investment’.23 The government presented the strike as a national emergency. This went beyond the question of ‘who governs?’ to become one 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 in 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 Beardmore’s forge under the tutelage of Sir James Lithgow, an interesting role model.24 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’.25 It was not as simple as that, however. The Scottish coalfield had been troubled since the early 1980s 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 also contributed to the 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.26 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 strike. The Scottish dimension 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 23 24 25 26

Richards, Miners on Strike, 117; Lawson, View from No. 11, 155. MacGregor, Enemies Within, 19–21. Quoted in Richards, Miners on Strike, 96. Brotherstone and Pirani, ‘Were there alternatives?’, 108–15.

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330 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 Eric Clarke, 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.27 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 Neil Kinnock’s attempts 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 media presented the striking miners as ‘extremists’ and thereby made it very difficult for the Labour party 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 that the NUM had erred in not holding one.28 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 the United Kingdom is not a ‘unitary state’ dominated by a monolithic centre, but an altogether more dynamic entity, a ‘union state’.29 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 Clarke, ‘Mineworkers’ strike 1984–5’, 138–55. Brotherstone and Pirani, ‘Were there alternatives?’, 106; Clarke, ‘Mineworkers’ strike 1984–5’, 144. 29 Mitchell, ‘Scotland in the union’, 85–6. 27 28

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 331 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.30 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 the Conservatives’ ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland. A Scotsman editorial in 1979 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’.31 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 had no ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland.32 This argument was increasingly heard as the Conservative vote fell away at the 1983 and 1987 general elections.33 There was a logical response to this: 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 they lost seats to all the other parties. 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. Mrs Thatcher pointed 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 30

See Paterson, Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Scotsman, 5 May 1979; Daily Record, 5 May 1979; Miller et al., ‘Government without a mandate’, 202; Dickson, ‘Peculiarities of the Scottish’, 367. 32 PD, 5th ser., 968, 1342, 1376 (20 Jun. 1979). 33 Daily Record, 11, 13 Jun. 1983; Scotsman, 11 Jun. 1983, 12 Jun. 1987. 31

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332 impa l e d upo n a this t l e aftermath of the election there was some incredulity in the Scottish press that the Conservative party intended to adopt such a brazen line.34 Following 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 in order to keep the homerule flame alive, commissioned a ‘Constitutional Steering Committee’. Chaired by the eminent planner Robert Grieve and 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 produce a plan for Scottish home rule.35 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 UK 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’.36 To adopt a title used by the seventeenth-century Scottish Parliament or a group of nineteenthcentury evangelical Churchmen placed the document in a historical tradition, but it was not best suited to a modern inclusive debate. In 1988 the Scottish Constitutional Convention began the long deliberations which produced a blueprint for a Scottish Parliament. It was composed of the Churches (indeed, it was chaired by a clergyman, Canon Kenyon Wright) the trades unions, home-rule pressure groups, the Scotsman, 13 Jun. 1987. The full text of the ‘Claim’ can be found in Edwards, A Claim of Right, 9–53 and extracts in Paterson, Diverse Assembly, 160–8; see Wright, The People Say Yes, 30–8. 36 Edwards, A Claim of Right, 10. 34 35

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Figure 13.4 One interpretation of Thatcherite policies. Alex Fletcher was a Scottish Office Minister in the 1980s; he was defeated by Alistair Darling at the 1987 general election. © The Scotsman Publications Ltd. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

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 in Scotland’s wider interests in an anti-Tory umbrella organisation.37 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’.38 Perhaps 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.39 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 PD, 5th ser., 967, 49 (15 May 1979); 968, 1333 (20 Jun. 1979); Marr, Battle for Scotland, 195–209. 38 MacLean, ‘Claim of right or cap in hand?’, 116. 39 Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 128–9. 37

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334 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. Most discussions start with the obiter 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 and Treaty of Union constituted fundamental constitutional law which restrained the activity of Parliament, thereby compromising its sovereignty. If one accepts that the UK 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 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 is ‘limited by the express or implied terms on which the powers are entrusted to them’ by the people. Modern scholars are uneasy about this weight being placed on the Declaration of 1320 and stress the anachronistic nature of interpreting it in the context of 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 have a role to play. The legal question of where sovereignty resides is, of course, deeply affected by political considerations. The Thatcher governments

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 335 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.40 Wright, had posed the question of what happened when the government simply said ‘No’ to 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.41 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 Parliament, 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.42 The roots of the Convention were diverse and the bases of its thinking were confused. It encompassed long-standing supporters of devolution and more recent converts, mostly from the left, who saw home rule 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’.43 It was not, 40

Goldsworthy, Sovereignty of Parliament, 166–72; Tierney, Constitutional Law and National Pluralism, 109–17, 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 and Simpson in Barrow, Declaration of Arbroath, 1–12, 108–15. 41 Brown et al., Politics and Society, 66; Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 131–2 damns the Convention with faint praise; Wright, The People Say Yes, 130. 42 Its final report, Scotland’s Parliament. Scotland’s Right, was published in 1995. 43 From a lecture at the University of Stirling, 21 Oct. 1988; Paterson, Diverse Assembly, 172. 40

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336 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 1992.44 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. This approach aroused frustration in the Prime Minister, who singled out Rifkind for criticism in her memoirs (‘His judgement was erratic and his behaviour unpredictable’).45 Rifkind’s message was contradicted by a succession of Cabinet ministers who berated the Scots for dependence on the largesse of the United Kingdom. Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dismissed constitutional change as a ‘red herring’ and argued that the real problem in Scotland was more profound than lack of enterprise. 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.46 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 post1987 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: 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 Edwards, Claim of Right, 18, 27; Wright, The People Say Yes, 32, 54, 119–20; Mitchell, ‘Creation of the Scottish parliament’, 656–61. 45 Scotsman, 2 May 1988; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 620. 46 Glasgow Herald, 24 Nov. 1987. 44

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 337 caring services which are provided by your Church’s department of social responsibility.47 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.48 In her tacit recognition of a Scottish civil society which had expressed opposition to many of her policies, albeit one of declining importance in the shape of the Church of Scotland, this was a curiously un-Thatcherite episode.49 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. In May 1979 the Scotsman asked: ‘. . . what are the 44 Scottish Labour MPs . . . going to do with themselves in opposition?’50 The Labour party was in a difficult position as the biggest Scottish party in Parliament and in Scottish local government, but committed to unionism. 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.51 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’.52 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’, to quote John Smith’s famous phrase. This was also a result of the effect of her economic policy on Scottish industry. Vast swathes of industrial Scotland were wiped out in the 1980s and the class and gender composition of the workforce was fundamentally altered in this period. This is an important point and one which undoubtedly contributed to the electoral reverses suffered by the Conservative party in Scotland in the 1980s. It is not 47 48 49 50 51 52

Glasgow Herald, 23 May 1988; Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, 119–26. Glasgow Herald, 14, 19, 23 May 1988; Scotsman, 23 May 1988. Walker and Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, 104–6. Scotsman, 5 May 1979. Scotsman, 7 Jun. 1983. Scotsman, 13 Jun. 1987; Daily Record, 13 Jun. 1987.

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338 impa l e d upo n a this t l e a sufficient explanation of voting trends, or of the rise in popularity of devolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The deindustrialisation effected in Scotland was not unique; south Wales, and the north-east and north-west of England also experienced this and remained, of course, heartlands of support for the Labour party. The Welsh experience is especially interesting as devolution was part of the political debate in the Principality. The ravages of Thatcherism did not lead to markedly greater enthusiasm for Welsh home rule during the 1980s. Further, within Scotland it was not the areas which experienced the worst effects of unemployment which turned against the Conservatives: that party lost seats in rural Scotland, in the north-east and in Edinburgh; middleclass and suburban seats also returned Labour MPs in a way which was not seen in England to the same degree. There was an extra dimension of opposition to Thatcherism in Scotland and that revolved around the perception that her government represented a threat to Scottish identity, often articulated by advocates of devolution in the language of ‘civil society’. This provides some evidence that the Scottish dimension of opposition to Thatcherism was distinctive from that which appeared in other areas of the United Kingdom. Devolution was not merely resorted to as an opportunistic response, but it seemed to provide the potential for a barrier to what was seen as an alien ideology.53 A major theme of political debate in the late 1980s and 1990s was the relationship between Britain and Europe. The Conservative government had acquired much of its credibility by its successful claim for a rebate of Britain’s contribution to the Community. Despite Mrs Thatcher’s strong Atlanticist outlook she presided over substantial steps forward in the process of greater integration between Britain and Europe, not least in her signature of the Single European Act of 1987. Further, the credibility of her successor’s government was destroyed by the humiliating withdrawal from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. As we have noted in an earlier chapter, at the time of Britain’s entry to the then EEC and the subsequent referendum, Scotland was somewhat ‘sceptical’, to adopt the usage of the 1990s. This attitude changed over time, however, and by the mid- to late 1980s ‘Europe’ was perceived much more positively. This alteration had much to do with European funding arrangements. The thrust of this policy ran counter to that of the Conservative governments of the period in that it had a strong ‘regional’ dimension. Ironically, these funds originated in the rebate negotiated by Mrs Thatcher earlier in her 53

The economic basis for the opposition to Thatcherism is argued by Finlay, ‘Thatcherism’, 136–55.

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 339 premiership. This allowed her governments to make much of the fact that they had facilitated substantial investment in Scotland from the European Regional Development Fund. This was something of a sleight of hand as these funds were applied to projects, such as the building of the A9 trunk road from Perth to Inverness or a series of bridges on the same road north of Inverness, which would have been funded by the UK government; thus they were not ‘additional’ funds.54 Further, despite highland and northern suspicion of the European project these regions proved to be substantial beneficiaries. The crofting counties benefited from a series of development programmes in the 1980s, and in 1993 the highlands were awarded ‘Objective One’ status. This brought funding designed to promote ‘the development and structural adjustment of the regions whose development were lagging behind’. The test was that such areas should have a GDP less than 75 per cent of the European average. This was trumpeted, not least by the SNP MEP for the Highlands and Islands, Winnie Ewing, as a great achievement for the region. As one official of Highlands and Islands Enterprise pointed out, however, ‘one minute we’re telling everyone how well our economy is doing, the next minute we’re getting special EC aid as one of the poorest regions in Europe’.55 Nevertheless, ‘cohesion’ became a more important theme in the objectives of the European Union in the late 1980s and 1990s as the Union became more diverse in its membership. The Conservative governments of the 1980s were not especially interested in ‘cohesion’ in its social and economic sense and it is doubtful if the investment from Europe compensated for the virtual abandonment of domestic regional policy, even if ‘additionality’ had been strictly applied.56 These events have contributed to a steady reversal of attitudes towards Europe in the United Kingdom. The very areas which had been most hostile in the referendum in 1975 came to view the European structures much more positively, while wealthier areas of the south of England, which had been enthusiastic in 1975, became ‘sceptical’. It has sometimes been suggested that Scotland, with nearly three hundred years of involvement in a political and economic union, was comfortable with the idea of participating in a multinational organisation and relaxed about issues of sovereignty. Other parts of the United Kingdom took the union for granted and saw it as a continuity with a much older state, making the loss of sovereignty much Midwinter et al., Politics and Public Policy, 89; Wright, Who Governs Scotland?, 37–42. 55 Cameron, ‘Scottish highlands’, 159–60, 165–6; Ewing, Stop the World, 230–3. 56 McCrone, ‘Scottish economy and European integration’, 19–21. 54

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340 impa l e d upo n a this t l e more threatening. There are even comparisons to be made between the Treaty of Union of 1707 and the Treaty of Rome in their establishment of common markets.57

m a j o r d i sa p p o i n t me n ts a n d su r p r ises 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 bête noire. Although there was some expectation that John Major, who had not shown any previous interest in Scottish affairs, would make the Conservatives more popular, there remained widespread optimism that a ‘time for a change’ feeling would override this. Major had inherited a fractious party, seemingly determined to rupture itself on the European issue. One of his strategies for dealing with this was to emphasise 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 UK. His view was that this was far too important to be left to the Scots; both Scotland and the UK 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 and contributed to modest success in 1992. Many of their arguments were reminiscent 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.58 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 Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 55–7. Major, Autobiography, 415–30; Seldon, Major, 262–3, 279–81; Lang, Blue Remembered Years, 77, 178–89.

57 58

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 341 with the Bevanite revolts of the early 1950s, Scottish Labour was not so prone to this masochism. The Militant threat was present in Scotland, especially in Glasgow seats such as Pollok and Provan, but no Scottish MPs were deselected in what was a fraught period for the party in Liverpool, London and elsewhere.59 Nevertheless, their activity helped to create Scottish Militant Labour and eventually the Scottish Socialist Party in the 1990s.60 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. 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 been defensible, just, in 1979 but it was wearing thin by 1992. The Scottish Constitutional Convention, by giving the appearance of activity, provided only 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.61 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.62 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’.63 After the 1987 election they argued that the third example of Labour dominance in 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 Compare Allison, Guilty by Suspicion, 60–70 with Sheridan, A Time to Rage, 87–109. Sheridan, A Time to Rage, 221–36; Devine, Scottish Nation, 601–2; McLean, ‘Labour in Scotland’, 43–4. 61 Levy, ‘Third party decline’, 62–8; Lynch, SNP, 160–77; Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 221–31. 62 Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 222. 63 Sillars, Case for Optimism, 181–91; Lynch, SNP, 185–7; Lynch, Minority Nationalism, 37–49. 59 60

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342 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 the seat for granted, an echo of Hamilton in 1967.64 Bitterness between leading figures on both sides contributed to the SNP’s departure from the Convention in early 1989 but was 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. Labour had been in this position before 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. 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.65 This shift can be explained by the political pressure exerted by the SNP, capable of causing significant 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 a stronger scheme than that of 1978 could ‘protect’ Scotland against 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.66 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 64 65 66

Allison, Guilty by Suspicion, 181–8. Geekie and Levy, ‘Devolution’, 399–411. Edwards, Claim of Right, 23–6.

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 343 reforms of the Conservative government. This was the new motive for advocating a Scottish parliament: socialism in one country.67 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 high unemployment, back as a serious blot on 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.68 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 UCS 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 UK 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 homerule movement organised a 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’. This 67 Michael Forsyth on ‘The governance of Scotland’, reprinted in Paterson, Diverse Assembly, 246. 68 Lang, Blue Remembered Years, 71–4.

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344 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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’.69 There was, however, a political problem: 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 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.70 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 69

40.

70

PP 1992–3 XCIII, Scotland in the Union: A Partnership for Good (Cm 2225), quote at Schlesinger et al., Open Scotland?, 120–5.

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 345 by plus or minus 3 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.’71 This was aimed at two obvious targets: first, the support for devolution of the Scottish electorate, consistently indicated in opinion polls and implied by the result of the 1992 general election and 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. 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 questions, the second seeking popular assent to the future Parliament’s tax-varying powers.72 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 71 Michael Forsyth on ‘The governance of Scotland’, reprinted in Paterson, Diverse Assembly, 247. 72 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.

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346 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Breaking the mould? 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 rightwing 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 Paisley in 1920.73 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. 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 1988 produced the Liberal Democratic party. 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 from 1999 to 2007. Although this has come despite modest success at Scottish Parliamentary elections, they played a reasonably effective

Crewe and King, SDP, 152–6; Jenkins, Life at the Centre, 556–64; Allison, Guilty by Suspicion, 96–8.

73

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mo t h e r i n g de v o l u t i o n 347 role as junior partner in the coalition, influencing higher education and health policies. Critics regretted a missed opportunity to raise the profile of Liberal values, but this view overestimates the leverage of a minor party in a coalition. Table 13.3 Changes in share of the vote in seats lost by Conservatives at the 1997 general election Constituency

Cons

Lab

LD

SNP

Aberdeen South Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine Ayr Dumfries Eastwood Edinburgh Pentlands Edinburgh West Galloway & Upper Nithsdale Perth Stirling Tayside North

-10.99

+11.37

+0.98

-2.33

11.18 (Lab)

-10.23 -4.63 -15.06 -13.07 -7.82 -10.23

+2.27 +5.81 +17.91 +15.61 +11.84 +1.42

+6.41 -2.74 -0.60 -4.74 -2.78 +13.31

+0.59 +1.41 -2.72 +0.55 -2.66 -3.70

8.32 (LD) 5.22 (Lab) 16.49 (Lab) 14.34 (Lab) 9.83 (Lab) 11.77 (LD)

-11.47 -11.13 -6.66 -10.65

+3.37 +11.57 +8.83 +4.32

-2.17 -3.92 -0.50 +0.26

+7.46 +1.99 -1.11 +6.06

Mean swing from Conservative

Swing from Cons (winner)

9.47 (SNP) 6.56 (SNP) 7.75 (Lab) 8.36 (SNP) 9.93

outmoded centralist outlook of the party, a historic obstacle to support for home rule.734 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 timeframe the collapse was dramatic: twenty-four seats had been lost since 1979. Table 13.3 analyses 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-election in 1995 which saw the SNP take the seat from the Conservatives on the death of the maverick MP Sir 74

Mitchell, ‘The evolution of devolution’, 479–96.

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348 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Nicholas Fairbairn. Roseanna Cunningham’s feat of repeating her byelection victory at the subsequent general election was a first in SNP history. 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 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, rather than a realisation of its inherent malleability, was much more threatening to its integrity. Their Unionism was more reminiscent of Andrew Bonar Law on Ulster than of Walter Elliot on Scotland.

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ch apter 14

New Labour, New Parliament, New Scotland?

T

he general election of 1997 has been seen as a watershed comparable to 1906, 1945 or 1979. Labour was elected with a decisive majority for only the third time and, in contrast to 1964 and 1974, did not rely on Scottish seats for its majority. The government was committed to Scottish (and Welsh) devolution, although in the context of a reform of the British constitution rather than in quasi-nationalist terms. Post-1997 home-rule politics can be contrasted with the wretched history of the Scotland Act of 1978. Contrary to the sequence of events in 1979, a 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. 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 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 emphasised ‘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. Finally, crucially, there was a single ‘Yes’ campaign which was adhered to by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. Traditional hostilities between Labour and the SNP were suspended and divergent perceptions of the role of devolved institutions 1

PP 1996–7 IL, Scotland’s Parliament, Cm 3658.

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350 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Table 14.1 Results of Scottish and UK general elections, 1999–2007 Election Seats 1999 (Sco)a 2001 2003 (Sco) 2005b 2007 (Sco)

Vote

Lab

Cons

Lib

SNP

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

Seats

Vote

53 56 46 41 37

39.0 44.0 34.6 39.5 32.2

0 1 3 1 4

16.0 16.0 16.6 15.8 16.6

12 10 13 11 11

14.0 16.0 15.4 22.6 16.2

7 5 9 6 21

29.0 20.0 23.8 17.7 32.9

Notes: a Constituency ballot only b Number of Scottish seats reduced to fifty-nine at 2005 election

Table 14.2 Results of the devolution referendums of 1979 and 1997 (Source: Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 371–2) 1997

Devolution (%)

Taxation powers (%)

Yes No 1979 Yes No

1,775,045 (74.3) 614,400 (25.7)

1,512,889 (64.5) 870,263 (36.5)

1,230,937 (51.6) 1,153,502 (48.4)

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 It is interesting to compare the results of the two referendums (in 1997 there was no 40 per cent rule; in 1979 there was only one question). There was a clearer result in 1997; although the turnout, at 60.4 per cent, was lower than the 63.6 per cent of 1979, it was in line with other referendums and higher than local-government elections.3 In the light of the 40 per cent rule from 1979 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.4 Another factor which had eroded the legitimacy of the ‘Yes’ vote in 1979 was the fact that some 2 Dardanelli, ‘Democratic deficit’, 320–42; Mitchell et al., ‘The 1997 devolution referendum in Scotland’, 166–81. 3 Pattie et al., ‘The 1997 Scottish referendum’, 4–6. 4 Bogdanor, Devolution in the United Kingdom, 199.

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 351 Regions had voted ‘No’. As can be seen from the next table, which maps the 1997 result onto the Regions which 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 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 48 per cent in 1979.5 The 1997 referendum caused less division than that of 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. 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’. All this demonstrates that support for devolution was overwhelming in 1997.6 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. Compared to the marathon of 1974–9, 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 is composed of 129 members, 73 elected from constituencies and the remaining 56 members are elected from lists of candidates put forward by the parties in each of 8 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 5 6

Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 372–5. Denver, ‘Voting in the 1997 Scottish and Welsh referendums’, 827–43.

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352 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Table 14.3 Regional support for devolution and tax-varying powers at the referendum of 1997 (Source: Hassan and Lynch, Almanac, 373) Region

Devolution

Taxation

Borders Central Dumfries & Galloway Fife Grampian Highland Lothian Strathclyde Tayside Orkney Shetland Western Isles

62.8 76.1 60.7 76.1 67.6 72.6 76.4 75.7 67.4 57.3 62.4 79.4

50.7 65.6 48.8 64.7 55.1 62.1 64.9 65.0 56.7 47.4 51.6 68.4

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. 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.7 The PR system gives the SNP a 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 recent Westminster elections. 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. Labour and the SNP were the principal victims of this tendency of the electorate to recognise independents and single-issue campaigners. Nearly 23 per cent of the list vote went to ‘minor parties’.8 This provides modest evidence for the existence of ‘new politics’ in the post-devolution 7 McCrone, ‘Opinion polls’, 32–43; Miller, ‘Modified rapture’, 299–322; Jones, ‘The 1999 Scottish parliament elections’, 1–9. 8 Denver, ‘A “wake-up!” call to the parties’, 33.

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 353 Table 14.4 Seats won at Scottish Parliament elections, 1999–2007

Labour

SNP

Lib Dem

Conservative

Green

SSP

Others

1999

2003

2007

53 3 56 7 28 35 12 5 17 0 18 18 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1

46 4 50 9 18 27 13 4 17 3 15 18 0 6 6 0 7 7 2 2 4

37 9 46 21 26 47 11 5 16 4 13 17 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 1 1

Const List Total Const List Total Const List Total Const List Total Const List Total Const List Total Const List Total

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 (fifty-one MSPs) in 2003 compared to 37.2 per cent (forty-nine MSPs) in 2003. 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 2003.9 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. 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, 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, 9

Mackay, ‘Women and the 2003 elections’, 74–90.

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354 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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. The Scotland Act does not limit the power of the Westminster Parliament, which is sovereign and can legislate on all matters, including devolved ones. The distinction in the Scotland Act between ‘reserved’ and ‘devolved’ issues is less clear-cut than first appears and there might be occasions where Westminster legislation on a devolved area is the most convenient way to proceed. On the other hand there are some reserved areas where the Scottish Executive might have a role in some circumstances. The most important of these involves nuclear defence policy. This is clearly a reserved area of policy, but the fact that all of the UK’s nuclear weapons are based in Scotland means that a wide range of Scottish agencies are involved in the administration and servicing of the bases at Faslane and Coulport.10 The ambiguities have led to the suggestion that ‘devolution is by no means a “settlement”, but a dynamic process subject to continuous conflict and change’.11 This much is clear. What is less obvious is how political clashes between the SNP and the Labour government at Westminster will develop. Friendly ‘cohabitation’ is unlikely. 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-nine seats prior to the general election of 2005, but this does not deal with the issue at the heart of the question. That Scottish MPs have continued to hold Cabinet positions, continuing controversy over the Barnett formula and the role of Scottish MPs at Westminster gives 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 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’ Chalmers and Walker, Uncharted Waters, 47–72, esp. 55. Cairney and Keating, ‘Sewel motions’, 134; Page and Batey, ‘Scotland’s other parliament’, 501–23.

10 11

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 355 or ‘autonomous’ Scotland within the Union is long-standing.12 This is at once a basis for devolution but also a challenging environment for the new Parliament. It will be required to hold to account experienced operators in established networks and institutions – in the educational or agricultural fields, for example – 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 evidence of its first two terms a note of cautious optimism can be sounded. There is also a 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 and it was the recent manifestation of this which produced the political will for Scottish devolution. 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. 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 is an ad hoc process which has produced roughly coincidental devolution. Devolution has been part of a process which has seen the reassertion of English identity and to a degree its disentanglement from Britishness. The north-east of England 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 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 1997.13

i nno v a t i o n a n d c o n t i n ui t y The popular perception of ‘devolution’ concentrates on the strengths and weaknesses of the Parliament, an obvious innovation, but the Executive (although since 2007 the SNP have used the word ‘Government’) is at least as interesting. When there was devolution to Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1972 there was a ‘Government’ with a ‘Prime 12 13

Murdoch, The People Above; Paterson, The Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Tomaney, ‘Anglo-Scottish relations’, 248.

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356 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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.14 There is a considerable continuity between the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Office. Civil servants, for example, remain part of the UK civil service, and are recruited by the same means as those who work for UK departments in London. Nevertheless, prior to devolution the staff of the Scottish Office 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 around 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. In the main the 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 a hundred and twenty-nine MSPs, and hence the civil service workload has increased.15 There are two clear areas of innovation implicit in devolution. The first is the procedures of the Scottish Parliament. This is a very different institution from Westminster and only a minority of its members have experience of the UK Parliament. 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.16 The 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 distinguishes it from Westminster. Its unicameralism and distinctive committee system are also interesting features. The threestage legislative process of the Scottish Parliament is 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 basic issues. Parliament then debates these issues, votes and Keating, Government of Scotland, 96. Parry, ‘The Scottish Civil Service’, 66; Parry, ‘The Civil Service and the Scottish Executive’s structure and style’, 85. 16 Keating, Government of Scotland, 110. 14 15

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 357 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 theme can be taken too far, however. One should not expect a consensual process devoid of aggressive partisanship – witness First Minister’s Questions and the vicious battle between Labour and the SNP. Most MSPs have been brought up within a British style of politics which focuses on divisions between parties, rather than areas of agreement. Some of this has been carried over into Holyrood.17 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 opponents of devolution argue that it contains the seeds of the destruction of the UK. 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 over-confidence 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. Independence cannot be achieved by stealth, and the SNP do not advocate such a course. Nevertheless, there is an appetite for extending the powers of the Scottish Parliament. This can be done in two ways. The first, the amendment of the Scotland Act to colonise formerly reserved powers, is fraught with difficulty. 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 17

Mitchell, ‘New parliament, new politics’, 617.

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358 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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’.18 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. One indication of the success of devolution has been the fact that the parties involved have got down to business and have not pushed the Scottish political agenda into these troublesome waters. One exception is an ongoing argument about fiscal autonomy. This has become 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. 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 centuries. 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 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 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.19 The Barnett formula is relevant here. 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, 18 19

Mitchell, ‘Devolution and the end of Britain?’, 61–82 at 77. See special issue of Scottish Affairs (no. 41, autumn 2002).

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 359

Figure 14.1 The HQ of the Vigil for a Scottish Parliament, continuously occupied from 10 April 1992 to 11 September 1997. © National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

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. 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 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 has been bypassed, means 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 has been applied to a greater range of expenditure and bypassed

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360 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Opening the Scottish Parliament The opening of the Scottish Parliament on 1 July 1999 was a revealing event.20 It pointed to the diverse, even contradictory, forces which led Scottish politics to this moment. It looked forward, but the past was also 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 Parliament until the opening of its new troublesome building a mile or so down the hill at Holyrood. This chamber was contained within 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 and had also been the site of Mrs Thatcher’s infamous ‘sermon on the Mound’ in 1988, an event which contributed to a consensus for home rule. There were strong nationalist emphases during the day, not least in the rhetoric of Winifred Ewing, the grande 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 1707.21 This seemed very backward-looking and it was 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. 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-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

20 21

Ritchie, Scotland Reclaimed, 205–10. Official Report, Scottish Parliament, 12 May 1999, col. 5.

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 361 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.22 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. 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.23 Certain events which have taken place since devolution, especially the 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 Scotsman, a remarkable contrast with the 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 have concertedly expressed a lack of confidence in the quality of many of the MSPs.24 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, 202122

20 21

22

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/history/donaldDewar/index.htm McLean, ‘Financing the Union’, 81–94; Heald and McLeod, ‘Scotland’s fiscal relationships’, 95–112; Keating, Government of Scotland, 140–67. 24 Schlesinger et al., Open Scotland?, 87. 23

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362 impa l e d upo n a this t l e ‘Higher Still’, suffered a catastrophic failure and many candidates did not receive their certificates on time. That the SQA was a semi-autonomous agency allowed the Executive to attempt to avoid direct responsibility for the disaster. Although this generated much bad publicity the crisis reflected 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 as evidence of the openness and accountability that stemmed from devolution, but also as an example of the Parliament challenging one of the key institutions of Scottish civil society, in this case the formerly unaccountable educational establishment.25 Another view is that the Parliament provides a vehicle for breaking from the left-of-centre consensus in Scottish politics.26 The electorate have shown little interest in such strategy. 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 a ‘blurring of this distinction’ in the eyes of the public, this is in the hands of the Executive.27 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 avoiding a repeat of Thatcherism.28 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 period before the second election to the Scottish Parliament in 2003. The first change occurred as 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. 26 Mitchell, ‘New parliament, new politics’, 619. 27 Brown, ‘Designing the Scottish parliament’, 555. 28 Mitchell, ‘Scotland: expectations, policy types and devolution’, 17. 25

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 363 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 was reassessed 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 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 unusual in the Scottish political class, almost unique in Scottish Labour circles, in having a 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, uncomfortable with the media manipulation which was the stock-in-trade of New Labour.29 His replacement, Henry McLeish, was a dull technocrat, but he did not last long, having to resign in 2001 over a financial scandal.30 Jack McConnell, Scotland’s third First Minister, represented something of a new departure in that 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.31 His principal problem was 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 kick the Labour party. The record 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. What have been the legislative landmarks of the devolved Parliament? While the Scottish Parliament has passed 134 Bills from 1999 to 2007 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 29 30 31

Schlesinger et al., Open Scotland?, 53, 93–5, 127, 167. Taylor, Scotland’s Parliament, 47–60. Mitchell, ‘Third year, third first minister’, 119–39.

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364 impa l e d upo n a this t l e both indicate 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 . . .’. 32 Radical conceptions of Scottish politics have included the concentration of land ownership 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.33 The Land Reform Act of 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. This was controversial and it disappointed some advocates of land reform but it represented 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.34 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. 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 a ‘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 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 of up to £3,000 per student to bring them closer to the full Official Report, Scottish Parliament, 20 Mar. 2002, col. 10398 (Bill Aitken). Donald Dewar, ‘Land Reform for the 21st century’, The Fifth John McEwan Memorial Lecture on Land Tenure in Scotland, 4 Sept. 1998. 34 Cameron, ‘ “Unfinished business” ’, 83–114. 32 33

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 365 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 they do exist in national and international contexts and the Scottish Parliament is not the only body which governs their activities.35 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. An 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 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.36 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’, Keating, ‘Higher education in Scotland and England’, 423–35; Paterson, Scottish Education, 164–75. 36 Greer, ‘Territorial bases of health policymaking’, 504–6; Keating, Government of Scotland, 174–8. 35

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366 impa l e d upo n a this t l e but it was not as simple as it seemed. Because the cost of free personal care has to be set against other benefits from the social security system, a reserved matter, complexities abound. This is 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 £22 million, 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’.37 The final innovation, also in the general area of health policy, points up some of the ways in which devolution compelled the 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 if the ban was presented as a public health measure to prohibit smoking in public places, rather than work places, the competence of the Parliament was clear.38 This placed Scotland and England in different positions regarding this issue. 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 2003.39 The first was immediately interrupted by a Labour member to question the right of the Parliament to debate the issue. The Scotland Act places no limit on the subjects that can be debated in the Parliament and Labour worries about the competence of the Parliament were connected to their own divisions over the war. In the event, the Parliament divided with Labour and the Tories on one side and the Liberals and Simeon, ‘Free personal care’, 215–35, quote at 220; Cairney, ‘Venue shift following devolution’, 433. 38 Cairney, ‘Using devolution to set the agenda?’, 73–89. 39 Official Report, Scottish Parliament, 16 Jan. 2003, cols 17013–86; 13 Mar. 2003, cols 19425–96. 37

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 367 SNP on the other.40 An irony which was pointed out 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. 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’.41 It might be added that the Westminster Parliament was not a key player in the decisions which led to war. The debate indicated that devolved institutions can, on occasion, provide alternative political spaces for discussion of issues which have been squeezed off the Westminster order paper.

t he 2 0 0 7 s c o t t i sh p a r l i a m en t el ec t ion Does the 2007 election offer evidence for a break with the past? The results would seem to indicate that this is so. 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 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. Continuity with 1974 and other SNP performances was evident in the 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 western seats, Cunninghame North (by forty-eight votes), and Kilmarnock and Loudoun. They crept into new territory in central Scotland by winning 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 40 41

Herald, 17 Jan. 2003, 9; Scotsman, 12 Mar. 2003, 10. I. McWhirter, ‘Enemies gassed to little effect’, Sunday Herald, 19 Jan. 2003, 9.

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368 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 1974 is the fact that the SNP are the second-place party to Labour in thirty-three seats, many of them in the west of Scotland.42 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-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.43 The Scottish election result was strongly influenced by the deepening unpopularity of the Labour government in London; this was 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.44 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. The SNP’s promise of an independence referendum was a deterrent to any of the unionist parties entering a coalition with them. 42

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2007/scottish_parliment/html/ region_99999.stm accessed 7 May 2007; Scotsman, 5 May 2007. 43 Daily Record, 3 May 2007. 44 Scotsman, 7 May 2007, 2.

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 369 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, focusing 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’.45 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. Even this issue of turnout was overtaken 45

Scottish Sun, 3 May 2007.

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370 impa l e d upo n a this t l e 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 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 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 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 2000.46 The most sensible conclusion to draw on the experience thus far of devolved politics is 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, the system has restored a consensus on the legitimate means of governing Scotland. Part of the argument for the creation of a Parliament stemmed from a feeling in the 1980s that the government did not have a ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland. Although this was not strictly 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.47 Expectations were initially very high, possibly unrealistically so. The Parliament is not only established but it is accepted across the political spectrum, including by 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 Anne Johnstone in the Herald, 10 May 2007, 15. Bradbury and Mitchell, ‘Devolution and territorial politics’, 314; Mitchell, ‘Third year, third first minister’, 137.

46 47

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n ew la b o ur, ne w pa r l iamen t , n e w s c o t l a n d? 371 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 erode 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 election in which people did not understand the voting mechanism or misunderstood the significance of the votes they cast.’48 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.

48

Quoted in Schlesinger et al., Open Scotland?, 151.

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b i b l i o g r a p h y 413 Simon, A., ‘Church disestablishment as a factor in the general election of 1885’, HJ 18 (1975), 791–820. Simonton, D., ‘Work, trade and commerce’, in Abrams et al., eds, Gender in Scottish History, 199–234. Simpson, M., ‘Urban transport and the development of Glasgow’s west end, 1830–1914’, Journal of Transport History, new ser. 1 (1971–2), 146–60. Simpson, M., ‘The west end of Glasgow, 1830–1914’, in M. Simpson and T. H. Lloyd, eds, Middle Class Housing in Britain (Newton Abbot, 1977), 44–85. Skelley, J., ed., The General Strike (London, 1976). Skelton, N., Constructive Conservatism (Edinburgh and London, 1924). Slaven, A. and D. Aldcroft, eds, Business, Banking and Urban History (Edinburgh, 1982). Smith, D., ‘Official responses to juvenile delinquency in Scotland during the Second World War’, TCBH 18 (2007), 78–105. Smith, D. C., Passive Obedience and Prophetic Protest: Social Criticism in the Scottish Church, 1830–1945 (New York, 1987). Smith, H. L., ‘The problem of “equal pay for equal work” in Great Britain during World War II’, Journal of Modern History 53 (1981), 652–72. Smith, H. L., ‘The womanpower problem in Britain during the Second World War’, HJ 27 (1984), 625–45. Smith, J., ‘Commonsense thought and working class consciousness; some aspects of the Glasgow and Liverpool Labour movements in the early years of the twentieth century’ (University of Edinburgh unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 1982). Smith, J., ‘Class, skill and sectarianism in Glasgow and Liverpool, 1880– 1914’, in R. J .Morris, ed., Class, Power and Social Structure in British Nineteenth-Century Towns (Leicester, 1986), 157–215. Smith, J., ‘Taking the leadership of the labour movement: the ILP in Glasgow, 1906–14’, in McKinlay and Morris, eds, The ILP on Clydeside, 56–82 Smith, M., Paper Lions: The Scottish Press and National Identity (Edinburgh, 1994). Smith, P. J., ‘Planning as environmental improvement: slum clearance in Victorian Edinburgh’, in A. Sutcliffe, ed., The Rise of Modern Urban Planning (London, 1980), 99–133. Smith, P. J., ‘The rehousing/relocation issue in an early slum-clearance scheme: Edinburgh, 1865–1885’, Urban Studies 26 (1989), 100–14.

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b i b l i o g r a p h y 417 Treble, J. H., ‘Unemployment in Glasgow, 1903–1910: anatomy of a crisis’, JSLHS 25 (1990), 8–39. Tulloch, J., ‘Disestablishment in Scotland: a reply’, Contemporary Review 41 (1882), 749–67. Turnbull, M. T. R. B., Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray (Edinburgh, 1994). Turok, I., ‘Contrasts in ownership and development: local versus global in “Silicon Glen”‘, Urban Studies 30 (1993), 365–86. Turok, I., ‘Glasgow’s recent trajectory: partial recovery and its consequences’, in Newlands et al., eds, Divided Scotland, 35–59. Ugolini, W., ‘The internal enemy “other”: recovering the world war two narratives of Italian Scottish women’, JSHS 24 (2004), 137–58. Ugolini, W., ‘Memory, war and the Italians in Edinburgh: the role of communal myth’, National Identities 8 (2006), 421–36. Vamplew, W., ‘The economics of a sports industry: Scottish gate-money football, 1890–1914’, Econ. HR 35 (1982), 549–67. van Egeraat, C. and D. Jacobson, ‘The rise and demise of the Irish and Scottish computer hardware industry’, European Planning Studies 12 (2004), 809–34. Velek, T. G., ‘Industrial and commercial efficiency: the role and development of Scottish technical and commercial education, 1895–1914’ (University of Edinburgh unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 1996). Walker, G., Thomas Johnston (Manchester, 1988). Walker, G., ‘Nancy Riach and the Motherwell swimming phenomenon’, in Jarvie and Walker, eds, Scottish Sport, 142–53. Walker, G., ‘The Ibrox Stadium disaster of 1971’, Soccer and Society 5 (2004), 169–82. Walker, G. and T. Gallagher, eds, Sermons and Battle Hymns: Protestant Popular Culture in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990). Walker, G. and T. Gallagher, ‘Protestantism and Scottish politics’, in Walker and Gallagher, eds, Sermons and Battle Hymns, 86–111. Walker, G. and D. Officer, ‘Scottish Unionism and the Ulster question’, in Macdonald, ed., Unionist Scotland, 13–26. Walker, S. P., ‘Occupational expansion, fertility decline and recruitment to the professions in Scotland’ (University of Edinburgh unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 1986). Walker, W. M., ‘Dundee’s disenchantment with Churchill: a comment upon the downfall of the Liberal party’, SHR 49 (1970), 85–108. Walker, W. M., ‘Irish immigrants in Scotland: their priests, politics and parochial life’, HJ 15 (1972), 649–77. Walker, W. M., ‘The Scottish Prohibition Party and the millennium’, International Review of Social History 18 (1973), 353–79.

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420 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Wright, R. E., ‘Can Scotland afford to grow old?’, SA 39 (spring 2002), 15–18. Wright, R. E., ‘The impact of population ageing on the Scottish labour market’, Quarterly Economic Commentary 27(2) (2002), 41–5. Young, A., ‘Foreign direct investment in Scotland: the Silicon Glen experience’, in G. Blazyca, ed., Restructuring Regional and Local Economies (Aldershot, 2003), 159–74. Young, D. R., ‘Voluntary recruitment in Scotland, 1914–1916’ (University of Glasgow unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 2001). Young, K., Sir Alec Douglas-Home (London, 1970). Zweiniger-Bargielowska, I., ‘Rationing, austerity and the Conservative party recovery after 1945’, HJ 37 (1994), 173–97.

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Index

Aberdeen, 44, 63, 70, 86, 99, 109, 207, 244, 245, 253, 269 Aberdeenshire, 207 Achnacarry, 177 Adamson, William, 90, 156 Addison, Christopher, 117 Aden, 284 agriculture Board (later Department) of Agriculture for Scotland, 139, 151 alcohol consumption, 205 Amsterdam, 127 Angus, 134 Anti-Poll Tax Federation, 327 Arbroath, Declaration of (1320), 334 Ardersier, 242, 253 Argentina, 310–11 Argyll, 191–2 Argyll, eighth duke of, 27, 29, 140n Ascherson, Neal, 312, 318–19 Asquith, H. H., 79, 81, 98, 154, 346 Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland, 140–1 asylum seekers, 212 Atholl, duchess of, 166, 180 Atholl, eighth duke of, 105, 123 Attlee, Clement, 268, 270 Australia, 208 Ayrshire, 70, 109, 131, 245, 304 Baird, James, 60 Baird, William, 37, 142

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Balfour, Arthur J., 86 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 65, 85, 116 Ballantyne, Bob, 254 Bannerman, John M., 144, 195 Bannerman, John W. M., 315 Barbour, Mary, 119 Barnes, George, 90, 156 Barnett formula, 302–3, 354, 358–9, 365 Barr, Rev. James, 156, 168 Barr and Stroud, 187 Barrow, G. W. S., 315 Bathgate, 239, 249, 257, 276, 290 BBC, 313 Beardmore, William (Lord Invernairn), 37, 142 Bearsden and Milngavie, 325, 326 Begg, James, 20, 22–3, 26, 55 Belfast, 240 Belgium, 220 betting, 145 Beveridge, William, 92, 118 Beveridge Report, 92, 197 Blackie, John, 21 Blackie, John Stuart, 31–2 Blair, Tony, 345, 363 Blatchford, Robert, 89 Bloomfield, Tommy, 181 Boer War (1899–1902), 80–1, 83, 84, 103, 146 Boothby, Robert, 166, 180 Bowie, James, 131 Boys’ Brigade, 146, 226, 228

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422 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Breadalbane, marquis of, 138 British Steel Corporation, 343 Britishness, 3, 263–4, 292 Brown, Gordon, 3, 316 Brown, James, 137, 156 Brown, Tony, 131 Bruce, Robert, 222 Bryce, James, 142, 233 Buccleuch, fifth duke of, 54, 56 Buchan, John, 166, 172 Buchan, Norman, 289 Buchanan George, 334 Buchanan, George, MP, 168 Buchanan Smith, Alick, 299, 307, 308 Budd, Zola, 231 Burnett, Ray, 316 by-elections Aberdeen South (1946), 272 Argyll (1940), 191 Carmarthen (1966), 285 Clackmannan and East Stirling (1939), 182 Dunbartonshire (1936), 180 Dundee East (1973), 297 Edinburgh North (1973), 297 Glasgow Bridgeton (1961), 281, 282 Glasgow Garscadden (1978), 298, 363 Glasgow Hillhead (1982), 346 Glasgow Pollok (1966), 281, 282, 291 Govan (1973), 297 Govan (1988), 327, 333, 342 Hamilton (1967), 267, 281–3, 290, 293, 298, 342 Hamilton (1978), 310–11 Kirkcaldy (1944), 192 Leith (1914), 101 Mid-Lanark (1888), 72 Midlothian (1912), 101 Motherwell (1945), 192 North East Lanark (1901), 83 North Midlothian (1943), 191 Paisley (1948), 278 Perth and Kinross (1995), 347 South Lanarkshire (1913), 101 West Lothian (1962), 281, 282 Caithness, 45 Caledonian Power Scheme, 190

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Callaghan, James, 296, 298, 300, 305, 307–8, 314, 317–18 Cameron, Dr Charles, 65 Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, 332 Campbell, Gordon, 319 Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 79, 80, 83, 93 Canada, 126, 208, 256 Carlyle, Thomas, 67 Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, 24 Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, 32, 148 Carson, Edward, 99 Cathcart, Edward, 270 Catholic Socialist Society, 89 Catto Committee, 302 Chalmers, Thomas, 28, 67 Chamberlain, Austen, 140 Chamberlain, Joseph, 75, 84, 85, 303 Chamberlain, Neville, 140, 166, 180 Chhokar, Surjit Singh, 211 Chisholm, Samuel, 21–2 Church of Scotland, 25, 55, 64–6, 135–8, 140, 360 and Conservative party, 265 and devolution, 313–15 anti-Irish attitudes of, 137–8 Church extension campaign, 138 Conservatism of in inter-war period, 137–8 decline of, 227–8 Falklands War, 323–4 Forward Movement, 138 Life and Work, 323 role during Second World War, 196 ‘Sermon on the Mound’ by Mrs Thatcher, 336–7 union with United Free Church (1929), 136–8 Churchill, W. S., 90, 96, 98, 180, 191, 197, 272, 303 cinema, 233 City of Glasgow Bank, 21, 35–6 Claim of Right (1689), 332 Claim of Right (1842), 55 Claim of Right (1988), 332, 342 Clark, G. B., 72, 75, 80, 81 Clarke, Eric, 330

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i n de x 423 Clarke, J. S., 119 Clydebank, 324; see also Clydebank blitz Cockenzie, 239 Colley, Linda, 3 collieries Bilston Glen, 329 Cardowan, 329 Kinneil, 329 Polmaise, 329 Rothes, 222, 239 Colquhoun of Luss, Iain, 141 Commonwealth Games (1970, 1986), 231 Communist Party, 132, 152, 160, 180, 267–8, 296 Congested Districts Board, 78 Conservative party (Scottish Unionist Party, 1912–65), 59–60, 71, 73, 74–8, 81–2, 84–6, 140, 163–8, 192–3, 197, 211, 265–6, 271–7, 279, 281–6, 298, 320–8, 330–3, 340–8, 367, 370 Constituencies Aberdeen North, 160 Aberdeen South, 297 Aberdeenshire East, 166 Aberdeenshire West, 284 Argyll, 195 Ayrshire Central, 274 Ayrshire South, 70, 297 Caithness, 75, 80, 81 Caithness and Sutherland, 155 Dundee, 90 Dundee East, 293, 296, 319 East Fife, 81, 154 East Lothian, 81, 286 Edinburgh North, 193 Glasgow Blackfriars, 90 Glasgow Bridgeton, 265 Glasgow Cathcart, 265 Glasgow Govan, 265 Glasgow Kelvingrove, 193 Glasgow Pollok, 340 Glasgow Provan, 340 Govan, 71 Greenock, 169, 193 Inverness-shire, 169 Kilmarnock District of Burghs, 71 Kinross and West Perthshire, 166 Lanarkshire North, 297

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Lanarkshire North East, 83 Lanarkshire North West, 71, 72 Lanarkshire South, 101 Leith, 81, 101 Liverpool Scotland, 74 Mid-Lanarkshire, 72 Midlothian, 54–9, 61, 66, 71, 367 North Midlothian, 191 Paisley, 154 Perth and East Perthshire, 166 St Andrews Burghs, 55 Scottish Universities, 166 Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth, 297 Sutherland, 56 West Fife, 90, 160 267 Western Isles, 169, 282, 291, 293, 319 Wick District of Burghs, 70 see also by-elections Constitutional Steering Committee, 332–6 Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, 327 Cook, Robin, 308, 342 Cooper, Charles, 61 Cooper, Lord (Thomas), 334 Cormack, John, 137 Coulport, 280, 354 Crawford and Balcarres, 27th earl of, 141 Crawfurd, Helen, 118–19 Crockett, S. R., 9–10 Crolla, Dominic, 194 Cross, R. A., 78 Crossman, Richard, 287–8 Cullen, Lord, 254–5 Cumbernauld, 222 Cunningham, George, 297 306 Cunningham Graham, R. B., 72 Cunningham, Roseanna, 348 Czech Republic, 258 Czechoslovakia, 318 Daiches, David, 16 Daiches, Salis, 16 Dalkeith, Lord, 54 Dalrymple, James, 109 Dalrymple, Lord, 71 Dalyell, 297, 303, 308, 330, 342, 367

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424 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Davitt, Michael, 69, 73 demography, 10, 11–14, 125–8, 202–13 emigration, 14–18, 50–1, 125–6, 190, 207–9 fertility, 13–14, 203–6 immigration, 16–17, 209–13 infant mortality, 126–8, 167, 203, 213 life expectancy, 204 marriage, 13, 214–15 migration, 207–8 mortality, 12–13, 203–5 population growth, 202–4 Denmark, 247 Department of Trade and Industry, 343 Devine, T. M., 3 devolution debate during 1980s, 330–9 proposals in 1970s, 296–319 proposals in 1997–8, 350–5 referendum (1979), 306, 309–11 referendum (1997), 350–1 see also Scottish home-rule Dewar, Donald, 286, 297, 331, 335, 342, 350, 360–1, 363, 371 Diamond, Charles, 73 disestablishment, 27, 64–6, 139–40 divorce, 214–15 Dollan, Agnes, 119 Dollan, Patrick, 161–2, 181–2, 268 Dolly (cloned sheep), 258 Dumfriesshire, 86 Duncan, George, 106 Duncan, Joseph, 88, 90, 96 Dundee, 14, 44–5, 63, 70, 82, 86, 90, 109, 110, 129, 133, 159–60, 207, 248, 256, 257, 269 Dunfermline, 24, 257 Dunnett, Alistair, 252, 312 East Kilbride, 222, 274 East Lothian, 45 Eastwood, 325 economy, 19–20, 35–53 agriculture, 42–3, 44–8, 85, 184, 188, 250–1 aluminium industry, 250 banking, 35–6, 51 biotechnology, 258–9

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broadband penetration, 259–61 Clyde Valley Regional Plan, 221–2, 239, 277 coal-mining, 40, 48, 52, 85, 93, 183, 184, 187, 237–9, 270, 290, 294–5, 328–30 decline of heavy industry since 1945, 236–45, 337–8 deprivation, 244 electronics industry, 255–9 energy, 239, 270 engineering, 48 entrepreneurship, 236, 245–7 exports, 41, 49–50, 85 financial sector, 43–4 fishing industry, 295 foreign investment, 245, 255–9 Framework for Economic Development, 259 free trade, 60, 83–6, 155 gender, 37–8, 45, 52 government intervention, 49–50, 247–50 gross domestic product, 237–8, 275–6 income, 48 industrial structure, 237–44 iron industry, 40, 48, 237, 270 jute industry, 41, 45 ‘knowledge economy’, 258–9 nationalisation, 269–70 oil industry, 237, 242, 250, 251–5, 290, 293–4, 315–16 protection, 49–50, 154–5 public expenditure, 247–8 rearmament, 52–3, 181 regional economic diversity, 45–6, 236–7, 244–50 regional policy, 247–50, 276–7, 343 shipbuilding, 37, 39, 43, 51–2, 85, 183, 184–7, 240–2, 270, 290, 295, 343 steel industry, 37, 39, 48, 51, 239–40, 270, 276–7, 343 textile industry, 42–3, 48, 50, 85, 115 unemployment, 40–1, 48, 52, 93, 126, 132–2, 243, 290 vehicle production, 249 wage levels, 19, 40–1, 115, 125, 237, 253 see also collieries, industrial relations

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i n de x 425 Edinburgh, 14, 20–1, 24, 42, 44–5, 63, 70, 82, 127, 129–30, 137, 158, 194, 210, 220, 244, 246, 259, 266, 326 Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company, 22–3 education, 28–33, 61, 146–9, 223–6, 266, 361–2 circular 44, 147 devolution and, 225 Education (Scotland) Act (1872), 29–30, 61 Education (Scotland) Act (1918), 147, 152 ‘extra-mural’ education, 225 fee-paying schools, 31 gender, 32–3 ‘Higher Still’, 226, 361 ‘lad o’ pairts’, 28–9 religious influence, 28–30 Roman Catholic schools, 146–7 school-leaving age, 224 Scottish Certificate of Education, introduction of, 224 Secondary schools, 30–1, 147–9, 223–4 see also universities electoral system, 56, 59–60, 70–2, 153, 157; see also voting patterns Elgin, 105 Elliot, Arthur, 77 Elliot, Walter, 131, 146, 166–7, 180, 189, 348 Elizabeth II, Queen, 334, 360 Empire, British, 79, 84–6, 164, 168, 170, 284–5, 292 Empire Settlement Act (1922), 126 England, 15, 18, 19 20, 23, 26, 29, 31, 33, 38, 41, 48, 52, 60, 64, 65, 71,77, 82, 86, 90, 92, 94, 98, 100, 104, 109, 121, 127, 129, 134, 144, 156, 164, 176, 178, 184, 202, 203, 209, 211, 212–13, 218, 220, 223, 226, 238, 240, 243, 245–6, 249, 263, 267, 269, 270, 272, 273, 275, 276, 279, 283, 285, 296, 298, 299, 301, 302, 303, 308, 309, 311, 320, 324, 325, 327, 328, 329, 331, 332, 334, 336, 337–8, 355, 358, 366 Erroll, earl of, 139

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Erskine, 258 Erskine, Ruaraidh, 170 ethnic communities in Scotland Bangladeshi, 209 Chinese, 209–10 English, 211–13 Irish, 73–4, 211, 230 Italian, 152, 194, 211 Lithuanian, 152 Pakistani, 209–10 eugenics, 23–4 European Union (formerly European Economic Community and European Community), 251, 295–6, 306–7, 309–11, 338–9, 341, 343, 346 Ewing, Harry, 297 Ewing, Winifred, 281, 288, 292, 339, 360 Fairbairn, Nicholas, 348 Falkirk, 224 Falklands War, 322, 328, 346 family structure, 213 Fascism, 152, 163, 194 British Union of Fascists, 133 New Party, 152 Faslane, 280–1, 354 Ferguson, John, 72, 73 Ferranti, 256 feudal tenure, 19 Fife, 45, 70, 111, 131, 239 Fife, duke of, 138 Findlay, Ranald, 131 Finland, 203, 259 Finlay, Richard, 3 Flint, Robert, 27 Foot, Michael, 292, 298, 300, 314 football, 142–4, 231–3, 310–11 football clubs Aberdeen, 232 Glasgow Celtic, 143, 144, 231 Glasgow Rangers, 143, 229, 232 Heart of Midlothian, 112 Hibernian 143, 144 Queen’s Park, 142 Queen of the South, 143 St Johnstone, 143 St Mirren, 143 Forsyth, Michael, 342, 344

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426 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Fort William, 190, 250, 276, 280 Forth Bridge, 175, 273 Foyers, 190 France, 204 Fraser, Tom, 282 Fraser, William Kerr, 327 Free Church of Scotland, 25–6, 35, 64–6, 135–6, 228, 360 Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 25, 136, 228 ‘Fresh Talent Initiative’, 208–9 Gaelic, 17 Galashiels, 57 Gallacher, William, 181, 267 game laws, 60 gang violence, 145 Garnock Valley, 248 Geddes, Patrick, 18, 24 Geikie, Archibald, 233 Gemmill, Archie, 310 gender and family structure, 213–14 and politics, 165, 335, 353 and sport, 144–5 and unemployment, 243 and work, 215–18, 243–4, 253, 337 general elections 1832, 78 1880, 54–5, 60 1885, 60, 69–72, 74, 82 1886, 75, 76 1895, 82 1900, 78, 79, 81–3, 155 1906, 75, 86–7, 99, 155, 156 1910 (January), 79–80, 90, 99 1910 (December), 79–80, 99 1918, 153, 157–8 1922, 100–1, 113, 114, 155–6, 158, 161, 193 1923, 114, 154, 155, 158 1924, 158, 162, 163 1929, 154, 157, 158, 164, 193 1931, 162, 193, 281 1935, 155, 158, 181, 193 1945, 193–7, 267, 269, 271, 278 1950, 269, 278 1951, 156, 269, 273, 275, 278

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1955, 273, 275, 345 1959, 269, 275 1964, 269, 277, 279 1966, 279–80, 281 1970, 288 1974 (February), 291–2 1974 (October), 291–2, 367 1979, 319, 341 1983, 324, 331, 340, 341, 346 1987, 319, 328, 331, 341–2 1992, 340, 345 1997, 345–7, 350–1 2001, 346 General Strike, 134, 161 George, Henry, 69 Gibb, Andrew Dewar, 137, 152, 170 Gibbon, Lewis Grassic (Mitchell, James Leslie), 172 Gilmour, John, 140, 165, 171–3 Gladstone, W. E., 54–9, 61, 67, 74, 75, 79, 98, 190, 296–7, 367 Glasgow, 21–2, 44, 49, 63, 70, 82, 86, 90, 99, 107, 109, 115, 127, 129, 145, 153, 158, 159, 176, 184, 204, 207, 222, 244, 245, 246, 248, 266, 269, 304, 308, 324, 363 Glasgow Good Government League, 158 Glasgow Workmen’s Dwellings Company, 22 Glasier, John Bruce, 68, 89 Glen Affric, 190 Glencoe, 142 Glenrothes, 222, 258, 274 golf, 14 Gorbals, 222 Goschen formula, 301 Govan, 71, 118 Graham, Billy, 227 Gray, Cardinal Gordon Joseph, 230–1 Great War, 1–2, 49, 102–24 agriculture during, 111 Arras, Battle of, 112 conscription, 102, 108 Defence of the Realm Act, 117 demographic effect of, 102–3, 122 Dilution Commission, 116 economic aspects of, 109, 115 financial costs, 102

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i n de x 427 government intervention, 102, 113–15 Gretna train crash, 122 industrial relations during, 113–18 Iolaire disaster, 122 landowners during, 107, 108 Loos, Battle of, 111 losses, 108, 111–12, 121–4 Ministry of Munitions, 115–16, 117 Munitions of War Act (1915), 116, 183 religious aspects of, 106, 108, 122–3 rent strikes, 1, 118–21 Scottish National War Memorial, 121–4, 140 Somme, Battle of, 112 voluntary recruiting, 105–12 Greenock, 133, 194 Grieve, Christopher Murray see MacDiarmid, Hugh Grieve, Robert, 332 Gunn, Neil M., 172–3 Haig, Douglas, 106 Haldane, R. B., 81 Hamilton, Willie, 267, 297 Hammer, Armand, 252, 255 Hampden Park, 311 Hardie, Keir, 39, 82, 87 Harmsworth, C. B., 83 Harmsworth, R. L., 81 Harris, 304 Hartington, marquis of, 75 Harvey, Rev. James, 137, 165 Hawick, 57, 110, 152 Hay, Matthew, 128 Healey, Denis, 307 Heath, Edward, 241, 285, 293–6, 297, 318, 328, 343 Heffer, Eric, 298 Henderson, Hamish, 114 Herron, Rev. Andrew, 314–15 Highlands, 46, 68–9, 151–2, 167, 190, 207, 250, 273, 39 Crofter MPs, 71 Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act (1886), 69, 250 Crofters (Scotland) Act (1955), 273 crofters’ war, 69 crofting, 46, 91, 139, 250

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deer forests, 47, 142 Highland Development League, 163 Highlands and Islands Development Board, 250 Highlands and Islands Enterprise, 250 Highlands and Islands Medical Service, 270 Objective One status, 339 population change in, 207 Hillington, 49, 167, 185, 187 Hillman Imp, 249, 276 Historic Scotland, 234, 356 historiography, 1–4 Hobhouse, Leonard, 85 Hobson, J. A., 85 Hodder and Stoughton, 10 Holy Loch, 280–1 Holyrood, 223 Home, Lord (formerly Lord Dunglass, earl of Home, Alec Douglas-Home), 273, 318, 345 housing, 19–23, 113, 128–31, 220–3, 250, 318 housebuilding, 220–2 legislation, 130, 274 overcrowding, 20, 22, 129, 222 politics of, 158–9, 161, 167, 195, 197, 273–5, 324–5 sale of council houses, 220 slum clearance, 20, 130–1, 222 Hume, David, 24 hydro electricity, 141, 189–90 Hyundai, 257 IBM, 256–7 Ibrox disaster (1971), 232 IMF, 248 Independent Labour party, 88, 132, 141, 150, 159, 160–2, 168, 181–2, 192, 267–8 India, 164, 209, 289 independence, Scottish, 369–71 industrial relations, 134, 256–7, 290, 294–5, 328–30 Invergordon, 250, 343 Inverkeithing, 176 Inverness, 82, 99, 169, 224, 339 Inverness-shire, 107, 304

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428 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Iran, 310 Iraq, 366–7 Ireland, 63, 109, 139, 144, 159, 164–5, 168, 170, 260–1, 303 Irish home-rule, 2, 73, 74, 75–6, 78, 79, 97–100, 159 Irish National League, 73 Irvine, 222 Italy, 204 Jack, Ian, 244 Japan, 240 Jenkins, Robin, 196 Jenkins, Roy, 346 Johnston, Russell, 281 Johnston, Thomas, 89, 91, 161–2, 163, 173, 184, 187, 189–91, 197, 226, 268 Johnston, Willie, 310 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 354, 357–8 Junior Imperial League, 164 Kennedy, Rev. John, 65 Kilbrandon Commission, 288 Kilmarnock, 71 King, Alexander, 195 Kinlochleven, 190, 329 Kinnear, John Boyd, 75 Kinnock, Neil, 330, 345 Kirkwood, David, 117, 119, 141, 183 Kishorn, 253 Kitchener, Lord, 105, 111 Korea, 240 Labour Party, 38, 66–9, 72, 87–90, 99–100, 118–19, 134, 150, 155–62, 181–2, 193–7, 267–70, 279, 281, 286–8, 289–90, 307–9, 313–14, 332, 337–8, 345–8, 350–71; see also Independent Labour Party Labour Representation Committee, 87 Laird, Mary, 119 Laird, Patrick, 174 Lanarkshire, 70, 71, 86, 88, 109, 187, 210, 240, 245–6 land owners, 62–3, 91, 138–42, 219 land reform, 2, 68–9, 72, 79, 86, 90–2, 100, 154, 233, 364

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land settlement, 46, 139, 151–2, 190 Lang, Ian, 340, 344 Lang, John Marshall, 26 Law, Andrew Bonar, 85, 99, 100, 140, 348 Lawson, 327, 328, 336 Leverhulme, Lord, 139 Lewis, 69, 139, 304 Liberal Democrats, 332, 346, 350–1 Liberal Unionist party, 74, 76–8, 81, 99 Liberalism, 2, 54–9, 71–2, 80–3, 153–5, 195, 267, 271–2, 278–9, 291 ‘Lib–Lab’ pact, 297, 299–300 Liddell, Eric, 144 Liddell, Helen, 307 Linwood, 239, 249, 276, 277, 290, 343 Lithgow, James, 162, 185, 242, 329 literature ‘kailyard’, 9–10 ‘renaissance’ of inter-war period, 172–3 Liverpool, 73, 99, 127, 341 Livingston, 222, 258 Lloyd George, David, 96, 116, 117, 154, 190, 191 local government, 62–3, 153, 158, 173, 229, 288, 303–4 Locate in Scotland, 257 Loch Linnhe, 280 Loch Long, 280 Lochiel, Cameron of, 140 Longannet, 239 Lord Advocate, office of, 61 Lorimer, Sir Robert, 123 Lothian, marquis of, 62 Lovat, 13th lord, 140, 144 Lovat, 15th lord, 178 Mabon, J. Dickson, 346 Macassey, 116, 117 McCance, Andrew, 276 McConnell, Jack, 363 MacCormick, John, 169, 170, 173, 192, 277–9, 307, 360 MacCormick v. the Lord Advocate, 334 McCrae, Sir George, 112 MacDiarmid, Hugh (Grieve, Christopher Murray), 1, 170, 172–3 McDonald, Alexander, 67

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i n de x 429 MacDonald, James Ramsay, 87, 142, 160–2, 163 MacDonald, Margo, 310 MacDonald, Murdo Ewen, 265 MacEwen, Alexander, 131, 168 McGahey, Mick, 294 MacGill-Eain, Somhairle (MacLean, Sorley), 179 McGinn, Matt, 114 McGovern, John, 181, 215 McGrath, John, 316 MacGregor, Ian, 329 McHugh, Edward, 69 McHugh, Michael, 121 McIlvanney, William, 212, 310 McIntyre, Robert, 192 MacKay, Eric, 312 Mackenzie, W. L., 128 Mackinnon, Sir William, 35, 39 Mackintosh, John P., 286, 297, 307, 318 MacKinven, Hamish, 223 Maclay, John, 276 Maclean, John, 88, 115 McLeish, Henry, 363, 365 MacLennan, Robert, 346 MacLeod Ally, 310 Macleod, Rev. Donald, 26 Macleod, Rev. George, 138, 265 MacMillan, James, 228 McNeil, Hector, 193, 268 MacPherson, Bishop Colin, 230 MacPherson, Hector, 80 Maguire, Archbishop John, 89 Major, John, 340 Manchester, 127 martial tradition, 103–5 Matheson, Sir James, 142 Mathieson, Eddie, 177 Maxton, James, 161, 267 Methil, 253 Midlothian campaign (1879–80), 53–9, 66 Militant Tendency, 330, 340–1 Millan, Bruce, 331, 342 Millar, J. H., 10 Millet, Leo, 68 Milne, Jimmy, 314 Milne, Stuart, 245 Mitchell, 284

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Mitchell, James Leslie see Gibbon, Lewis Grassic Monklands, 324 Morley, John, 57 Morningside, 326 Morris, William, 68 Motherwell, 324 Motorola, 257–8 Mosley, Oswald, 152 mountaineering, 141, 233 Muir, Edwin, 131, 172 Muir, Willa, 172 Muirhead, Roland, 163, 168 Mull, 304 Munro, Neil, 172 Munro Ferguson, R. C., 81, 140 Murdoch, John, 69 National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, 61, 63 National Coal Board, 329 National Government, 154, 161, 164, 170 National Health Service, 266, 270, 365 National Insurance, 93, 132, 135 National Liberal party, 164, 271–2 National Trust for Scotland, 140, 234 National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, 132–4 National Union of Mineworkers, 294–5, 328–30 nationalism, 4, 77, 152, 168–70, 266–7, 277–9, 287–8 Covenant movement, 278 National Party of Scotland, 168–9, 170 Scots National League, 170 Scottish National Party, 168–70, 184, 192–7, 248, 249, 267, 277–9, 280–1, 284–5, 290–3, 298, 305, 312, 317–19, 325, 331, 335–6, 341, 342, 350–1, 352, 355, 357, 361, 363, 367–71 Scottish Party, 168, 170 NCR, 256, 257 Netherlands, 127, 203, 237, 310–11 New Towns, 222, 274, 292 New Party, 152; see also British Union of Fascists New Zealand, 127, 144, 208, 261

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430 impa l e d upo n a this t l e newspapers, 10, 17, 58, 153, 232–3, 263–4, 312–13 Aberdeen Free Press, 58 Daily Mail, 81 Daily Record, 232–3, 263, 265, 313, 322, 324, 331 Dundee Courier, 265, 313 Edinburgh Evening News, 80 Exile, 73 Forward, 87, 91, 117, 120, 160, 182 Glasgow Herald, 22, 58, 85, 164, 172, 176, 180, 263, 310, 312–13 Glasgow Observer, 73, 89, 109, 181 Highlander, 69 Inverness Courier, 265 North British Daily Mail, 65 Press and Journal, 265, 313 Scots Independent, 169, 315 Scotsman, 58, 61, 87, 90, 164, 252, 263, 272, 312–13, 322, 324, 331, 337, 361 Scottish Daily Express, 233, 263–5, 312 Sun, 323, 369 West Highland Free Press, 313 Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, 10 Nigg, 242, 253 North British Locomotive Company, 187 North of Scotland Hydro Electricity Board, 190, 270, 282 North Queensferry, 175 Northcliffe, Lord, 81 Norway, 237, 259 nuclear weapons, 280–1, 354 O’Brien, Cardinal Keith, 229 O’Connor, T. P., 74 Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, 255 old age pensions, 93, 94–6 Orange Order, 229 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, 252 Orkney, 13, 45, 86, 106, 175, 351 Paisley, 154, 207, 346 Papal visit to Scotland (1982), 230, 324 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 73, 74, 298 Partick, 118 Paterson, Robert, 96

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Pentland, Lord (John Sinclair), 24 Perth, 70, 134, 326, 339 Perth, Declaration of (1968), 286, 297, 298 Peru, 310 Pilger, John, 323 Piper Alpha, 254–5 Plaid Cymru, 282, 353 Poland, 207, 258 Polaris missiles, 280 ‘poll tax’ (Community Charge), 325–8 poor law, 92, 94, 132, 135, 270 Port Glasgow, 133 Portugal, 127, 204 Power, William, 191 Protestant Action, 137, 152, 229 Puissant, 89 racism, 210 Rainy, Robert, 136 Ratcliffe, Alexander, 137, 158 Ravenscraig, 239–40, 249, 276, 343 Red Paper on Scotland, 316–17 regimental traditions, 104–5 regiments Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 284–5 Black Watch, 177, 181 Cameron Highlanders, 107, 177, 284 Cameronians, 104, 284 Gordon Highlanders, 177, 178, 284 Highland Light Infantry, 104, 284 King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 178 Royal Regiment of Scotland, 284 Royal Scots, 112 Seaforth Highlanders, 177 religion, 23–8, 64–6, 135–8, 164–5, 226–31 and voting, 229, 231, 265–6, 351 Renfrewshire, 13, 70, 207, 276 Rep, Johnny, 310–11 Rerum Novarum, 89 Richmond and Gordon, sixth duke of, 62 Rifkind, Malcolm, 299, 307, 308, 327, 336 Risk, C. J., 315 Robb Caledon (shipbuilders), 241 Robertson, George, 310, 345 Rodgers, Bill, 298

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i n de x 431 Rogan, Pat, 223 Rolls-Royce, 179, 184, 185, 187 Roman Catholic Church, 26–8, 89, 109, 159–60, 181, 226–7, 228–31 Rosebery, fifth earl of, 56, 58–9, 61–2, 75, 79, 93, 95, 123 Ross, Jim, 332 Ross, William, 249, 286–7, 297, 350 Ross-shire, 304 Rosyth, 176 Rough, Allan, 310 Royal Navy, 104, 175, 181, 280 Rugby, 144, 231–2 Russell, Conrad, 3 Russell, James Burn, 22, 129 Salisbury, 3rd marquis of, 62, 77 Salmond, 367 Scandinavia, 203 Scargill, Arthur, 328 Scheu, Andreas, 68 Scholey, Robert, 240 Scotland Act (1978), 308–9, 320, 331, 350 Scotland Act (1998), 350–5, 370 Scotland’s Parliament (1997), 350 Scott Lithgow (shipbuilders), 241 Scottish Communist Party, 114 Scottish Constitutional Convention, 332–6, 345 Scottish Convention, 277 Scottish Council on Industry, 189, 196 Scottish Development Agency, 248, 249 Scottish Economic Committee, 50, 162 Scottish Enterprise, 257, 259 Scottish Executive (‘Government’), 261–2, 346, 354, 356, 357 Scottish Farm Servants Union, 88 Scottish Football Association, 142 Scottish Football League, 142 Scottish Green Party, 352 Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, 225 Scottish home-rule, 2, 63, 76–7, 97–100, 168–70, 193, 268 Scottish Home Rule Association, 63, 76–7, 168, 301 Scottish Labour party (1888), 72, 87 Scottish Labour Party (1976), 307

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Scottish Land and Labour League, 68, 69 Scottish Land and Property Federation, 91, 140 Scottish Land Restoration League, 69 Scottish Liberal Association, 89 Scottish Militant Labour, 341 Scottish Mountaineering Club, 233 Scottish National Development Council, 50, 162 Scottish National Party (SNP), 5 Scottish Office Development Department, 273 devolution and, 356 economic policy, 236 establishment of, 61–2, 331, 332 European Union, 295 evacuation of schoolchildren during Second World War, 176 extension of powers, 78, 100, 272, 273 Gilmour Committee, 171–4 policies on provisions of leisure facilities, 146 ‘poll tax’, 326 Scottish Education Department, 148 Second World War, 189 Special Areas, 166 staffing of, 63 Scottish Parliament (post-1999), 5 building for, 361 coalitions in, 364–5 elections to, 352–3, 357, 363, 367–70 legislation of, 363–4 membership, 351 opening ceremony of, 360–1 powers of, 353–4 procedures of, 356–7, 362 taxation powers of, 358–9 voting system for, 351–2 Scottish Parliament (pre-1707), 360 Scottish Prohibition Party, 160 Scottish Protestant League, 137, 152, 158, 229 Scottish Qualifications Authority, 361–2 Scottish Rugby Union, 144 Scottish Socialist Party, 352 Scottish Special Housing Association, 131, 167, 274 Scottish Trades Union Congress, 313–14

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432 impa l e d upo n a this t l e Scottish Unionist Party see Conservative Party Scottish Workers Representation Committee, 88 Scottish Workers’ Republican Party, 114 Scottish Youth Hostels Association, 141 Scrymgeour, Edwin, 160 Second World War agriculture during, 188 bombing raids on Scotland, 175 Clydebank ‘blitz’, 176 conscription, 175–6, 182 Council of State, establishment of, 189, 196 D-Day, 178 economic aspects of, 183–8 El Alamein, battle of, 178–9 evacuation of schoolchildren, 176, 195–6 51st (Highland) Division, 177–8 gender relations during, 185 global nature of, 177 government intervention, 175–6, 182–4 industrial relations during, 179, 183–7 poetry, 179 politics during, 191–7 Scottish Office, 189 sectarianism, 137–8, 228–31 Shaw, Rev. Geoffrey, 265, 305 Sheridan, Tommy, 326, 327 Shetland, 46, 86, 296 shinty, 144 Shinwell, Emanuel, 159 ships Arandora Star, 194 Howe, HMS, 187 Royal Oak, HMS, 175 Southampton, HMS, 175 ‘Silicon Glen’, 257 Sillars, Jim, 289, 297, 307, 333, 341–2 Sillitoe, Percy, 145 Sinclair, Archibald, 140, 155 Singapore, 259 Skelton, Noel, 166, 167, 325 Skye, 69, 139 Slater, Oscar, 16 Smiles, Samuel, 67 Smillie, Robert, 83

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Smith, Adam, 320, 337 Smith, John, 297, 298, 300, 314, 338 Smith, Sydney Goodsir, 179 Smith, William, 146 smoking, 205, 366 social change, 3–4, 9–10 social class, 218–20 Social Democratic Federation, 68, 114 Social Democratic Party, 346–7 Socialism, 27–8 Socialist League, 68 South Africa, 208 South Uist, 139 sovereignty, 334–5, 344, 351 Soviet Union, 162–3, 280 Spain, 127, 204 Spanish Civil War, 180–1 Special Areas Acts (1934–7), 49, 165, 187 Steel, David, 281 Stephen, Rev. Campbell, 156 Stevenson, Flora, 33 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 10 Stewart, Donald, 293 Stirling Maxwell, John, 141 Stone of Destiny, 278, 344 Strathclyde Region, 265, 304–5 Students Awards Agency for Scotland, 356 Sturgeon, Nicola, 367 suburbs, 19, 33 Sutherland, 13 Sutherland, duke of, 140 Sweden, 240, 247 Switzerland, 247 tariff reform, 79, 83–6 ‘tartan tax’, 344–5 Tay Bridge, 273 Taylor, Teddy, 265 television, 233 ‘Tell Scotland’ campaign, 227 temperance, 72, 79, 100, 159 Tennant, Sir Charles, 37, 39, 75 tennis, 144 Terken, Fr Peter, 89 Thatcher, Margaret, 299, 317, 320–39, 360 Thomson, Roy, 252, 312

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i n de x 433 Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin), 76 Thornton, 181 Timex, 257 Trades Disputes Act, 93 trades unionism, 134, 218 Trident missiles, 280 Tulloch, Principal John, 65 ‘Turra Coo’, 96 Turriff, 96 Tweedsmuir, Lady (formerly Lady Grant, later Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie), 272, 286 Ulster, 99–100, 109, 165, 303, 348, 355–6 Unemployment Assistance Board, 132 unionism, 263–88 United Irish League, 90 United Free Church of Scotland, 106, 135–6 United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 64, 135 United States of America, 125–6, 155, 163, 255, 261, 280, 371 Universities, 31–2, 78, 148, 219, 224–5, 246–7, 300–1, 364–5 Aberdeen, 224 Dundee, 24, 224 Edinburgh, 24, 224, 315 Glasgow, 224 Heriot-Watt, 224 Highlands and Islands, 344 ‘post-1992’ institutions, 225 St Andrews, 224 Stirling, 224 Strathclyde, 224 University Grants Committee, 148, 224, 301 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, 241–2, 290, 295, 343 urbanisation, 18–25, 206–7 voting patterns, 61, 69–78, 79–80, 82–7, 97–101, 150–1, 153–8, 163–4, 168, 182, 191–7, 263–9, 271–2, 279–86, 291–3, 312, 321–2, 335, 337, 345–8, 350–1, 367–70; see also electoral system

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Wales, 82, 164, 240, 272, 282, 285, 287, 309, 337–8, 351, 353, 355, 356 Watson, John (Ian Maclaren), 9–10 Weir, J and G & Co., 187 Weir, Tom, 141 Weir, William, 115, 117, 129 Welfare State, 92, 195, 197, 266, 270 Wellington, Sheena, 360 West Calder, 133 West Lothian, 13, 187, 207, 246 ‘West Lothian Question’, 2, 303, 354, 365 Western Isles, 296 Wheatley, John, 73, 74, 89, 120, 130, 134, 150, 156, 158–9, 161, 223, 268 Wheatley, Lord, 288, 304 White, John (Lord Overtoun), 39 White, Rev. John, 106, 265 Whitelaw, William, 326 Wick, 70 Wiggins Teape, 276 Wilkie, Alexander, 90, 156 Wilson, Brian, 308, 342 Wilson, Gordon, 293 Wilson, Harold, 286, 296, 314 Winning, Cardinal Thomas, 212, 229 Wolfe, William, 230 Wood, Ian, 245 Wood, Wendy, 278 Woodburn, Arthur, 119, 163, 182, 268, 287 Woolton, Lord, 285 Workmen’s Compensation Act, 93 World Cup (football), 231, 310–11 World Cup (rugby), 231–2 Wright, Esmond, 282 Wright, Kenyon, 333–5 Yildiz Dag, Firsat, 212 Young, Douglas, 192 Young Scots Society, 85 Younger, George, 284, 327

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