Basic statistics cannot
convey, sixty years and more on, the carnage in Scottish society
occurring in the inter-war years. The generation, which lived through
and can recall from their own experiences the hardships brought by
industrial and commercial changes - to say nothing of incompetent
government, is growing old and passing on and, when they try to speak
about it to young people in the 1990ís. their recollections appear to
come from a by-gone age and evoke no real response.
The period has been well
documented and has fashioned myths about the Scottish character,
particularly in the west of Scotland, but there are few who have been
able to channel the resentment into giving the Scots a sense of positive
ambition. Those who doubt this can take a glance at the names and ages
in their local war memorial to see the extent of the sacrifice made in
the "war to end war".
It is the artists, poets,
musicians and writers, who feel the pain and humiliation first and
deepest, and it is no accident that it is this section of our society
which senses the irritation at being denied the recognition of a clear
Such stirrings appear in
the 1920ís in the Scottish National Movement of literary figures like
Hugh MacDiarmid, Neil Gunn, Eric Linklater and Lewis Spence. But, as has
been acknowledged, this is a long way from "consistent and
effective" political activity.
Post 1918. Scotland
suffered from a "high" over rising expectations based on a
mistaken analysis of what had happened during the war and a view that
boom conditions in heavy industry would continue.
Business leaders, like
Lord Pirrie, head of Harland & Wolff in 1917, epitomised this
approach. He owned an upper Clyde yard at Govan and decided to purchase
the Cairdís yard at Greenock and embark on an extension which involved
encroaching on the Old West Kirk and its adjacent burial ground in which
Bumsí Highland Mary (Margaret) Campbell lay. After considerable
outcry, which included the blocking of a Parliamentary Bill, the Old
West Kirk was removed stone by stone and recrected, and the remains of
Mary Campbell were likewise removed and re-interred to accommodate the
needs of the shipbuilding magnate.
Shortly after this
exertion and dislocation, Lord Pirrie died in 1924 and the dream of
expansion ended. Cairdís closed and stood empty for years as a
"monument" and mockery.
Lord Pirrie also held a
position on the Board of John Brown & Co. and, through the
inter-connection between Royal Mail Shipping Group, which had acquired
Harland& Wolff in 1919, Brownís obtained substantial orders in the
But the effects of
over-concentration on naval building during World War 1, and the changes
in the nature of competition, were not to be staved off. The
international financial and economic cuts produced a huge steel
"monument" on the Clyde. John Brownís had reached an
agreement to build ship No 534 for the Cunard Line and work began
in December 1930 - not a good time, in view of the collapse of world
trade and banking failures.
Work stopped on the
vessel in December 1931, and it lay on the stocks like a "monument
to the glory departed" for nearly three years before, by dint of
pressures from Scotland, a government loan was granted which enabled the
ship eventually to be completed in 1936.
The crisis in
shipbuilding merely highlighted the malaise of the Scottish economy and
the damage to pride and confidence. The reaction and proposed solutions
took many forms, political and social. Pride might be restored by
industrial agitation and political action. The great mythology of the
"Red Clyde" was created, emphasised, in boxing terms, by Benny
Lynch and, in political terms, by the still revered Marxist, John
McLean, and stories of the exploits of David Kirkwood, Emmanual Shinwell
and the loveable Jimmy Maxton.
Scottish reality in this
period was far removed from the engaging resonance of competing
panaceas, of which there were many and varied. Writers, like MacDiarmid,
were absorbed by the Social Credit views of Major C H Douglas. The
Church produced its own missionary to Scotlandís unemployed with the
energetic and charismatic activities of the Rev George MacLead, who
deserted St Cuthbertís, Edinburgh, for Govan Parish Church and the
Pearce Institute to conduct his experiment in putting God into the High
Streets and, specifically, the Govan Road.
MacLeod, tall, elegant
and a magnificent preacher, carried the effects of the honors of the
Great Warís trenches on his conscience. When he saw the sheer grinding
poverty of Govan, he asked the question, "Was it for this that men
had died in their thousands in the trenches?" He told of the
experience of entering a house where a woman was suffering from
puerperal fever and the family were sitting round silent and dismayed.
"Get hot water bottles", he said. Six people in the room heard
the plea but none moved, the reason being that there were no hot water
bottles in the house. There was no health insurance and only one doctor
who could be relied upon for midnight calls among ten thousand people.
Children playing in the
back courts knew better than to shout up to their mothers for a
"piece" of bread because it was highly unlikely that there
would be bread in the house and their pleas would only cause anxiety and
For the vast army of
unemployed, the sense of hopelessness and despair was unrelenting and
could rarely be relieved. Technology produced the cinema, and the
escapism into the growing number of Vogues, Plazas, Coliseums etc.
fulfilled the role of diversion and distraction that Methodism had
provided for an earlier generation.
On quite another level,
John Maynard Keynes was refining his economic analysis on how to explain
the reasons for the market mechanism not working to produce a full
employment equilibrium which the classical theorists had thought
applicable. Keynes argued, in his General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money (1936) that the classical view was a special case and,
"Moreover, the characteristics of the special case assumed by the
classical theory happen not to those of the economic society in which we
actually live, with they result that its teaching is misleading and
disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience."
Millions of unemployed
would have exclaimed "Amen! Amen!" to this, if they had
understood it because western industrialised countries and their
politicians, including Britain under Labour, Tory and
"National" Governments were thirled to dogmas which did the
opposite of what Keynes was advocating.
Other powerful schemes to
solve the problems of the age were afoot and, in one guise or another,
were placed before peoples. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had taken a
course under Lenin and Trotsky and their successor, Stalin, which caught
the imagination of some of the left in Britain and caused many, who
should have known better, to support Stalin and his successorsí
repressions for over forty years.
In Germany. Hitler had come to power in 1933 and his
form of so-called national socialism, with its racialistic implications,
building on the experiences of Mussolim in Italy, had its advocates in
high political circles and was to see its initial aspirations of
expansion and wars in Abyssinia and Spain.
Political ideas and opinions were not scarce for any
student at a Scottish University in the early 1930ís and it was into
such an atmosphere that Robert McIntyre found himself when he commenced
his studies at Edinburgh.