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Chapter 16
The Rebirth of a Nation (1945–2000)
In This Chapter
Focusing on the creation of the wartime welfare state
Understanding the changes taking place in the Scottish economy
Looking at the collapse of the British Empire
Observing the growth of Scottish Nationalism
The victory over Fascism in 1945 almost heralded a new begi
The post-war decades also witnessed an equally profound transformation in political allegiances due to the rise of Nationalism, which led to the establishment of a parliament in Scotland in 1997 and the possible breakup of Britain. By the new mille
Scotland and the Second World War
In most histories of the home front during the Second World War, the focal point has been London and the pounding the city received from German bombing raids. But London wasn’t the only place in Britain to suffer. Industrial towns and cities proved a magnet for these raids, and among the most bombed was Clydeside, the centre of shipbuilding and engineering in the UK. But war didn’t just bring death and suffering; it also held out the promise of a better tomorrow.
The blitz
It wasn’t just London that was pummelled by German bombing. Other parts of Britain, like Coventry and Birmingham, were also subjected to the same treatment. But it was slow to start. There was a period known as the ‘phoney war’, which lasted for eight months after war was declared in September 1939. The first bomb to be dropped on Scotland, in June 1940, demolished a bungalow in Nigg on the outskirts of Aberdeen.
Things began to heat up in 1941, and industrial Clydebank became a prime target for German bombers. It was estimated that 500 tons of high explosives were dropped on Clydebank in the late winter of 1941, killing 538 people and leaving 35,000 people homeless.
Strangely enough, Aberdeen was the Scottish city most subjected to bombing, with some 40 raids. The biggest raid took place in 1943, when 25 bombers attacked the city streets, which were full of women and children, with low-flying machine-gun waves.
But Aberdeen was not the most bombed place in Scotland. That honour belongs to the fishing port of Peterhead. Why Peterhead? The answer is simple: it wasn’t because of its strategic value, but because of the port’s geographical position. Peterhead was the first urban settlement German bombers flying from Norway came across.
In total, there were more than 500 German air raids on Scotland, ranging from single aircraft hit-and-runs, to mass bombings by 240 planes. The last air battle in Europe was fought off the Aberdeenshire coast on 21 April 1945.
The authorities had tried to evacuate children – 30,000 of them were evacuated from the west of Scotland to rural Aberdeenshire in September 1939 – but almost all of them were home a month later.
Of 40,000 Scottish war dead, 6,000 were civilians.
The home front
The First World War had generated a great deal of discontent over not only the way the war was being run, but also issues such as dilution, conscription, pay and rents (see Chapter 15). Strikes and demonstrations occurred, and Glasgow was at the centre of this unrest, giving birth to the idea of ‘Red Clydeside’. The government learned a great deal from these events and wisely put Labour in charge of ru
Johnston was able to use his position to introduce far-reaching reforms that benefited ordinary Scots. He set up 32 committees to deal with social and economic problems, ranging from juvenile delinquency to sheep farming. One of the most important reforms was the Clyde Basin Hospital Scheme, a foreru
However, Johnston’s most important contribution was the formation of the North of Scotland Hydro Board. Launched in 1943, it provided desperately needed electricity to the Highlands and Islands.
Rationing
In spite of these reforms, life for those on the home front was not easy. On top of the bombings, there was rationing. Rationing was introduced at the outbreak of war so that the government could control the provision and distribution of food and ensure that everyone received an equal share. Rationing was applied to basic foodstuffs like bacon and ham, butter and margarine, sugar and cheese. Ration books were issued to everyone, including children; people were required to register with a shop supplying the rationed food.
Of course, the wealthy could find ways around the restrictions; everything was available through what was known as the ‘black market’, if you had the money. Many ordinary Scots resented the wealthy for their ability to get what they wanted on the black market, and the situation dented the image of the ‘people’s war’.
Notwithstanding the discontent, the health of the population improved through access to more nutritious food. Scotland experienced the largest fall in infant mortality anywhere in Europe. The average height of Glasgow children increased by 5 centimetres during the war years.
The politics of war
The declaration of war in 1939 was not popular with everyone. Opposition came from left-wing pacifists, the Communist Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP). But it was the SNP that proved the most troublesome for the government.
The writer and poet Hugh MacDiarmid (conscripted in 1942 as a lathe turner) reckoned the Germans were bad but the British bourgeoisie was a ‘far greater enemy’, even suggesting that England being invaded by Nazis would amount to historical revenge. Another member of the SNP, Professor Douglas Young, who taught Greek at Aberdeen University, argued that the 1707 Treaty of Union prevented the conscription of Scots to defend ‘an Empire in the government of which she has no voice’. No Scottish court agreed, and Young was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for refusing to be conscripted.
Although these Nationalists were depicted as trying to undermine the war effort, their political message seemed to get across to the Scottish people. In 1940, the SNP polled 37 per cent of the vote in Argyll; in the Kirkcaldy by-election in 1944, it polled 41 per cent. Dr Robert McIntyre won a parliamentary seat for the SNP at the Motherwell by-election in 1945, although he lost it in the general election later that year.
The Communist Party was also making political progress. Although the party was initially opposed to the war, after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, it became an enthusiastic supporter. On the back of the heroic struggle of the Soviet people, the party grew in numbers to 10,000 by the end of the war. It was estimated that one in ten Scots read the party newspaper, the
Daily Worker.
Much of the success of these fringe parties was due to the special circumstances created by the war. The main parties called a truce at the begi
However, when things got back to normal in the 1945 general election, it was clear that the real beneficiary of the war was the Labour Party, which won a stu
The Silent Social Revolution: War and Welfare (1945–2000)
The main problem for the wartime government was keeping up morale among the civilian population and those who were doing the fighting. The old world was the 1930s in which unemployment was in the millions and people went hungry. There had to be a new way forward to give people hope and reward the sacrifices the British people were making to win the war. Well, cometh the hour, cometh the man. Step forward, William Beveridge.
Fighting for a better world
The war against Germany and its allies encouraged people to think of a better world. There was little point in fighting the war if we weren’t going to come out better off in the end. The publication of the Beveridge Report on National Insurance in 1942 laid out the blueprint for a new Britain, and it caught the imagination of the British people.
Beveridge, a wartime civil servant and Liberal, laid out the five great social evils:
Want (poverty)
Disease
Ignorance
Squalor
Idleness (unemployment)
To conquer these evils, the state was to provide ‘cradle to grave’ coverage as a right of citizenship. In practice, this meant
Abolishing poverty
Creating a health service
Expanding the provision of education, including raising the school leaving age
Providing more and better housing
Providing full employment
The Beveridge Report (a reaction to the problems I highlight in Chapter 15) brought Labour to power for the first time. Labour won a landslide victory in the 1945 general election because the party was more closely identified with the report than the Tories. Winston Churchill, the great war leader, was rejected in favour of the pipe-smoking, avuncular Labour leader, Clement Attlee.
Poverty
William Beveridge believed that the solution to the age-old problem of poverty was full employment. For those too old or too unfit to work, some kind of social provision would be provided through the welfare state. The Labour government of 1945 only went so far in tackling the problem because there was a fear that if benefits were too high, people might find staying at home more attractive than working in a dead-end job. The benefits from the outset were never high enough to keep people out of poverty – this has been the case regardless of which government has been in power.
Scotland has suffered more than most other parts of the UK from the problem of poverty, although even in Scotland it’s worse in the west than in the east. Glasgow has some of the most deprived areas in the UK. Here are some reasons why:
Scotland has a much smaller middle class than the UK.
Scotland has a higher rate of unemployment than the UK average.
Scotland has a lower level of income per head of population than the UK.
Because of emigration, Scotland has more old and very young people.
Health