J.D. MACKIE ON SCOTLAND (1969)

J.D. Mackie, A History of Scotland

(Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd.; 1969), pp. 348, 349.

In the great march of events which has transformed the Britain of Queen Victoria into the Britain of today the fortunes of Scotland were inextricably bound up.

In the Liberal revival which marked the beginning of the century, Scotland had her part, and upon her the Irish question had its repercussions.

She was involved as deeply as any in the First World War, the Great Depression, the rise of pacifism which followed, and the Second World War.

As much as any she was affected by modifications of the constitution, by alterations in the balance of political parties, and by all the great social changes which have marked the recent years. . . .

The Great Wars and the Great Depression

In the two great Wars Scotland took her fair share; indeed, before conscription was introduced during the first Great War, perhaps a little more than her fair share. Like all the combatant countries she suffered heavy losses, and she had a smaller population than some from which to make the losses good.

To take one instance only, the Battle of Loos, where three great divisions and many other Scottish units were so heavily engaged, took a toll of her young men of a most disastrous kind.

On the heels of the first war came the great depression after a fictitious boom; and in that depression Scotland, like the north of England, the north of Ireland, and Wales, suffered more severely than the south of England because, during the great conflict, her enterprises, in response to the needs of the times, had been directed so largely to war-work, particularly to coal, steel, and ship-building.

The capital and the skills employed in these essential ʻheaviesʼ could not lightly be transferred to the lighter industries which were springing up, not unnaturally, near the great purchasing centres of the south.

The coal-trade suffered from foreign competition; there was less demand for steel; fewer ships were wanted, firms which had been building for well over a century were without orders, and even the ʻ534ʼ languished for years in the stocks before she sailed forth as the Queen Mary.

The new industries began to come north and with them the men who were already experienced in the new techniques. For the moment Samuel Johnson's dictum was reversed; there was an influx from England to Scotland, chiefly perhaps at the higher levels and, meanwhile, there was a steady emigration of native Scots.

With the new population came new outlooks on life. The texture of Scottish society began to change.

Yet much of the old Scotland still remains.

Scottish invention and industry are mastering the new techniques and many of the old techniques are still good. It was a Scot, after all, who invented television and a Scot who discovered penicillin. Changing conditions are demanding new organization and new methods, but the Scottish miners, steel-makers, and shipbuilders have still their old competence.

None the less, Scotland, like the United Kingdom as a whole, is still suffering from the effects of the two wars in which, as the first and the most resolute champion of liberty, Britain made so prodigal an expenditure of her blood and of her wealth.

It is against this background of struggle, suffering, loss, and achievement that the domestic history of Scotland during the present century must be understood.

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