A Time of Tyrants

by Trevor Royle

  He was released on 7 December 1944, and after the war returned to teaching, firstly in Dundee and then in St Andrews. As a poet he was prominent in the post-war debates about the use of Scots or ‘Lallans’; however, in politics he left the SNP and rejoined the Labour Party after the former rejected the common cause policy and voted in favour of banning members from joining other political parties.

  However, despite those high profile cases the issue of conscription did not give the SNP the political leverage which its fundamentalist members might have wanted. It was, though, a useful stick with which to beat the government, and another opportunity came in 1943 when the party campaigned to prevent the unpopular conscription of 13,000 unmarried Scottish girls to work in munitions factories in the English Midlands. The scheme had attracted widespread criticism across Scotland, especially as it seemed to involve a degree of coercion, with the girls being locked in reserved railway compartments, and was being overseen by female supervisors during the journey south. Even though the Ministry of Labour backed down, the SNP did not gain all the credit from the decision as the trades unions had also been involved. Worse (from their point of view), the protest failed to cover over the split caused by the leadership contest which had only succeeded in weakening the party by producing ‘two competing sets of losers’ at a time when the SNP had already been weakened, and there is little doubt that the party’s leadership quarrels left it badly hamstrung for the remainder of the war.22

  The self-destruction within the SNP also coincided with the growing strength and authority of the rule of central government from Westminster. On coming to power in May 1940, Churchill had created an all-party coalition with a War Cabinet of thirty-five ministers which included Labour leaders Clement Attlee (Deputy Prime Minister), Ernest Bevin (Minister of Labour and National Service) and Hebert Morrison (Minister of Supply); as well as Conservative allies Anthony Eden (War Office) and Lord Beaverbrook (Aircraft Production). In the initial months of his leadership Churchill was preoccupied with the threat of German invasion which had been ended by the failure of the Luftwaffe to gain supremacy during the Battle of Britain, and it was not until the beginning of 1941 that he visited Scotland, travelling first to Edinburgh on 3 January and then again on 17 January when he met Tom Johnston and visited civil defence services in Glasgow. The latter visit was supposed to be a secret but when Churchill’s train arrived in the city his private secretary Sir John Martin recalled that ‘a mob of hundreds if not thousands was waiting at Queen Street Station and we had to fight our way to the cars and then into the City Chambers’.23

  Afterwards Churchill made an impromptu speech, and that evening dined with Johnston and Lord Provost Dollan before returning overnight to London. It turned out to be a momentous occasion. In the official party was Harry Hopkins who acted as US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s special emissary, and was in the country to assess Britain’s position before deciding whether or not to offer any American support to the war effort. After the dinner several informal speeches were made and Johnston invited his American guest to address the gathering, having ascertained earlier that Hopkins was proud of his Scottish ancestry and his antecedents from Perthshire. As Johnston recorded at the time, Roosevelt’s envoy’s words were not mere pleasantries but could be read as an emotionally charged signal to his hosts.

  Mr Chairman, I am not making speeches here. I am reporting what I see to Mr Franklin Delano Roosevelt, my President, a great man, a very great man. But now that I am here and on my feet perhaps I might say in the language of the old book to which my grandmother from Auchterarder, and no doubt your grandmother too, Mr Chairman, paid so much attention, that (and here Hopkins paused and looked straight down the table at Churchill) Where-soever thou goest we go, and where thou lodgest we lodge, thy people shall be our people, thy God our God, even unto the end.24

  Hopkins was indulging in theatricality, but for Churchill, who was easily moved by any display of sentimentality, it seemed to be the first indication that the US would support the Britain in the war. The prime minister’s ‘eyes welled up in tears’ because this was an outcome which he earnestly desired.

  It was also a moment which changed Johnston’s political career. Churchill was determined to strengthen his War Cabinet, and was equally determined that it should include Johnston. Although he turned down the first offer of Health, on 9 February he accepted the position of Secretary of State for Scotland which had been previously held by Ernest Brown and Sir John Colville. It was an astute appointment. Johnston was a well-respected Labour politician and proved to be a capable administrator with an appetite for hard work and an ambition to get things done. Churchill also realised that with such an important Labour member in the Scottish Office there would be little chance of history repeating itself on the Clyde, which remained relatively strike-free throughout the war.

  The perception of Johnston as a strong man who could manage Scotland on his own gave him considerable benefits. Not only did his Cabinet colleagues generally bow to his wishes or leave him to his own devices, at least as far as Scotland was concerned, but it created the freedom to evolve his own way of doing things. He was also in a position to name his own conditions before accepting the post. The first was personal in that he asked to work without his ministerial salary, just as he had done while serving as Regional Commissioner, thereby underlining his own independence. (‘My resources are adequate to my needs but I don’t want to make a song and dance about it.’) The second condition was equally shrewd. He told Churchill that he wanted to establish ‘a Council of State for Scotland – a council composed of all the living ex-Secretaries for Scotland, of all parties; and whenever we were all agreed upon a Scottish issue, I could look to you for backing!’ Although the prime minister could see that this would be a kind of shadow Scottish national government whose decisions would be difficult to countermand, he agreed to both conditions.25

  The council came into being in September, and it was composed of five of Johnston’s predecessors in office, all of whom had contributed significantly to political life in Scotland and the UK. Lord Alness, as Robert Munro, had held the position as a Liberal between 1916 and 1922, and was one of the longest-serving secretaries; amongst other matters he had been responsible for suppressing Tom Johnston’s magazine Forward in 1915 while serving as Lord Advocate. Archibald Sinclair, a Liberal and a friend and confidante of Churchill, held the post between 1931 and 1932, and became Secretary of Air in 1940; after the war he was ennobled as Viscount Thurso. Walter Elliot was Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland between 1936 and 1938, and had proved to be an innovator and interventionist responsible for the creation of the Hillington industrial estate and a firm supporter of the Empire Exhibition of 1938. John Colville had occupied the post in Chamberlain’s government at the beginning of the war, and was later appointed governor of Bombay; after the war he was ennobled as Baron Clydesmuir. Ernest Brown, Johnston’s immediate predecessor, had become Secretary of State for Scotland in Churchill’s 1940 government, and was unusual in being an Englishman.

  From the outset the new body showed that it meant business by instituting a series of inquiries which would investigate areas of regeneration and renewal. It held its first meeting at the Scottish Office in London on 29 September 1941, and boldly set out its immediate ambitions which the council members thought would be for the long-term good of Scotland after the war: ‘The Council would consider Scotland’s post-war problems, set up enquiries as necessary (deciding their priority) and survey the results. While the responsibility for any action taken remained with Ministers, the advice and support of the Council would be of the utmost value. The object was, of course, that at the end of hostilities the Government should have available authoritative advice on the questions considered and should be in a position to act at once.’26

  At that first meeting twelve main areas were identified for further investigation: hydro-electric development, the herring industry, hill sheep farming, gas grids, regionalisat
ion of water supplies, unification of hospital services, housing, health services, food production, dairy farming, the white-fish industry and industrial development. Although most of them were imbued with revivalist, even messianic, intentions (a good example being an ill-fated scheme to introduce citizenship in schools) they also helped to point the way to the country that Scotland would become in the post-war world.27

  Perhaps the most successful of those initiatives was the first committee of inquiry into the development of hydro-electric power in the Highlands which was chaired by Lord Cooper, the formidably energetic and resourceful Lord Advocate. It helped that he was of scientific bent and combined a keen intellect with a forensic mind, and his committee worked quickly and efficiently to produce the report which Johnston, a keen proponent of hydro-electric power, wanted. The idea of harnessing Scotland’s water assets to produce electricity was not new: following a number of small private attempts to use hydro-electric power at Fort Augustus and Strathpeffer, the system came into its own in the 1930s with the development of the aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven before the First World War and the first major integrated hydro-electric complex at Tongland in Kirkcudbrightshire.

  There was a snag. Although these had shown that hydro-electric power was technically and economically viable, many of these pioneering innovations had either been squandered or scandalously neglected. One reason was the influence of the coal lobby, which feared that the industry’s pre-eminence and profitability would be challenged by the introduction of a new and potentially dangerous system. The other main opposition came from landowners who argued that the arrival of dams, pipelines and pylons would ruin the essentially primitive nature of the Scottish Highlands and its indigenous wildlife. As a result of their objections six hydro-electric projects had been turned down at Westminster in 1940, largely as a result of well-organised landed opposition to their introduction. Johnston was keenly aware of what was happening. Likening those groups to ‘corbies’ (hooded, or carrion, crows) who were driven by self-interest and had little or no concern for the good of the country, he promised he would personally ‘inform the 51st Division when it returned after the war of the names and addresses of the saboteurs.’28

  Fortunately Cooper and his committee were objective and painstaking in their approach, and during the collection of evidence they spread their net widely. When he finally reported on 15 December 1942 his paper carried a stinging rebuke to those who had attempted to stymie the introduction of hydro-electric power in the Highlands, claiming that ‘all major issues of policy, both national and local have tended to become completely submerged in the conflict of contending sectional interests’.29 Not only would the continuation of such attitudes have a deleterious effect on the future economy of the Highlands, but the Cooper Report stated bluntly that any regeneration could not be dependent purely on prohibitively expensive thermal power stations. This was music to Johnston’s ears, and the main recommendations were incorporated in the Hydro-Electric Development (Scotland) Bill which became law the following year.

  To all intents and purposes the act nationalised the development of Scotland’s natural water assets in the Highlands by creating the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. This became responsible for the construction of the necessary infrastructure and also for ensuring that the Highlands as a whole benefited from the introduction of affordable and environmentally friendly power. This latter point was central to Johnston’s political viewpoint, namely that there was a social welfare aspect to the legislation – a key point in section two of the act insisted that profits from the scheme should be used for ‘the economic development and social improvement of the North of Scotland’. This was seized upon by Conservatives as socialism, or worse, and Johnston had to fight extremely hard to ensure that the legislation passed through parliament unscathed by its main opponents. Quite apart from his own innate parliamentary abilities, he was helped by the support of eight Cabinet colleagues, notably the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood, and by the board’s first chairman, the Earl of Airlie who was frequently vilified by his fellow landowners. To these attacks Johnston responded that he would not be dissuaded by ‘a few shameless twelfth of August shooting tourists, who themselves took care to live in the electrified south for eleven months of the year [and] moaned about the possible disappearance in the Highlands of the picturesque cruisie [open boat-shaped lamp with a rush wick]’.30

  The creation of the hydro board (as it quickly became known) was one of the high-water marks of Johnston’s tenure as Secretary of State for Scotland, and he was justly proud of the achievement. Although there would be problems in implementing the scheme in the post-war world, and many of the wartime objections returned to haunt the board, it was still a hugely altruistic innovation, and one which pointed the way to later policies which depended as much on social vision as on economic good sense. It also proved the capability of the Council of State, as it was the first occasion when a piece of specifically Scottish legislation reached the statute book without a division.

  The success also prompted Johnston to extend the reach of his activities in Scotland by encouraging a more inclusive approach to politics and by putting Scotland first wherever possible. Here he was only partially successful. An attempt to rejuvenate the Scottish Grand Committee foundered due to lack of general interest amongst Scottish MPs who believed, probably rightly, that it was only a talking shop and a poor one at that. First formed in 1907, it was established to provide Scottish MPs with the opportunity to consider the committee stage of Scottish bills, but although Johnston saw it as a means of rectifying the democratic deficit by reinforcing the committee as a forum for Scottish affairs, its few meetings were badly attended. Robert Boothby, the outspoken Conservative MP for East Aberdeenshire, was probably not far wrong when he dismissed it as ‘a pretty dismal fiasco’, and was scornful of its pretensions to resemble an alternative ‘Scottish National Parliament’.31 It certainly did not meet Johnston’s hopes for the introduction of a form of Scottish self-government.

  More successful and certainly more to the point was the creation of the Scottish Council on Industry which was chaired by Sir William Young Darling, Lord Provost of Edinburgh and a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Representatives came from the Chambers of Commerce, the Scottish Trade Union Congress, the Scottish Development Council, the Scottish Office and local authorities. Under existing wartime legislation most of Scotland’s social and economic life was largely governed by Whitehall departments such as the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Trade and their agencies, leaving law and order, the health service, agriculture and education in the hands of the departments of the Scottish Office. This meant that there was little Scottish input into wartime production, economic planning and industrial investment, with the result that Scottish industry missed out on the increased production levels and was largely used for storage. Indeed, the Cabinet noted at the time that there was a distinct reluctance for Scottish firms to take advantage of existing and new schemes for wartime expansion even though funds had been made available on a UK basis.32 Johnston was determined to change that and outlined his thinking at the fifth meeting where he claimed that ‘the stage was now set for all possible preventive action to stop, save in cases where good cause was shown, the drift south of industry, particularly peace-time industries’.33 In short, Johnston wanted Scottish industry to get a fair share of wartime contracts both to maintain production and to retain employment.

  There was still a lot of leeway to be made up following the downturn of the economy during the Depression years. The poor housing stock, especially in the west of Scotland, prevented mobility and led to large-scale emigration to England – the relocation of Stewarts & Lloyds to Corby in Northamptonshire being a prime example. During the 1920s an estimated 400,000 people left Scotland as a direct result of poor housing conditions or unemployment; in Dundee alone the rate in the jute industry rose to over 70 per cent in 1931 and 1932. Steps had been taken to rectify the s
ituation through regional assistance schemes but it is noticeable that Scotland missed out on many of the opportunities produced by wartime growth, either because there had been no diversification or because the available workforces were ill-equipped to meet the new challenges. Notable exceptions were the Rolls-Royce factory at Hillington, which began producing engines for Spitfire fighters in 1940, and the Ferranti facility at Crewe Toll in Edinburgh which produced gyro gunsights for the same aircraft. Within three years of arriving in the west of Scotland Rolls-Royce was producing 400 Merlin engines a week while Ferranti came north as a result of the expansion of its defence electronics business and a lack of available labour in Manchester.

  During the same period only thirty-two government-sponsored factories opened in Scotland, mainly for aircraft and vehicle production, but some things remained the same, with shipbuilding and its associated trades remaining prominent in the Scottish economy and employing over half of the available workforce.34 Ironically, this had been foreseen by the Council of State at its third meeting on 8 December 1941 when members bemoaned ‘the fact that expansion of industry in Scotland was ephemeral, being almost entirely confined to munitions and war industries, which would, from their very nature, decline rapidly after the end of hostilities, while more permanent industries were attracted to England’.35 Even so, towards the end of the war, in July 1944, unemployment fell to 16,199 from its 1940 high of ten times that number, thanks largely to the exploitation of wartime opportunities and the stemming of the tide of workforce removals to similar factories in England.36