A Time of Tyrants

by Trevor Royle

  Johnston also turned his attention to agriculture and fisheries, both devolved issues with their own department in the Scottish Office. Both were central to the war economy, and it soon became apparent that there were anomalies which did not always favour Scotland’s interests. From the outset Johnston favoured the introduction of a uniform milk price across the UK because Scottish milk producers had been missing out by almost one penny a gallon, a loss which was exacerbated by the heavier costs in road transport. In an effort to ameliorate the latter problem the War Cabinet decided on 1 October 1942 to authorise the Milk Marketing Board and the Scottish Milk Marketing Board (as the sole purchasers from producers) to pay for supplies at collection centres instead of, as was done previously, at consuming centres.37 While this did not completely resolve the issue for Scottish farmers, it was considered to be an equitable outcome as milk producers in the west of England and Wales faced similar problems, and the cost of levelling out the Scottish returns would have amounted to £300,000 a year. Hill sheep farming was also an issue. In addition to the uncertainty traditionally present in rearing upland sheep, the exigencies of wartime brought fresh problems such as coping with the bracken when labour was short and the cumulative effect of two bad springs in 1940 and 1941. Fluctuations in market prices added to the feelings of insecurity, and in 1943 the government increased the subsidy per head to eight shillings. As a result the earned net income for Scottish hill sheep farmers rose that year to £760, a threefold rise from the position at the start of the war.38 In addition to the increased subsidy, the farmers had been helped by a Scottish Office innovation whereby surplus stock was taken to government-owned hill-grazing parks for fattening up before going to market. This came about as a result of another of Johnston’s committees of inquiry, in this case chaired by Lord Balfour of Burleigh.

  Another problem was the perennial lack of a decent housing stock in rural areas. In 1917 a Royal Commission on Housing in Scotland had revealed that the average farm worker’s house ‘has too often been selected not for its suitability as a site but for economy of land and the convenience of the farm worker. The result is that the site is often a contributing factor in the prevailing dampness of the houses, and aggravates the difficulties of water supply and drainage.’39 Although it had been agreed that this was a matter of scandal, little had been done to resolve the issue which Johnston described as ‘appalling’. In a belated attempt to make things better, in 1943 subsides were made available of £200 per house which resulted in the immediate construction of eighty cottages for farm labourers’ use. As workers tended to move every six or twelve months from one farm to the next, legislation was passed in 1941 under the Essential Work (Agriculture) (Scotland) Order to prohibit the cancellation of contracts unless permission was given by the local National Service office. This was more often honoured in the breach but it did at least bring some order to the traditional movement of farm servants and the accommodation that was available to them. During the war the full-time labour force in Scotland’s farms increased from 72,000 to 96,000, but this reflected the need to increase food production and the use of prisoners of war (see Chapter 9). Johnston was also justifiably proud of the first steps that were taken in fish farming at Loch Sween where marine biologists made rapid strides in the cultivation of flat fish as a means of easing the nation’s food-supply problems.

  It would not be unfair to claim that in managing his role as Secretary of State for Scotland Johnston regarded the country as his personal fiefdom. The robust way in which he promoted Scottish industry, agriculture and fisheries in Cabinet meetings is evidence of his concern for Scotland’s best interests and his own abilities as a politician. He was also a good team player, and amply rewarded Churchill’s willingness to bring him into the heart of the war government. While Johnston never warmed to the Westminster way of doing things, and disliked the constant journeying between Scotland and London, he played a full role in formulating policy. In particular, he was hugely supportive of moves to implement the Beveridge Report of 1942. Officially known as the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, this ground-breaking initiative was one of the main fruits of Labour’s coalition agreement with the Conservatives; it was intended to investigate and provide suggestions for thoroughly overhauling ‘the existing national schemes of social insurance and Allied services, including workmen’s compensation, and to make recommendations’. It was chaired by the economist Sir William Beveridge, and when it was published in December 1942 it was clear that by addressing five identifiable threats to society – want, ignorance, disease, squalor and idleness – it provided the blueprint for the implementation of a ‘welfare state’ once the war was over.

  The central plank of the report was the provision of a national health service which would produce ‘cradle-to-grave’ services which would be paid for by weekly financial contributions; in return, benefits would be provided for the unemployed, the sick, the retired and the widowed. It was a ground-breaking set of reforms, and its implementation depended on a huge amount of political goodwill and a willingness to work collectively for benefits which would only become available once the war was over. The concept was dear to Johnston’s heart, and from 1943 onwards he worked closely with the Minister of Health Henry Willink, Conservative MP for Croydon North, who was responsible for drafting the White Paper, A National Health Service, based on the recommendations of the Beveridge Report.

  Another impetus behind Johnston’s support for the creation of a national health service came from innovations which had been introduced to the hospital services in Scotland. At the outbreak of war thought had already been given to dealing with the expected casualties from enemy bombing attacks, and steps had been taken to increase the number of hospital beds that would be needed under the emergency powers. In Scotland that authority was given to the Scottish Department of Health which was not only responsible for administering the scheme but, unlike England and Wales, ran the participating state hospitals. Seven new hospitals were also introduced at Raigmore (Inverness), Stracathro (Angus), Bridge of Earn (Perthshire), Killearn (Stirlingshire), Law (Lanarkshire), Ballochmyle (Ayrshire) and Peel (Selkirkshire). Under the same programme new annexes were built at existing hospitals, and in total the Emergency Hospital Service (EHS) scheme in Scotland eventually produced an additional 20,500 beds, an increase of some 60 per cent on Scotland’s pre-war provision.

  However, although this was encouraging and demonstrated what could be done when emergency services were directed by the state and funds were made available, the expected take-up in beds never materialised. Scotland was certainly bombed, and in 1941 huge numbers of casualties were caused during the blitzes of Clydebank and Greenock (see Chapter 6), but by the end of 1942 the numbers of raids had diminished. As a result it soon became apparent that the beds were lying empty, and could therefore be put to better use, or as Johnston put it in his memoirs: ‘It was obviously foolish to have the well-equipped hospitals often standing empty and their staffs awaiting Civil Defence casualties – which, thank God, never came – while war workers could not afford specialist diagnosis and treatment.’40

  Because the Scottish Department of Health was responsible for running the EHS scheme, it was in a position to admit patients directly from the waiting lists held by the voluntary hospitals. In January 1942 hospitals with long waiting lists were allowed to refer patients who were not war casualties to the EHS hospitals, regardless of how long their treatment would last. By the end of the war 32,826 patients had been treated in this way; many of them had been on waiting lists for three months or longer.41 By the standards of the day Johnston’s policy was radical in that it made good use of existing facilities, and in so doing helped to ease the lengthy waiting lists that accumulated in the pre-war system of local authority and voluntary hospitals. It was also unique to Scotland as the Department of Health did not enjoy similar powers to its opposite number in Scotland, and in any case the English and Welsh hospitals wer
e opposed to any introduction of this ‘curious arrangement’ north of the border.42

  Cognisance also has to be made of the pioneering Highlands and Islands Medical Service (HIMS) which had been established in 1913 with a Treasury grant of £42,000 to bring basic medical care to more than 300,000 living in an area which amounted to half the Scottish land mass. Although it was not strictly free, the fees were set at minimal levels, and the scheme was operated centrally from Edinburgh where the Scottish Office worked in co-operation with local health committees. By 1929 there were 175 nurses and 160 doctors in 150 practices covering some of the most remote areas of the Highlands and Islands where doctors and nurses worked for the first time in tandem to provide the necessary care. Funds were also found to allow specialist surgeons to work in the more isolated hospitals, with the result that comprehensive health care suddenly became universally available in areas which had been previously deprived.

  In 1933 when Edward Cathcart, Professor of Physiology at Glasgow University, was appointed to lead a committee of inquiry into the existing health services in Scotland, he and his colleagues concluded that HIMS produced good results because it put the general practitioner at the centre of health care: ‘The Highlands and Islands Medical Service has been an outstanding success and is universally approved. On the basis of the family doctor, there has been built up by flexible central administration a system of co-operative effort, embracing the central department, private general practitioners, nursing associations, voluntary hospitals, specialists, local authorities and others, to meet the medical needs of the people.’43 The report was published in 1936, and although it concluded that the cost of health services should be met from an extension of existing insurance schemes, many of its broader principles were embraced in the planning for the post-war National Health Service.

  Even more enterprising was Johnston’s introduction of the Supplementary Medical Service which from its locus was also known as the ‘Clyde Basin Experiment’. Launched at the beginning of 1942, it was originally limited to workers under the age of twenty-five whose health was poor and required treatment but by the end of the year it was extended to war workers of all ages. Basically, the scheme was led by general medical practitioners who were encouraged to refer suitable patients to Regional Medical Officers for examination by a panel of suitable experts. Those requiring further treatment were admitted to EHS hospital wards or were sent to auxiliary hospitals for rest. No fees were charged, and the intended purpose of the experiment was to treat patients and to prevent further breakdowns in health ‘by investigating and removing the physical, psychological or social causes.’44 In all, by 1945 11,000 patients had been treated in this way, and Johnston received plaudits from his Cabinet colleagues both for the Clyde Basin Experiment and for the useful lessons which had been learned in preventive medical treatment in Scotland.45 Equally successful was an ancillary scheme to provide respite and convalescent care for recovering industrial patients. Several large hotels were requisitioned for this purpose, including the opulent railway hotel at Gleneagles, where a wing was made available as a fitness centre for recuperating miners requiring physiotherapy or occupational therapy in a residential setting. Johnston was reported to be delighted by the fact that miners were being treated in this luxurious and beneficial way.

  The success of the Clyde Basin Experiment and the use of EHS hospitals would help to fashion the emergence of the future National Health Service in Scotland after the war, and in so doing it would evolve somewhat differently than England and Wales (see Chapter 12). It was not perfect, and the numbers of admissions were relatively small but the bed spaces had been provided, and it had been proved that a centrally administered service could work in Scotland. The drawbacks arose from the perception of the benefits provided by the scheme. Many general medical practitioners were wary of anything which seemed to threaten their independence of action and smacked of state control, while many patients did not always want to be hospitalised or thought they were not sufficiently unwell – this applied most to the preventive measures. Finance, or lack of it, was also a factor. While the scheme was well funded, and those treated received travelling expenses and small subsistence allowances, there was no provision for compensation for loss of wages. That was clearly a factor which had to be considered by workers who had family responsibilities, and probably accounts for the low take-up in referrals for respite care. Nevertheless there is no doubt that during the war Scotland led the way in introducing fresh thinking to public health care, and it is not surprising, perhaps, that when Johnston looked back at this period in his life he regarded it as a time of innovation and enterprise when optimism was in the air: ‘Meanwhile, and emanating from the activities being stirred up under what was the Council of State umbrella, there was arising a new spirit of independence and hope in our national life. You could sense it everywhere, and not least in the Civil Service. We met England now without any inferiority complex. Our tails were up. We were a nation once again.’46

  Johnston’s confidence came about as a result of all the hard work he invested in making Scotland work during the war, and it raises the question of how much he valued the idea of devolution. In his younger days he was certainly a supporter of home rule and could be described as a nationalist and patriot in a non-party political sense. As a minister in Churchill’s wartime Cabinet he was not above playing the Scottish card when necessary, and was always intent on getting the country’s fair share of available funds. However, he was also aware of the potency of the threat allegedly posed by extreme nationalism; at one stage in 1943 he told John Reith, Minister of Works and founding father of the BBC, that the SNP could provide the basis for a Sinn Fein-type of separatist movement should there be increased agitation for home rule.47 Herbert Morrison, wartime Minister of Supply, told a similar story, and while Johnston may well have feared trouble from the SNP, it also suited his purpose that the concern should be aired at a time when he was consolidating his own power in Scotland.

  Throughout Johnston’s period at the Scottish Office there is no evidence that he ever pushed for home rule during or after the war, but that did not stop him from pursuing Scotland’s best interests at a time when the realities of economic and social life were governed by Whitehall ministries. In 1944 William Leonard, Labour MP for St Rollox, published a memorandum in association with MacCormick’s Scottish Convention, proposing the establishment of a Scottish government which would have authority to deal with industrial development, as well as some powers relating to Scotland which were then held by the Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Transport. Although Johnston was sympathetic, he rejected the proposal, largely because he had already tried without success to reach a similar agreement, only to be told by Treasury officials that it would add immeasurably to his own workload and would ‘merely reproduce work which might without difficulty have covered Scotland as well as England in the first place’.48 Johnston tended to agree with that assessment, and placed his faith instead in the presence of a strong Secretary of State who would argue for Scotland’s fair share and ensure that UK ministries understood that point of view when directing their policies. And it has to be remembered that Johnston was above all a socialist, albeit always a gradualist, who valued the possibilities of consensus and working in a common cause. That was what was needed in wartime Scotland, and that was what he provided.

  6 Total War

  On a clear moonlit night on 13/14 March 1941 the terrors of modern warfare were visited on Scotland. A German bomber fleet of 236 aircraft arrived over Clydebank from three different directions to drop 270 tons of high explosive munitions and 1,700 incendiary bombs on the densely populated area below. Amongst their intended targets were the Clydebank shipyards and the complex at Hillington, but the bombers and their lethal payloads were indifferent to the fate of 50,000 civilians who lived under their flight path. (Due to the influx of workers into the area the real figure was closer to 60,000.) Shortly after 9 p.m. the air-raid sirens began to wail, first
on the east coast as the raiders passed over South Queensferry, and then in Glasgow and Clydebank as the German pathfinder force, flying ahead of the main fleet, dropped green marker flares and incendiary bombs.

  Their task was made easier by the use of target photographs taken by reconnaissance aircraft before the war, and also by the use of a crude radio directional navigation system known as X-Gerät (X apparatus). By directing a series of radio beams across the British mainland the Germans were able to direct specially fitted pathfinder aircraft towards their destinations. In this way key targets were crisscrossed and located along the route, while stop-clocks on board the aircraft accurately measured the time between them. Later in the war British scientists developed counter-measures to ‘bend’ the radio beams, but in 1941 X-Gerät was still the primary means for German bombers to find their targets.

  During the Clydebank raid the pathfinder aircraft were Heinkel IIIs of Kampfgeschwader 100 which was based in north-west France. The operation was made much simpler by the clear weather conditions and by the explosions of the first incendiary bombs. These began an inferno which gave the best marker for the attacking bombers flying behind them from bases in northern France, the Netherlands and Norway. As the west of Scotland housed several strategic targets amongst the heavy industries in the area, it was no stranger to hit-and-run raids – the first had taken place a year earlier on 19 July, and another on 18 September had destroyed the cruiser HMS Sussex refitting at Yorkhill Dock – but it soon became obvious that the German attack on Clydebank was something different. Not only did it involve a large fleet of bombers, but they arrived at intervals in three waves between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. the following morning.

  It was a carefully planned and calibrated operation based on sound intelligence, and it followed in the wake of similar German raids on English cities such as London, Liverpool and Coventry. The attack came from the south, with the bomber fleet flying up the west coast, and the first wave veering eastwards towards Edinburgh before flying across the central belt to follow the distinctive line of the River Clyde. Towards midnight the second wave arrived, having hooked westwards, and began its attack from the north to fly in over Loch Lomond. Finally, a third wave attacked directly from the south, flying over Glasgow.