Scots Wha Hae

Scotland was burning last week, as any Clydesider in any pub would have told you: "A scandal, lad, a scandal. The Parliament allowing only half a day to a debate on the dismal category of trends and tendencies in Scotland. Ah, lad, the Scottish workingman is getting the short end of the horn as usual."

The workingman in Scotland was too busy to do more than grouse about what he suspected, but the awful realities of Scotland's economy moved a chill hand over the hearts of Scotland's industrialists. Last week able, convincing Secretary of State for Scotland Tom Johnston, onetime editor of a left-wing Independent Labor Party newspaper, hung the high Scottish grouse before Parliament's nostrils.

Those Days Were Bleak. As head of a new Advisory Council for Scottish Industry, Tom Johnston accused the English of concentrating heavy industries in England, at the expense of Scotland. Between 1932 and 1937, 3,217 new factories were started in Britain, of which Scotland received only 127--while 133 Scottish factories were closing their doors. In 1941, 4,500,000 square feet of Scottish factory accommodation was allocated to storage and only 500,000 square feet to war production--a storage ratio of nine to one for Scotland, compared to a British ratio of two to one.

Scotland had suffered accordingly. Between 1931 and 1936, unemployment was never less than 23%, rose in Clydeside, Fife and Lanark as high as 65%--until a year and a half before World War II, it was 87.9% worse than in England.

By this time the fat was in the fire. Communist Willie Gallacher raised the "Scots Wha Hae" cry* of Scottish nationalism. M.P. Neil MacLean blamed "some confounded fool in the Admiralty" for allowing a famous shipyard to remain idle because of a mistaken idea that it had no engine shop.

Tom Johnston gave figures, however, to show that all was not lost--provided the English realized the gravity of Scotland's position. In 1942, 16 new war industries were granted Scotland. His committee, he said, hoped to corner more, while working at the same time against the drift of industrialism to the south. On the Scottish domestic front he urged more attention to hill shepherding, herring fishing and de-velopment of hydroelectric power.

These Days Are Better. For the moment at least, Scotsmen are working again. Even on the normally turbulent Clyde-side, where strikes and upheavals resulted in the granting of then-revolutionary trade-union rights in the midst of World War I, there is now political quiet. The 100%-profits tax, making employers relatively generous with wages, leaves firebrands little besides absentee ownership and shipyard discipline to protest about. For their part, shipyard owners complain about "absenteeism"--workers occasionally take a day off just for the hell of it.

But coalpits scarcely miss a shift. Lan-arkshire iron and metal works roar 24 hours a day. While vast schemes are going forward for converting to agriculture more of the one-sixth of Scotland that is locked up in huge, private hunting preserves, Benedictine monks at Fort Augustus have hiked up their habits and converted ten acres of monastery land into a victory garden. From low-ceilinged island cottages comes the never-ending keening of Heb-riden women mourning their men lost at sea.

Whether "the fleet's in" or "the fleet's awa" (convoys in or out), once-gloomy Glasgow bustles with workingmen. Pubs and musical music halls are jammed to blackout suffocation. Princes Street in Edinburgh is still beautiful, but even more exciting for the lasses now that there are hundreds of Polish and Norwegian fighting men who have adopted Scotland as their second home.

What Days Are Ahead? This is Scotland in 1942--busy but worried--and so doubtless it will remain until the war is over. But then, as in other countries throughout the world, a tragic era of depression may return. M.P. Harry Mc-Neil, adding more gloom to Tom Johnston's picture of Scottish industry, foreseeing new threats to Scottish livelihood in the bounding Dominion increase in steel production, in the "staggering" rate of U.S. shipbuilding, made clear that the home rule of Scottish nationalists is not the answer. Those who raise the "Scots Wha Hae" cry, he said, will "have to learn to sing it to the tune of the Atlantic Charter."

*Home-rule battle cry springing from Burns's poem on the defeat of the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

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