Scotland the Brief

Part 3: Choosing a Future
19 Administrative Devolution

The aftermath of World War II was, on the surface, far different from the disaster of 1920. Because German and Japanese shipyards and engineering works were heaps of rubble, industrial Scotland had a second boom. But little investment was going into the traditional industries, and although there were some attempts at consumer goods (at one point Dundee made more clocks than Switzerland) small houses and low incomes still inhibited the market for these. The place resembled the 1900s more than the 1930s, and that was the problem. For Britains empire, though still extensive, was proving impossible to hold. The fall of Singapore in 1942 had been its death sentence, and this was carried out when Britain and France invaded Suez in 1956 to recapture the pivotal imperial link of the Suez Canal. They were repulsed, not just by Colonel Nassers Egyptian nationalists but by John Foster Dulles State Department.

While the canal was closed, the size of tankers soared, from 40,000 to over 250,000 tons, far too big to be built on the Clyde. Shrewd bosses saw the consequences and invested in greenfield sites in South Korea. Railways went into eclipse which proved temporary but enough to kill off the Glasgow locomotive industry, which never made the transition to diesels. The Scottish coalfield, in decline for decades in its main centre of Lanarkshire, faced competition from first hydro-electricity and then nuclear power; the shale oil industry died in 1962. A similar but slower nemesis overtook textiles, cookers, furniture, porcelain, carpets.

Against this Scots commercial organisation found it difficult to compete. Would you rather shop at Marks and Sparks or the Co-op? was the key question, and the old store with its dividend, lack of credit facilities and fusty fashions was the loser, although up to the 1950s it had often handled a quarter of local retail. The same went for small holiday resorts with risky weather in the era of the charter flight to the Mediterranean. By the 1970s the Scottish high street was looking pretty much like anywhere else in the UK, though worse was to come.

Elected in 1964 on a programme of centralised modernisation, Harold Wilson's Labour government drew up ambitious regional development plans, of which the most obvious signs were multi-storey flats and motorways. But the attempt to protect the pound and the last vestiges of empire weighed on its economic performance. The Conservatives were already sinking, and the SNP emerged in 1966-67 as the alternative. Having ditched home rule as a (very vague) aim in 1958, Labour had to return to considering it, through the Kilbrandon Commission (1968-73); although by the time it reported, centre stage had been taken by two further issues: entry to the EEC, negotiated by Edward Heath in 1973, and North Sea oil.