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The Scottish Office and The Special Areas in the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. H. Campbell
R. H. Campbell
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Extract

In 1934 two commissioners (for England and Wales and for Scotland) were appoineted to tackle the problems caused by high and Persistent unemploed in areas dependent on a narrow and depressed range of industriues. These Statutory Special Areas were only some of the most depressed parts of the country, in scotland largely west-central Scotaland but excluding Glasgow. defects in the policies adopted, and in their implementation by the commissioners, are well known, especially their alleged failure to encourage adequatelythe newindustrial development the special Areas needed. Certainly the powers and the financial provision given tio the commissioners in 1934 were slight, but they were increased in new legislation in 1937 and had little time to become effective before the outbreak of war. In addition, lack of success, especially in the end towards which the policies were directed as much as because of their own inadequacy or insufficiency. the end, justifiable in the conditions of the 1930s, was to releive unemployement, not to encourage a distinctive policy of regional industrial diversification. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population Suggested a new direction in 1940, but its views were applied as part of an overall strategy only in the 1960s. A comment of 1952 may be applied from the pre-war years throughout the 1950s. Only the name of the special Areas had been changed.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 167 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 General discussions of their work are in Dennison, S. R., The location of industry and the depressed areas (Oxford, 1939)Google Scholar and McCrone, G., Regional policy in Britain (London, 1969)Google Scholar, Part 11. The Scottish Commissioner has been particularly criticised. Of the first, ‘his reports were singularly colourless’. Dennison, op. cit. 161.

2 Cmd. 6153 (Barlow Report). A file note on the Report by a Scottish Office official is revealing: ‘…there is little in the findings and recommendations that could not have been formulated by anyone having any kind of knowledge of the problems before the Commission began its work…’ Scottish Record Office (S.R.O.). Scottish Development Department (DD). DD 10/304. File 34496/94. Note dated 14 Feb. 1940.

3 Scottish Council, Report of the committee on local development in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1952), para. 61Google Scholar.

4 S.R.O. DD 10/197. Industrial Transference Scheme, 1929

5 S.R.O. DD 10/201. Ministry of Transport to Scottish Office, 14 November 1929.

6 S.R.O. DD 10/201. Memorandum on slum clearance, 12 Nov. 1929.

7 S.R.O. DD 10/201. Slum clearance and unemployment, 1929. Memorandum on Scotland's share of UGC schemes.

8 S.R.O. DD 10/202. Memorandum on schemes of land reclamation, 1929.

9 S.R.O. DD 10/206. Relief of unemployment, 1929–35. (Files 32770/127 and 193).

10 S.R.O. DD 10/208. T. Johnston to M. Bissett, 3 Nov. 1930.

11 S.R.O. DD 10/289. File 33496/4. Inter-departmental committee on derelict areas, 1930–4.

12 Ibid.

13 Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Report on the position of trade and industry in Glasgow and the west of Scotland (Glasgow, 1930)Google Scholar.

14 Industrial survey of the south-west of Scotland; an industrial survey made for the Board of Trade by the department of Political Economy, Glasgow University, 1932, para. 543Google Scholar.

15 Ministry of Labour, Reports of investigations into the industrial conditions in certain depressed areas… IV. Scotland. Cmd. 4728. 1934.

16 S.R.O. DD 10/289. File 33496/43E. Sir Horace Wilson to minister of labour, 2 Oct. 1934.

17 Cmd. 4728, para. 10.

18 Cmd. 4728, para. 72. See also para. 100.

19 S.R.O. DD 10/289. File 3446/43F. Para. 4 of DA10.

20 Ibid. DA8.

21 S.R.O. DD 10/289. File 3349/43E. Report of the Inter-departmental committee on the reports of the investigators into the depressed areas, 1934, para. 54.

22 Cmd. 4728, paras. 19, 71 and 25.

23 The matter was fully investigated later in Board of Trade, Report of the departmental committee on gas supplies in the west of Scotland, 1936. Further details of the dispute, which impinged on local politics, are in DD 11/8 Gas undertakings: Glasgow Corporation, 1934–42 and in DD 11/85, Gas supplies: West of Scotland, 1937–44.

24 S.R.O. DD 10/289. File 33496/43E Report of the inter-departmental committee, para. 213.

25 S.R.O. DD 10/289, paras. 6 and 3 of covering note.

26 To be followed by Sir David Alan Hay in 1936 and by Lord Nigel Douglas-Hamilton in 1937. Their reports until the outbreak of war are Cmd. 4958; Cmd. 5089; Cmd. 5245; Cmd. 5604; Cmd. 5905.

27 Report of the commissioner for the special areas in Scotland, 21 Dec. 1934 to 30 June 1935. Cmd. 4958. 10.

28 Ibid. p. 12.

29 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Report of inter-departmental committee, 1935, para. 137.

30 Ibid. para. 150.

31 Ibid. para. 143.

32 Ibid. para. 144.

33 Ibid. para. 145.

34 Ibid. para. 147.

35 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Covering note to inter-departmental report, 27 Sept. 1935, paras. I(a) and (b), III, and IV.

36 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Memorandum by the minister without portfolio, 4 Oct. 1935.

37 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Report of the cabinet committee on the reports of the commissioners for special areas, 18 Oct. 1935.

38 Cmd. 4958, Cmd. 5245, Cmd. 5604, Cmd. 5905.

39 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Report of inter-departmental committee, 1935, para. 151.

40 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Memorandum of 16 Oct. 1935 in minutes of ninth meeting of cabinet committee, 17 Oct. 1935.

41 S.R.O. DD 10/84. Scottish economic committee, 1936–9.

42 S.R.O. home and health department (HH) 36/117. Sir William Goodchild to C. C. Cunningham, 3 Sept. 1937. An interesting slant on relations between the secretary of the Scottish economic committee and the commissioner is in a minute of a meeting between the secretary of state and the commissioner on the future of the committee, 2 Mar. 1939. ‘He [the commissioner] suggested that Sir William Goodchild's attitude had been somewhat nationalist, and that this had greatly influenced the work and outlook of the Committee. He criticised its general activities on the ground that it had considered all its problems from the point of view of Scotland as an economic unit, instead of from the point of view of Scotland as part of a Great Britain economic unit. He suggested in passing that for this reason a secretary of English birth and experience would be more likely to get things in their proper perspective.’ S.R.O. DD 10/178.

43 S.R.O. DD 10/171. Appendix to SA38, circulated after 16th meeting of inter-departmental committee.

44 S.R.O. DD 10/171. Corporation of Glasgow to Scottish Office, 11 Dec. 1936.

45 Cmd. 5303.

46 S.R.O. DD 10/171. Minutes of 16th meeting of inter-departmental committee, 7 Dec. 1936.

47 S.R.O. DD 10/172. Memorandum to the secretary of state, 9 Dec. 1936.

48 S.R.O. DD 10/171. Minutes of 17th meeting, 15 Dec. 1936.

49 S.R.O. DD 10/172. Memorandum to the secretary of state, 9 Dec. 1936.

50 S.R.O. DD 10/172. P. J. Rose to David Milne, 18 Dec. 1936.

51 S.R.O. DD 10/172. P. J. Rose to secretary of state, 1 Jan. 1937.

52 S.R.O. DD 10/172. Walter Elliot to P. J. Rose, 2 Jan. 1937.

53 S.R.O. DD 10/170. Report of inter-departmental committee, pp. 45 and 49.

54 S.R.O. DD 10/14. Memorandum on the future of the Special Areas, 31 Mar. 1939.

55 S.R.O. DD 10/169. Covering note, para. 3.

56 S.R.O. DD 10/178. Chancellor of Exchequer to secretary of state, 28 Nov. 1938.

57 S.R.O. DD 10/178. Note of meeting between commissioner and secretary of state, 2 Mar. 1939. The issues are discussed more fully in departmental memoranda in S.R.O. DD 10/173 and 175.

58 S.R.O. DD 10/175. Notes on the position, by the commissioner for Special Areas, 8 June 1938, para. 15.

59 Ibid. para. 16.

60 S.R.O. DD 10/178. Note of meeting between secretary of state and commissioner, a March 1939.

61 S.R.O. DD 10/175. Memorandum for the secretary of state, 17 June 1938, para. 6.

62 Ibid. para 2.

63 S.R.O. DD 10/174. Memorandum by P. J. Rose, 5 Sept. 1938, para. 4.

64 S.R.O. DD 10/178. Commissioner to secretary of state, 21 Dec. 1938.

65 Ibid.

66 Following the Report of the committe on Scottish administration, 1937 (Gilmour Committee). Cmd. 5563, especially para. 39: ‘…as far as possible the aim should be to conduct the day-to-day administration from Edinburgh, leaving the London Office, in the main, a Parliamentary and Liaison Officers’. The contrasting views of Lord Rosebery on such moves are instructive. See Dalyell, T., Devolution: the end of Britain? (London, 1977), 65–6Google Scholar.

67 S.R.O. DD 10/175. Memorandum ‘The state of Scotland’, dated 18 December 1937. That the memorandum was by Elliot, and that he thought it applied with even more force some years later is shown by his circulation of the same document to the Advisory Council of ex-Secretaries of State on Post-War Problems on 4 May 1942. (S.R.O. HH 50/189). Elliot then explained that he had circulated the document to the cabinet to show the ‘disparity’ between Scottish and English conditions, a disparity which he believed had increased in both economic and social matters. Elliot's own interests led him to be more concerned with the social problems of health and housing than with the economic problems of industrial diversification and rejuvenation.

68 In writing this article I have benefited from discussion with my colleague Dr M. W. Kirby.