History documentary charting the birth and growth of the Scottish nation.
As a partner in the British Empire, Scotland began the 20th century with an advanced economy and a world-beating heavy industry. But in the closing decades its sense of Britishness was in doubt and a Scottish Parliament sat in Edinburgh for the first time since 1707. Charting Scotland's darkest century, Neil Oliver discovers a country driven to self-determination through a series of economic crises so deep that her most striking export became her own disillusioned population.
As a partner in the British Empire, Scotland began the 20th century with an advanced economy and a world-beating heavy industry. But in the closing decades its sense of Britishness was in doubt and a Scottish Parliament sat in Edinburgh for the first time since 1707. Charting Scotland's darkest century, Neil Oliver discovers a country driven to self-determination through a series of economic crises so deep that her most striking export became her own disillusioned population.
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00:00From the top of a hill on the Isle of Bute, in the early 1920s, Scots would have seen
00:27an incredible sight and a clue to the great hidden catastrophe of 20th century Scotland.
00:43Down there, the Firth of Clyde would have been full of ships coming and going across
00:46the world, made from Scottish steel, powered by Scottish coal. These ships were the backbone
00:53of Scottish life. What was so wrong with all of that? The cargo.
01:06That cargo was the most precious thing Scotland could produce, its own people. Tens of thousands
01:12of them abandoning their homeland for the promise of a better life across the sea.
01:24Scotland was bleeding, the lifeblood of the nation draining away. And as the ambitious,
01:30the talented, the optimistic and the restless departed, some of those left behind began
01:35to ask, what could be done to stop the human hemorrhage, to save this failing nation?
01:43Over 200 years earlier, Scotland had surrendered her sovereignty to become a partner in Great
01:48Britain. And through that union, and the empire that followed, Scots had earned rich rewards.
01:57But with Scotland in crisis, was it time to renegotiate that union? Was it time for Scotland
02:05to take back control of her own affairs?
03:05The Scotland that entered the 20th century boasted one of the strongest economies in
03:10all of Europe, strength that was rooted almost entirely in heavy industry.
03:20The 20th century was forged here, in the ironworks of Lanarkshire. These hand-stoked furnaces
03:27turned iron ore into some of the hardest, strongest metals the world had yet seen, and
03:32transformed central Scotland into the workshop of the British Empire, when the British Empire
03:38covered a quarter of the globe.
03:42Girders, boilers, bridges, ships. Scottish engineering became a guarantee of precision
03:51and quality, renowned across the world. And Scotland's industrialists grew outrageously
03:58rich on the rewards. Their success was fuelled by the iron ore and coal locked inside the
04:05earth of central Scotland, around towns like Motherwell.
04:15One family firm of metalmakers, the Colvilles, started smelting iron here in the 1870s. They
04:22were just one of many small, independent ironworks in the town, but they were the most innovative.
04:28And they quickly developed the technological know-how to make the new metal that everyone
04:33wanted, steel. Something which would transform their fortunes and allow them to take their
04:41place among Scotland's other magnets of global industry.
04:48The Colvilles were the sort of bosses who kept wages low, but gave their workers time
04:52off on Sundays to go to church. They were big on God, big on politics, and of course,
04:59big on profit.
05:03Archibald and David Colville, the second generation of the family, were in charge of the firm
05:08as Britain and Germany prepared for war. And demand for their Motherwell steel was sent
05:14rocketing.
05:17The First World War was an opportunity for many Scottish industries, and Colville's was
05:22no different. This plant was flung into the war effort, churning out orders for armour,
05:27for shell casings, and for tanks. As the war progressed, Colville's expanded to become
05:33the biggest steelworks in Scotland. By 1917, this was the kind of munitions factory that
05:39the King visited.
05:49In the post-war years, the firm kept expanding. As the firm grew and grew, the whole town
05:56came to identify itself with steel, with Colville's in particular. The workers formed bands, sports
06:03clubs, educational institutes, and created a community out of an industry.
06:12Across central Scotland, similar communities rose up around coal seams, iron foundries,
06:17and steelworks. Heavy industry wove central Scotland together.
06:29But there was a catch. A particularly Scottish catch. It brought home every week on Wages
06:37Day, the day when Scotland's skilled workers received much less money than their counterparts
06:41in England for doing exactly the same job. It made Scottish industry competitive, but
06:48it consigned many Scottish families to live in squalor, without running water or basic
06:54sanitation. Overcrowding was six times higher than in England, and infant mortality was
07:02among the very worst in Western Europe.
07:06This was the contract, the unspoken agreement that bound industrial Scotland together. Acceptance
07:12of it was the secret ingredient locked inside every tonne of coal, every ingot of iron,
07:17and every penny of profit.
07:22But still the workers came, drawn to the furnaces like moths to the flame, sucked into the workshop
07:29of the empire. Until by 1921, across central Scotland, around 500,000 livelihoods depended
07:37on the health of heavy industry, on steelworks and coal mines and shipbuilding, on an incredible
07:43boom that couldn't last forever. Scotland had become a house of cards.
07:55When the collapse came, it came fast. In peacetime, no one needed shell casings or tanks, no one
08:04needed new ships. So the workshop of the empire grew quiet. Industrial Scotland was plunged
08:15into crisis. The fortunate ones merely had their wages slashed. The unfortunate ones
08:24lost everything. Around the steel town of Motherwell alone, unemployment increased from
08:31under 2,000 to over 12,000. Motherwell became one of the worst hit places in Scotland.
08:44The unemployed, the able-bodied, destitute, poor as they were known, flooded into the
08:49parish councils of Lanarkshire looking for poor relief. And here, in Erbil Cemetery in
08:54Motherwell, they found the best that Industrial Scotland had to offer. One week in three,
08:59earning 11p a day, burying the dead. Those that wanted something better than poor relief
09:11or the dole started to leave their stricken communities, to emigrate from central Scotland
09:17like they'd never emigrated before. In 1921 alone, Scotland lost 50,000 people, a greater
09:29proportion that year than almost any other country in Europe.
09:47This wasn't a clearance, but it was an exodus. Scots left in droves, on one-way tickets to
09:53the New World. And as ship after ship sailed out of the Clyde, away past Canada Hill, more
09:58and more Scots began to ask just why their country was in such a mess. What they wanted
10:04was a New World right here, in Scotland itself. Scots weren't alone in seeking a New World,
10:16a new beginning. Just a few years earlier, Russia had had its Communist Revolution. And
10:23in the Balkans, a host of brand new nations had emerged from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian
10:28Empire. Much closer to home, Ireland was in the grip of assertive nationalism to free
10:34itself from Britain's grip. Was it time for Scotland to take control of her own future
10:40too? Was it time for Home Rule? Home Rule was hardly a new idea. The earlier British
11:05governments had flirted with the notion, seeing it as a way to strengthen the empire rather
11:09than weaken it. But with Scotland in crisis, calls for a new kind of Home Rule began to grow louder.
11:19The most radical Scots called for complete independence,
11:23for national liberation as they saw it.
11:31And in 1922, one of the strongest supporters of that idea
11:35was to be found tucked away in the quiet seaside town of Montrose.
11:40Christopher Murray Greave was a journalist who lived here in Montrose.
11:48His pen name was Hugh McDermott and his house was just along this street.
11:56He made his home at 16 Links Avenue and in 1922, the first number of a literary magazine was issued
12:02from that address. It was the beginning of a Scottish literary revival and there was a new
12:08name among the contributors. To McDermott, Scotland's journey to independence had to start
12:16with poetry. He thought that Scotland had lost itself, been swamped by its bigger neighbour,
12:23by England and he wanted to kick-start Scottish culture,
12:28to create something modern and vital by drawing on something old and pure.
12:38The language of the medieval poets. Poets who wrote before the influence of England and English,
12:45who expressed their ideas and their emotions in their own distinctive way.
12:53In 1922, McDermott launched his own magazine, the Scottish Chapbook, publishing modern poems
13:00written in a kind of ancient Scots, a language that turned rainbows back into poetry.
13:08It turned rainbows back into water-goes.
13:38McDermott's poems seemed at once ancient and modern and were rapturously received.
14:00McDermott's voice and his agenda reached the ears of other writers and poets and ignited
14:06the whole Scottish literary scene. His house became a meeting place for all those drawn
14:11into his circle. Here, great writers like Lewis Grassock Gibbon and Compton MacKenzie
14:16congregated to talk about Scotland. They didn't all share McDermott's conviction that Scotland
14:23needed to be liberated from English influence and they didn't all share the conviction that
14:29and they didn't all write in Scots, but they did agree that Scottish culture desperately
14:34needed to be revived. Hugh McDermott had got Scotland going. He had succeeded in opening
14:43a door into the world of modern ideas and started a movement, a movement that became
14:49known as a Scottish Renaissance. Soon the newspapers and the magazines were full of
14:58articles and letters and reviews, all of them discussing the national condition and asking
15:04just what it was that was wrong with this small failing nation and what could be done to make it
15:10better. With Scottish culture invigorated, McDermott wanted to go further. He was already
15:19involved in local politics as a socialist councillor with nationalist sympathies,
15:25but in 1923 he took up the latest political movement sweeping Europe,
15:33fascism.
15:37Not long after Mussolini marched on Rome to seize power in Italy, McDermott published an article
15:56inciting Scottish fascism. He even urged unemployed ex-servicemen
16:01to march on the highlands and islands and reclaim the land for themselves.
16:08Is it not time for a Scottish fascism to oppose the anti-national forces which are robbing Scotland
16:17of the finest elements of its population and at one and the same time denying the Scottish
16:22people access to millions of acres of the finest scenery in Scotland and setting the
16:29sport of English plutocrats before the vital needs of the country? Is it not time to smash
16:36the laws which sanction and ensure such things? Rights are not asked, they are taken,
16:43and Scotland is a sovereign country entitled to resume her independence at will.
16:55But McDermott's call to fascism went unheeded among those who might have joined an uprising.
17:06Instead, the unemployed and low-paid workers of the industrial belt listened to the promises of
17:11Scotland's growing socialist movement, whose activists and Labour MPs encouraged them to
17:17believe in the kind of improvements that a socialist government in charge of Britain
17:21would deliver. If Scotland's socialists also supported Home Rule, and many of them did,
17:28it was never as much of a priority for them as housing or sanitation, or the
17:34or the issue that would finally force Britain into confrontation.
17:42Wages.
17:46In 1926, when coal miners were facing a wage cut,
17:49Britain's unions joined together and called a general strike.
17:58The government placed troops on standby and called for volunteers to keep essential services running.
18:04Thousands volunteered, terrified that Bolsheviks, as they saw them, might take over Britain.
18:14After just a few days, the strike in Scotland lost its momentum.
18:19Some miners held out for several months, but eventually they all returned, defeated, to work.
18:26For many workers of the industrial belt, the future would be just like the past,
18:31where they had to know their place, not their worth.
18:44And those industrialists who ran Scotland were only too happy to oblige.
18:55So
19:08most of the men who owned Scotland's factories resisted the influence of trade unions,
19:13and if they looked out for their employees, it was largely through good Christian charity.
19:20John Colville, one of the third generation of the family,
19:23donated a golf course to his grateful workers
19:26to thank them for making his firm a fortune during the last war.
19:32On the board of his family's steel firm, he sat alongside some of the supreme magnates of
19:37Scotland's industry. Men who, between them, sat on the board of over 50 leading companies
19:42and who effectively controlled the Scottish economy.
19:46Their grip extended deep into politics. John Colville would himself become an MP and, later,
19:53Secretary of State for Scotland.
19:58They were symptomatic of a country that was locked in the past.
20:04And those Scots who wanted a better life had to seek it abroad.
20:0950,000 left in 1926.
20:1250,000 left in 1926.
20:16And yet another 50,000 in 1927.
20:27To nationalists like Hugh McDermott, the scale of emigration was a sure sign that Scotland was in
20:32crisis.
20:39McDermott no longer called for fascist uprisings. Instead, he concentrated his efforts on the ballot
20:45box.
20:48In 1928, he joined up with a small handful of fellow travellers
20:53to form a new political party, the National Party of Scotland.
20:57McDermott set out the party's aims in a letter that's held at Edinburgh University.
21:04Here, on page two, you see what it was that prompted McDermott to write this.
21:09In one word, emigration. See here. A very large part of the Scottish expenditure on education
21:15has gone, not to build up the national prosperity, but to export Scotsmen to America and elsewhere,
21:22to undertake precisely the kind of work they ought to have been doing at home.
21:27In other words, McDermott wanted all of the opportunities of the new world here in Scotland
21:32itself. And he believed that the only way to do that was through independence.
21:38This wasn't the first time a Scottish Parliament had been called for.
21:42Over the years, many of the established political parties had backed Home Rule.
21:47But, as McDermott says here, Bill after Bill had been defeated by the sheer number of English MPs
21:53at Westminster. Now, Scots who wanted Home Rule would have a new option.
21:59A political party whose sole objective was independence.
22:04McDermott expected the National Party to attract big support at the election of 1929.
22:12But they secured just 3,000 votes.
22:15But they secured just 3,000 votes. An unconvincing start for a liberation movement.
22:24Instead, Scots voted for the devil they knew.
22:27For socialism. For union. And for men of the old industrial order, like John Colville.
22:36But just a few months after the election, their world was shaken to its core.
22:41The financial markets crashed. The Great Depression took hold.
22:46And the economic crises of the previous decade were dreadfully outdone.
23:02Now the ice lays its smooth claws on this hill.
23:06The sun looks from the hill, helmed in his winter casket,
23:11and sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
23:15The water at the mill sounds more hoarse and dull.
23:20The miller's daughter, walking by with frozen fingers soldered to her basket,
23:25seems to be knocking upon a hundred leagues of floor with her light heels,
23:30and mocking Percy and Douglas dead, and Bruce on his burial bed.
23:40To Edwin Muir, one of the leading writers of the Scottish Renaissance,
23:44it was as though Scotland was stuck in a perpetual winter.
23:50Unlike MacDermid, he wasn't a nationalist first and foremost,
23:54but a socialist. A political position that he developed as a youth.
24:00Edwin Muir came originally from Orkney,
24:02and arrived in the centre of industrialised Glasgow aged just 14.
24:06Something that he said was like leaving the 18th century and leaping straight into the 20th.
24:22Muir developed a dark fascination for the industrial world he saw around him.
24:26And in 1934, he decided to go on a journey around Scotland to see for himself
24:32what had become of the country at the hands of those who ruled it.
24:39Here in Lanarkshire, Edwin Muir found a world made up of exploiters and exploited.
24:45A landscape utterly devoid of humanity.
24:48Among the unemployed hanging around the labour exchanges, he found only despair.
24:52The civilised world had forgotten about them,
24:55had forgotten this whole part of Scotland.
24:57As a socialist, Muir was appalled.
25:04Muir compared it to the most painful episode of Scotland's history.
25:11A century ago, there was a great clearance from the Highlands,
25:15which still rouses the anger of the people living there.
25:18At present, on a far bigger scale, a silent clearance is going on in industrial Scotland.
25:25A clearance not of human beings, but of what they depend upon for life.
25:29Everything which could give meaning to their existence
25:32in the grotesque industrial towns of Lanarkshire is slipping from them.
25:43The 20th century was not the end of Muir.
25:46The 20th century was not even 35 years old,
25:50yet almost as many Scottish children had died in poverty
25:54as soldiers had been killed during the entire First World War.
25:59And over 400,000 Scots had left in the preceding 13 years alone.
26:06Old Scotland had failed, and something had to be done.
26:10To those like Edwin Muir, the solution was clear.
26:15Only the power of a socialist government in Westminster
26:18could fix all Scotland's social problems.
26:22But MacDermid and his fellow nationalists disagreed.
26:28Their revolution would see all Scotland's problems fixed by its own parliament.
26:35But the nation's internal problems would be overshadowed.
26:40By concerns of graver consequence.
26:44And the new Scotland would have to wait.
27:06The Kingdom of Fife.
27:10The Kingdom of Fife.
27:13The Kingdom of Fife.
27:17The Kingdom of Fife.
27:19Glenrothes is one of the very few Scottish towns without a memorial to the dead
27:24either of the First or the Second World War because history didn't start here until 1948.
27:33Glenrothes and the other Scottish new towns were planned towns,
27:38emblems of a new world, of an optimism born of victory.
27:43During the Second World War, Britain had pulled together to defeat Hitler's fascism.
27:48The nation's efforts had been directed from London, specifically from Whitehall.
27:54Now, the first government after the Second World War wanted to use the power of that
27:59same central planning to create a new Britain, a socialist Britain that would eradicate
28:06five giant evils, squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease.
28:16In Glenrothes, their plans included a house and a job for life at the nearby Rothes super pit,
28:24and miners came in their thousands from the central belt,
28:27drawn by the prospect of new houses and hourly wages.
28:31From cradle to grave, the state would provide, and Scotland embraced this great British future.
28:40A visionary scheme to light up the highlands through hydroelectric power
28:43was set up in Argyllshire. At a stroke, 10,000 jobs were created, 10,000 livelihoods were secured.
28:53A car factory was boldly founded at Linwood, making hillman imps.
28:58In Motherwell, money was sunk into more steel making on a site at Colville's.
29:03Using all the latest technology, this place would roll steel thinner than ever before.
29:09It was to be called Ravenscraig.
29:28The planners had projected that some old industries would struggle, that some would even die.
29:45But these vast new projects would mop up any unemployed.
29:49They would be the industrial linchpins around which the new Scotland would take shape.
29:54And through the next decade, through changes of government and boom and bust,
29:59the British state grew and unemployment remained low.
30:05But by the early 1960s, it was clear that Scotland wasn't going to plan.
30:12Scotland might have started to look different, but for most Scots, it didn't feel different.
30:17New industries, major building projects, like this bridge,
30:21began to appear, but not quickly enough.
30:25And as the old industries went into terminal decline, so the unemployment figures crept up.
30:33Remote control from Whitehall wasn't working.
30:37It was as if the planners were out of touch with the consequences of their decisions.
30:42What Scotland needed was someone who would shake up the planners,
30:46someone who could ensure that Britain served Scotland better.
30:49In Harold Wilson's Labour Party, there was just the man.
30:53The actual facts are stark. They're grim for Scotland.
30:58And only Labour planning will improve the position and give us the 40,000 jobs a year
31:03that we really need. In housing, it's a tragic story.
31:14And I will make you fishers of men.
31:16Those were Christ's words to Andrew and Peter, the first apostles,
31:20when he returned from the wilderness and found them fishing on the Sea of Galilee.
31:28It's meant as a rallying cry for those who work here at St Andrew's House,
31:32the government HQ in Scotland, to look out for the welfare of their fellow men.
31:38In 1964, the new boss here was Willie Ross, and he was determined to do just that.
31:44And he was determined to do just that in his own distinctive way.
31:50Willie Ross was the son of a train driver whose political beliefs had been forged when he worked
31:55as a teacher in working-class communities in Glasgow in the 1920s and 1930s.
32:02During the war, he had served as Lord Mountbatten's personal signals officer in the Far East.
32:08Once demobbed, he became a Labour MP and had spent over a decade in opposition.
32:14Learning how Britain worked.
32:18Willie Ross knew that the fight for Scotland didn't lie just here in Edinburgh,
32:22so he took it right to the heart of the British government.
32:25In cabinet meetings, he would bang on the table, demanding more money for his patch,
32:29more money for Scotland. Ross was a fearsome sight, and even the Prime Minister was intimidated.
32:37Willie Ross decided to bring the planning process closer to home,
32:40to St Andrew's House, and he quickly set to work on a detailed master plan.
32:47The master plan for improving Scotland was unveiled early in 1966.
32:51It was state planning, socialist style, and on a scale never before seen in Scotland.
32:57It was big on ambition and obsessive about the details.
33:01Jobs, houses, roads, power supplies, nothing was overlooked.
33:06And if it succeeded, Scotland would be transformed.
33:10It was to cost £2,000 million.
33:18But the ink was barely dry on the master plan before disaster struck.
33:23In 1967, the pound was devalued.
33:26The British Treasury froze all government spending.
33:30And the promises Willie Ross had made to the electorate just a year earlier
33:33were, at a stroke, in tatters.
33:41The unemployment that he'd been trying to alleviate went through the roof,
33:45and Scots left for Canada and Australia on £10 tickets to a brighter future.
34:40Away from the world of politics, of failed plans and economic turmoil,
35:05Scotland had been quietly changing.
35:08Seeds sown in the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s
35:11had finally taken root in the popular imagination.
35:15And a new generation had woken up to Scotland's distinctive culture and history.
35:22The site of Bannockburn, the battle in 1314,
35:25where the Scots decisively defeated an invading English army,
35:29was commemorated with this state-of-the-art monument.
35:32And a statue was raised to the victorious Robert the Bruce.
35:38Bruce's exploits were further celebrated in a new song,
35:45Flower of Scotland, that urged Scots to rise now and be a nation again.
35:55The mythology of Scotland as a once-victorious nation
35:58struck a chord with those Scots who felt that Scotland
36:01had been reduced to Scotlandshire, a sort of badly-run province of Britain.
36:07All of this powerful nationalist sentiment
36:10couldn't help but spill over into Scottish politics.
36:36In November 1967, the Scottish National Party won a by-election in Hamilton.
36:42The party that had spent three decades losing deposits up and down the country
36:47suddenly seemed to be in tune with the times.
36:52I have to say thanks to Hamilton for making history for Scotland.
36:59The major political parties hoped it was a blip, but it wasn't.
37:04The SNP started to pick up votes from new supporters,
37:08drawn from new battlegrounds in Scottish politics.
37:17All along the River Clyde, shipyards had turned out
37:20some of the most famous vessels the world had ever seen.
37:23This wasn't just an industry, it was a symbol of the nation's identity,
37:27and it was in trouble.
37:29One by one, the shipyards started to go to the wall.
37:34In 1971, one shipyard, Upper Clyde Shipyard,
37:38employed around 13,000 people and was struggling with large debts.
37:44Its closure would devastate the local area.
37:48Yet the Westminster government was refusing to bail it out.
37:54The workers started a sit-in and a campaign to keep the shipyard open.
37:58Churches, councils, trade unions,
38:01tens of thousands of ordinary Scots joined the protests.
38:07Eventually, the shipyard was kept open.
38:11But more Scots than ever before were coming to believe
38:15that Westminster was either completely out of touch with Scottish affairs
38:19or was being held hostage by the British Empire.
38:23The shipyard was closed to the public for a period of time,
38:26but the people who were out of touch with Scottish affairs,
38:30or worse, simply didn't care.
38:38And all the time, the Scottish National Party felt the benefit.
38:46Then, somewhere in the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland,
38:51the drill of an oil rig hit black gold
38:53and the support for Scottish independence rocketed.
39:03Oil changed Scottish politics overnight, and there was lots of it.
39:08Imagine what could happen, said the nationalists, if Scotland kept it all.
39:17It was Scotland's oil after all, wasn't it?
39:23To the SNP it was, and they argued it should be used to benefit Scotland.
39:30After two decades of planning and spending,
39:32the five great social evils had far from vanished.
39:37Scots still lived in some of the poorest housing in Britain,
39:40had the worst health in the Western world,
39:43had the smallest children in the UK.
39:46Oil, said the SNP, could eliminate all of these ills
39:50in a way that Westminster planning never had.
39:54The people of Scotland could have the very best healthcare, housing, education.
40:02Scotland could finally catch up with England,
40:05might even be a match for anywhere in the world.
40:14By early 1974, almost a fifth of Scots backed the SNP.
40:19Their picture of a wealthy, independent Scotland
40:22was particularly seductive in a Britain that seemed locked
40:25in a downward spiral of inflation, strikes and strife.
40:31In the general election of February that year,
40:33the SNP turned their support into an all-time electoral high of seven seats.
40:41Where would the SNP rise end?
40:43To the bigger parties, it was clear that something had to be done.
40:50The answer seemed to be a kind of home rule called devolution.
40:56It would see the powers that one man, Willie Ross,
40:59enjoyed as Scottish Secretary,
41:01placed under the control of an elected assembly.
41:07The only problem was that many of the Scottish MPs
41:10The only problem was that many of the Scottish Labour MPs didn't want it.
41:19They believed that the problems of Scotland were more likely to be solved
41:22by a socialist government in Westminster than by any assembly in Edinburgh.
41:28Chairman, I want to enter this debate in terms of the context of devolution.
41:34All through the summer of 1974, the ruling Labour Party remained bogged down in debate.
41:40And divided on grounds of principle.
41:42Now in Scotland at the moment, there are a very large number of pressure groups
41:46led largely by the Scottish Nationals Party.
41:50But the time for principles was nearing an end.
41:54Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson wanted to call another election
41:57to strengthen his position in Westminster.
42:00To him it was simple.
42:01Devolution would be a vital vote winner in Scotland.
42:04With another general election looming, and the SNP still on the rise,
42:08the Labour Party had to have a Home Rule policy.
42:12So Harold Wilson forced it through against the wishes of many Scots Labour MPs
42:17who felt it was a betrayal of socialism
42:19and a policy guaranteed to lead to the break-up of Britain.
42:23It was in this atmosphere of division and self-interest
42:27that Scotland's first Home Rule referendum was born.
42:34Labour's promise of a referendum on Home Rule didn't stave off the rise of the SNP.
42:40Nor did it unite the ruling Labour Party, or even the public.
42:43Do you think you'll be able to vote yes, or vote no?
42:46I'm just saying.
42:46OK.
42:48I can't put that on you then.
42:49Not yet.
42:51It took the politicians four years to agree the scheme.
42:54And during those four years, it was transformed into a referendum with a catch.
42:59A catch that said 40% of the entire electorate would have to vote yes to win the day.
43:07What actually do we control if we vote yes?
43:10Well, you control education, housing, health, the environment, transport.
43:15A lot of the things that are run by the Secretary of State at the moment.
43:21With an electorate of nearly three and three quarter million,
43:24With an electorate of nearly three and three quarter million,
43:29the Scottish office has drafted in an army of clerks to count the votes,
43:33and they'll be in action from early tomorrow morning.
43:38On the 1st of March 1979, Scotland went to the polls.
43:42Hereby declare that on the basis of the count results in the several counting areas,
43:50the count result which I intend to certify for Scotland is as follows.
43:56Oh, look at this.
43:57This was all prepared for 1979.
44:06Edinburgh's Royal High School was kitted out like a parliament
44:09in the expectation that Scots would vote yes in the devolution referendum.
44:19Number of yes votes, 1,230,937.
44:29Number of no votes, 1,153,500.
44:36Scotland had voted yes, but the majority wasn't big enough to win the referendum.
44:42If it was a test of the country's determination,
44:45then it showed a lack of national resolve.
44:47It also revealed a population divided between Scottishness and Britishness.
44:56The plan for an assembly in the Royal High School
44:59was Britain's solution to its Scottish problem.
45:03To many Scots, it was just another Westminster promise that didn't deliver.
45:08A half-hearted enterprise that failed because of its half-heartedness.
45:13And as the momentum towards Home Rule petered out,
45:17a new era dawned, one that would have a profound influence on Scotland.
45:25Good afternoon, Prime Minister.
45:29Margaret Thatcher had a new vision for Britain,
45:33one inspired by the work of an 18th-century Scot called Adam Smith.
45:37The man who had given the world the idea of free trade.
45:44Smith believed that markets had to operate freely
45:47according to their own fundamental laws.
45:54And in Margaret Thatcher's modern version of his idea,
45:58the free market had to be brought to bear with greatest urgency
46:02on Britain's national island.
46:03To her, these vast, dilapidated and inefficient concerns
46:08had been kept open by the state for purely social reasons,
46:12to provide jobs rather than make profit.
46:15Something which couldn't go on.
46:19Margaret Thatcher's vision for the future
46:21was to create a free market,
46:23a free market for all,
46:25a free market for all,
46:26a free market for all,
46:28a free market for all,
46:29a free market for all,
46:30a free market for all,
46:32a free market for all,
46:34a free market for all.
46:40Shipbuilding had won a few battles,
46:42but had lost its war.
46:46And in the early 1980s,
46:48that other great pillar of Scottish industry,
46:51of Scottish life,
46:52came under threat.
47:00Coal.
47:03Of exploitation.
47:05But many of the pits had never been profitable
47:07and had been kept going only by subsidies.
47:10Now, any pits that couldn't make money
47:14were to be closed.
47:26Where there is discord,
47:28may we bring harmony.
47:30Where there is error,
47:31may we bring truth.
47:33Where there is doubt,
47:34may we bring faith.
47:36And where there is despair,
47:38may we bring hope.
47:54Can you describe when you became aware
47:56that the industry was going to go downhill?
47:59Was there a day came when you realised
48:01that the game was up?
48:02I was sorry it was ever coming.
48:04I knew it was coming,
48:05but I was sorry
48:06because there were going to be a lot of people with no jobs.
48:09That was that.
48:10It made so much sense
48:11why all these towns were here.
48:13Because they were either here to support a pit
48:15or they were here for the steelworks or whatever.
48:17And now these towns have been,
48:18it's as if the tide's gone out
48:21and left these places high and dry.
48:23There's nothing left.
48:29Allentown.
48:30Shorts.
48:31Cumnock.
48:32Bonnyrig.
48:34The list of places left behind as that tide went out
48:37stretches from one end of central Scotland to the other.
48:45Those who had chosen to stay,
48:47those who had faced the future here in Scotland
48:50rather than emigrate,
48:51were left adrift.
48:53As once and for all,
48:54their way of life was lost.
49:03In the early 1980s,
49:04unemployment returned to levels unknown since the 1920s.
49:14If this was Margaret Thatcher's new vision of Britain,
49:18then it seemed to many Scots
49:19to be a place without compassion.
49:23And Scots began to notice
49:26that only a small number of them
49:28had voted for her and her party.
49:33When Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives
49:35won the election in 1987,
49:37it was their third victory in a row
49:40and the third time that Scotland voted overwhelmingly against her.
49:46Scotland was being ruled
49:48without the consent of the majority of its people.
49:50And at this rate,
49:52its national interests could be overlooked forever.
50:00As this reality sank in,
50:02Home Rule got a new lease of life.
50:08The idea of devolution had once divided Scottish opinion.
50:12What was needed now was a scheme that would unite.
50:21In 1988,
50:23many of the country's political and civic leaders met
50:26to thrash out a plan
50:27that would restore the Scottish people's right
50:29to decide their own form of government.
50:34A scheme based on the principle of self-determination.
50:44And here it is,
50:46a claim of right for Scotland.
50:48We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention,
50:52do hereby acknowledge and assert the sovereign right
50:55of the Scottish people
50:56to determine the form of government
50:58best suited to their needs.
51:00We further declare and pledge
51:02that our actions and deliberations
51:04shall be directed to the following end.
51:07To agree a scheme for an Assembly or Parliament for Scotland.
51:11And there, the second name,
51:13Donald Dewar.
51:15And after his,
51:17name after name,
51:18page after page.
51:24The claim of right was clear and unequivocal.
51:27The crisis of the 20th century
51:28had gone far beyond material things,
51:31beyond jobs,
51:32beyond housing.
51:34It threatened the very nature of Scotland's existence.
51:38The people should no longer be governed without consent,
51:41said the claim of right.
51:42Only a Scottish Parliament
51:44could safeguard Scotland's identity now.
51:54One opposition party,
51:55the SNP,
51:57didn't back the claim of right.
51:59But for almost 60 years,
52:01their calls for a Parliament
52:02had echoed across Scottish politics.
52:06With support for out-and-out independence increasing,
52:09and Scotland's other opposition parties
52:10now committed to a Parliament as well,
52:13Scotland grew restless.
52:17Among the people,
52:18a sense of nationhood grew,
52:21and was heard.
52:23At Murrayfield in 1990,
52:25Scots embraced their own unofficial national anthem
52:28for a rugby match against England.
52:31What song did they choose?
52:3460,000 Scots
52:36got behind their country
52:37and belted out the sentimental 60s folk song
52:40Flower of Scotland,
52:41and inspired Scotland to a famous victory
52:44over their oldest adversaries.
53:10And the English team
53:12went right on singing God Save the Queen,
53:15as if England and Britain
53:17were one and the same thing.
53:24It was just sport,
53:26but it told its own story.
53:30People who had begun the century
53:32as loyal subjects of Britain
53:34had changed.
53:36They were no longer the same.
53:37And they no longer unquestioningly accepted
53:39that to be Scottish was,
53:41first and foremost,
53:42to be British.
54:08But Britain had changed, too.
54:11The version of Britain
54:12that Scots had understood and supported
54:15was gone.
54:17And it had been replaced
54:18with something very different.
54:20Something that Scots didn't recognise
54:22as their own creation.
54:37Ravenscraig Steelworks
54:39had been the jewel of post-war planning.
54:42One of the foundations
54:43on which 20th century Scotland
54:44was supposed to be built.
54:49By the time it came down in 1996,
54:52Scots the length and breadth of the country
54:54were united in an urgent mission
54:56to take back political control
54:58of the country.
54:59And it was a decision
55:00that was made by the people of Scotland.
55:02It was a decision
55:03that was made by the people of Scotland.
55:05It was a decision
55:06to take back political control.
55:12The nation had a settled will.
55:33The birch trees
55:34are reclaiming the site of Ravenscraig.
55:37The furnaces, coke piles,
55:39iron stores and cooling towers
55:41are long gone.
55:43And now any traces
55:45of one version of the old Scotland
55:47are giving way to a much older one.
55:50The heavy industries
55:51of the 19th and 20th centuries
55:53have all but vanished.
55:55And Scotland, the land,
55:57is taking the place back.
55:59But what lingers
56:01is a sense that something has gone
56:04that has not yet been replaced.
56:11There once was a settled will.
56:14In 1999,
56:15that settled will was turned
56:17into a parliament.
56:18Not an assembly,
56:20but a parliament.
56:25When hard economic times
56:26forced Scots to question the union,
56:29Scotland created a new relationship
56:31with its old partner.
56:33And in doing so,
56:35helped to create a new kind of Britain.
56:39For most of the 20th century,
56:41Scotland's story was the story
56:43of a failing nation.
56:45One that couldn't keep hold
56:46of its population.
56:52In the first years of the 21st century,
56:55Scotland's story changed.
56:57Scotland became a place
56:58in which to stay
57:00rather than leave.
57:01A place to come to.
57:03Rather than go from.
57:07So what of the future
57:09for the five million people
57:10who live here today?
57:12As the 21st century
57:14stretches out ahead,
57:15what will fill the empty spaces?
57:18What will fill this void
57:19where the nation's industrial heart
57:21once beat?
57:25And what will become of us
57:27as a nation?
57:29Is it Scottish that most defines us now?
57:32Or does British still run deep too?
57:35Is Scotland's journey
57:36to self-determination at an end?
57:38Or is there more to come
57:40on the road ahead?
58:31you