The Birth of Modern Scotland Scotland: The Promised Land

In late November, 1918,

in towns across Scotland,

crowds of well-wishers gathered to welcome their troops

as they began to arrive home from the horrors of war.

The war to end all wars had left 100,000 of their comrades dead.

No town, village or home was untouched.

These soldiers came from all classes and all walks of life.

Many had volunteered to fight for King and country,

others had been called up.

These were not professional soldiers,

these were citizens in uniform.

Conscription makes it far easier to talk about a people's war.

Going forward, if this was a people's war,

it had to be a people's peace.

This series is the story of that peace

and of the people who shaped its tumultuous progress

in the decade that followed the end of the war.

It is a contested story of broken promises and political conflict.

Revolutionary moments

and cultural clashes,

as a generation of extraordinary characters battle over competing

visions for a country's future,

which still resonate today.

Among them is the first Socialist Prime Minister,

a nationalist poet with the heart of a revolutionary,

a radical landowner whose dream is one island's nightmare...

..and a miner's daughter unable to vote because of her age and sex.

In the turbulent decade ahead, a modern nation will take dramatic shape,

as Scotland's people fight to discover their promised land.

November 1918 - the certainty of total war gave way to

an uncertain and unsettling peace

and Scotland stood on the brink of a democratic revolution.

Many of the poorest men who had been sent to fight and die

for their country did not even have the right to vote

and not a single woman was enfranchised.

Long before the war was over,

it had been clear that this had to change.

If the state could call you up and say

you have to serve your country and potentially die, then it seemed

ludicrous to say that you didn't have the right to vote.

And so the democratic floodgates were opened

and Scotland would change forever.

It started with an election, just one month after the war ended...

..when all men over 21 and women over 30

were allowed to vote for the first time.

But with many troops and munitions workers unable to register in time,

the turnout was a paltry 43%.

Those that did vote, returned the same Liberal wartime leaders

on a promise to build homes fit for heroes.

EXPLOSION

Elsewhere, the world was in turmoil.

In Ireland, a nationalist rising developed into a full-blown war of independence.

And in Russia, the revolution was threatening to spread west,

instilling fear of the "red menace" across Europe.

Closer to home came isolated warnings of deepening discontent.

When a political demonstration in Glasgow's George Square

turned into a riot, a red flag was hoisted by the protesters

and tanks were sent on to the streets to maintain order.

And then...

nothing.

Scotland remained in suspended animation,

while under the surface, disillusionment continued to build.

The reality, which soon kind of bites in,

is that the war has cost Britain a huge amount of money.

One of the ways in which the government is going to pay down its debt

is through public expenditure cuts.

So that you have this sense by 1922,

that this is not a land for heroes.

The idea that things are getting better

doesn't actually come to pass.

The simmering disaffection of the electorate came to a head

in the city of Dundee.

Dundee sent as many soldiers for the war as any city in Scotland

and its jute mill workers played a crucial role in making sandbags

for the trenches.

But as the world's economy slumped and spending cuts bit,

new long-term unemployment was heaped upon the old hills

of overcrowding, malnutrition and high infant mortality...

..and Dundee became a city with a reputation for despair...

..drunkenness

and disorder.

This is the Dundee book of register of inebriates,

it was dated from about the early 20th century

and it is full of people who were fined in Dundee

for breaking the Licensing (Scotland) Act.

On this page here, we have Bridget Glancey

and she lived in the East Poorhouse.

She was described as being employed in Manhattan works as a mill worker.

So, she was 60 years old.

She was only five foot and her peculiarities or marks were listed

as a broken nose, a blue mark on brow, and E. G. on her left forearm.

And she was "found in a state of intoxication

"and incapable of taking care of herself

"and not under the care or protection of some suitable person."

John Boyd, he was 46 years old and he was five foot four inches.

His peculiarities included his "Left eye awanting."

This person here, his eye was missing and he was

"found in a state of intoxication and incapable of taking care of himself."

Most of them have scars, they have broken noses,

they have missing teeth.

And they have cuts and tattoos, many of them have tattoos,

This lady here is said to have been "behaving while drunk in a riotous

"or a disorderly manner."

and she just looks absolutely beaten by life.

It's tragic.

They're Dundee's poorest people who are trying to escape life through alcohol.

Many of them, if you look at their faces, you can see that they're broken,

they're used to brutality and poverty

and you can't imagine the conditions that they were living under at this time.

Low wages, long hours, little food.

So, life was hard.

You can read history books, but as soon as you start to look at

the faces of the people in this book, it starts to make sense,

the conditions and the lives that they were leading.

By 1922, working class voters of Dundee,

like those documented in this book,

were registered to vote and ready to have their say.

So, too, were ex-servicemen, promised decent houses

that never materialised and penniless war widows.

As the election approached, the candidates lined up

in a remarkable battle for hearts, minds and souls

and Dundee became a key battleground in the new democratic Scotland.

The sitting MP was one of the "big beasts", Sir Winston Churchill

of the ruling Liberal party, who had represented the city since 1908.

He was loved by the working class people of Scotland,

in particular in Dundee in 1908.

But from 1910, a series of events start to happen that Churchill

is seen to have a hand in.

Not least, he wouldn't back women's suffrage.

When somebody asked him in an election one time,

"Why will you not give women the vote and give them their political rights?"

And he said, "Well, you the vote and you have political rights

"as exercised through your husband."

He brings the troops in massively into the transport strike

in Liverpool in 1911.

He was very popular with the Irish in Dundee, as well.

But can you imagine how that popularity would wane very quickly

when he was seen to be sending the troops into Ireland.

We get ourselves to 1922, the women are out for him,

the Irish are out for him and the Dundee working class are out for him.

The next candidate was a local politician whose slogan was,

Vote As You Pray.

Edwin Scrymgeour was a strict teetotaller convinced that

banning alcohol would solve the city's desperate social problems.

A devout Christian and a socialist,

Scrymgeour couldn't fit into the mainstream parties,

so he formed his own.

Edwin Scrymgeour was very, very well known in Dundee politics.

The man who headed up the Scottish Prohibitionist Party.

They wanted outright prohibition of alcohol -

not control of alcohol - utter, total prohibition.

But he was a pacifist - he supported the No-Conscription Fellowship -

erstwhile socialist, as well, but fundamentally a prohibitionist -

controlling the drink trade.

Scrymgeour is Dundee born and bred.

He's unique.

Standing against them was Willie Gallacher.

A Revolutionary Communist who had just returned from Bolshevik Russia

and a meeting with its leader.

Gallacher was very much of the view that you cannot change society

by just simply getting other representatives in Parliament.

If you're going to change society, it has to be entirely -

the old has to go and you have to bring in the new.

You do not take part in the Parliamentary system.

So, it was anti-parliamentarianism.

A big word, but that's exactly what he stood for.

He was only convinced to go down the route, the Parliamentary route,

in Moscow in 1920.

Basically, as the story goes,

Lenin put a fatherly hand around his shoulder and said,

"If we can't do it physically, then we have to do it

"through the Parliamentary system."

A former conscientious objector, Edmond Morel stood for the Labour Party,

as a total of six candidates contested two seats to make

the campaign one of the most memorable the city had ever known.

Churchill arrived late, recuperating from a major operation.

This is the Secretary of State for the Colonies

being carried round the streets on a chair like an imperial viceroy.

The Dundee Courier, one of the most powerful regional daily newspapers,

captured the moment in vivid detail.

As we came up to the last week of polling, Winston Churchill finally,

as it says here, "enters the fray."

Here he is being carried into the Caird Hall by four men.

Now, apocryphally, the men were paid

£1 each to carry him into the hall because he was very weak.

He even got a lot of sympathy. Instead of being this hostile welcome

that we all anticipated, because he was in such poor condition,

he actually got quite a muted reception.

But of course, famously, these guys were meant to be paid £1,

but a wag in the crowd shouted, "We'll give you £2 if you drop him!"

"Huge gathering in Caird Hall"

"Scathing attack on Morel and Gallacher."

Edmund Morel was a Frenchman, but he'd been pretty much brought up

in Britain, but Churchill got stuck into him.

Winston Churchill, more or less played the racist card,

said that nobody who wasn't a Britisher should be represented

in the British Parliament.

So, it was that sort of depth of personal attack that was going on.

If we move on to the 14th,

this was the day before the 1922 election - the polling -

"Drill hall meeting wrecked. Reptiles and Featherheads."

So, Churchill actually called the communists and socialists -

he was assured that they were disrupting his meetings -

and he called them reptiles.

Even today, that would be considered quite strong language.

"Crowds rush the gates and police make baton charge."

You know, it must've been hugely exciting, if nothing else.

As long as you weren't in the way of a policeman with a baton.

But it was a terrific campaign.

There were stories in Dundee of the Drill Hall having 6,000 people inside

packed like herring in barrels

and a queue of half a mile outside trying to get in.

That was the sort of excitement during the 1922 election.

The day of the result, "A huge poll at Dundee."

"Unprecedented activity and lively scenes."

"Churchill's car kills a black cat."

So, that's quite interesting.

Voting day brought a huge turnout of 83% in Dundee.

The candidates gathered together at a first floor window of the Caird Hall,

from where the returning officer read the results to the crowd below.

Churchill was voted out and after decades of dominating Scottish politics,

his Liberal party was humbled.

The revolutionary communist came bottom with 5,000 votes.

The victor - with one of the biggest majorities ever known in Dundee...

..was the prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour.

The only prohibitionist MP ever to be elected

and that still remains the case.

It's safe to say, that the women's vote here would have been important, as well.

It has been argued that many women had been drawn towards temperance

during the First World War.

So, a lot of women were voting on that - an antiChurchill ticket, but a prohibitionist ticket.

The engagement of the electorate in '22 is phenomenal,

eight in every ten people in Dundee turned out to make that vote count and it clearly did.

The other MP elected was E. D. Morel

and his election heralded a breakthrough for the Labour Party right across Scotland.

They took 29 of 71 Scottish seats.

Five times more than they'd ever had before.

Labour in Scotland had been talking the language of the class

since the 1880s, it hadn't worked.

It hadn't caught light.

The working class is the majority of the electorate after 1918,

so after 1918, class matters.

Among the new Labour MPs were a group of hardened class warriors.

Heroes of Glasgow's tumultuous politics,

known as the Red Clydesiders.

STEAM TRAIN HOOTS

A few days after the vote, they departed on the overnight train from Glasgow

with their plans and pledges still ringing in the air.

'We, the Labour members of parliament for the city of Glasgow

'and the West of Scotland,

'inspired by the zeal for the welfare of humanity

'and the prosperity of all peoples.

'And strengthened by the trust imposed in them

'by our fellow citizens, have resolved to dedicate...'

Among them was James Maxton.

Maxton was a middle class teacher, radicalised by the sight

of the hungry, dirty children he taught in Glasgow's East End.

Jailed as a conscientious objector during the war,

he was a brilliant speech-maker.

'We will bear in our hearts the sorrows of the aged,

'the widowed mothers and the poor, that their lives will not be without comfort.

'We will urge without ceasing the need for houses,

'suitable to enshrine the spirit of the home.

'We will have regard...'

Travelling with him was John Wheatley,

the godfather of Red Clydeside.

He left school at 12 and spent the next 12 years working as a miner

before escaping to become a successful printer.

All together, they were bound for the Commons hellbent on making scenes.

Politically, the influence of the Clydesiders is that they reinforce

the image of a Scotland as more left wing.

The Tories bait them endlessly by asking them questions

using arcane Latin phrases and do they agree?

But they got quite good at responding to that in Scots,

which really foxed the Tory backbench MPs.

For the leader of the Labour Party, they were both a gift and a curse.

Ramsay MacDonald had the difficult job of turning his bold new

Labour MPs into a disciplined and effective force in Parliament.

Within a few months, the Red Clydesiders were causing him trouble

by accusing a Tory MP of being a murderer for withdrawing free milk.

Four of them were suspended from the House.

When McDonald tried to assert control, they refused to back down.

Their wild behaviour threatened the one thing McDonald craved

for his party and for himself -

respectability.

Ramsay MacDonald was the illegitimate son of farm workers

from Lossiemouth on Scotland's north-east coast...

..where he returned regularly all through his life.

'I come here for peace and quiet,

'to be amongst old neighbours.

'To be reminded of my young days

'and above all, to breathe the fresh air of the hills in the Moray Firth.'

And today his granddaughter still lives in the same house.

This was my grandmother's dress -

there she is, Margaret Ethel Gladstone MacDonald.

She was married to Ramsay MacDonald

and the dress must've been made by her mother-in-law Annie Ramsay.

All this lacework, all these beads - all hand-threaded together.

and his mother had spent the whole day

cleaning houses for the richer folk in Lossiemouth, gutting fish,

doing work on the farm and then she'd come home and make things like this.

Quite amazing.

Yes.

As a young man, Ramsay MacDonald travelled to London where he forged

a reputation as a socialist campaigner

and caught the eye of his wife-to-be.

Her father, Dr Professor Gladstone, wrote up to Lossiemouth

wanting to know, "Who is this long-haired,

"red tie-wearing, gypsy type?"

He wrote up to the Bailey of Lossiemouth wanting to know about Ramsay.

He was called Barefoot Donnelly in the village.

Donnelly because he was Donald - MacDonald -

and barefoot because the child had no shoes.

He had a very bad time.

Illegitimate, in those days,

that was really a criminal offence against the church.

But as soon as he got to school, I think his school teachers realised

this boy's very clever, he's exceptional.

11-year-old, 12-year-old, he only had four years of schooling.

No Eton and Cambridge and Harrow - no, thank you.

She was upper-middle class, I suppose,

and she was very important to him

because she had a little money from an annuity and this money

they used to educate him, really, in a wider sense, in a social sense.

He was getting to speak to ambassadors and kings and queens,

talking to all sort of levels and he could do it.

He was very relaxed there, he was better at that, I think,

than he was among his own people where he was sneered at in Lossiemouth.

Through 1923, MacDonald the statesman-in-waiting kept his rowdy Clydesiders

in order and soon his moment came to walk on the world stage.

Following a snap election, the Conservative government fell

and Labour took the reins of power...

..and Ramsay MacDonald, a pacifist who had opposed the great patriotic War,

a committed socialist, an illegitimate boy from

the most humble Scottish background,

led the biggest empire in the world...

..and governed it as the leader of the Labour Party.

The shock waves were felt throughout Britain's entire political system.

Many people are thinking, what's going to happen?

Are they going to be respectful to the King?

Are they going to behave themselves?

What's actually going to happen?

And for the Labour Party, what they really want,

is to establish themselves as a credible party.

MacDonald reached out to one of the Red Clydesiders

and made John Wheatley his Minister for Housing.

Wheatley was determined to deliver on his election promises

and skilfully built support for a new law to fund cottage-style houses

with front and back gardens.

These were the "homes fit for heroes" that had been promised

since the war.

Today, they are still known as Wheatley houses.

The lasting achievement of the first Labour government that survived

just nine short months.

Ramsay MacDonald lost a vote of confidence

and called another general election.

And Scotland's new electorate had the chance to vote again.

But the forces of conservatism were mustering

and strange conspiracies were forming.

Just four days before the election,

a peculiar document showed up in London and passed from the hands

of British intelligence to reporters at the Daily Mail.

It has become known as the Zinoviev letter.

This is a letter purportedly - it's in this file here -

purportedly sent by Grigory Zinoviev,

who was the head of the Comintern, the Bolshevik propaganda arm,

to the Communist Party of Great Britain inciting them to

greater efforts in fighting the bourgeoisie and to

destabilising industry and in particular to incite the military to revolt.

And it was this letter, when it was made public in the middle of October,

which created a great deal of negative publicity.

The Daily Mail got hold of it, essentially.

It became the prime example of why Labour cannot be trusted,

you must vote against them.

And it wasn't only the Daily Mail, other papers, obviously.

And you have to remember that primarily the press is owned

by right wing interests, that is just how things were.

But it's a very peculiar document

and it's almost certainly a forgery.

Zinoviev famously said later on, "Well, I didn't actually write this,

"but I might have."

And actually that's part of it, it was very much in character.

There wasn't anything particularly surprising in it,

but the fact is in a very frenzied political atmosphere

during an election campaign,

something that the press can pick up on.

Here is a government that is in thrall to the reds,

that is under the command of the Soviet butchers -

this kind of thing - reds under the beds, literally.

These are the sort of people who cannot be trusted to run our country.

It was a major psychological blow to the Labour movement,

which was just trying to build some confidence.

The Zinoviev letter confirmed the worst fears of many of Scotland's voters.

That a vote for the Labour Party was a vote for uncertainty.

At the election, the Conservatives won a landslide across the UK

and Scotland went partly blue for the very first time.

The Conservatives are natural class warriors.

They will take on the Bolshies.

They never talk about socialists, they always talk about Bolsheviks

because it sounds more foreign and threatening

and the Conservatives do have that image that they are hard,

that they are tough, that they can protect property,

they will protect business and that they stand for tradition.

And if there was a Red Clydeside,

it was now obvious there was also a blue Clydeside...

..where the comfortable middle and upper classes enjoyed tremendous status and wealth

and hoped things would stay just the way they were.

What I've got out here are four dresses that were made

by Muriel's in Glasgow.

Muriel's was a top-end establishment at 432 Sauchiehall Street.

Glasgow had been the second city of the Empire

and there was still a lot of money in Glasgow, so you could get the shops

that could cater for the wealthier sections of society.

You have a beautiful dress from 1924.

You can see that it's made out of a silk and gold lame,

that's then been embellished with beadwork and some embroidery.

A fantastic green silk chiffon,

with a slight crepe feel to it and then it's got these beautiful

silver beads, which makes the dress actually very heavy to wear.

It's unlikely that a dress like this would have been widely seen

in Glasgow, because it was worn by an upper middle-class woman, so you

may have just seen the brief glimpse as she got out of maybe a taxi

and went into the venue that she was wearing such a beautiful dress for.

So, these are the sorts of garments that you can wear to social occasions.

Muriel's also made sure that she only bought or had made one dress

in each particular style or colour,

so that you could buy it reassured to know that you're not going to

turn up at a social event and have that embarrassing moment

of bumping into somebody wearing the same dress.

There were no prices advertised

and the bill would have been sent discreetly to your husband.

The clientele Muriel would have been working for was very much

that upper-middle classes in Glasgow. Not gentry, but probably the wives

of the top doctors, physicians, the stockbrokers in Glasgow.

In the big houses, maybe, in Pollokshields, in Hyndland.

In Glasgow's wealthy Southside, the voters turned to

a politician called Sir John Gilmour,

whose election literature promised not only to battle socialism,

but to defend Ulster.

An idea that was right at the heart of Scottish conservatism.

So much so, that their official name was the Scottish Unionist party.

And the union it referred to wasn't between Scotland and England,

but between Britain and Ireland.

Here in the city's Langside Halls, just two miles from Red Clydeside,

the voters of Glasgow Pollok returned Gilmour by a landslide,

beating the Labour candidate by almost 15,000 votes.

Glasgow Pollok, although it's difficult to appreciate now,

at that point was one of the safest Unionist or Conservative seats.

Not just in Scotland, but in the UK.

You know, it was rock solid Unionist territory and Sir John

wouldn't have had much difficulty getting elected and re-elected.

Conservatism at that time didn't have the sort of

bogey man credentials that it does now.

Although, it was seen as an establishment party of the upper classes,

it had always had a cross-class appeal

and of course unionists and conservatives in that period were much more paternalistic.

So, there would have been deference to a figure like Sir John Gilmour

and a general expectation, however misguided,

that he would be an effective political figure.

With a huge country estate based around the now demolished

Montrave House in Fife,

Sir John Gilmour was a class warrior of the landed gentry

and just the man to defend Scotland from the perils of socialism.

He inspired such confidence that he was soon appointed Scottish Secretary

and his credentials were impeccable.

Landed gentry, member of the Orange Order,

and war hero who had served at the front in not just one but two wars.

Today, his descendants still live around the estate.

This must be GCVO, I think.

By order of the sovereign, for some reason.

Yes, that must be the GCVO. Transvaal Free State...

-That's a campaign medal, isn't it?

-That's a campaign medal.

Do we know what he was awarded his DSO for?

I don't know in particular, but it was probably in Gallipoli.

I can just remember him as a small boy.

I was born in 1933, but I do remember him walking up the drive

of Montrave in a very baggy old pair of rather well-worn

plus fours and a flat hat, with his gun over his shoulder,

looking quite the country squire and gentlemen.

But knowing, I suppose with hindsight, underneath his flat hat

was a good brain and a kind man and an efficient man.

This is a fascinating election leaflet actually,

from grandfather's time and some of these words at that time

"Within the bounds of our empire, there exist great prospects

"of prosperity and happiness for the future of our race and those many

"other nationalities whose interests are our care and responsibility."

Loyalty and patriotism were sort of inbred

into people of his ilk.

Part of their upbringing, I think.

It's easy to be scornful about patriotism,

but if you think about victory

and if you think about what victory meant to those who had lost so much,

I think it's easier to understand

why some people voted for parties that seem to have had a good war.

As monuments to the fallen began to appear in almost every town and village,

they confirm the patriotic unionist vision of Scotland

that endures to this day.

One that has very deep roots.

If you're asking why people would vote Unionist in the interwar years,

the answer, to a certain extent, is unchanged since the early 19th century -

it's faith.

Many of them, a great many of them, are Protestant.

Secondly, it's monarchy, it's loyalty to the crown,

but the biggest aspect in all of this is empire.

Scots still had the empire to call their own.

They still had places in the world where they too could aspire to greater things.

There was that imperial frontier

that Scots always had when they dreamed dreams

about what Britain meant beyond the bounds of the United Kingdom.

Whether they liked it or not, the world the Unionists believed in was changing.

By the mid-1920s, around 12% of the Scottish population was

Roman Catholic, mostly having emigrated from Ireland.

Catholic churches, schools

and sports clubs had all become part of Scottish life...

..and so too had anti-Catholic sectarianism.

The bigot-in-chief was a senior minister called reverend John White,

who preached from this church in Glasgow's East End.

He started an official church campaign to limit immigration

and commissioned an astonishing report about Irish racial inferiority

to justify his actions.

Today, it's kept at the Scottish National Records Office in Edinburgh.

We have here what is in essence a very frightening document,

a report which was prepared for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

and it's called The Menace of The Irish Race to Our Scottish Nationality.

And this report considers the impact

of the Irish population on Scotland

and the problem is defined as "They cannot be assimilated and absorbed

"into the Scottish race, they remain a people by themselves,

"segregated by reason of their race, their customs,

"their traditions and above all, by their loyalty to their church."

There's some interesting points in the document about when

the Irish move into an area, that the Scots start leaving.

So, one area which is cited is the Croy district in Cumbernauld.

It said, "..is practically Irish and the Scottish mining population

"refusing to stay, have gone elsewhere."

We can't underestimate the power of the Kirk in 1920s Scotland

and the Kirk, in a sense, fulfils the duties

and obligations of what one might call a devolved administration now

in the sense that the Kirk is where these key issues about

the development of Scottish society are debated.

One of the objections to Irish immigration

is that Irish immigrants tend to vote Labour

and in a sense that this mass proletariat are changing

the political complexion of Scotland in the 1920s.

A key phrase in here is that,

"The Irish seem to be very good at organising themselves politically."

So there's that fear, as well, that not alone are you going to have

this lumpen proletariat, but you're going to have a lumpen proletariat

which has a political voice and that political voice is essentially

the one of Labour and the Labour movement more generally.

It might have stirred up sectarianism...

..but it didn't fly politically.

By the time the report landed on Sir John Gilmour's desk,

Scotland was no longer a land of opportunity.

Immigration from Ireland fell away as Scotland's economy began

to collapse.

By 1925, unemployment in Scotland reached a new high

of 100,000.

Wages for those in work were cut

and workers began to talk about a general strike

as 20th-century economics caught up

with Scotland's 19th-century industry.

One of the big problems with the Scottish economy is that

it's very much tied to industries that you would associate with

the 19th century. And if we think about the 20th century,

it's the era of the motor car, the petrol engine,

the wireless, and Scotland doesn't produce any of those.

Scotland has coal, steel, ships, locomotives.

Very much all part of the 19th-century world.

So the predominant argument in Unionism is that Scotland

needs England to survive and Scotland couldn't go on its own.

With the Scottish economy in crisis and Ireland gone its own way,

London drew Scotland closer.

In early 1926, Sir John Gilmour's position as Secretary of Scotland

was elevated to a full Secretary of State.

For the first time since 1746,

Scotland was given a seat in the cabinet

and a government department in Whitehall.

Power devolved to Scotland and retained in London.

In the summer, Sir John visited Fife.

Not to tour the mining villages

where striking miners were holding out after the general strike...

..but to visit St Andrews to receive the honour of being made

captain of the Royal And Ancient Golf Club.

When playing himself in,

the caddie that retrieves the new captain's ball

traditionally would claim a sovereign,

as this footage shows.

But as Sir John teed off,

the ranks of caddies were swelled by unemployed miners.

To Gilmour's critics, the obvious stood out.

An aristocrat on the fairway, unemployed miners in the rough...

..waiting for the chance of a sovereign.

His vision of Scotland couldn't last forever

and in 1928, the final stage of

the decade's democratic experiment approached.

Men could vote at the age of 21 -

but women, not until they were 30.

Now discussion turned to whether

they should be given equal franchise.

It was called the flapper vote, after the carefree image

of the independent young woman.

Though the reality for many women under 30 was anything but carefree.

Most were mothers several times over.

A book of maternity letters

collected by the Women's Co-operative Guild

documented their remarkable experiences in their own words.

"Besides two stillborn children, I have had two miscarriages.

"The last miscarriage I had,

"I lost that much blood it completely drained me.

"I was three whole months unable to sleep.

"My hair came off and left bald patches about my head.

"The doctor told me if he had not had the presence of mind

"to lay me flat in the bed when the miscarriage took place,

"I should have bled to death.

"I confess without shame that when a well-meaning friends said,

"'You cannot afford another baby, take this drug,'

"I took their strong concoctions to purge me

"of this little life that might be mine."

"I was married at the age of 22

"and by the time I reached my 32nd birthday,

"was the mother of seven children.

"When, at the end of ten years,

"I was almost a mental and physical wreck,

"I determined that this state of things should not go on any longer.

"And if there was no natural means of prevention, then of course

"artificial means must be employed."

As the 1920s progressed,

voices like these challenged some of society's deepest taboos.

There is this whole kind of general idea that women should be

having babies, you know, motherhood is the foundation of the nation.

And they're actually saying, "We're having babies under these

"really awful conditions, this is an occupational health issue.

"It is more dangerous than mining."

So, you know, childbirth is more dangerous than going down the mines,

so women should actually be able to control how often they get pregnant.

I mean, at that time, the people who were talking about this were

mostly men, in Parliament,

or as medical officers of health,

and they're saying, "Women this, women that. Motherhood, motherhood."

And this was women actually coming back from the grassroots and saying,

"Well, this is what motherhood is actually like."

It's quite a complicated story, early contraception,

because it was a very surreptitious thing.

People didn't like to say that they were doing it

and it was very unmentionable that people were actually purveying this.

You got a lot of commercial firms which are producing these

little catalogues, so that people can buy things discretely

by mail order, rather than having to go into a shop

and actually face-to-face with somebody,

ask for some rubber johnnies or whatever.

This is the Anglo-Scottish Surgical Stores of Glasgow.

Mostly, they're selling condoms.

Some female methods, like Patterson's pessaries.

The condoms have names like Confiance

and Premiere

and Samson - "Guaranteed washable and unbreakable."

Parcels sent privately sealed.

So it's reassuring people that this is all conducted

in a way that is not going to be traceable to them

and it's all going to be very, very discreet.

These kinds of booklets, which are stealth advertising,

they're about wisdom in marriage and their advice to husbands and wives,

but they're actually concealed catalogues for birth control.

You do get the sense that it's addressed largely to the more

middle classes than the working classes, because it says things like

"How to fit the rubber cap -

"It should be fitted at any convenient time,

"preferably when dressing in the evening."

Which I think positions it socially.

Inspired by the Women's Co-operative Guild, Scotland's first

contraception clinic opened in Glasgow's Govan in 1926.

It was called the Married Woman's Welfare Centre

and it brought information about birth control within reach of

the city's young working-class women for the very first time.

Society was clearly changing, but Parliament hadn't caught up.

In Scotland, tens of thousands of young women under 30 were

still unable to take part in the democratic process

and one of them would show the world

just how ridiculous that situation was.

Jennie Lee was a miner's daughter from Lochgelly in Fife.

It was then a major industrial and political centre

in the heart of the Fife coalfield.

Jenny was raised in this house,

this was where her political universe took shape.

Among her schoolmates in Lochgelly, Jenny noticed children

in torn clothes and without jackets, with holes in their shoes

and who were often cold, wet and exhausted.

Her father explained why.

Her father taught her from the

age of six or seven that there was a battle between us - the workers

who produce the wealth

and them who were the capitalist layabouts,

who took wealth of the labour

and property from the miners into their own private profits.

And she had to choose her side, and Jenny was born

into the side she was on -

the miners, the poor, the dispossessed and,

frankly, the increasingly angry.

Jenny left Fife on a scholarship to university where

she threw herself into Labour politics.

Beautiful, argumentative and eloquent,

she seemed to epitomise the spirit of change.

She glowed with life and passion and energy.

She was sexually uninhibited.

I mean, she slept with anybody that she was close to that she

wanted comfort from.

She was generous, I think, in her private life,

but casual, also.

Could never understand why men kept falling in love with her

when she'd given them no inclination that she was inclined to reciprocate,

but she just bowled them over.

'Not myself, but you...

She was extraordinary.

I mean, she could storm a meeting to anger, she could warm it

into solidarity, she could lift it into hope for the future.

She was undoubtedly not only the best woman orator in Scotland,

she was probably the best platform orator that Scotland produced.

..to bring either work, chances of work,

or prosperity to the working people.

She could take an audience with her, she could hold 300 miners -

working men, solid, hard to impress -

she had them spellbound.

While working as a teacher, Jenny began to look around

for a constituency where she could stand for Parliament

and she found it in central Lanarkshire.

Shotts was a mining village where many of the homes had earth floors,

water running down the inside walls

and filthy outside toilets.

Even in Fife, Jenny hadn't seen such conditions.

Here, she felt she could make a difference.

It was a landscape of desolation and despair.

At best, despondency,

and Jenny had this ability to lift up their hearts and give them hope.

Jenny promised to fight to alleviate the terrible poverty

in which the miners' families lived

and brought up their children.

And at the tender age of 24, still too young even to vote herself,

Jenny was elected to Westminster.

The Commons were seduced by her.

I mean, she gave her maiden speech in which she pitched into them

fearlessly, controversially and powerfully and polemically.

I mean, she basically recycled her election speeches.

She didn't seem to realise she was meant to be noncontroversial

and courteous and appear to be timid and nervous and so on and so forth.

But the older Tories thought this was really rather fun,

being assailed by this rather beautiful, passionate young woman

and they always filled the chamber up whenever Jenny was up to speak.

As the decade drew to a close,

the voices of all young women would finally be heard.

In 1929, the Equal Representation Act brought the vote

to every woman over the age of 21.

For the first time in history,

there would be more women casting their votes than men.

Ramsay MacDonald made a recording reaching out to the new voters.

'I speak to you of the Labour Party,

'its ideas and its immediate objects.

'The party was born from the hearts and the needs of the people.

'Its program is based on the problems of the home.

'That is the dread of an ever-overhanging poverty.

'Many who have, have not earned their possessions,

'multitudes who have not,

'have toiled all their days, and at the end

'are no better off than when they began.

'This is a political and moral, as well as an economic issue.

'It is the greatest problem of our civilisation.

'Let me welcome the goodly company of new electors,

'whom we have long striven to get on the register,

'and whom we are now glad to appeal.

'May they govern their country well.'

There was no knowing what impact they would have on the next stage

of the democratic experiment.

It turned out that the flappers didn't vote with one voice,

instead they voted much like everyone else, based on the issues.

Some for Conservatives, but mostly, in Scotland, for Labour.

As these socialists return to government,

Ramsay MacDonald was back in power.

And Jenny Lee was voted back in.

Miss Jenny Lee represents North Lanark.

She's successfully fought twice in one month, in two months.

She was a teacher by profession, she is the daughter of a miner,

she is an MA...

But just as Westminster was seduced by Jenny,

Jenny was seduced by Westminster.

In the corridors of power,

she grew remote from the concerns of her constituents.

She wasn't the first Scottish MP to do so,

nor would she be the last.

She eventually cut her ties with Shotts

and found a Labour seat in England.

..and now we must all get back to work. Good day.

The 1929 election brought the birth of a new political movement

that would set itself against Westminster.

Two candidates stood for a fringe nationalist party called

the National Party Of Scotland

and between them, they won just 3,000 votes.

Five years later, it would become the SNP.

As the decade drew to a close, Scotland was a changed place.

Not only was a new kind of nationalism stirring,

but the once all-powerful Liberals were eclipsed,

never to be a dominant force in Scotland again.

The Labour Party had become electable,

but a deep conservatism had also been revealed.

Crucially, though, the future of the country was in the hands

of its people, regardless of their sex or class.

The left will claim it under the guise of Red Clydeside.

The right will claim it as a patriotic generation.

I think the important thing to realise is that

the story of Scotland in the interwar years is a contested one,

it's a contradictory one,

and it's one that cannot be owned by any interest.

But these interwar years also saw the birth

of a new story for Scotland,

as seeds of change were sown that would take root deep in British

political thinking.

Scotland is increasingly portrayed as being dependent on England,

largely because of its economic difficulties.

That becomes a template that exists in some places

right up till the present day.

In the next episode, the story of Scotland's most isolated communities

and their struggle for survival in a turbulent decade after the war.

The battle for who owns Scotland and the story of the tens of thousands

of Scots who crossed oceans in search of their own promised land.