SCOTLAND-NOT SO BONNIE
Cranston, Maurice
Scotland-Not So Bonnie By MAURICE CRANSTON) London WE Scots are a scattered people, the younger sons of the British Empire, the poor relations of the English. We left home, or our ancestors left...
...More money goes from the Government to keep the "old school tie" flying in England than to modernize democratic education in Scotland...
...And the shipyards on the Clyde are the finest in the world...
...Fifty years ago Scotland could boast of the lowest infant mortality rate in the world: 2,000 fewer babies died in Scotland than in England...
...If it fails, then I am afraid there will be trouble north of the border...
...They say that Scotland will never be able to enjoy her own wealth until she has political independence...
...Fifty years ago it was adequate...
...This is far from the truth...
...But Scotland desperately needs development at home—and England, which must export manufactured goods or die, could foster that very development...
...Certainly Scotland is governed by a clumsy and outmoded system today...
...We left home, or our ancestors left home, because there was little hope of making a fortune there, or even of following a professional career...
...They say that Scotland will never be able to enjoy her own wealth...
...with oats, 15.8 to 17.2...
...No, Scotland is not a poor country naturally...
...Scotland is naturally rich, with an agriculture to compare with any in the world...
...Today Scottish education is where it was, while English education has been catching up with it—at any rate, theoretically—by its peculiar system of scholarships...
...And a belligerent nationalism, already troubling the English in India, will begin to make itself felt nearer home...
...England produces 17 hundredweights of wheat to the acre (1,904 pounds English), Scotland 23...
...now it is 2,000 more...
...Take a few figures...
...And while the average annual output of each farm laborer in England is (or was before the war) around a thousand dollars, that of the Scot is $1,600...
...Some Scots allege this is because Scotland is "worked" for England's benefit...
...The Scottish Nationalist movement, already growing, may well win the people if Labor disappoints them...
...so does the Scottish Labor Party...
...In the economic system of the United Kingdom, Scotland does a large part of the work, and receives the fewest "ha'pence...
...WILL Britain's Labor Government, which has such a strong hold in Scotland, be able to put an end to this anomaly ? It has undertaken to make an effort...
...Scotland is under-populated and under-developed, able to produce more food than she requires and to export a million tons of it annually to England...
...She has greater resources, greater output per acre, greater output per man, greater export...
...Not only Scottish Nationalists say this...
...England is a country over-populated for her natural resources and food production...
...Inside Britain, Scotland presents a startling economic anomaly, and sooner or later, unless something is done about it, there is going to be a political eruption...
...With hay it's 20 to 31...
...Fifty years ago Scotland had a democratic system of education that gave a secondary education to everybody, while education in England was still the exclusive preserve of the rich...
...The Scottish Co-ops (who recently refused to emerge with the English) say the same...
...Why then has she also greater poverty, greater unemployment, a higher death rate...
...MOST people in England, and in the world generally, imagine that Scotland is poor because the soil of Scotland is barren...
...During the war, Scotland fed herself and contributed a million tons of agricultural produce to England's larder every year...
...What is more, things have been getting progressively worse in recent years...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 51
