INTRODUCTION

THE TWO WORLD WARS and the interwar years comprised a period of major discontinuity in British and Scottish history. The two world wars were marked by heavy loss of life in combat and, in the case of World War II, by civilian casualties, such as the German bombing of Clydebank in March 1941. Civilian casualties per head of population in World War II, however, were lower in Scotland than in England and Wales. On the other side of the coin, both wars saw a boost for the Scottish economy, as demand for ships and armaments provided work for the Clydeside shipyards and the heavy industries of central Scotland. Around 250,000 Scots worked in war-related industries in the Clyde basin during World War I, and the west of Scotland was transformed into ‘a vast arsenal for the mass production of ships, shells, guns and other munitions’. Both wars were ‘total wars’, and women were drafted into previously all-male occupations as the men left to join the armed forces. This led to a gradual improvement in the status of women, marked most obviously at the end of World War I by the Representation of the People Act of 1918 which extended the vote to all adult males over twenty-one and all women over the age of thirty.

The two world wars saw an extension of state control into many aspects of life, from the building of large national munitions factories, nationalisation of parts of the drink trade and requisitioning of buildings, including hotels, for the armed forces, hospitals and other government use in World War I, to blackout regulations, food rationing, evacuation, billeting of troops and children, and further requisitioning in World War II. Both world wars were extremely expensive, and government debt to pay for them rose to record levels, particularly by the end of World War II when the country was practically bankrupt. During World War I, patriotic Scots bought larger numbers of war bonds proportionately than the rest of the United Kingdom.