Thomas "Tom" Johnston CH (2 November 1881 – 5 September 1965) was a prominent Scottish socialist and politician of the early 20th century, a member of the Labour Party, a Member of Parliament (MP) and government minister – usually with Cabinet responsibility for Scottish affairs.
Contents |
Johnston, the son of a middle-class grocer, was born in Kirkintilloch in 1881 and educated at Lenzie Academy. At the University of Glasgow, he helped launch the left-wing journal, Forward, in 1906, and in the same city later became associated with the 'Red Clydesiders', a socialist grouping that included James Maxton and Manny Shinwell. In 1909 he published a book, Our Scots Noble Families, which aimed to discredit the landed aristocracy.
First elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Stirling and Clackmannan West in November 1922 general election, Johnston lost his seat at the October 1924 general election. He quickly returned to Parliament, winning the Dundee by-election in December.
He was re-elected for Stirling and Clackmannan Western at the 1929 general election, when he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Scotland by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. This troubled administration was relatively short-lived; only a handful of Labour ministers supported MacDonald’s proposal of a coalition government, with Johnston and other Red Clydesiders among the strong opponents. This opposition may have backfired (albeit temporarily), as Johnston lost his seat at the 1931 general election, and failed to be returned at a by-election in Dunbartonshire in 1932, but he returned (representing Stirling and Clackmannan West) to the House of Commons at the 1935 general election and remained an MP until retiring in the 1945 general election.
In April 1939, during the build-up to the Second World War, John Anderson, the Home Secretary, appointed Johnston as Commissioner for Civil Defence in Scotland. In this role, Johnston over-saw preparations for aerial bombardment and possible invasion, and the organisation of shelter and relief work. Prime Minister Winston Churchill appointed Johnston as Secretary of State for Scotland on 12 February 1941, and Johnston retained the post until May 1945. As Devine (1999) concludes, "Johnson was a giant figure in Scottish politics and is revered to this day as the greatest Scottish Secretary of the century....In essence, Johnson was promised the powers of a benign dictator.".[1]
Johnston launched numerous initiatives to promote Scotland. Opposed to the excessive concentration of industry in the English Midlands, he attracted 700 businesses and 90,000 new jobs through his new Scottish Council of Industry. He set up 32 committees to deal with any number of social and economic problems, ranging from juvenile delinquency to sheep farming. He regulated rents, and set up a prototype national health service, using new hospitals set up in the expectation of large numbers of casualties from German bombing. His most successful venture was setting up a system of hydro electricity using water power in the Highlands.[2]
A long-standing supporter of the Home Rule movement, he was able to persuade Churchill of the need to counter the nationalist threat north of the border and created a Scottish Council of State and a Council of Industry as institutions to devolve some power away from Whitehall.
He withdrew from politics in 1945 to run the Hydro Board. Johnston subsequently served as chairman of various Scottish organisations, including the Scottish National Forestry Commission (1945–48) and the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (1946–59). He represented Scottish interests in the council appointed to devise the 1951 Festival of Britain. He was also Chancellor of Aberdeen University from 1951 until his death in 1965.
Undoubtedly his greatest legacy was the creation of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. Until the 1940s, many rural areas of Scotland outwith the Central Belt had little or no electricity supply. There were coal-fired steam-turbine and some diesel-driven power stations serving urban locations, and excess capacity from a few large industrial hydroelectricity stations (e.g. those serving the aluminium smelters at Foyers and Kinlochleven) was made available locally, but there was no widespread distribution of electricity through a comprehensively-integrated electric power transmission system such as the present National Grid.
Possibly inspired by the earlier example of the American Tennessee Valley Authority initiative of the New Deal administration of President Franklin D Roosevelt, but undoubtedly determined to address the very strong popular sentiment of the immediate post-war period for a more equitable distribution of the resources and benefits of a modern economy, Johnston strove hard and successfully to win over all interested parties, including generally-reluctant landowners, to the goal of harnessing the (then) scarcely-developed but naturally well-suited geography and climate of the Scottish Highlands to the generation of electricity by water power. In the three decades following the Second World War, the Hydro Board's teams of planners, engineers, architects and labourers succeeded in creating an epic succession of electricity generation and distribution schemes that were world-renowned not only for successfully achieving their technical aims in very demanding terrain but for often doing so in an aesthetically-inspiring manner. The economic and social benefits thus brought to all the people of Scotland, and especially those in rural areas, were immense and longlasting.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Harry Hope |
Member of Parliament for Stirling and Clackmannan West 1922–1924 |
Succeeded by Guy Dalrymple Fanshawe |
| Preceded by Edwin Scrymgeour and E. D. Morel |
Member of Parliament for Dundee 1924–1929 With: Edwin Scrymgeour |
Succeeded by Edwin Scrymgeour and Michael Marcus |
| Preceded by Guy Dalrymple Fanshawe |
Member of Parliament for Stirling and Clackmannan West 1929–1931 |
Succeeded by James Campbell Ker |
| Preceded by James Campbell Ker |
Member of Parliament for Stirling and Clackmannan West 1935–1945 |
Succeeded by Alfred Balfour (for Stirlingshire West) |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Vernon Hartshorn |
Lord Privy Seal 1931 |
Succeeded by The Earl Peel |
| Preceded by Ernest Brown |
Secretary of State for Scotland 1941–1945 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Rosebery |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||