Behind the ‘tartan curtain’: Cartelisation in the Scotch Whisky Industry, 1830–1960

Abstract

Described as using a ‘tartan curtain’ to mask its activities, the Scotch whisky behemoth Distillers Company Limited (DCL) was forged out of a wave of trade agreements, mergers, and takeovers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 1945, DCL controlled half of the productive capacity of the Scotch whisky industry. This chapter peeks behind the ‘curtain’ to explore both the antecedents and operations of cartel-like behaviours in DCL. The chapter examines the Company's corporate political activities supported by DCL's access to elite networks and facilitated by the social selection and milieu of its directors. DCL's cartel-like behaviour was also determined by economic context. Scotch whisky had become an increasingly important and influential industry of national stature; it was a measure of its growing strategic importance to the United Kingdom that when Chancellor of the Exchequer Austen Chamberlain introduced his 1919 budget to address post-war debt that he included a significant increase in spirits duties with whisky at the forefront of his mind. By 1945, whisky exports and their Dollar exchange value were one of the most significant lifelines for Britain's devastated and indebted economy. Drawing comparisons with other industries, it locates these discussions within interdisciplinary debates around the operation of cartels. Consistent within this is an exploration of how cartel-like behaviours begot the creation of the industry's largest company and how these behaviours continued into its operations as it established itself as a global presence.