Personal Accounts of Leaving Scotland, 1921–1954

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century approximately two million people left Scotland, a figure paralleling estimates of Scottish migration in the pre ceding century. As with the nineteenth century, Scottish migration in the twentieth century was part of a broader European movement. Between 1815 and 1930, for instance, approximately 60 million people are thought to have left Europe for overseas shores.1 Such was the average rate of mi gration from Scotland from 1851 until 1930 that the country ranked third, behind both Ireland and Norway, among European countries exporting migrants. In certain periods, such as 1901-10 and 1913, Scotland was sec ond only to Italy, while between 1921-30 the exodus from Scotland was proportionately greater than other European countries.2 Statistics for Scottish mobility in the twentieth century are, however, notoriously unre liable, particularly as no accounts were kept of cross-border flows both in to and out of Scotland. Despite this, scholars have estimated that 800,000 Scots departed in the period prior to 1920 with almost half a million leav ing during the interwar years.3 At least another half a million Scots left in the 1950s and 1960s.4 Most Scottish migrants who departed during the twentieth century settled in the United States and Canada, with Australia and New Zealand also proving attractive destinations. Increasing num bers, however, moved to other parts of Britain from the 1920s onwards un til by the 1950s and 1960s a balance was struck between those settling elsewhere in Britain and overseas.5 Despite this significant surge of people out of Scotland in the twenti eth century, there is an astonishing absence of scholarly literature on this mobility. The interwar period, when at least half a million Scots departed for destinations beyond Europe, has been rescued to some extent by Marjory Harper's major study, Emigration from Scotland Between the Wars: Opportunity or Exile?>6 This important work, however, focuses