Stories of the Scots who joined exodus

Alison Campsie looks at a new book detailing the experiences of those who joined the diaspora to the outposts of the empire

The voices of more than 100 Scots who left their home country during the 20th century in search of a better life have been recorded in the first project of its kind.

The testimonies were gathered by Professor Marjory Harper, chair of history at Aberdeen University, who has long researched migration and the Scottish diaspora.

She travelled to Australia, Canada and New Zealand for the project with excerpts of the accounts now published in her new book, Testimonies of Transition, which explores why people were compelled to leave their home country behind.

Professor Harper said: “The main objective of everyone who left Scotland was a search for betterment. That even could come down to the betterment of the weather, which came up very often. A lot of people mentioned the greyness of Scotland.

“There is no one mould into which the emigrants can be fitted. The research has reinforced the diversity of those who left, the complexity of the decision-making, and the multifaceted nature of the whole experience.”

Between 1951 and 1981, 753,000 people migrated from Scotland with 45 per cent moving to England and the rest heading overseas.

The £10 passage programme operated by the governments of Australia and New Zealand between the mid 1940s and early 1970s represented a key phase of migration, Professor Harper said.

She added: “Some who left Scotland were following a family tradition, sometimes there would be a tradition of wanderlust in their families. In some cases it was parents looking for a better education for their children and housing was also a factor.

“One emigrant in Dunedin recalled that her father had taken the family to New Zealand in 1953 partly because he wanted his daughter to have a better education, and partly because he was frustrated at the local council’s refusal to give him a bigger council house.”

The effectiveness of the subsidised migration schemes caused alarm for politicians, including nationalists of the day.

Douglas Henderson, later the deputy leader of the SNP, petitioned the Prime Minister of New Zealand to withdraw his country’s emigration agents from Scotland, claiming the benefits to New Zealand came at the cost of a “disastrous drain of many of the finest and best of Scotland’s youth”.

In a letter to the New Zealand premier, he went on to accuse the Westminster government of ‘actively and deliberately fostering a large-scale clearance” of an “underpopulated” nation.

In 1959, highly abusive slogans were painted on the front steps of the Australian immigration office in St Andrew Square with a pile of literature set alight with protestors dancing an eightsome reel around the burning pile .

The group Scottish Patriots are known to have embarked on such protests.

Professor Harper also compares the experiences of those leaving Scotland in the 20th century to those who departed during the 18th and 19th centuries, when Highland Clearances and deprivation were among factors at work.

One woman, Joan Noble, originally from Lewis but who later settled in Aberdeen, moved to Vancouver Island with her husband and two sons in the 1980s. She spoke of the historical narrative of migration from Scotland and referred to the “literature 0 Hundreds wave off the SS Metagama, which left the Hebrides for Canada in 1923; a 1959 Scottish Patriots protest and a 1960s £10 passage poster. Pictures: Getty/tspl/contributed. of exile – sad songs, sad poems, the anguish of exile, and the sorrow and so on”.

Mrs Noble added: “Well, that’s how it used to be, ’cos (sic) it was not by choice that they came in the past.

“But we came by choice, and it’s been nothing but good things.”

Professor Harper is now looking for more Scots who have emigrated to contribute their story to an enhanced talking version of the book. She is particularly keen to speak to those who relocated to India.

Testimonies of Transition is out now, published by Luath Press.