1924 - 1949

1924
James Ramsey MacDonald heads Britain's first Labour government, but as former president of the London branch of the SHRA, shows no interest in supporting George Buchanan's Private Member's Bill on Scottish Home Rule.

1926
A Secretary of State for Scotland is created by the administration of Stanley Baldwin.

John L. Baird gives the first successful demonstration of television.

1927
Death of James Scott Skinner, the "Strathspey King," who helped preserve the long tradition of Scottish fiddle music that had been in danger of disappearing during the latter part of the 19th century.

Charles Thomson Wilson pioneers experiments in cloud formations and nuclear physics and is jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

1928
Alexander Fleming noticed that a bacteria-free circle had grown around a growth of mold in his lab. He calls the substance "penicillin." One year later, Fleming used crude penicillin in the first clinical application.

The National Party of Scotland is created.

Compton Mackenzie leaves Northern England to live in Scotland and begin his career as an important force in Scottish literature.

Death of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose inventive, imaginative work with the Glasgow School of Art led to the Art Nouveau movement in Britain and also had great influence abroad.

1929
John Grierson directs "Drifters", a study of the lives of the North Sea herring fishermen that shows the potential for motion pictures to shape attitudes toward life and the use of film in education. Thus he rightly deserves to be called the "father of the documentary."

1931
"Hatter's Castle", by A. J. Cronin, explores the grit and squalor of so much Scottish urban life, to be followed four years later by "No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums".

1932
The Scottish Party is formed as a more moderate, right-wing home rule movement than the N.P.S.

1934
Arthur Henderson receives the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work as British Foreign Secretary, ardent supporter of the League of Nations and head of the World Disarmament Conference of 1931. The Scottish National Party is created out of a merger between the N.P.S. and the Scottish Party.

1935
Well-known author and diplomat John Buchan, lst Baron Tweedsmuir (Prester John, The Thirty-Nine Steps) becomes Governor of Canada.

1936
The Saltire Society is established, with the aim of preserving the distinctive Scottish tradition in literature and the arts.

The S.S. Queen Mary, built at Clydebank, begins her service on the North Atlantic.

1938
Douglas Young joins the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) where his enthusiasm and dedication will help the continued existence of a party that will have a strong resurgence in the 1990's and the restoration of a Scottish Parliament.

1943
Sorley Maclean's publication of Gaelic verses in the modern idiom marks a new voice in the production of Scots Gaelic literature.

1944
William Craigie, brilliant philologist and lexicographer publishes, as chief editor, the outstanding "Oxford English Dictionary", which he had first proposed twenty-one years earlier.

1945
Robert McIntyre is elected to Parliament as the SNP candidate for Motherwell, the first seat won by a Nationalist candidate.

1947
The first Edinburgh Festival of Music and Drama gives the city the chance to lead the way in the reconciliation of nations after World War II. It also revived links with Scotland's long history as a country of enlightenment.

1948
A Scottish Covenant calls for a Scottish Parliament.

1949
the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to world authority on nutrition, Ayrshire-born John Boyd Orr, founder of the Imperial Bureau of Animal Nutrition in at Aberdeen University. His "Food, Health and Income", published in 1936, will be used to create the fair food-rationing policies of World War II, to ensure an adequate diet for Britain's citizens.