20th Century History of Scotland

Twentieth Century Scotland Chronology of Events

A List of important and/or interesting events in Scotland in the twentieth century listed in chronological order.

1900 Free Church unites with United Presbyterian Church to form United Free Church
1900 Re-elected to parliament as MP for Merthyr Tydfil
1901 Queen Victoria dies
1901 Rev. A.E. Robertson completes Munros to become 1st Munroist. The Reverend Archibald Eneas Robertson, 4th President of the SMC, completed the Munros on September 1901, with an ascent of Meall Dearg on the Aonach Eagach ridge, Glen Coe. Having a parish in Rannoch, and with long holidays, he realised that the target was not impossible. In 1898, for example, a three months? holiday allowed 75 additions. In 1899 another 72 were added. He may not have climbed the Inaccessible Pinnacle on Skye (technically, it was on the list as a top, an anomaly which Munro no doubt would have corrected in a future edition). He may also have not climbed Ben Wyvis, but he is recognised as a pioneering walker in a time before properly constructed roads or railways. He died at the age of 88, in 1958.
1906 Success for ILP in General Election
1906 Depression hits Scotland
1908 Suffragettes open their Scottish headquarters in Glasgow
1909 Women mount a protest in Edinburgh to demand the vote
1913 Glasgow acid bomb campaign launched by suffragettes
1914 Outbreak of the Great War
1914 The Great War breaks out
1914 First World War. Munro goes to Malta. During the winter of 1915-16, being past military age, Munro worked in Malta, helping to trace the missing for the Red Cross. He catches some sort of malarial fever, and returns home for a while.
1915 James Keir Hardie dies of pneumonia at the age of 59
1915 Pay and rent strikes take place in Glasgow
1915 Workers' wage and rent strikes on the Clyde
1915 Battle of Loos
1916 Battle of the Somme
1916 Clyde Workers' Committee ringleaders jailed
1917 Lever becomes Lord Leverhulme
1918 Leverhulme buys Lewis
1918 Great War finishes
1918 Munro and two daughters in France. Munro goes out to France with his two daughters, organising a canteen for troops at Tarascon, Provence.
1918 War results in victory for the allies
1919 He purchases additional estates on Harris
1919 Riots break out in Glasgow's George Square
1919 Lewis land seizures begin
1919 Munro dies in France. Munro catches influenza and dies of pneumonia at Tarascon, in his small hotel room on March 19th. He is aged 63. There is a funeral service at which the locals pays homage to his charitable work. Brought back to Scotland he is buried beside his mother and wife, next to family home, near Kirriemuir. This is on 2nd April. He had still to climb two of the Munros; Carn an Fhidhleir (Feshie), and Carn Cloich-mhuilinn. (The Inaccessible Pinnacle was down on his list as a top, and not a Munro.)
1920 Recession starts. Labour makes gains in Glasgow town council elections
1921 Scots National League formed
1921 2nd Edition of The Tables Two years after Munro?s death, the SMC, under the guidance of the ?Master of the Rolls?, James Gall Inglis, publish the second edition of the Tables. Based on Munro?s Card Index, and his annotated personal copy, there were many changes to the original; including the spelling of hill names, improvements in locations and heights and so on. 40-odd tops changed status, being either promoted to Munros, demoted to Tops, or deleted!
1922 Red Clydesiders win power in General Election
1923 Leverhulme announces an end to his Lewis project
1923 Rev. A.R.G. Burn completes Munros to become 2nd Munroist. The Reverend Burn completes the Munros, including the Innaccessible Pinnacle and the tops, to become 2nd Munroist, finishing on July 20th, 1923. This double completion, of both the Munros and tops, was accomplished only six times before the early 1950s. Burn died in 1973, well into his 80s, having worked as a Latin and Greek proof-reader for the Oxford University Press, for 29 years. Some would consider Burns the first true Munroist.
1925 Leverhulme dies
1927 Scottish National War Memorial opened
1928 Formation of Glasgow University Student Nationalist Association
1929 United Free Church re-unites with the Church of Scotland
1929 J.A. Parker becomes 3rd Munroist. James Parker climbs the Munros in 1929, adding in the Furths. (The 3000?ers of England, Wales & Ireland.) He thought he had done them in 1927, but on returning from a trip round the world he found that a new Munro had been discovered (Beinn Tarsuinn).
1930 John Rooke Corbett completes as No. 4. Corbett finishes both the Munros and, like Burn, the tops as well. He also climbs all of Scotland?s 2,000-foot hills, which become known henceforth as the Corbetts.
1931 Queen Mary started at John Browns yard in Clydebank
1933 First completion without a beard. J. Dow becomes the 5th Munroist, and the first to complete without the ?semi-illegitimate assistance of a beard.? Dow climbed 214 out of the 277 Munros with the help of a motor car, ?somebody else?s when available, or my own in the last resort.? Dow later completed the tops and the Furths.
1933 Tables re-published. Munros Tables were re-published, with few amendments.
1934 Queen Mary launched
1934 Founding of the Scottish National Party
1937 Work on Queen Elizabeth started
1938 Empire Exhibition takes place at Glasgow's Bellahouston Park
1938 Empire exhibition in Glasgow closes
1938 First completion by a non-SMC member. J. Robertson becomes the 6th to complete, and the first who is not a member of the SMC.
1939 Britain declares war on Germany
1940 Queen Elizabeth launched
1941 Clydebank and Greenock bombed
1941 Rudolf Hess lands in Scotland
1942 Thomas Johnston creates the Scottish Council on Industry
1942 Scottish National Party splits
1943 North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board set up
1944 D-day
1945 The Second World War ends in victory for the Allies
1945 Robert McIntyre wins Motherwell by-election for the SNP
1945 Attlee Labour government elected to power
1946 East Kilbride designated as first Scottish new town
1947 First female Munroist. Mrs J. Hirst completes with her husband, to become the first female Munroist. No.10.
1949 John MacCormick launches the Scottish Covenant
1950 Ian Hamilton and others seize the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey
1951 Stone is left at Arbroath Abbey and taken back to England
1953 Lord Cooper delivers his famous judgment
1953 New Edition of Munro?s Tables. Tables re-published, with few amendments.
1954 Dounreay nuclear plant built
1955 Conservatives win general election
1957 The first Clerk of the List. Eric Maxwell is No. 30, and also becomes the first multiple completer in 1966. He is later the first ?Keeper of the Gate?, or ?Clerk of the List? as the position is now known, organizing and recording the list of completers. By 1960, with better transport and equipment, the list was about to start a meteoric growth.
1960 Linwood car plant approved
1962 William Wolfe comes second in West Lothian by-election
1962 The 50th Munroist. A Miss L. Ticehurst completes in 1962 to become No. 50, some 61 years after the Rev. A.E. Robertson.
1964 Labour government returned again
1964 Forth Road Bridge completed
1965 Highlands and Islands Development Board established
1966 SNP performs badly in general election
1967 Winnie Ewing wins Hamilton
1967 First attempt at a continuous round. The brothers Brian & Alan Ripley make an attempt to complete all the Munros in one continuous walk. They begin in August and are forced by bad weather and swelling ankles to give up in mid-November.
1968 Ted Heath makes declaration of Perth committing Tories to devolution
1969 Tables re-published. Munros Tables re-published, with minor changes.
1970 SNP wins just one seat in general election
1970 The 100th Munroist. SMC member Mike Geddes becomes Munroist 100.
1971 Sandy's Big Walk Sandy Cousins makes a solo walk from North to South, from Ben Hope to Ben Lomond. In 26 days he averages 22.5km and 1070m of ascent per day, taking in 103 tops and 47 Munros.
1974 SNP wins seven seats in march general election
1974 Nationalists pick up another four seats in October election
1974 First Metric List, First continuous round. First Metric Edition of Munro?s Tables published by the SMC. The classic 3,000 feet becomes 914.4 metres. James Donaldson edited the first metric Tables, and although few metric heights were in fact available, he converted Imperial heights to metric. Often the heights were in fact based on contours only. Beinn Tarsuinn and two other Letterewe Munros were introduced (Ruadh Stac Mor and Beinn a?Chlaidheimh), while poor wee Beinn an Lochain was deleted. These changes were due to new heights from the O.S. Six-figure grid references also introduced. Hamish Brown completes a round in one continuous trip lasting 112 days. At the end of this year, there were a recorded 130 Munroists, averaging about five per year. Brown had done three complete rounds before his continuous walk, and went on to complete another three following it! He took 18 months to prepare for the walk. For the statistically curious, Brown?s ?vital statistics? regarding his walk are as follows: Mileage: 1,639 (2,640km) Footage: 449,000 (137,000m) Time: 112 days Daily average: 4,000 feet (1,220m), 14? miles (23.3km). Brown climbed all of the 279 Munros as the list was then, with five climbed a second time. Five Corbetts were also climbed, making a grand total of some 289 peaks. One interesting figure produced by Brown, and also backed up by the walks done by Ripley, Hinde, and Cousins, is that on average you take 1,500 feet (457m) and four miles (6.44km) per Munro.
1978 Scotland Bill amended to include 40 per cent rule
1978 Hamish's Mountain Walk? published. First published by Victor Gollancz, London (1978). Now available as a reprint by Baton Wicks, along with ?Climbing the Corbetts.?
1979 Scots vote yes to a parliament but are denied one by 40 per cent rule
1979 Margaret Thatcher elected as Prime Minister
1979 Margaret Thatcher and Conservatives elected to power
1981 New Edition of Munro?s Tables. Munroist No. 250. James Donaldson and Hamish Brown jointly edit a new edition of the Tables. New metric maps almost completed, and accuracy of positions and heights improved. Garbh Chioch Mhor, Mullach an Rathain and Sgurr Fiona promoted, Carn Cloich-mhuilinn and six other easterly Munros demoted. Leonard Moss recorded as No. 250.
1982 A number is set by for The Unknown Munroist. The number 284 is given over to 'THE UNKNOWN MUNROIST.' There is a full explanation of this in the 1983 SMC Journal (p.389), but as many will find this difficult to access the brief story is that this number, the same as the then total number of Munros (and therefore until recently 276!), is assigned to those who 'are deliberate non-reporters, others who refuse to compleat their final Munro and still others, equally obtuse but more metaphysical, who claim that they don't know that they have already compleated..' In others words, number 284 is allocated to all those dissidents. For other reasons, the count at one point might well have ceased at 665; instead it is left unfilled. (See Revelation, xiii,18.)
1984 Tables re-published. Tables re-published, with minor amendments. Beinn Teallach promoted.
1985 ?The Munros? published by the SMC.?High Mountains? by Irvine Butterfield published.
1986 Poll tax introduced in Scotland
1987 Tory MPs in Scotland reduced from 21 to 10
1987 Munroist No. 500. Graham S. Wilson is No. 500 on the List.
1988 SNP win Govan by-election
1989 Constitutional Convention established
1989 First Member of Parliament Chris Smith completed the Munros in 1989
1990 Thatcher ousted. John Major becomes Prime Minister
1990 Tables re-published. Munroist No. 750. Munros Tables re-published with Derek Bearhop as new Editor. David A. Henderson is No. 750 on the List, as numbers continue to rocket.
1991 1000 Munroists recorded. Angus K. Robertson recorded as Munroist No. 1000 (although completing in 1989).
1992 Thatcher ousted. John Major becomes Prime Minister
1992 Thatcher ousted. John Major becomes Prime Minister
1993 Munroist No. 1250. Gordon Hopper hits the 1250 slot.
1994 John Smith dies. Tony Blair elected Labour leader
1995 Munroist No. 1500. A. Smith rounds off a millennium and a half at No. 1500. Dave Purser completes a round in reverse order of height.
1997 Labour sweep to power in general election. Tories lose all their Scottish seats. Scots vote decisively for their own tax-raising parliament in referendum
1997 New Edition of Munro?s Tables. Includes eight new Munros. Munroist No. 1750 and 8 New Munros Bearhop grasps the nettle and introduces eight new Munros. Winds of change moves through SMC committee as Bearhop given the go-ahead for clean-up of Tables. Mark Aiken is No. 1750 on the charts.
1998 Munroist No. 2000 ? the Big One! Rati Chiba is awarded the prize number, with 2000. Richard Wood of Cannich, with 6,278 ascents of various Munros, has probably done more Munro ascents than anyone else on the planet. The SMC publish The Munros on CD-ROM.
1999 Scottish parliament re-established
1999 Record Multiple Completer Stewart Logan climbed Schiehallion on December 31st to complete his 10th round of the Munros. He accomplishes this as a charitable event. Number of compleaters recorded in SMC Journal reaches 2066.

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