C.M.M. Macdonald

‘To form citizens’: Scottish students, governance and politics, 1884–1948

Citizenship was not a straightforward concern for Scottish university students between 1884 and 1948 and tended to express itself in multiple and often competing allegiances. Despite students being empowered to elect a Rector, and their role in university governance being accorded statutory recognition through the Students’ Representative Councils, students still struggled to identify a role for politics in university life. Local, national and international contexts also encouraged apparently contradictory responses from the student body. In addition, university enfranchisement perpetuated many of these dilemmas into the later lives of former students. The abolition of plural voting in 1948, while signalling the triumph of a more egalitarian vision of citizenship, for the most part left unresolved the status of the student in the civil life of Scotland.

The Radical Thread: Political Change in Scotland, Paisley Politics, 1885-1924

atriona Macdonald has taken the ‘linguistic turn’. Using as her theoretical framework concepts drawn from linguistics theory together with Gramsci’s concepts of ‘hegemony’ and ‘organic change,’ Macdonald traces the decline of Liberalism in Scotland and explains the “thread” that underpins and determines political change. The town of Paisley is the focal point of her study no doubt because she accepts the argument of Robert Kelly that “Paisley provides . . . a reference point in the history of Liberal thought in Britain.” ( JBS, iv [1964], p. 133) On the whole, Macdonald puts forth a very good effort to present fairly her historical research. Her empirical evidence is well organized, supported and documented, and the historical record is used to good advantage. The reader is left in no doubt as to Macdonald’s strong abilities as an historian or the veracity of her historical research. However, in an effort to use a conceptual framework for analysis and interpretation of political change in Scotland, the author encounters one or two methodological problems. At the outset, Macdonald assumes the reader’s familiarity with linguistics theory as well as Gramscian political theory. She accordingly makes no attempt to precis the actual theories, nor does she ever discuss whose linguistic theory she will be using. Moreover, she commits the faux-pas of not defining concepts which appear to be particularly relevant to her discussions and analysis. For example, in Chapter one she frequently refers to the political culture of Paisley yet nowhere, either in the beginning of her book or as the analysis progresses, does she concepScottish Tradition Vol. 26 2001