George Malcolm ThomsonOBE (1899–1996) was a Scottish journalist and publicist for
Scottish nationalism. He is now best known for the
sectarian slant he adopted the 1930s, aimed at
Irish-Scots, and as an activist working on behalf of the
Scottish Party.[1] His biographer George McKechnie wrote "His modern Scottish reputation is grounded almost exclusively on his obsessive campaigns against Irish Catholics."[2]
Life
He was born in
Leith on 2 August 1899 into a Presbyterian family, the eldest son of the journalist Charles Thomson and his wife Mary. His parents belonged to the
United Free Church.[3] He attended
Daniel Stewart's College from age 10, and was a student at
Edinburgh University from 1919 to 1922. In his final university year, he founded with another undergraduate, Roderick Watson Kerr, the
Porpoise Press.[4]
In 1990 Thomson was awarded an
OBE for services to journalism.[9] He died in June 1996, in
Hampstead.[10]
Scottish nationalist
Caledonia (1927) had dwelt on
Irish immigration to Scotland, as did
Andrew Dewar Gibb's Scotland in Eclipse (1930), with the connected theme of
slum housing in
Glasgow. The two authors described a perceived threat in the influence of the
Roman Catholic Church.[11] At this time, the newly-joined United Free Church and
Church of Scotland were leading a campaign against Irish-Scots Catholics, now seen as
racist. Gibb and Thomson repeatedly denounced the same group.[12] Their position has been described as a "strident, racially oriented nationalism which was politically to the far right and had quasi-fascist tendencies."[13] The context, identified by Stewart J. Brown, was the "exclusivist racial nationalism" of Presbyterians, dating from the early 1920s and their distancing from the
UK Labour Party, and associated with the
Church union in Scotland.[14]
In terms of party politics, the
National Party of Scotland, of the left, was first countered by the
Scottish Party set up in 1932, of the right, by Gibb and
James Graham, 6th Duke of Montrose, with others. Then with the mediation of Thomson and
Neil Gunn, the two parties merged in 1934, to form the
Scottish National Party, with the exclusion of some radical nationalists. Electorally the
Scottish Protestant League peaked in Glasgow local government in 1933. Fascist ideology made no further advances in Scotland.[15] Gibb and Thomson went on to found the
Saltire Society, concerned with Scottish culture and heritage, in 1936.[16]
For Thomson, 1935 and the publication of his book Scotland: That Distressed Area marked the end of his involvement in Scottish politics that had been pursued covertly. Lord Beaverbrook as his employer required him to sign an agreement that he would cease these activities.[17]
Thomson married in 1926, in
Oslo, Else Ellefsen (died 1957), whose portrait had been painted by Eric Robertson (1887–1941) of the
Edinburgh Group.[6] She translated (1923) The Plague in Bergamo by
Jens Peter Jacobsen for the Porpoise Press.[34]
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. p. 83.
ISBN9781908931320.
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. pp. 26–7.
ISBN9781908931320.
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. pp. 30–2.
ISBN9781908931320.
^
abMcKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. pp. 36–7.
ISBN9781908931320.
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. p. 10.
ISBN9781908931320.
^
abMacDonald, Aeneas; Thomson, George Malcolm (2006).
Whisky. Canongate. p. xvii.
ISBN9781841958576.
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. p. 15.
ISBN9781908931320.
^Finlay, Richard J. (1994). Independent and Free: Scottish Politics and the Origins of the Scottish National Party, 1918-1945. John Donald Publishers. p. 130.
ISBN9780859763998.
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. pp. 191–2.
ISBN9781908931320.
^McKechnie, George (2013). The Best-hated Man: George Malcolm Thomson, Intellectuals and the Condition of Scotland Between the Wars. Argyll Publishing. p. 11.
ISBN9781908931320.
^Glen, Duncan (2006). Small Press Publishers of Scotland: Idealists and Romantics 1922-2006: With a Checklist of Publications from Small Scottish Literary Publishers 1920-2006. Akros Publ. p. 54.
ISBN9780861421763.