The Last Queen of Scotland

Ray Barron-Woolford

• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781645363576
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia scozzese

The most important UK civil-rights activist of the past 100 years you probably knew nothing about.

Chapter 1

Winston Churchill’s Apprentice

With a classroom of children to teach, a never-ending queue of people needing her help to both read and write letters in the middle of a war, and plays to perform at her amateur dramatics group, Kath could be forgiven for having one of those full-on busy days which we have all had. Such days when we find we have put on odd socks, or our top inside out, or, in Kath’s case, rushing from performing on stage to a meeting with the ever-busy and dashing Winston Churchill… and forgetting to remove her stage makeup.

“Well, it’s not every parliamentary candidate who gets the endorsement and office help of Mary, Queen of Scots,” Churchill said to the beautiful but strange-looking woman sitting in wait for him.

Somewhat annoyed with herself at having been so busy on this most important of occasions that she had overlooked the makeup, pointing her gloved hands to her face, covered in makeup for her next performance in an hour’s time, Kath said, “Am I not Elizabeth I?”

Winston roared with laughter: “Yes, Kath, and I cannot think of a better person to organize and win my campaign.”

Churchill was under pressure to get a strong election campaign team in place if he was to secure his seat in parliament as the new MP for Dundee, in 1917. Just two years earlier, he had been demoted from his role as First Lord of the Admiralty; this was after the huge loss of life in the Gallipoli and Dardanelles naval campaigns, for which he was responsible. He resigned from government, and in 1916, became a capable army officer on the frontline.

In 1917, Prime Minister David Lloyd George wanted Winston Churchill to become the new minister for munitions. Therefore, the then MP for Dundee traded his seat in the House of Commons for a seat in the House of Lords to give Winston Churchill the chance of once again sitting on government benches in the House of Commons. His wife, Clementine, had found him the perfect candidate to run his campaign team and to mobilize the workers in his support: her friend, Kath MacColl.

Kath was born on 4^th July, 1888, in the rural Scottish village of Tarbert. She was named after her father’s mother, Catherine Sinclair, whilst her sister would be named after her mother’s mother. In 1893, when Kath was just 5-years-old, her father, Archibald MacColl, a merchant, died at just 39-years-old and the family moved to 9 Sterling Cottage, Kirkden, in Argyllshire. This was to be close to her grandparents on her mother’s side, George and Margaret Stephens.

3

These children marched in a South Wales demonstration against the means test and welfare reform

The loss of her father and the man of the house must have had a traumatic impact on Kath, her sister Margaret, and her mother, Agnes Gibson Stevens.

Agnes, who had been born in Kirkden Parish, in Angus, on 3^rd July, 1860, was known as ‘Mama’ to everyone. In the difficult period after the loss of her husband, her Christian faith kept her going and her sewing and dress-making skills provided the family with a basic income, skills which would later ensure that Kath wore the latest handmade designs that would allow her to impress at the highest levels of society. The local community also rallied to the family’s aid, making sure that they did not end up in the workhouse. Kath’s sister, Margaret, grew up to marry John McCowan and have two children, Elspeth Margaret McGowan and Ada Stewart McCowan. Although Kath had no children of her own, Margaret’s daughter, Elspeth, made up for it. She had four children with her husband, Robert Maurice Jacobi, three girls – Lorne, Sally, and Barbara – and a son, Clive.

Kath’s family roots were as radical as she would become. Although Margaret would take a less political path, they were both proud of the fact their great-grandmother was a descendant of the Scottish folk hero Rob Roy, who was said never to have ‘lifted’ a poor man’s beast. In his youth, Kath’s great-grandfather had gallantly taken the place of an older, married man who had been seized by the press-gang. And on returning from the wars, he ran off with the daughter of his master. Her grandfather had been a man well respected for feeding the hungry during the ‘years of the short corn’.

Kath attended the village school in Kirkden and worked hard, securing a scholarship to high school and another scholarship to St. Andrews University, Dundee, where she studied literature. In between helping local people write letters to their loved ones on the Western front and giving comfort to the far too many getting terrible news, Kath started to become active in the Independent Labour Party and the Suffragette movement.

Kath became friends with Churchill’s wife, Clementine, when she lived for a period in Edinburgh while attending the Karl Frobel School. Clementine Churchill, like Kath, had a strong sense of social justice, and the two had a close bond from the moment they met, although they clearly came from very different backgrounds. Clementine’s family had moved to Scotland from Dieppe, in France, after Clementine’s elder sister, Kitty, had contracted the tuberculosis that would take her life on 5 March, 1900. The same disease would also take Kath’s life.

4

Kath’s School in Kirkcaldy

Churchill would grade women he liked according to two criteria: they must have ‘beauty’ and ‘distinction’, and Kath had both, and more.

It was impossible not to be struck by Kath MacColl’s appearance: she was always immaculately dressed in the latest style, wearing gloves, and with a hat to set off her beautiful red hair and blue eyes to their best effect.

Clementine Churchill had pleaded with Kath, as a friend, to help her husband win the Dundee seat and fight off a very real challenge from Tories. Kath readily agreed, as she always did whenever she was asked to help, and found herself flying hectically between her amateur stage performances and Churchill’s tight schedule.

At the time, Kath lived in rooms at 92 High Street, Kirkcaldy. She had secured a job as a teacher at the East School, a primary school in Kirkcaldy (now the Glebe Park Neighbourhood Centre).

During the Great War, it was her job to teach girls who spent most of their day working in the factories and mills. Despite their exhaustion, the children had huge affection for Kath and a real eagerness to learn from her, which in turn, made her task very satisfying and rewarding. After the war, her classes consisted of unemployed girls whom she would teach and inspire in exactly the same way. But, this was not enough to satisfy Kath’s need and desire to do what she could in the fight to defend and support the ‘underprivileged’. Kath was always to be found assisting at food kitchens, helping the sick, and teaching everyone and anyone how to read and write.

Kath was precise, well-organized, and smart, with a huge love of books and a massive hunger to learn. Living on the ‘Lang Toun’ – Kirkcaldy’s 6.4-kilometre-long high street – and close to the bustling docks, an important center for the trade in coal, salt, linen, and linoleum – just like Adam Smith, 2 centuries previously – gave Kath a real insight into the economic dynamics of the world and shaped her perspective on the political, social, and economic problems of the age and their solutions. Although, her views and those of the author of The Wealth of Nations could not have been more different.

Kath’s friendship with the Churchills, which gave her access to people from the highest levels of society and the country’s most interesting and controversial radicals and suffragettes, also gave her a distinctive insight into the world and the war. Billed as the war that would end all wars, the devastation was immense. It must have been almost impossible for Kath to comprehend what Winston Churchill, who was on the frontline in 1916, would report of the war and the staggering loss of life.

By the end of WWI, it would be estimated that 37 million people had died as a direct consequence of the war. 6 million died of disease and starvation. 250,000 British Tommies would come home with partial or full amputations, only to have to eke out a living begging on the nation’s streets, while 908,000 British men never came home.

Kath was particularly alarmed at the way in which all the men from one village were put together as one fighting unit, which ensured that they fought together but also died together. This meant that all the menfolk from entire families and villages could be wiped out together. Russia, a country for whose history Kath shared a love for with Clementine, lost 1.7 million people, whilst having to care for a staggering 4.9 million people, taking the greatest share of the pain. It would be Kath’s influence that would lead to Clementine Churchill becoming an active member of Friends of Russia.

However odd it must have seemed to those around Winston Churchill, Kath had become a firm friend at a time when people of her class would not usually be permitted through the front door and certainly would not be recognized as a friend. Yet, in 1908, Kath was at the Churchills’ wedding in London with many of the most significant people of the time. Clementine Churchill introduced Kath to the leading members of the Suffragette movement, while Kath would introduce her to Willie Gallacher. This was the man who, in 1935, would be the United Kingdom’s first elected communist MP for West Fife, a seat he would hold until 1950, when he would lose it to The Labour Party.

These three distinctive and determined individuals felt the same about the Tories, whom Clementine described as ‘vulgar’. How she felt when her own Winston joined the Conservative Party is not known. And although Kath received support from the suffragette activists, she felt that none of the women truly understood the real crises facing the nation: poverty, inequality, social injustice, and an absence of meaningful civil rights. How could it be right and just that working women did not have the vote, while their labor, often in truly appalling conditions, made others hugely rich, all while their menfolk were being sent to fight and die in the country’s wars? How could it be right and just that children were freezing to death in slum housing conditions without adequate nutrition or health care?

***

This, then, was the situation in 1917. And as Kath’s friend Clementine found a new, active role working for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in setting up canteens for munitions workers across the North East, Kath found herself in the new role of Winston Churchill’s apprentice, helping him fight an election campaign and learning the art of politics. Churchill himself spent very little time campaigning and left much of the election strategy and the mobilizing of the popular vote to Kath, whose street activism at the gates of factories and pits secured him the seat. This he won on 6 May with a staggering 80% of the vote. 1917 was also the year in which her beloved sister and fellow teacher, Margaret, married, on 20 July, in the United Free Church of Scotland, in Kirkcaldy.

5

Kath’s lodgings in Kirkcaldy

Kath’s involvement in this political campaign and her association with the Churchills very much represents her political coming of age.

But, this campaign also brought her closer to her fellow teacher and activist, Sandy (Alexander) Duncan. The son of a railway goods supervisor, Sandy also taught at the East School in Kirkcaldy, and his inspirational teaching of sport to the children was greatly admired and respected by his colleagues. With his rugged good looks, he was a perfect match for the striking and stylish Kath, who was already regarded as one of the great beauties of the age. And even though married teachers were simply not allowed, they were married on 23 December, 1923, at the Carlton Tea Rooms in Kirkcaldy, just as his parents, David and Mary, had done on 30 December, 1892.

What I find particularly interesting about the marriage of the popular Kath and Sandy Duncan is the fact that only the minimum number of people attended the wedding ceremony. Only two people were present to witness the marriage, and it is striking that neither Kath’s mother nor her sister Margaret were there. Kath’s mother was devoted to her daughter and lived with and supported her until her death. She was also deeply religious and, although this would not have necessarily prevented her attending Kath and Sandy’s civil ceremony, it has led me to think there might have been something else about this marriage that kept her away. Given the libertarian nature of the Duncan household, particularly in London, and especially its openness to and support of the persecuted and marginalized, including transvestites and gay people, it has occurred to me that the Duncans’ marriage may have been a marriage of convenience between two...