Rural Scotland – Its Industries and Culture was the subject of a broadcast talk last night by Mrs Haughton, Williamston, by Insch. Progress, she said, had reduced the industrial activity and population of the countryside, and had affected the cultural side equally badly.
Rural Scotland to-day had practically lost its independence. The country was almost entirely under the dominion of the town. To-day the farm hands’ Eldorado was a super-cinema with a cafe and jazz band attached. If existing tendencies continued, rural Scotland would cease to possess any culture whatever, or any industry other than tilling the soil; the countryman as distinct from the town dweller would cease to exist. If they could restore to rural Scotland a real and sincere desire for independence, they would have sown the seeds of a country life as full, self-supporting and-self-satisfying as that of a hundred years ago.