ABSTRACT
The principal hallmark of Scottish Labour's experience in interwar years is to be found in how it dealt with its past, and the past of the wider political community. Liberalism was a faith in Edwardian Scotland, and the Liberal Party a broad church-supported as readily by Irish Catholics as Presbyterian Scots-in which believers found communion and leadership. While prominent Scots may have earned a militant reputation for themselves in the interwar years, labour organisations and the wider membership were more cautious. In many ways, the powerful imagery of events which together made up the Red Clyde years and the strident personalities that peopled these times have distorted the historiography of interwar Scottish Labour. Labour's electoral performance in interwar years confirms the reality of a party whose managerialist rhetoric belied a patchy and inconsistent organisation on the ground. The influence of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) on Labour policy, strategy and organisation in Scotland is distinctive feature of the interwar years.
