Tom Johnston (Scottish Politician) - Power To The Glens

Power To The Glens

Undoubtedly his greatest legacy was the creation of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. Until the 1940s, many rural areas of Scotland outwith the Central Belt had little or no electricity supply. There were coal-fired steam-turbine and some diesel-driven power stations serving urban locations, and excess capacity from a few large industrial hydroelectricity stations (e.g. those serving the aluminium smelters at Foyers and Kinlochleven) was made available locally, but there was no widespread distribution of electricity through a comprehensively integrated electric power transmission system such as the present National Grid.

Possibly inspired by the earlier example of the American Tennessee Valley Authority initiative of the New Deal administration of President Franklin D Roosevelt, but undoubtedly determined to address the very strong popular sentiment of the immediate post-war period for a more equitable distribution of the resources and benefits of a modern economy, Johnston strove hard and successfully to win over all interested parties, including generally reluctant landowners, to the goal of harnessing the (then) scarcely developed but naturally well-suited geography and climate of the Scottish Highlands to the generation of electricity by water power. In the three decades following the Second World War, the Hydro Board's teams of planners, engineers, architects and labourers succeeded in creating an epic succession of electricity generation and distribution schemes that were world-renowned not only for successfully achieving their technical aims in very demanding terrain but for often doing so in an aesthetically inspiring manner. The economic and social benefits thus brought to all the people of Scotland, and especially those in rural areas, were immense and longlasting.