Episode Transcript

While many people say that Dundee has had a rebellious streak throughout its history, it’s perhaps more true to say that it has embraced those who encourage radical or singular thought.

Being a student is a time that should be laced with singular thinking and perhaps a time for activism. At the University of Dundee precedent has certainly been set for that.

The first Principal of the independent University of Dundee was Professor James Drever.

Born in Edinburgh, Professor Drever was a lifelong academic, aside from service in the Royal Navy. Psychology was his discipline, succeeding his father as Professor of Psychology in Edinburgh in 1944. The department flourished under his leadership, but Drever also had a wider interest in how higher education was delivered.

He was appointed to the 1963 Committee on Higher Education chaired by Lionel Robbins, which, as one of its recommendations said that Queen's College, Dundee, should be a university.

So, in 1966, Drever was given the role of managing the transition as Master of Queen's College and the following year became the University of Dundee’s first principal and vice-chancellor.

It was a difficult first few years and he had to deal with not only financial restrictions but student protest. Rather than maintaining a distance however, Drever lent some support to the student rent strike in 1973 as well as other protests. Most famously, he openly encouraged the opposition to a visit to the University by Enoch Powell in 1969.

He spent 11 years in office and guided and helped to shape the respected institution it is today.

The city has also produced political mavericks, with Edwin Scrymgeour the only MP who has ever sat in House of Commons as a member of the Scottish Prohibition Party.

The Dundonian established the party in 1901 to try and further his work in the temperance movement and served on the city council before looking towards Westminster and fighting elections, competing against the incumbent MP, Winston Churchill.

By 1922, he finally managed to unseat the increasingly unpopular Churchill and represented  the two-seat Dundee constituency alongside Labour candidate ED Morel.

Scrymgeour was an MP for almost 10 years. Scrymgeour’s zeal for clean-living was never unbowed and he became an evangelical Chaplain among the city’s poorest at East House and Maryfield Hospital in Dundee.

He was succeeded by Florence Horsbrugh, Dundee’s first female MP. She was also first Conservative to represent the city – as much of a surprise then as it would be today.

For many of Dundee’s reformers, time spent abroad had a lasting effect on their thinking.

George Kinloch, who was born in Dundee in 1775 became the first MP for Dundee when it was given a seat in Parliament in 1832. He had travelled to France as a young man and at the age of 22 watched as the monarchy and aristocracy crumbled and a republic was established.

The Kinlochs were wealthy landowners, but his experiences in France had shaped his political views. He bought a large amount of land in Angus in 1808, but provided grants to prospective tenants and in 1814 was pivotal to the harbour extension at Dundee.

Kinloch’s popularity waned with his years of campaigning for reform of Parliament – so much so that he was forced to escape to France.  With the blessing of George IV, however, he was free to return. Just a year later in 1832 he became MP but died just two months after taking up his seat.