ORAL history is the practice of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities and participants in past events.
Scotland has its own hub for oral history expertise, the Scottish Oral History Centre (SOHC), based at the University of Strathclyde.
This year sees the Centre mark its 30th anniversary.
Co-director Yvonne McFadden says: “The SOHC operates as a place for interdisciplinary research and as a knowledge exchange hub between academic, community and corporate oral history.
“It was established by professors Arthur McIvor and Callum Brown in 1995, making it one of the longest-running centres of its kind in the UK.”
But why do we need it? McFadden says: “Oral history has sometimes had a slightly tangential relationship to universities and to the rest of the historical discipline.
“Especially in the UK and in Europe, the practice of oral history has been associated with social movements, history from below, working-class history, women’s and gender history, marginalised groups, and so on.
“Because of that, oral historians have often had to work in quite precarious ways, not always or only partially within universities. The existence of spaces like the SOHC is really important. They can be a bridge between work inside and outside of a university and a point of connection for people who want to use oral history in heritage projects.”
From Tapes to Tutoring BACK in the 1980s, Brown and McIvor found themselves ever more involved with creating histories based upon stories people told. Brown was beginning to study Up Helly Aa, in Shetland, while McIvor was working as part of a collective recording stories from the Singer Sewing machine factory at Clydebank.
They were amassing tapes, and their students were embarking upon projects. There was a need to provide training in a more co-ordinated way. Brown says: “We had a lot of students wanting to do 20th-century history, so we needed to build. We’d spend lots of time tutoring them individually, and I said to Arthur, ‘This is crazy. We’re wasting so much time on one-to-one tuition. Let’s create a class’.”
Soon, external groups were approaching the centre. The SOHC was not alone in the field but played a major role in developing the use of oral history methodology through its training sessions.
Other Scottish pioneers were the late Ian MacDougall, Lynn Abrams at Glasgow University, the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University, and the Scottish Oral History Group.
Memories of Everyday ExperienceS ONE of the earliest PhDs in Scotland based on oral history was conducted by the late Neil Rafeek, who in the early 2000s recorded the memories of women activists in the Communist Party in Scotland. Meanwhile, McIvor – with Ronnie Johnson – investigated the asbestos tragedy in Scotland, the health impacts of poor working conditions in coal mining, and the history of attempts to control dusty working conditions.
These two projects resulted in books, Lethal Work and Miner’s Lung: A History Of Dust Disease In British Coal Mining. Before departing to Dundee, Brown also spearheaded a large project which collected the memories of former University of Strathclyde students, in the process telling a story of social change in 20th-century Scotland.
IN 2009, David Walker interviewed former dock workers on behalf of Glasgow Museums, sampling the memories of electricians, winch operators, and stevedores.
The SOHC also ran a major project on gender identities, and another on “reserved occupations” during the Second World War, interviewing “home front” veterans.
Accompanying the lecturers were a cohort of innovative doctoral students. Annmarie Hughes worked on domestic violence in Glasgow in the 1930s, Andy Perchard interviewed former managers from the coal industry and workers from Scotland’s aluminium industry, while Angela Bartie studied the history of the Edinburgh festivals, interviewing artists, publishers and cultural entrepreneurs.
Lost Villages THE centre recently carried out a major project on the oral history of mining communities in East Ayrshire. In partnership with East Ayrshire Council and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Environment Scotland, the Lost Villages project collected memories of now largely demolished mining villages including Benwhat, near Dalmellington.
As coal mines began to close from the 1920s onwards, these remote communities disintegrated, their buildings were torn down and residents rehoused elsewhere in the local area.
The project reconstructed the social and cultural life of these communities, capturing the “intangible history” of the villages while investigating the impact of deindustrialisation.
As well as collecting oral histories, the project ran storytelling events, film screenings with poetry and music, and an exhibition at the National Mining Museum of Scotland in Newtongrange, Midlothian.
Ultimately, it resulted in the recent publication of a book: Memory, Mining And Heritage: Voices From Ayrshire Communities.
Looking to the Future OTHER important research shows the breadth of research at the centre – Fearghus Roulston on the punk subculture in Belfast during the Troubles; Laura Kelly on contraception in Ireland, and Matthew Smith’s work on ADHD and mental health.
Along with the Scottish Oral History Group, the centre hosted the Oral History Society’s annual conference this year, bringing together practitioners from the UK, Ireland and beyond. It included a civic reception given by Glasgow City Council.
The SOHC has also developed a strong international profile, for example through its long collaboration with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling based in Montreal, Canada, and the transnational Deindustrialisation and the Politics of Our Time research project.
McIvor, who has steered the centre since its inception, will soon retire and his place will be taken by Roulston. What does the future hold? At the moment, the outlook for history and the wider humanities in Scottish universities can hardly be seen as encouraging. Yet the quality of the work at the SOHC speaks for itself.
McFadden said: “We’ll continue to build a bridge between universities and public heritage, through training, advice, consultancy and collaborative research.
“Recently, we’ve enjoyed working with storytellers and musicians to help get people’s stories out there. We’ll continue to listen to these stories – whether they are celebratory or less easy to hear.
“It remains important that oral history continues to be a way for the marginalised to tell their stories, so that all groups in society can start to see themselves within the history of the world around them.”
Charlie Lynch thanks Yvonne McFadden and Arthur McIvor from the Scottish Oral History Centre for their help with this article
