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The 1970 British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh is widely thought to have been a barnstorming success and an excellent advertisement for Scotland. Recent research by the authors, however, shows that the event was a deeply politicized one: reflective of Scotland's status as a "stateless nation," of Westminster politics during the era more generally, and of the politics surrounding apartheid South Africa's sporting contacts with the outside world. The games managed to avert a mass boycott organized by the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC), in retaliation for the Marylebone Cricket Club's recent invitation of the South African national cricket team. This article will explore Scotland's place as a nonstate actor within the 1970 crisis. Attention will be given to the domestic political response from Scottish members of Parliament, members of local Scottish councils (particularly within Edinburgh itself), and Scottish National Party (SNP) activists, angered that Scotland should pay for the crimes perceived to be made by an English sporting body. However, our piece goes beyond these discourses, to examine the broader sporting relationship that Scots had with South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), governed by white supremacist regimes during the period. Policy documents, housed in the National Records of Scotland, express UK Cabinet-level concerns about the actions of individual sporting clubs' tours of the countries. This article will also look at how cabinet ministers, most notably Labour's Minister for Sport Denis Howell, intervened to shape Scotland's devolved sporting councils' policies on contacts with South Africa and Rhodesia.

This article examines Scottish reactions to African, Asian, Caribbean and other nations’ boycotts of the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. These boycotts occurred over the UK Government’s support of trade with apartheid South Africa, and over the inclusion in the England team of South African-born Zola Budd and Annette Cowley. This piece focuses in part on the political reaction, both by Scotland’s Westminster MPs, and also by Edinburgh District Council – the latter led by the Labour Party, and keen to show their opposition to apartheid. However, it also focuses on the press reaction to these boycotts, which was rarely supportive of boycotting nations, with some of the more left-liberal outlets largely defensive over Scotland’s participation in anti-apartheid politics. The highly mediated public reaction is additionally gauged through letters to newspaper editors. Whilst some displayed anger over the position of the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, and others consternation over the impotent political position of Scotland within the wider UK, most letters were overwhelmingly hostile to the boycotters, and linked their disgust to a nostalgia for the British Empire (some of it racially tinged), and accordingly an inability of athletes and sporting authorities to keep politics out of sport.

The works of historians such as Hargreaves, Tranter, Walvin, McCrone and Bailey suggest that women were, for a variety of reasons, gradually entering into the ‘world of sport’ from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. Despite a lack of research it has been argued that this trend, of increased participation amongst women, continued into the twentieth century. Recent studies have tended to converged on the broad leisure choices of women, ignoring the place of sport within these experiences. This study therefore addresses an under researched topic: the development of women’s participation in sport in Scotland between 1920 and 1937. Many argue that during the interwar years there was a general distortion of the traditional boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ areas of life for women. However, it has also been acknowledged that notions of gender differences persisted in this period. This study contributes to a wider understanding of gender relations during the period. It probes how women’s involvement in physically demanding sports were influenced by existing discourses and enabled the emergence of new ones. This thesis does not aim to chart the chronological growth and development of specific sports but rather seeks to understand the ways in which sport was incorporated into women’s lives and the meanings which they attached to their experiences. Each section of the thesis deals with a different area of participation. It examines the development of physical education in schools, the establishment and growth of a selection of sports organizations, the growth and use of local council run sports facilities and the development of work-based sport for women. This research focuses on contemporary depictions and discussions of sportswomen during these years as well as drawing on the views of sportswomen themselves. It employs both qualitative and quantitative methodologies in order to achieve a holistic and balanced interpretation of interwar sports participation and the attitudes that influenced it.