19 NOVEMBER 1937, Page 30

• * * * Scottish Councils A strong plea for

more community councils (for Scotland at any rate) is put up in a thoughtful little book The Scotland

of Our Sons, written and published by Alexander MacLehose. It is a little surprising that he does not mention a very telling example of the effectiveness of such councils from Galloway in general and Dairy in particular. The community council there was perhaps stirred to greater activity by the dissolution of the parish councils, a destructive -act " that it is difficult to explain. The community council has been much more directly practical than some of the English councils that have died of a plethora of typescript: One of its enterprises, for example, was the building of a much-needed bridge. The existence of parish councils is, or should be, of great assistance to a community council ; and its forma- tion has been followed by the formation of voluntary parish councils, which are proving useful though they have no legal status and no direct powers. The urbanisation of the mind of the population (that pet bogy of Sir Horace Plunkett) seems to be as real a danger in Scotland as in England, though Scotland still supplies us with our best gardeners and often our best farmers.

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