11 Albany Street

1937 – 1938 Offices of Protestant Action Society

The Protestant Action Society was a political party in Edinburgh founded by John Cormack in 1933. This was a period when extremist and Fascist parties across Europe were gaining support, including Oswald Mosely’s ‘Blackshirts’ in England, but Cormack’s militant anti-Catholicism was Scotland’s home-grown intolerance manifest. Cormack’s main preoccupation was what he saw as the rising influence of Catholicism in Scottish life twinned with his own virulent anti-Catholic mind-set. For a short while, he was able to harness the prejudices, and sometimes the violence, of a significant minority of Edinburgh citizens under his ‘no-Popery’ banner. At the peak of his powers, he was able to attract 3000 to a meeting at the Usher Hall.

In 1935, he managed to bring 20,000 people onto the streets of Morningside to protest (at times violently) against the Catholic Eucharist Congress. In 1936, Cormack was arrested and fined for having participated in a sectarian disturbance. There is a report by a French catholic 'White Father' who, while walking down Albany Street, with a young student from The Priory, Bishop’s Waltham, were greeted by the cry of 'One, two, three, No Popery' and stones thrown at them by two youths. They escaped their attackers, but undaunted, bought plates and cups and saucers from a warehouse and returned. They threatened to hurl their crockery at the offending defenders of Protestant Faith, who thought discretion the better part of valour and fled.

In the 1938 municipal elections Protestant Action won nearly 32% of the Edinburgh vote, returning nine councillors, and pushing Labour into third place. Cormack’s politics was of the street and the mob – and he considered himself a latter day John Knox. He had a weekly public speaking itinerary where the public could hear and heckle his ideas. Cormack tried to encourage the Orange Order in Scotland to join in his movement, but without success. He left the movement in 1939 and was not readmitted until the late 1950s. At its peak the party had 8,000 members. Although the Protestant Action Society declined after the Second World War it was active, in some form or other, until the early 1990s. Cormack continued as a councillor until the early 1960s.

1940 - about 1950 Drambuie store

Drambuie was first commercially produced in Union Street in Edinburgh in 1910. Around 1940, the company moved to bonded premises in Dublin Street Lane and the company office was in York Place, and Number 11 used to store the produce. After a short period at Broughton Market nearby, the operation was moved, in 1955, to premises at the foot of Easter Road in Leith. It is reputed - with no historical evidence - that it was Prince Charles Edward Stuart who, on being given sanctuary by Captain John MacKinnon in Skye, rewarded Mackinnon with the recipe. The legend holds that the recipe was then given in the late 19th century by Clan MacKinnon to James Ross who ran the Broadford Hotel on Skye, where he developed and improved the recipe, initially for his friends and then later to patrons in the 1870s. Ross then sold it further afield, eventually to France and the United States. The name was registered as a trademark in 1893. Ross died young, and to pay for their children's education, his widow was obliged to sell the recipe, by coincidence to a different MacKinnon family, in the early 20th century. Only twelve cases were originally sold. In 1916, Drambuie became the first liqueur to be allowed in the cellars of the House of Lords, and Drambuie began to ship world-wide to stationed British soldiers.

early 1950s Barkers Furniture Store

1965 – (at least) 1970 Edinburgh Trades Council

Part of a network of about 40 local Trade Union Councils in Scotland which were affiliated to the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

1970s Victoria Social Club