Scotland was not the only country to municipalise some of its cinemas during the early period. The influence of pressure groups pushing for a tight regulation of commercial cinema led to a widespread municipalisation of cinemas in Norway. In 1913, the Norwegian government passed the Film Theatres’ Act, demanding that local councils ‘licence all public showings of films within the area of their
jurisdiction’. An indirect consequence of this Act was that many Norwegian
municipalities began to buy local cinemas, leading to the establishment of a public cinema monopoly, the National Association of Municipal Cinemas, in 1917. As Gunnar Iverson pointed out, apart from the motivation to regulate film exhibition, local authorities were drawn towards municipalisation due to the promise of earning a profit by running cinemas themselves and using this to pay for other services.14 Dag
12 Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, “Modernity of Small Town Tastes: Movies at the 1907 Cooperstown, New York, Centennial,” in Explorations in New Cinema Histories. Compare also Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and George Potamianos, introduction to Hollywood in the Neighbourhood:
Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing, ed. Kathryn Fueller-Seeley (London; Berkeley;
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008); and Kathryn H. Fuller, At the Picture Show:
Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996). See also Joe Kember, Marketing Modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2009).
13 John Caughie, “Small Town Cinema in Scotland: The Particularity of Place,” in Cinema beyond the City: Filmgoing in Small Town and Rural Europe, ed. Judith Thissen (London:
Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming).
14 Gunnar Iverson, “Norway,” in Nordic National Cinemas, eds. Tytti Soila, Astrid Söderbergh-Widding and Gunnar Iverson, (Routledge: London and New York, 1998), 106.
Asbjornsen and Ove Solum have analysed the function of municipal cinemas in Norway by applying the concept of public service, more commonly used in studies of broadcasting. They found that its inherent notions of social responsibility and
legitimacy were central to the institutionalisation and survival of the municipal cinema system.15 In the 1920s, the Social Democrats and the ruling Norwegian Left supported municipalities taking over cinemas which suggests that some parallels can be drawn with the Scottish situation where municipalisation of local services was an Independent Labour Party policy.16 However, municipal cinemas remained an
exception, not the norm. One reason was that the power of local authorities as cinema regulators was limited, as explained in the first part of this thesis. Another reason was that national, political and legal structures were supportive of private rather than public trading. While widespread municipalisation like in Norway was unfeasible for these reasons, on the municipal level certain possibilities existed.
Similar to the Norwegian case, attempts to municipalise entertainment in Britain were associated with motivations to enhance public taste. Originating in the temperance and moral reform movements of the late nineteenth century, civic entertainments were intended to ‘elevate to some degree the recreational taste of local citizens’.17 Such motives were articulated, for instance, by the Liquor Control Board when it considered opening a cinema in Cumberland in 1916. The idea was that a ‘state cinema’ would help
(1) To secure an antidote to the lure of the public house.
(2) To submit the picture theatres to a process of “State Purification” similar to that which is being applied to certain public houses.
(3) To attempt some demonstration of its broad-minded tolerance towards
“healthy amusement” for the people.18
Glasgow Corporation had been running municipal shows with similar intentions since the 1870s. Staged regularly on Saturday afternoons, these entertainments – often taking the form of concerts – started to include moving pictures at the beginning of
15 Dag Asbjornsen and Ove Solum, “ ‘The Best Cinema System in the World’- The Municipal Cinema System in Norway: Historical and comparative perspectives,” Nordicom Review (Vol.
24, No 1: 2003): 89-105.
16 Iverson, “Norway,” in National Cinemas, eds. Soila, Söderbergh-Widding and Iverson, 105.
17 Griffiths, Cinema and Cinema-going in Scotland, 114.
18 “No Room for State Cinemas,” Bioscope, August 10, 1916, 1.
the new century. In 1919, these shows faced increasing competition by cheap picture houses. In response Walter Freer, curator of Glasgow Corporation Halls and driving force behind the Saturday concerts, announced Glasgow’s plans to furnish all public halls with a cinematograph to run municipal picture shows.19 Glasgow was not the only authority considering such a move at that time. Similar proposals came
especially from a number of smaller towns such as Clydebank, Kirkcaldy, Montrose, Johnstone, Dunoon and Renfrew. The surge in post-war municipal cinemas even reached Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, where it was hoped that a public cinema
‘would be less likely to offend Free Church sensibilities.’20
Local authorities were not only motivated by moral arguments, but considered municipal pictures for economic reasons. Their profitability was proven by the success of commercial cinemas and, thus, regarded as a potential source of income to fund other municipal activities. As Griffiths maintained, this was particularly relevant during the early decades of the twentieth century when the increasing influence of socialist policies brought about the expansion of public services in many Scottish town councils without a matching growth in revenue:
[I]n a period in which the revenue base of most urban authorities was failing to expand at a rate to match the growth in services provided, the cinema’s record for profitability offered hope of an additional buoyant source of income.21
Income generated through municipal cinema meant that revenues could increase without the town council having to raise the rates (the equivalent of Council tax).
Enthusiasm for the municipal cinema schemes was particularly high during the immediate post-war years when property values were being re-assessed and the likelihood of increased rates was great.22
Apprehensive about any type of state interference, the cinema trade lobbied against the spread of municipal cinemas. At a conference of the cinema trade in Glasgow in September 1918, the need to stop municipal competition was urgently
19 “The Municipal Cinema,” Bioscope, November 27, 1919, 113.
20 Griffiths, Cinema and Cinema-going in Scotland, 115.
21 Ibid., 114.
22 Ibid., 112.
brought to the attention of delegates. First and foremost, the cinema trade was anxious about the favourable position municipal cinemas operated from:
Municipal trading in all except the absolute necessities of life – water, gas, and the like – is without doubt the most pernicious form of
competition which the man of commerce has to face.23
Under the protected auspices of the local authority, municipal cinemas were thought to have unlimited access to public finances and perceived to be in a better position to evade sanctions when the safety requirements of the 1909 Cinematograph Act could not be met:
No public hall can come near to complying with the restrictions which apply to all cinemas in the way of exits, fixed seats, etc., and it is far from right that with such obvious advantages they should be allowed to compete with halls which have to spend thousands of pounds … to satisfy the [Cinematograph] Act … .24
Another worry was that municipal picture shows would appeal to the same patrons while having lower running costs.25 In 1919, when Glasgow was planning a municipal cinema scheme so comprehensive that it would ‘embrace all the Halls under the Corporation’ accommodating ‘300,000 patrons’, the editors of The Bioscope accused the Corporation of trying to eradicate commercial cinemas in their jurisdiction. At the time the Corporation banned the building of new cinemas due to a shortage of housing stock, a policy the editors claimed was connected to its municipalisation agenda:
In effect it works out thus: We [Glasgow Corporation] want municipal cinemas. If we allow private enterprise to build cinemas, we shall not be able to run our municipal cinemas – therefore, we will stop building by private enterprise on the plea of houses first, and we will thus eliminate any further competition.26
Glasgow Corporation never realised this agenda; it was unattainable in the face of a strong trade lobby as well as legal and pragmatic obstacles. The city’s commercial cinema scene already encompassed more than eighty cinemas and was represented
23 “Ousting the Exhibitor,” Bioscope, September 19, 1918, 4.
24 “The Municipal Cinema,” Bioscope, March 27, 1919, 87.
25 “Municipal Enterprise,” Bioscope, July 19, 1917, 319.
26 “The Municipal Cinema,” Bioscope, November 27, 1919, 113.
by a local branch of the Cinematograph Exhibitors Association which had close links with the Corporation. But the trade was not concerned about municipal cinemas in Glasgow per se, or any other specific place. What needed to be curbed were the consequences of any municipality setting a precedent for authority controlled cinemas that could lead to a Norwegian scenario:
A far greater danger lies in the possibility that the practice once started will be followed, and the havoc wrought may be multiplied a
hundredfold. From the municipality to the State is but a short step. Is the next step to be the State controlled cinema?27
Consequently, the journal encouraged exhibitors to take active steps against municipalisation. The principal strategy was to question the legitimacy of local authorities entering into commercial business with ratepayers’ money:
The Acts of Parliament under which our municipalities are constituted never for one instant contemplated that these municipalities should be permitted to embark upon commercial enterprises.28
In Scotland this led to two court cases, starting with a legal challenge against Dunoon Town Council in July 1921. In January, the Council had decided to take over the Pavilion Cinema on Argyle Street to offer summer entertainments that included cinematograph shows, a move that was contested in the Court of Session by the proprietor of the Picture House, also on Argyle Street. The judge sided with the private owner, arguing that while the council was allowed ‘to erect places of public entertainment’ and ‘to provide music by bands, concerts, or otherwise’ this provision did not include cinematograph shows.29 In Montrose on the East coast, Ex-Bailie Davidson had started to run a municipal cinema in the Burgh Hall in 1919. According to The Bioscope, the pictures made close to £1000 in profit, a success that prompted the owners of the Empire Picture House to ‘commence a legal action’ against
Davidson in December 1921, but without the desired effect.30 Whereas legal
27 “Ousting the Exhibitor,” Bioscope, September 19, 1918, 4
28 Ibid.
29 “Councils and Kinemas,” Scottish Kinema Record, July 10, 1921, 1; Griffiths, Cinema and Cinema-going in Scotland, 115-6.
30 Ibid., 116. “The Burgh Hall Cinema, Montrose,” Bioscope, August 5, 1920, 74.
intervention prevented municipal cinema in Dunoon, in Montrose it enjoyed a number of prosperous seasons before faltering in September 1923.31
As an alternative to commercial cinema, municipally controlled cinemas were resisted and legally challenged by the cinema trade. While this strategy was not always successful, the surrounding discourse shows that political and legal structures were more supportive of cinema as a private enterprise and that the idea of cinema as public service was met with considerable opposition. This opposition is connected to municipal cinema's alignment with political movements which challenged the orthodoxy of free-market capitalism. The case of Kirkintilloch, in particular, must be understood in relation to the Independent Labour Party’s view on municipal
government and Thomas Johnston’s support for cinema as a public service.