Dunfermline is to become Scotland’s eighth city after being granted it as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. The Fife town is one of several locations in the UK and further afield being bestowed the honour to mark the monarch’s 70 years on the throne. A record number of eight places are being made cities, with Bangor in Northern Ireland, Colchester, Doncaster and Milton Keynes in England and Wrexham in Wales all being similarly honoured, along with Douglas on the Isle of Man and Stanley in the Falkland Islands.
Dunfermline’s claim to city status drew on it’s royal history, one of the seats of the kings of Scotland in the middle ages, with Robert the Bruce buried in Dunfermline Abbey after his death in 1329. It also boasts an array of famous sons and daughters including Andrew Carnegie, Barbara Dickson and Iain Banks.
Labour Provost of Fife, and former football manager, Jim Leishman is himself almost synonymous with Dunfermline. He welcomed the announcement, saying: “The official title of city will give Dunfermline the wider recognition that it deserves as one of the fastest-growing, urban areas in Scotland, offering all the amenities that any modern city could hope for. City status will help us grow economically and as a tourist destination and will have a positive impact on Dunfermline and the surroundings. Of course, the people of Dunfermline have always known that Dunfermline is a city, that’s why we have the City Car Park, the City Hotel and City Cabs but it’s great to finally get official recognition of this.”
Jim has grasped the real significance of this honour in terms of future opportunity rather than past nostalgia. Those bidding for city status as part of the Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours Competition had to highlight their royal associations, as well as showcase their unique communities and distinct local identity, but most of all, they had to sell themselves as ready to grasp the future opportunities before them. Dunfermline is the only successful Scottish entry this year, with Dumfries, Elgin, Greenock, Livingston, Oban, St Andrews and South Ayrshire missing out.
When I was at school it was all very straightforward. Everybody knew there were four Scottish Cities - Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. While the civic heads of burghs were called provosts only the cities had Lord Provosts. The trick question was ‘what is the biggest town in Scotland? To which the answer was ‘Paisley’. It was the fifth largest by population but without city status. I was vaguely aware of the claims of other places - ‘ the Fair City’ of Perth (after Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Fair Maid of Perth’), and football teams like Brechin City and Elgin City. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remember being told a city had to have a cathedral and a university. L P Hartley wrote that ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ Well they do things differently here in Scotland too - no cathedrals in that sense. As for universities, we now have universities in the Highlands and Islands, the Borders and the West of Scotland with hubs and campuses in all our main towns.
Between 1905 and 1994 fourteen UK towns were officially designated as cities, though none of them were in Scotland. Inverness became Scotland's fifth city in 2000 when it was one of three new UK cities granted their status to mark the Millennium, beating off challenges from Ayr, Stirling and Paisley. Now it is a regular question on TV quiz shows - ‘the most northerly city in the UK?’ Two years later, in 2002, Stirling became Scotland's sixth city when it was one of five created across the UK to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne. Stirling was in competition again with Ayr and Paisley and in addition, Dumfries. In 2012 Perth became Scotland's seventh city to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and now joined by Dunfermline.
It would be convenient to think that these decisions are all based on fairly random royal patronage but the truth is there is a great deal of politics involved. By the 1800s Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth and Elgin were referring to themselves as cities. Dunfermline is first recorded as a city in 1856 based on its historical role as a royal capital.
In 1889, Dundee was granted city status by letters patent and so became Scotland's first officially recognised city. Two years later, in 1891, Aberdeen had its city status confirmed when the burgh was enlarged by an Act of Parliament. The Royal Burgh of Inverness had its application to be granted city status as part of Victoria’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee celebrations rejected: possibly because it was thought it would draw attention to the lack of any formal city status held by Glasgow or Edinburgh. The situation in Scotland was not fully clarified until the passing of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929, which designated Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee as "counties of cities". The strong implication of this was that there were no other cities in Scotland and this was confirmed when Local Government (Scotland) Act 1947 explicitly listed Dunfermline and Perth as "large burghs" and Elgin as a "small burgh". When James Callaghan was Home Secretary in 1969 he muddied the waters again by referring to six Scottish cities without naming them (including Perth and Elgin as cities in the Municipal Year Book 1972).
When Helen Liddell was Secretary of State for Scotland in 2002, she had to advise between the respective claims of Ayr and Stirling, two New Labour jewels in the political crown of 1997, wrested from the clutches of the Tories.
The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebration has seen city status extended for the first time to the British Overseas Territories with it being granted to Stanley on the Falkland Islands.
However, the most obviously political decision, very much with a small ‘p’, and also perhaps the least controversial, was the Queen according Southend-on-Sea city status in honour of Sir David Amess, MP, murdered at his constituency surgery on 15 October 2021. He had campaigned over many years to have such recognition for his beloved Southend-on-Sea.
With Dunfermline’s status secured, I am now opening nominations for Scottish City Status 2023. It will be exactly 100 years since the first radio broadcast from Scotland; the last woman to be hanged here, Susan Newell; the first woman appointed to the Scottish Bar, Margaret Kidd; the year of birth of Ivor Cutler and Janet Brown and the death of John Maclean. Applications are invited from places of any size, with royal heritage or none, economically thriving or down at heel, boasting a cathedral or only a Salvation Army Citadel, with famous sons and daughters ranging from Adam Smith to the Krankies. Entries will be charged at the premium rate and you should have the bill payer’s permission to enter. My decision will be final.