Migrant and Seasonal Workers in East Lothian Agriculture

Heather Holmes

The employment of different groups of workers did not decline at the same rate even for one seasonal task, such as the potato harvest. For that occupation, the number of children employed under the Education (Exemptions) (Scotland) Act, 1947, gradually declined during the second half of the 1950s, when the Secretary of State for Scotland deliberately reduced the number of exemptions granted throughout Scotland. In East Lothian in 1960, the last year they were granted in that county, only 100 children were released from school. The employment of Donegal workers declined rapidly in the late 1940s, though the migration of Achill workers continued until the mid 1980s; their numbers fell rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s. (In 1961 for example, this last group comprised some 350 workers who undertook harvesting on at least 17 farms in the county; a decade later they were accommodated at nine farms.) Local women were employed in increasing numbers in the 1950s and 1960s, though their numbers had decreased by the 1980s.

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