Page 20 - Microsoft Word - Guiding light final version 0955 1506 big print.doc

In October that year the STB approached the STGA committee with a suggestion that members’ subscription should be increased to five guineas per annum from 1st January 1968, and from this a contribution would be paid to the STB to help pay for the service given by them to the STGA.
On December 12, 1967, a stormy Extraordinary General Meeting took place to discuss the future of the association and it was decided that the STGA would break away from the STB and form their own committee with a new constitution. The subscription remained as it was.
The classes were organised by the committee with Ian Anderson as chairman, Mr Kenneth Robertson, secretary and Mr William Montgomery treasurer. They held these positions until 1971. The Glasgow branch formed a separate branch in the same year.
In May 1967 the STGA had 127 members including 64 Edinburgh guides, 28 of them working full time. There were also 19 Glasgow guides, eight of them full time. It also had one full time member in Inverness and another in London.
An additional 35 members were employees of Edinburgh Corporation Transport, five worked for Scottish Omnibuses Ltd and four were employees of St Cuthberts Co-operative Association Transport department. 87 of the guides were males and 40 were females.
But by 1968 the STB was once again organising the classes and there is nothing in the annals to explain why.
Michael Glen had replaced Douglas Russell as head of STB’s Information Department when he retired that year.
‘Douglas who was a man of the old school,’ he said. ‘It was a hard act to follow.
I was 27 or thereabout and he was 60 something and had been responsible for managing but not doing the training of the tourists guides. I was not particularly close to the STGA. My job amongst myriad things was to co-ordinate the classes that were run first of all by Dr Barclay and latterly by Basil Skinner.
‘I can’t remember how much organising I did. I must have liaised with the guides who at that time were split into an Edinburgh group which was the biggest group and a Glasgow group but I am not sure they conversed very greatly at that point. They were 45 miles away from each other and that was a long way in those days. And Glasgow and Edinburgh were very different. Glasgow guides I think dealt mainly with Burns Country and Loch Lomond.
Glasgow wasn’t regarded very much as a tourist attraction in its own right in those days. Oh, how things have changed. There was also a loosely-organised group up north as I remember.’
20