Jack McConnell was six years old when he was belted for the first time. His “crime”? Not eating his carrots.

The former First Minister recounted his experience this week at the launch of a new book by Carol Craig, chief executive of Scotland’s Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing, which is 20 years old. In it, she devotes a chapter to what she describes as Scotland’s past “predilection for cruelty to young children”, something which she believes could hardly have failed to affect their confidence.

It paints a picture of an age, prior to abolition of the tawse in 1987, when some schools were stalked by cold authoritarians who “wore their belts over the shoulders like scarves” so they could “whip them out at the slightest provocation” and hit children on their outstretched palms. Stinging hands and pervasive fear were the consequences.

It’s worth us remembering the brutal reality at a time when politicians on the populist right promote more authoritarian practices, some even speaking favourably of a partial return to corporal punishment.

Read more Rebecca McQuillan

It’s also worth considering how the fear and uncertainty it caused might have shaped the adults these children became, and what that has meant for Scotland more broadly.

Most people over 50 will have witnessed or experienced corporal punishment. Not every teacher was prepared to hit children, but many were. A 1980 study of 40,000 school leavers found that 95 per cent of boys had been belted at secondary school. Another 1977 study of 12-15-year-old boys found that more than a........

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