Police Scotland & Federation to sit out 2025 season; Scotland down to six Grade 1 bands

For the first time in its 142-year history, the Grade 1 Police Scotland & Federation will sit out a competition season.

Members of the band met to discuss plans, and decided that calling off the season was the most practical decision as the group continues to search for a suitable leading-drummer and drum section following L-D David Henderson’s decision to join Grade 1 Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia.

“The band is regrettably unable to compete this season, unable to appoint a leading-drummer so close to the competition season,” Pipe-Major Ewan Henderson said. “The pipe corps will meet as usual, working on a whole new repertoire and work towards securing a new leading-drummer for the long term.”

Apart from the two cancelled seasons due to the pandemic, the band—which is most famously known as the “Glasgow Police”—has been a constant on the UK scene, as well as one of the most successful in history. The band has won 20 World Championships, 14 British Championships, 23 Cowal Championships (the de facto World Championships before 1947), 11 European Championships four World Pipe Band Drumming Championships, and 14 RSPBA Grade 1 Champion of Champions titles.

Ewan Henderson wrote an open letter, published by pipes|drums, discussing his opinion that rules must be tightened to create a “transfer window affording an agreed time for band players to move on and seek enjoyment elsewhere. This move at this crucial juncture of the pipe band calendar in my opinion goes against the RSPBA’s objective of ‘creating and maintaining a bond of fellowship with all pipe band personnel throughout the world.'”

There are now only six Grade 1 bands in Scotland actively competing: Inveraray & District, Peoples Ford Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia, Johnstone, Police Scotland Fife, ScottishPower, and Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia.

If all three of Northern Ireland’s three Grade 1 bands (Closkelt, Field Marshal Montgomery and Ravara) and Ireland’s St. Laurence O’Toole compete as normal in 2025, the three non-World’s RSPBA championships will feature a Grade 1 competition of 10. The European Championships (August 9th) and World Championships (August 15-16) will have a larger number, with at least four international bands expected to make the trip.

The band became Police Scotland & Federation in 2021 after nationwide reorganizing the Scottish police force. Its greatest success was as the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band in the 1970s and ’80s, winning 10 World Championships in 11 years under Pipe-Major Iain McLellan from 1981 to 1991. The band missed only 1987, giving up the title to Canada’s 78th Fraser Highlanders, but holds the record for six consecutive World’s wins from ’82 to ’86. After 1987, the band won another four straight.

The group experienced a tumultuous period in the early 2010s when Scotland streamlined its various police departments into a unified “Police Scotland.” The band also underwent various name and leadership changes, with several pipe-majors and lead-drummers assuming control.