No sooner had the Act of Union been passed than the cries of betrayal and unfair treatment started to be heard. Support for the restoration of a Scottish Parliament, however, was restricted by the association of that demand with the Jacobite manifesto. Amid current sentiment for the "Bonnie Prince" it is important to remember that Scotland was divided over the question of the Stuart restoration.
As Jacobitism entered its twilight, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the demand for a Scottish Parliament found an advocate in Thomas Muir, and the Friends of the People, who supported the ideals of the French Revolution. Following the suppression of Muir's movement, the standard of Scottish democracy was raised again at the turn of the century, however briefly, by the United Scotsman, an organisation inspired by the political and social programme of Wolfe Tone's United Irishmen. "Scotland Free of a Desert" was the slogan of the democrats who suffered in the "radical war" of 1820.
Following the Napoleonic Wars, Scottish grievances found reformist, rather than revolutionary expression. The agenda championed by Sir Walter Scott and later the Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights sought to meet Scottish aspirations within the Union, while the Chartist Movement advocated proto-federalism.
It is to the 1880s, however, that we have to look for the genesis of the modern home rule movement. The 1880s were a key decade in the formation of the modern Scottish identity. The "second" industrial revolution carved out something resembling the map of today's Scotland as it resulted in another wave of internal migration from rural to urban areas. The supply of workers for Scotland's emerging industries was partly met by Irish immigration. While industrialisation an immigration formed the modern Scottish identity, the prospects for democratic action were opened up by the "third" Reform Act of 1884 which extended the franchise to the male heads of all households.
In the 1880s, Gladstone's embattled Liberal Government was attempting to accommodate the Irish national and land reform movements, and a increasingly powerful labour movement which was threatening to exert political independence. Land agitation was not confined to Ireland. Throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, small tenant farmers were in revolt against absentee landlords. This expressed itself in relatively large-scale civil disobedience and the development of independent political organisation which called for the establishment of a Scottish Parliament to redress wrongs.
The " Crofters' MPs" were the first independent working class representatives to take their seats at Westminster, and London responded with a Royal Commission on crofting, while the associated nation demands were acknowledged by the creation of a Scottish Secretary in the British Cabinet and the beginnings of administrative devolution. The crofters had been encouraged by the influence wielded by the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party and sought to use their numbers to create a parliamentary lever which, in an age of keen Liberal/Tory competition, could force concessions from Liberals seeking a parliamentary majority. The success inspired the formation of the first Scottish Home Rule Association in 1886 - unlike the crofters and the Irish Nationalists, however, the SHRA was not a political party. It sought to influence existing parties and to support parliamentary aspirants who would support home rule, regardless of party. In 1888 the SHRA supported the candidature of its Vice President, Kier Hardie, when he contested the Mid Lanark by-election, an event which changed the course of Scottish political history.
Rebuffed by local Liberals, miners' union official Hardie decided to contest the by-election as an independent labour candidate. Supported by an alliance of trades unionists, Crofters, home rulers and dissident Irish Nationalists, Hardie's programme featured a prominent commitment to home rule. Hardie polled only 8%, but the Scottish party system would never be the same again. Later in 1888, the Mid Lanark alliance formed itself into the Scottish Labour Party. The experience of the SLP made it an important ingredient in the formation of the independent Labour Party in 1893, ensuring that the early Labour Party would have a strong commitment to Scottish home rule.
Gladstone's support for Irish home rule split the Liberal Party in 1895 with the formation of the Liberal Unionists. The dissidents formed an alliance with the Tories and in Scotland merged to form the Scottish Unionist Party, the name used by Conservatives in Scotland until as recently as 1964. Historical associations with Jacobitism and "landlordism" had left native Scottish Toryism with little support, however, the Liberal Unionist breakaway created a working class Protestant base of support for modern Conservatism.
The Liberal response was "home rule all round", championed by the Scottish Liberal Association. By advocating a federal future, Gladstone sought to retain the support of Irish nationalists while minimising mainland reaction by linking the measure to home rule for Scotland and Wales.
The drive to home rule was interrupted by World War I, and transformed by development in Ireland. For forty years Scottish home rule had been carried along in the Irish slipstream, but the events which began with the Easter rising in 1916 transformed relationships. The home rule all round solution was obsolete, the final attempt to find a common constitutional framework for the United Kingdom, the Speaker's Conference in 1919, was doomed to failure from the outset.
As Labour began to eclipse the Liberals as the leading non-Unionist party, the "second" Scottish Home Rule Association, formed in 1918, put its faith in an electoral breakthrough by the former. Expectations were running high in 1923/24 when Labour formed a minority government. It fell to George Buchanan, MP for the Gorbals, to sponsor a Scottish home rule bill. Despite frontbench and Liberal support, the bill was talked out by Unionists amid riotous scenes. With the fall of the Labour Government, the Scottish Home Rule Association opted for a different strategy. It convened a Scottish National Convention with the aim of developing a broad consensus behind a detailed home rule scheme which would then be put to parliament.
The Scottish National Convention worked diligently for two years, involving 29 of Scotland's 36 non-Unionist MPs, 28 local authorities and the Convention of Scottish Royal Burghs in its deliberations. It fell to the Rev. James Barr MP to present the Convention's scheme in a parliamentary bill in 1928. The failure of the Buchanan and Barr bills led to a major reassessment within the Scottish Home Rule Association and the wider national movement.
The debate was now between forming an independent nationalist party of continuing to lobby within the existing party system. Those who argued the latter complained that the verdict on Labour's ability to deliver should be deferred until the party had formed a majority government. The SHRA never actually came to a conclusion on the matter. It was upstaged by John MacCormick, whose Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association convened a meeting of organisations and individuals favouring the independent party strategy in May 1928. The meeting, attended by the Scots League, the Scottish National Movement and GUSNA, agreed to launch the National Party of Scotland. The move also received the support of veteran home rulers Roland Muirhead and Robert Cunningham-Graham. Muirhead had been a member of the Young Scots, a pro- home rule pressure group within the Liberal Party, had joined the ILP, and was secretary of the Scottish Home Rule Association. Cunningham-Graham had been a "Radical" MP when he broke with the Liberals, and chaired the foundation meeting of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888. Forty years later he became the first chair of the NPS. Six years later the NPS joined with the Scottish Party to form the Scottish National Party in 1934.
War intervened again, but this time it brought Scotland an unprecedented degree of self-government. In an imaginative move, Churchill appointed Labour's Tom Johnston as Scottish Secretary in his coalition government. Johnston had been a member of the Scottish Home Rule Association and had seconded both Buchanan's and Barr's home rule bills. In accepting the appointment, Johnston insisted on freedom of action. He chaired Scottish Council of State comprising all living previous Scottish Secretaries. If Johnston could get consensus within the Council then that was good enough. There was no need to refer Scottish legislation to Westminster. Johnston and his colleagues went on to lay much of the groundwork for the creation of post-war Scotland.
The ending of the war and the election of a Labour Government saw a steady decline in Labour's interest in home rule, which would lead to outright opposition by 1958, and differences over strategy within the SNP. MacCormick, who had been central to the formation of the SNP, became increasingly unsure of the independent party strategy. Losing the argument for gradualism and co-operation in the wartime SNP, MacCormick, backed by Muirhead, set up a new organisation that formed the Scottish National Assembly in 1947. A re-run of the 1928 Scottish National Convention, the Assembly produced a scheme for a domestic Scottish Parliament within the UK, the "Blue Print for Scotland", in 1948. In October 1949, the Assembly launched the National Covenant, a monster petition designed to demonstrate support for a Scottish Parliament. Within one week of its launch, the Covenant had been signed by 50,000; by 1952 it had been signed by two million as national sentiment was fuelled by the centralising aspects of Labour's nationalisation programme. The test facing these new Covenanters was to maintain the momentum of their initiative in the face of government intransigence. Some of the decisions taken by the leadership of the movement allowed it to be seen as partisan, playing at party politics. By 1953 the Covenant had run out of steam. The years that followed were the high water mark of unreformed Unionism.
The Indian summer of the "you've never had it so good" era was drawing to an end in Scotland by the early 1960s, and by-elections in Glasgow Bridgeton and West Lothian were indications of the SNP's attraction as a home for voters seeking to protest against the perceived failure of government. The major SNP breakthrough at the Hamilton by-election in 1967, and the municipal elections of 1968, transformed the nature of Scottish politics. The principal political leaders acted to stem the Nationalist advance. Ted Heath came to Perth to declare that devolution was definitely on the Tory agenda, while Harold Wilson established the Royal Commission on the Constitution. These initiatives seemed to have bought some political breathing space but, by February 1974, the Commission had reported, Labour was back in power with a non-existent majority, and the SNP returned seven members of parliament. The summer of 1974 saw the conversion of Scottish Labour's ranks to the home rule fold, just in time to stave off further SNP gains from Labour at the October 1974 election, although the nationalists increased their representation to eleven.
The legislative process that resulted in the Scotland Act and the subsequent referendum for or against the proposed Scottish Assembly is a long and sorry tale from which today's Campaign for a Scottish Parliament can learn much. It must never be forgotten that, by all accepted democratic standards, the 'Yes' vote won the day, only to be denied by the novel regulation that 40% of the electorate (i.e. 40% of the entire enfranchised population, voters and non-voters) should record a 'Yes' vote. However, those of us who support the case for a Scottish Parliament must answer: Why did consistent poll ratings of 70%, and more, in favour of an Assembly, shrank to 51.8% in the three weeks leading up to referendum day? The complete answer to that question would require a Briefing in its own right but, in summary, it lies in the fears peddled by the 'No' Campaign, the divisions in the 'Yes' Campaign, and undoubted flaws in the proposed scheme itself.
For the purposes of this Briefing, we will concentrate on two points - the organisation of 'Yes' Campaign and the geographical divisions which were opened up in the course of the debate. The tenor of those times is perhaps best recalled by the statement from the then Scottish Secretary of the Labour Party, Helen Liddell, when she launched the Labour Movement 'Yes' Campaign. When asked by the assembled press corps whether or not Labour would work with other parties, Liddell responded that Labour would not "soil its hands".
The major attempt at cross-party co-operation was 'Yes For Scotland' (YFS), which attempted to forge unity at a national and local level. YFS succeeded in drawing together Liberals, the breakaway Sillars Scottish Labour Party, Communists, non-party people, certain elements within the SNP and even a few pro-devolution Tories. With honourable exceptions, it was ignored by Labour Party activists and the support it received from the SNP was variable, particularly at local level.
The Labour Movement Yes Campaign was neutered by divisions within the party, while the close association between a 'Yes' vote and the survival of the Labour Government created a dilemma for non-Labour supporters of the Assembly cause. The necessity for the 'Yes' campaign to assure a-swithering voters that the Assembly would not result in a "slippery slope to independence" did little to encourage SNP activists to take ownership of the campaign. The absence of revenue-raising powers, the absence of any notion of sovereignty, the absence of proportional representation, and the significance of the entire exercise to the survival of the Labour Government combined to deter non-Labour Scotland from embracing the proposal as its own. Lord Home's promise that this was "not Scotland's last chance" for devolution may have won over some switherers to the 'No' camp. The ultimate tragedy was that divided Scottish Labour also denied the Assembly proposition enthusiastic support.
It is always easier to forge unity in opposition and, while there were as many 'No' campaigns as 'Yes' campaigns, the anti-devolution side displayed greater unity of argument and organisation. One of the greatest successes of the 'No' side was to divide Scotland geographically. This is clearly reflected in the referendum results, which were declared on a regional basis. While the urban / industrialised regions of Fife, Central and Strathclyde voted 'Yes', rural Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Grampian and Tayside voted decisively 'No'. Our island communities were very divided. While Orkney and Shetland voted overwhelmingly 'No', the Western Isles recorded the largest 'Yes' percentage. In both Lothian and Highland, the contending parties slugged it out to a draw. The results speak for themselves. The anti- devolutionists succeeded in persuading rural Scotland that the Assembly would be dominated by the concerns of the central belt and that Westminster offered the best prospect of handling rural interests.
The failure of the referendum and the election of the Thatcher Tory Party in the spring of 1979 marked a nadir in the fortunes of the home rule cause but, from those same ashes, today's CSP was born.
On 1 March 1980, the first anniversary of the referendum debacle, the remnants of the Yes for Scotland network organised the inaugural meeting of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (CSA). Some 400 people crammed into the Edinburgh Trades Council Club. The meeting was chaired by Glasgow academic Jack Brand and was addressed by speakers drawn from all of Scotland's parties, including the Tories! The aim of the campaign was " a Scottish Assembly or Parliament, with such powers as desired by the Scottish People". The first strategy paper put to the organisation included the call for a "National Convention" which would seek to build a consensus for a new home rule scheme, drawing on the lessons of the failed 1979 formula. The SNP's Isobel Lindsay told the meeting that the job of such a Convention would be to "work out what Scots really want" and that she for one was ready to concede that it was not independence.
Despite dedicated work by many individuals, it was the shock of the 1987 election and the coming to pass of the "Doomsday Scenario" that brought the CSA and the Convention strategy centre stage. The origins of the term are disputed: by what was meant by Doomsday was well understood - the overwhelming rejection of Tory Unionism to a degree where the democratic legitimacy of that rump to continue to govern Scotland on the basis of English votes was open to challenge.
In an attempt to jump-start the Convention Strategy, the CSA formed a steering committee of experienced Scots to sketch out a framework for the establishment of a Convention. Chaired by Sir Robert Grieve and serviced by Jim Ross, former head of the Labour Government's devolution unit, the working party exceeded all expectations. The resulting 'Claim of Right for Scotland' not only laid out the possible mechanics of a Convention, but also underlined the historical basis in the Scottish democratic tradition for such an initiative. The Claim of Right was the basis of a historic meeting of the leaders of Scotland's political parties (except the boycotting Tories) and major national institutions in January 1989. The meeting drew the attention of the world's media and it seemed, for a few days, as if the widest possible range of pro-Scottish Parliament opinion would be represented in the Convention. The SNP, however, decided not to participate, and the work of the Convention began without them. Following two years of deliberations, the Scottish Constitutional Convention agreed a broad framework document, 'Towards Scotland's Parliament', and later by its final report, 'Scotland's Parliament. Scotland's Right.'
The scheme agreed by the Convention is dealt with in Briefing No.11 in this pack. (Webmaster's Note: Full text of the scheme and other info on the SCC is now available on this site - click on the appropriate link above.) Throughout the work of the Convention, the CSA was busy in raising the funds required to service the Convention, and played an important role in moving the process of consensus to a successful conclusion. In the run up to the 1992 General Election, the CSA campaigned for tactical voting in constituencies to maximise the number of pro-Scottish Parliament MPs returned from Scottish constituencies.
If the result of the 1987 General Election spurred activity, the result of the 1992 election bred disappointment and a proliferation of cross- and non- party organisations campaigning for Scottish democracy. The Scottish Constitutional Convention decided to continue with its work and , on St. Andrew's Day 1995, published the most detailed blueprint for Scottish Home Rule in the United Kingdom ever produced.
The Campaign for a Scottish Parliament (following a name change) has worked with all those dedicated to building unity in the demand for a Scottish Parliament. The Campaign for a Scottish Parliament remains a long-standing advocate of Scottish home rule, drawing on the energy of experienced home rulers from all parties and none.
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