iven Gellner’s theory outlined in Chapter 1, we might have expected Scotland, with V J its history of independent statehood, advanced industrial economy, developed bourgeoisie and popular ill-feeling towards its southern neighbour, to fit all the criteria for secession during the nineteenth century. Instead, Scotland’s commitment to the Union hardly wavered, from the latter half of the eighteenth century to the last third of the twentieth, when a separatist movement became a permanent feature of Scottish politics. Scottish participation in the British project was predicated on the maintenance of a significant degree of autonomy, guaranteed by the terms of the Treaty of Union of
1707. Scottish nationalism should not only be understood as characterised by calls for independence, but should include demands for home rule nationalism also. Both types of nationalism were formed out of the tradition of Scottish autonomy, but sought to guarantee autonomy in new ways, somewhat outside the traditional arrangements of Britishness. The home rulers wished to guarantee Scottish autonomy by creating a sovereign Parliament within the United Kingdom; the separatists wanted Scottish autonomy within the European Union. Autonomy was the central issue around which diverse, anti-Conservative protests coalesced from the late 1980s. Protest in Scotland assumed a nationalist form because of the historic preservation of Scottish autonomy and Scottish consciousness since the Act of Union in 1707. But protest also occurred in order to preserve that autonomy. When Scotland’s autonomy was threatened during the 1980s, support for both home rule and independence grew. A subsequent anti-Conservative alliance between these two strands of Scottish nationalism resulted in a successful referendum campaign for the establishment of a parliament in 1997. Significant as it was, the return of a parliament to Edinburgh was not so much a complete rejection of Britishness, but a re-assertion of Scotland’s historic autonomy within the United Kingdom.
New Forms of Autonomy: Home Rule and Independence
To speak of “Scottish nationalists” as solely those interested in establishing Scottish independence from Britain would be to misunderstand the phenomenon of nationalism in Scotland. Scottish nationalism ranged from appropriations of Highland culture to defence of Britain’s unitary system of government. Scottish nationalists could demand Scotland’s separation from the United Kingdom; measured reform of the relations between Scotland and Westminster; or be implacably opposed to any alteration of the Act of Union. All shades of political opinion in Scotland could be termed Scottish nationalism if the actors believed they were acting for the greater good of Scotland. However, in the interests of clarity, certain distinctions will be made. Throughout this chapter, the term “Scottish nationalism” will be used to refer to the relationship between the demands for Scottish self-determination and the ability to accommodate those demands within British nationalism and the British political system as it was prior to 1999. “Nationalism in Scotland” will be employed less often, but will refer to all
varieties of nationalism to be found in Scotland, including unreconstructed Unionism, home rule nationalist-Unionism and separatist nationalism.
Scottish nationalism at the turn of the millenium offered two solutions to what was perceived as a crisis in Scotland’s position within the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. These two positions were firstly, a home rule nationalism, aiming at the creation of a Scottish assembly or parliament with control over domestic, Scottish affairs, firmly within the Union and a separatist nationalism, that aimed at the revocation of the Acts of Union of 1707 and secondly, the secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom. Whilst having different aims, both these strands of nationalist thought agreed that the British political system in Scotland had failed decisively and irrevocably during the 1980s and 1990s. Ultimately, it was the alliance of these two strands of Scottish nationalism, in the face of threats to Scotland’s autonomous status within the Union, that facilitated the creation of a Scottish Parliament via a successful referendum held in 1997.
The growth in support for such Scottish nationalisms at the expense of an unreconstructed unitary conception of Britain derived crucial support from the perceived threat posed to Scotland’s autonomous status within Britain. This autonomy is central in understanding the national consciousness that developed in Scotland. This Scottish consciousness preserved in and since 1707, not only existed within and alongside a British consciousness, but also contributed to the development of Britishness itself as state-based, multinational and imperial ideology.
Neil Davidson links the rise of Scottish nationalism in the last two decades directly to the Conservative Party election victories of 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992 (Davidson, 2000: 1). That is to say, he explains contemporary Scottish nationalism as a reaction to the exercise of power from Westminster by a party whose philosophy came to be regarded as un-, or even anti-, Scottish. That the Conservative Party’s neo-liberal radicalism seemed better suited to the City of London and its attendant economy in the south-east, than to Scotland was grist to the separatists’ mill. Such an interpretation was, however, a gross over-simplification. Andrew Marr points out that:
What became known as Thatcherism was viscerally and intellectually opposed to the post-War Scottish consensus, characterised by the domination of the public sector and quasi-socialist tone in public life generally. With its mass public housing, high union membership and struggling heavy industries, Scotland was a lot like England, only more so. But its subtly different intellectual and political climate made it much more resistant to the politics, if not the policies, of Thatcherism (Marr, 1995: 168).
It is true that the effects of the economic restructuring of the last quarter of the century were keenly felt in Scotland, whose economy was particularly dependent on heavy industry. Tom Devine estimated that Scotland’s manufacturing capacity declined by 30.8 per cent - the largest decline in the UK - between 1976 and 1987, whilst the textile industry lost no less than 64 per cent of its manufacturing capacity. Active coal pits in Scotland fell from 15 to 2 during the Thatcherite era, and whilst employed labour fell overall by 3 per cent in the UK between 1979 and 1986, it fell by 8 per cent in Scotland
(Devine, 1999: 592-97). The effects of this restructuring and of neo-liberal policies in general were felt throughout Britain, in all of its constituent parts. However, it was the structure of the UK state, and Scotland’s autonomous position within it, that allowed discontent to be expressed in nationalist form, as a partial or total retreat from the British state. The years of economic restructuring also exacerbated the “North-South divide” in England, and the idea of a devolved assembly in the North-East was raised, as this region was, like Scotland, dependent on ship building and mining and was similarly effected. However, Scotland’s long experience of autonomy from Westminster was far more pronounced than that of Wales or the English regions, and permitted discontent to feed into Scotland’s pre-existing national consciousness. Guaranteeing this autonomy by establishing a Scottish assembly or through complete separation appeared to many as the solution to Scotland’s political and economic plight. Scottish nationalism was articulated as the defence of Scottish institutions of public life, that would in turn protect Scotland’s autonomy and thereby “Scottish culture”. In 1988, a Claim o f Right was issued, calling for the establishment of a Scottish assembly. The authors of the Claim of Right argued that ‘Either we advance to an Assembly, or we retreat to the point at which Scottish institutions are an empty shell and Scottish government is, in practice, indistinguishable from any other English region’ (Constitutional Steering Group, 1988: 3). In the same year the separatist Scottish National Party promised to ‘restore the Scottish dimension in politics, to restore Scottish influence in politics and to begin the drive towards independence’ (Scottish National Party, 1988: Introduction). Calls for constitutional reform became bound up with various types of Scottish nationalism, all of which aimed at some re-negotiation of Scotland’s relationship to the British state.
The idea of home rule, or the devolution of some of Westminster’s powers to a Scottish assembly or parliament, was not a new one in Scottish politics. But Scotland’s experience of Thatcherism and the economic restructuring of the 1980s ultimately exacerbated the demand for devolution. Whilst in 1979 constitutional reform appeared to be a distraction from more pressing affairs, by the late 1980s it began to be argued that this type of reform was the only way of ameliorating the effects of the economic and political climate that Scotland was now in. In the wake of the Conservative Party’s
second landslide election victory in 1987, but combined with their poor showing in Scotland, the Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC), a pressure group promoting constitutional reform, was established. By 1989 the Scottish Constitutional Convention, a centre-left organisation that gained its support and membership from the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties, as well as bodies such as the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), was arguing that ‘The removal of decision making from Scotland has had a damaging impact on the economy, and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament would lead to a reversal of this trend’ (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1989: 7). Calls for reform were frustrated by the Conservative Party’s strong commitment to Unionism. The matter of Scotland’s relationship to central government was given urgency and popular appeal by plans to introduce a flat-rate community charge, or poll tax, to replace the previous system of household rate payments that were deeply unpopular with Scottish Conservatives. For Scottish nationalists, the problem was becoming two-fold. The problem was not just the Conservative Party alone, but “Britain” too. Issues of anti-Conservatism and nationality had converged sufficiently by the end of the 1980s to make a nationalist solution to the political impasse seem both possible and desirable. In issuing the Claim o f Right, the Constitutional Steering Group of the Scottish Constitutional Convention argued that ‘we have a government which openly boasts its contempt for consensus and a constitution which allows it to demonstrate that contempt in practice’ (Constitutional Steering Group, 1988: 23).
The unitary structure of the British state was now contributing to the development of Scottish nationalism, whereas before it had been crucial in maintaining a sense of Britishness. Scottish representation at Westminster had helped forge a dual consciousness that was both Scottish and British. But during the 1980s, Scottish participation in the unitary British state appeared more and more to be delivering unpopular policies to Scotland, of which the poll tax was the most notorious example. Introduced at the behest of the Scottish Conservative Party, by February 1989, a Scottish petition protesting the poll tax, signed by about 300,000 people, was presented to Downing Street. In April, 15,000 people demonstrated in central Edinburgh. By September, the number of defaulters had reached an estimated 900,000 out of the 3.8
million Scots eligible for the tax. In the largest region of local government, Strathclyde, a 15 per cent rate of non-payment resulted in a shortfall of GBP60 million in local government revenue. In November, Scottish banks informed the government that they would be unable to cope with a large-scale freezing of defaulters’ bank accounts (Butler
et al., 1994: 133-6). Allan McConnell referred to the anti-poll tax movement as ‘possibly the largest campaign of civil disobedience in modem British history’ (McConnell, 1995: 197). Unpopular policies such as the poll tax exacerbated longer-term trends in Scottish politics. As the voting patterns between England and Scotland became markedly different from 1987 onwards (Browa Mcrone and Paterson, 1996: 146), it became easier for Scottish nationalists to portray the Conservatives as an “English” party, unresponsive to, or uncaring of, Scottish realities. Such notions ultimately fed off the economic situation in Scotland and fuelled calls for a re-assertion of Scottish autonomy. When issuing a declaration for the establishment of a Scottish Parliament, the Constitutional Steering Group stated that Scotland ‘regularly suffers from macro-economic policies designed to suit the economy of south eastern England, particularly, though not only, policies of restraint applied to the United Kingdom when capital and labour are underused in Scotland’ (Constitutional Steering Group, 1988: 8). In this climate, the survival of the massive Ravenscraig steel works ‘began to assume a totemic significance as the symbol of Scotland’s historic status as a great industrial nation’ (Devine, 1999; 593). The closure of the plant was announced in 1992, shortly before the general election of that year, reinforcing fears in Scotland that the Conservative government was little concerned with Scotland’s economic situation. The Conservative Party fared little better in Scotland in 1992 than it had in 1987. However, the Tory majority in England once again delivered a Conservative government to Britain.
The continued divergence of voting patterns between England and Scotland allowed nationalists to argue for the existence of a “democratic deficit” in Scotland, whereby Scots voted overwhelmingly against the Conservative Party, but were ultimately governed by them anyway given Tory success in England. Nationalists argued that democracy in Scotland was entering crisis because link between “nation” and “state” was no longer being reflected in the electoral process. The idea of the democratic deficit was
only possible given the multi-national nature of the British state and a general nationalist assumption that nations deserve representation by “their own people”. Strictly speaking, none of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom prior to 1999 was governed by “it’s own” state. However, to popularise their claims for reform, it suited the nationalists to treat Britain as an institutional expression of English power and dominance. The Campaign for a Scottish Assembly endorsed the idea that ‘the United Kingdom is a political artifact put together at English insistence. If it is to continue, it must work for its living and justify its existence’ (Constitutional Steering Group, 1988: 6). Nevertheless, this link between Scottish nationalism and the notion of democratic deficit provided the reformers with powerful language through which to channel their demands. Thus the authors of the 1988 Claim o f Right argued that they were making their report ‘against the background of a drive to diminish democracy - to reduce the range and influence of representative institutions’ (Constitutional Steering Group, 1988: 10). It was not the electoral situation alone that caused concern amongst the political classes of the opposition parties and other representatives of public bodies. The growth of extra- governmental organisations (EGOs) and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos) was also seen as a matter of concern for democratic scrutiny throughout Britain. Quangos are semi-autonomous, un-elected governing bodies, appointed by the government of the day to run a diverse range of public services, from utilities, to official ombudsmen, to the BBC. Again the problem was seen as one running deeper than just bad policy. In 1994, London-based reformist group Charter88 reported that ‘the spread of EGOs is a symptom of a systematic disease. The body politic itself has to be cured if they are to be brought under democratic control’ (Weir and Hall, 1994: 45). By 1994, it was estimated that there were 70,000 appointed and self-appointed quango positions, more than the total number of positions for elected local councilors (Barnett, 1997: 61). The method of appointment to such organisations, and the potential for jobbery, also raised concerns amongst the political elites. Anthony Barnet quoted one chair of a quango from his organisation’s newsletter:
I became chairman as a consequence of sharing a cab with a stranger. Another Quango chairman was appointed following a pheasant shoot at which the Secretary of
State was a fellow gun; the subsequent chairman of a water authority bumped into a Cabinet minister whilst birding on a Greek island. It is a splendidly capricious way of doing things (Barnett, 1997: 62).
Concerns about the development of an unelected “quango state”, and general criticism of Conservative mismanagement of government, were used by Scotland’s reformers as an argument for the creation of a parliament with powers of scrutiny in Scottish public life. Having drawn up a blueprint for a Scottish Parliament in 1995, the Scottish Constitutional Convention promoted the case for change as such:
The first and greatest reason for creating a Scottish parliament is that the people of Scotland want and deserve democracy... But present constitutional circumstance denies Scotland responsive and effective democracy... Scotland approaches the new millenium facing a stark choice. It has a distinguished and distinctive structural heritage, evident in Scotland’s legal system, its educational system, its social, cultural and religious traditions. These things are the very fabric of Scottish society, yet Scotland has come to lack democratic control over them. Their conduct is determined by a government for which few Scots voted, operating through a dense tangle of un elected quangos’ (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1995: 6).
The Scottish Constitutional Convention, a body determined on a ‘settlement based on a new relationship between Scotland and Westminster with a substantial and fundamental shift of power to the people of Scotland’ (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1989: 3). At its inaugural meeting of 30 March 1989, the Convention adopted the following declaration:
We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interest shall be paramount.
We further declare and pledge that our actions and deliberations shall be directed to the following ends:
• To agree a scheme for an Assembly or parliament for Scotland;
• To mobilise Scottish opinion and ensure the approval of the Scottish people for that scheme; and
• To assert the right of the Scottish people to secure then implementation of that scheme (quoted in Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1995: 10).
By 1995, membership of the Convention included MPs and MEPs from the Liberal Democrats and Labour, local authority representatives, political parties, trade unions, Scottish churches, women’s groups, ethnic minority representatives, Gaelic speaking groups, the Law Society and observers from small business organisations and the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1995: Appendix II). The two main political parties which remained apart from the Convention were the Conservative Party, advocating an unreformed Unionism and the Scottish National Party whose stated aim was the removal of Scotland entirely from the British state. Thus between the Conservative Party UK election victories of 1987 and 1992, support for some sort of an assembly coalesced within the anti-Tory left in a way that had not been possible during the 1970s, when constitutional reform was seen as something of an irrelevancy by the electorate. Far from being a distraction, constitutional reform was