One objective, two strategies (1946-1997)

3.2.2 One objective, two strategies (1946-1997)

In 1946 the SNP adopted a new comprehensive policy statement which had been drafted by a small number of members led by McIntyre. In fact, more than a detailed policy plan, the document was rather a statement of intent, where the party‟s primary objectives and guiding values were outlined. The document put the SNP on a firm pro-independence footing. The opening paragraph of the document, headed “Aim of the National Party”, states: “The People of Scotland….have…an inherent right to determine their own destiny. The aim of the Scottish National Party is therefore „Self-Government for Scotland‟. The restoration of Scottish National Sovereignty by the establishment of a democratic Scottish Government…” (Statement of Aim and Policy of the SNP, reported in Hanham, 1969, p. 213). The document also set out the strategy to achieve independence and a new Constitution for Scotland:

On the election to the British Parliament of a majority of Scottish National members from Scotland, a Scottish Constituent Assembly shall be summoned either (a) in virtue of an Act of Parliament passed by agreement with the English members of (b) failing such agreement, by the Scottish National members acting in terms of the authority conferred upon them by the Scottish electorate. (ibid.)

This strategic plan, which envisaged the achievement of independence, and nothing less than independence, in one stroke, would remain the „guiding light‟ of the so called

„fundamentalist‟ tendency within the party until at least the late 1990s. According to this school of thought (which was obviously affected by the past failures of cross-party co-operation on Home Rule grounds and was still suffering from competition with MacCormick‟s National Convention) self-government for Scotland could come only from SNP‟s success. Nothing should be expected from the British parties and, if any proposal was put forward by them, it should be considered a trap, designed to embroil the SNP and make it lose momentum. In addition, even if such proposals were genuine and serious, they should not be taken into consideration unless they were designed to grant the Scottish electorate the chance to choose independence, since the achievement of a milder form of self-government could jeopardise the final objective.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, this point of view was widely shared within the party and helped the SNP to focus on improving its electoral score as its primary activity. However, in the absence of electoral progress, the idea of winning a majority of Scottish seats and, on the basis of such an event, secure independence from the UK looked even more unlikely. In 1957 Roland Muirhead, who had remained a member of the SNP in spite of also engaging in consensus building with his Scottish National Congress, wrote: “the present policy of the party has proved a complete failure” (Harvie, 1994, p. 170).

Ironically enough (or perhaps naturally enough) the electoral growth of the second half of the 1960s and 1970s also brought about the emergence of a „gradualist‟

tendency within the party. As the British parties, and in particular Labour, started to take the SNP‟s electoral challenge seriously, they became more prone to advance proposals for Scottish self-government, which lured many within the party (Levy, 1990, pp. 60-61). In the first half of the 1970s, the SNP obtained its electoral breakthrough, campaigning strongly in favour of full-blooded independence and using the issue of North Sea oil to strengthen its case. However, after Labour won the October 1974 election with a manifesto that included a commitment to devolution, the SNP found itself engulfed in internal debates on the position to be adopted for the following five years.

Divisions arose between the leadership and the grassroots and, because of lack of co-ordination, between the NEC (whose most prominent members were not MPs) and the parliamentary group at Westminster. Billy Wolfe, the party leader, struggled to find a balanced line between a largely fundamentalist membership and a devolution proposal which the SNP‟s parliamentary group had little or no chance to amend.

Suspicion of the real commitment of Labour to devolution was widespread, as the first proposal was lost at Westminster in early 1977 and the second proposal was subject to approval by a referendum in which of at least 40 percent of the Scottish electorate would have to vote yes. The Labour government had itself to find a very delicate balance, between moderately pro-devolutionist Scottish MPs and largely anti-devolutionist English and Welsh MPs. The SNP leadership, at least in the venues where the grassroots had considerable power, such as party conferences, could not avoid criticizing the limited powers that the Scottish Assembly envisaged would have. This put them in a weak position when they tried to uphold a pragmatic line in support of the government proposal. Debates between the gradualist and fundamentalist factions at the annual Conferences from 1975 to 1978 were often tough, with different positions being adopted each year (Levy, 1990, pp. 68-85; Lynch, 2002, pp. 148-56). Although the gradualists managed to formally commit the SNP to support for a „Yes‟ vote in the referendum, they never really won the argument fully within the party. In addition, the problems of co-ordinating a „Yes‟ campaign with the other parties, especially with a scarcely motivated Labour, contributed to the overall ambiguity of the party‟s stance.

The opinion polls, showing a sharp decline in support of devolution from 65% in April 1976 to only 49% in February 1979 (less than a month before the referendum), also did not help the gradualist faction to strengthen its position (Bochel and Denver, 1981a, p.

32). In the party‟s public discourse, the benefits of devolution were never convincingly exposed (while many opponents, especially in local campaigns, indulged in listing the shortcomings of the government proposals) and party‟s support for the „Yes‟ vote was justified exclusively in terms of an incremental approach to independence (Levy, 1990, p. 86).

The referendum result was very disappointing for the party. As Table 3.8 shows, only a very slim majority of voters supported devolution, with some Scottish regions, such as the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, not to mention the „Scandinavian‟ Islands Orkney and Shetland, expressing a clear majority against. Crucially, the very narrow majority in favour of devolution meant that the 40% threshold was not reached. In spite of a relatively respectable turnout, the „Yes‟ votes remained below the threshold by more than 7%.

Table 3.8

1979 Referendum Results on Devolution in Scotland Yes

% of votes

No

% of votes

Yes - % of the electorate

Turnout Region

Borders 40.3 59.7 27.0 67.3

Central 54.7 45.3 36.4 66.7

Dumfries and Galloway 40.3 59.7 26.1 64.9

Fife 53.7 46.3 35.4 66.6

Grampian 48.3 51.7 27.9 57.9

Highland 51.0 49.0 33.3 65.4

Lothian 50.1 49.9 33.4 66.6

Strathclyde 54.0 46.0 34.1 63.2

Tayside 49.5 50.5 31.5 63.8

Orkney 27.9 72.1 15.3 54.8

Shetland 27.1 72.9 13.7 51.0

Western Islands 55.8 44.2 28.1 50.5

Scotland 51.6 48.4 32.9 63.8

Source: Bochel and Denver (1981b, p. 140-41), in Bochel, Denver and Macartney (eds) (1981) The Referendum Experience: Scotland 1979, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

The first reaction of the SNP was to push the Labour government to ignore the 40% threshold and implement devolution, on the grounds that the „Yes‟ vote had won the referendum. With eleven MPs in Westminster and a Labour minority government which could not count anymore on the systematic support of the Liberals, the SNP decided to play the blackmail card. However, the choice turned out to be a failure as, confronted with a Labour‟s government playing for time, the parliamentary party ended

up supporting a motion of no confidence together with the Conservative Party, thus bringing the government down and opening the door to eighteen years of Tory government in Scotland. Such a move was severely punished by Scottish voters at the general election in May 1979, which the party fought on a gradualist position and focused primarily on the „broken promises‟ of the British parties, Labour being the primary target (Levy, 1990, pp. 95-96). In addition, the election of an anti-devolution Conservative government meant that the whole issue of Scottish self-government was now off the agenda.

The blow of the 1979 referendum and general election reignited factional confrontation with the party. The showdown between fundamentalists and gradualists led to the end of Billy Wolfe‟s leadership and the election of Gordon Wilson, the only MP amongst those elected in October 1974 who managed to get re-elected in 1979. It was Wilson himself who led the offensive on the party leadership for its divisive an ambiguous strategy:

The poor result is a direct consequence of the indecisive collective direction of the party, which has wandered in only two years from full-blood independence to an obsession with devolution. The NEC must bear responsibility for the dismantling of the oil campaign with its phase-out as a priority issue…Any party which does not know where it is going and is disunited on strategy, stands little chance of obtaining support from the public. (Gordon Wilson, May 1979, quoted in Lynch, 2002, p. 156).

Wilson himself, after being elected party leader, had to cope with increasing factionalism and, given his strong opinion on the deleterious consequences of internal divisions, did tackle the issue, even resorting to expulsions. However, as will be discussed in the following sections, the factionalism he had to deal with turned very quickly from being centred on a gradualist-traditionalist division to being centred on a left-right split. The opposition between fundamentalists and gradualists gradually lost salience. With the devolution issue off the agenda and electoral decline, both strategies were very unlikely to bring any concrete result in the short to medium term.

After the 1983 general election, in fact, the fundamentalist „counter-revolution‟

started to lose strength. The proposal for the establishment of an elected constitutional convention which would discuss a scheme for a Scottish Parliament was defeated at the

SNP‟s September 1983 Conference but approved the following year (Lynch, 2002, p.

184). On that occasion, the SNP‟s proposal did not find a political context receptive enough and led to nothing. However, in the years that followed, and in particular after the 1987 general election, things were to change considerably. The growing unpopularity of the Thatcher government and the dramatic electoral decline of the Conservatives in Scotland created a „legitimacy question‟: the Scots continued to be governed by a party which they increasingly rejected at the ballot boxes (Levy, 1990, p.

110; Mitchell and Bennie, 1996). This situation determined a sharp increase in public support for both devolution and independence (see Table 3.9).

Table 3.9 Constitutional preferences (%) amongst the Scottish electorate (1979-1994)

1979 1981 1983 1984 1985 1987 1989 1990 1992 1994 Independenc

e

14 22 23 25 33 35 35 34 37 38

Devolution 42 47 48 45 47 42 42 44 34 44

No Change 35 26 26 27 14 20 20 19 25 16

Don‟t know 9 5 2 3 6 3 3 3 3 2

Source: Kellas, 1989, p. 150 and Newell, 1998, p. 113.

As will be discussed in section 3.4, in the late 1980s the SNP managed to reformulate its independence proposal in a more attractive way by linking it to the process of European integration. In the context of growing Scottish nationalism, this move contributed to rebuilding the party‟s credibility and to regaining electoral momentum. Even more importantly, the rise of the „legitimacy question‟ had pushed the Scottish Labour party and Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) towards strongly pro-devolutionist positions. In 1988, Scottish Labour Action (SLA) was formed, an internal pressure group which proved effective in pushing the issue of a Scottish Parliament in the following years. Under increasing electoral pressure from the SNP, which won the traditionally Labour seat of Glasgow Govan in a by-election in 1988, the

Labour party re-took the initiative for a cross-party Constitutional Convention which was set up in February 1989 (Mitchell, 1998).

While the establishment of the cross-party Constitutional Convention and its foundational Claim of Right, with its emphasis on the right of the Scottish people to self-determination, represented an important intellectual victory for the SNP,³⁷ it also re-ignited internal debate over party strategy. Initially, the fundamentalists seemed to prevail again, as the SNP dropped out of the Constitutional Convention even before this was established. The memories of the disastrous experience of the 1970s added to the fear of being marginalized by the Labour Party within the convention, both numerically and, as discussion was going to be centred on devolution and not on independence, politically (Lynch, 2002, p. 184). However, with the election of Alex Salmond as party leader in 1990 the gradualists started to strengthen their position within the party. In fact, the fundamentalists retained considerable influence until the 1992 general election, when the SNP ran de facto two campaigns: one supported by the gradualists and centred on Salmond‟s idea of a multi-option referendum which included both devolution and independence; and one supported by the fundamentalists, such as Jim Sillars and Alex Neil, who campaigned on the unlikely slogan „free by 1993‟ (ibid., p.

196-198).

After the 1992 election, Salmond and the gradualists strengthened their authority within the party further. In spite of a resilient internal opposition by the fundamentalists, in 1995 Salmond managed to push through a dual approach to independence which added a „plan B‟ to the traditional „one stroke‟ strategy. This plan B consisted of winning a majority of seats in a future Scottish Parliament rather than at Westminster‟s elections. De facto it was an endorsement of devolution as a stepping stone to independence. Such a move created the conditions for a commitment to support a „yes vote‟ in the 1997 referendum on devolution which found little internal opposition.

37Roger Levy argues that the „legitimacy question‟ could have been addressed by Labour (and the Conservatives) by considering and implementing other reforms than devolution, such as proportional representation. The latter would have made both Labour-majorities north of the border and Conservative-majorities south of the border less overwhelming. The choice by Labour and the Liberal Democrats to convert to Scottish nationalism, and especially the formulation of the Claim of Right, represented a

„political gift‟ to the SNP (Levy, 1990, p. 138).

Compared with 1979, conditions were now much more favourable for a gradualist stance. First, the 1997 proposal envisaged the establishment of a Scottish Parliament with more powers than the Scottish Assembly proposed in the 1970s. Secondly, the Labour Party, both in Scotland and in London, was very much behind the devolution project from its grassroots to the leadership. This was a better guarantee for success and opinion polls kept confirming a stable and solid majority in favour of devolution (McCrone, 1998). Thirdly, because of these reasons, there were no major divisions between the SNP‟s leadership and the grassroots or the wider electorate. The fundamentalists were marginalized and a majority of party voters would have liked the SNP to commit to a „yes‟ vote even before the 1997 election (ibid, p. 215). Eventually, the party backed a „yes, yes‟ vote only after having checked they were satisfied with the content of the White Paper Scotland’s Parliament. The formal decision was taken at a National Council in August 1997, about a month before the referendum date. As recalled by a prominent gradualist, the decision was uncontroversial: “I think that was a pragmatic, sensible response by the party to the prospect of having a devolved Scottish Parliament. It would have been unimaginable for the SNP to argue anything than that case in the referendum… it would have ridiculed the SNP.” (John Swinney, interview with the author, Edinburgh, 07/11/06).

3.2.3 The new strategic dilemmas after devolution: between an independence