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The victory in 1973–74 became part of the folklore of the coal industry. The miners seemed invincible, but when they tested the waters in 1984, the outcome was very different. A programme of pit closures was a
End of an empire
Scotland’s fortunes were tied to the British Empire. The empire provided markets for Scottish goods and employment opportunities in the imperial service. Some historians have argued that the Scots ran the empire, so it was quite a shock to the Scottish psyche when it all began to collapse. First, India, the jewel in the imperial crown, went in 1947, followed by Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.
Rather strangely, it was the Tories rather than Labour who presided over the dismemberment of the empire as they tried to reposition the UK economically and politically in Europe.
Ru
Scotland was the most disaffected part of the UK. Despite the deep engagement with empire, its passing left no lasting legacy unless you include the number of curry restaurants in Scotland. There are no works of art, no works of literature or even games like cricket to co
Politics in a Changing World (1945–2000)
Just as the years following the end of the First World War saw a re-ordering of Scottish politics leading to a two-horse race between Conservatives and Labour (see Chapter 15), so the decades following the end of the Second World War witnessed another political transformation that may prove to be even more profound.
After the Labour Party’s stu
The SNP grew from a tiny organisation in the 1960s to one that dominates the re-founded Scottish Parliament in the 2000s. Its rise was spectacular, but the consequences this time are far greater than those experienced because of the demise of the Liberal Party in the 1920s. On the cards is the breakup of Britain should the referendum of September 2014 deliver a ‘Yes’ vote in favour of an independent Scotland.
I tell this amazing story of political change in this section.
The rise and fall of the Tories
In the general election of 1945, Labour won by a landslide due to its identification with the Beveridge Plan (see ‘Fighting for a better world’, earlier in this chapter), but by 1951 it had run out of ideas and popularity. Tory promises to end wartime rationing and the austerity programme of the Labour government struck a chord with the British people; the Tories were elected in Scotland with just under 50 per cent of the total votes cast.
What was it about the Tories that appealed to all sections of society in Scotland? Protestantism, empire and patriotism. However, these traditional rallying appeals were quickly losing their resonance with the post-war generations brought up on rock ’n’ roll, consumerism and prosperity. Churchgoing had declined after the 1950s, plunged rapidly in the 1960s and failed to recover in the decades after that. The empire was rapidly disintegrating, and patriotism evaporated. Tory values were seen as old hat and reflective of a pre-war deferential society. Even the resurgence of the party during the 1980s under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher failed to co
A massive split emerged in voting patterns north and south of the border. In 1979, over half the working class in England went Tory, while in Scotland it was under a quarter, falling to 16 per cent five years later. Why did Thatcher fail to reach Scottish voters?
Personality:
Scots didn’t like being told how ungrateful they were.
Public services:
Many more Scots earned their living in the public services, and Thatcher’s promise to roll back the frontier of the state threatened their livelihoods.
Poll Tax:
The deeply unpopular Poll Tax was introduced a year earlier in Scotland, which suggested that the Scots were being used as guinea pigs for Tory policies.
Thatcher managed to alienate all sections of Scottish society. When she gave her famous ‘Sermon on the Mound’ (as it was known) to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in May 1988, it was greeted with stony silence. Afterward, the then moderator, the Right Reverend James Whyte, politely handed her copies of the Church’s reports on homelessness and the welfare system, criticising her policies and reforms. A few days later, her attendance at the Scottish Cup Final in Glasgow provoked the assembled supporters to give her the ‘red card’ and to roundly boo her.
The decline in the Tory vote continued until 1997, when Scotland, along with Wales, became a Tory-free zone in terms of seats in the UK Parliament. The transformation of a party from wi
The rise and rise of Labour
The faltering performance of the Tory Party in Scotland was contrasted by the impressive rise in the Labour vote after 1955. Labour came to dominate parliamentary politics north of the border in spite of the rise of the Nationalist vote after 1967.
Earlier in the century, the Labour Party had benefited from two developments:
The collapse of the Liberal Party
The shift in the Irish vote from Liberal to Labour
However, after 1945, it was the welfare state, municipal housing and the NHS, as well as support for old industries like coalmining, that attracted Scottish voters to Labour.
The Thatcher years were, strangely enough, not the most decisive in turning Scotland into a Labour fiefdom; instead, her legacy was more important. In 1987, Labour enjoyed a 15 per cent lead over the Tories, but seven years after her leaving office, the lead had increased to around 27 per cent.
However, Labour wouldn’t have it all its own way. The old two-horse race of Labour versus Tory that had dominated politics in Scotland from the 1920s onward may have disappeared, but there was a new kid on the block: the SNP.
The mercurial Scottish National Party
The story of the Scottish National Party (SNP) is one of highs and lows: from an insignificant political organisation in the 1960s, to an explosive force in the mid-1970s that threatened to shake up the party system, and back to insignificance in the 1980s and 1990s. Why has the SNP experienced such a volatile history? To answer that question, you have to look at how it made the journey from the periphery to the centre of the political system.
The story begins in 1967, when Wi
Then, as if in possession of a magic lamp, the party was given two wishes:
The discovery of oil in the North Sea:
The discovery of oil in the North Sea allowed the SNP to undermine the arguments from the Unionist parties concerning the economic necessity of the union. The whole economic argument changed as the SNP campaigned around the slogans ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’ and ‘Rich Scots or Poor Britons’. Given that this was a period of rising inflation and unemployment, the slogans hit a raw economic nerve.
Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Union (EU):
At the time, the SNP opposed membership in the EEC, but joining it in 1973 raised the possibility of future European unity and suggested to some Scots that the country’s interests might be better protected in the EEC than by continuing to send shed loads of Labour MPs to Westminster.
The failure of both the Labour and Conservative governments to satisfy the national aspirations of the Scottish people paved the way for the SNP’s triumph in the 1974 general elections. The first election in February saw the party’s support rise to 22 per cent of the vote and 7 seats; the second election in November saw support rise even further to 30 per cent of the vote and 11 seats. More worrisome was the fact that the SNP had come in a close second in most Labour seats. One more push and the door to independence would be open.
But it didn’t happen. The SNP train was derailed by one spectacular event: the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution. The Labour Party feared that if a ‘Yes’ vote was successful, it would lead to a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs in Parliament. Without the Scots, it was feared that Labour could never win a general election. With this in mind, and facing a revolt in the Commons, the Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, accepted a proposal from backbench Labour MP George Cu
The referendum could not have taken place at a worse time:
National confidence in Scotland was shaken by the disgraceful exit from the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.
The Labour government was unpopular.
The two parties nominally favouring devolution – SNP and Labour – refused to co-operate because each wanted the credit if victory was achieved.
The ‘No’ campaign, which included all the major players in Scottish society, with the exception of the Church of Scotland, argued that devolution would lead to higher taxes and more government. This struck a chord with many voters. As it turned out, there was a majority for devolution but not the 40 per cent needed for victory; only a third of Scots were in favour.
A vote of no confidence in the Labour government followed, and the SNP voted with the Tories to bring down the ruling party. As the outgoing prime minister, James Callaghan, said of the SNP, it ‘was turkeys voting for Christmas’. In the general election of 1979, the party was routed. It was reduced to two seats in a Parliament dominated by the Tories and Mrs Thatcher.