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The decades of the 1980s and 1990s were barren years for the SNP. Within the party, there was a lot of debate over which direction the party should take. Those on the left of the SNP, including current ministers in the Scottish Parliament, such as Alex Salmond, argued that it had to remake itself as an organisation capable of wi
With the SNP engaged in a fierce internal struggle, the baton of devolution was passed to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. As their share of the vote declined, the Tories were increasingly seen as an English party with no mandate to govern in Scotland. So, in July 1988, the Claim of Right was launched in Edinburgh. A formal declaration was signed on 30 July 1989 in the Assembly Halls of the Church of Scotland on the Mound.
The declaration was signed in the same room in which the Covenant had been signed more than 400 years before by the duke of Montrose and others before being presented to the Scottish people (see Chapter 11). The Covenant had a particular historical resonance, as did the Claim of Right. This harkened back to 1689, when the Scottish Estates presented the incoming Protestant monarch, William of Orange, with a set of demands. So, the mobilisation of the past in the service of the Scottish present and future was an important tool used by the pro-devolutionists.
The Claim was signed by 58 of Scotland’s 72 MPs; 7 out of 8 members of the European Parliament (MEPs); 59 out of 65 regional, district and island councils; and numerous other political organisations, Churches and voluntary groups. The Tories and, surprisingly, the SNP did not sign the Claim, although the latter eventually did. But there was no denying that the Scottish people had spoken, and Westminster could not fail to notice.
Within eight years, another referendum to establish parliaments for Scotland and Wales with limited tax-raising powers was held by the incoming Labour government. This time, the result was a resounding ‘yes’.
The Scottish Parliament
The first elections for the Scottish Parliament took place in 1999 and led to a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but since 2007, it has been increasingly under the control of the SNP. The SNP formed a minority government after the 2007 elections, but in 2011 it actually won control of the Holyrood Parliament with 65 seats out of 129, something that the architects of devolution thought was impossible.
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