The National Movement in Scotland

Jack Brand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032068947
• eBook ISBN: 9781000434538
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Originally published in 1978, but now re-issued with a new Preface by James Mitchell, this volume traces the rise of the SNP, with special emphasis on explaining the increase of the National Party vote in Scotland from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. The book draws much of its information from interviews with members and ex-members of the SNP, including some who helped to found the party in 1928. In describing the movement and giving an account of its main features, the author begins with a discussion of various aspects of Scottish society which have contributed to the growth of nationalism. These include the political developments of the Labour movement, the economic history of 20th Century Scotland the development of youth culture and in particular, the interest in folk music, as well as developments in the Church, the army, and the press.

Part One

1
The Nature of the Problem and its Background

The aims of this book are to describe the nationalist movement in Scotland and to explain why the Scottish National Party (SNP) has become such a prominent factor in British politics. Inevitably these two discussions are interlinked. Any account of the nature of the movement has implications for theories about why it has, over the last fifteen years, been able to attract so many votes.

The situation in Scotland

Before starting the more systematic analysis it is worth while to outline what success the SNP has had in Scotland.¹ From its foundation in 1928 (as the National Party of Scotland: NPS) until the beginning of the 1960s the SNP, dedicated to independent statehood for Scotland, was a tiny fringe party. With a few exceptions, mostly engineered by peripheral organisations rather than the party itself, it made no impact on British or even Scottish politics. At the time of writing this chapter (February 1977) two opinion polls conducted by separate organisations at different times and with different designs have estimated that the SNP has the support of the largest block of voters in Scotland.²

On the basis of that information alone, a reader might think that this was remarkable but no more than a flash in the political pan similar to the shortlived successes of the Mouvement Poujadiste, or the Dixiecrats in the United States. The real situation is more akin to that of the Parti Québécois.³

A glance at Table 1.1 shows that the SNP has not tumbled suddenly onto the stage. After the disastrous 1950s it has made steady progress in doubling or almost doubling its vote at each election. The party thus seems to be a permanent feature of the Scottish political scene. One further comment on the table ought to be made. The size of the 1970 vote is veiy largely explained by the fact that, for the first time, the party contested virtually every seat in Scotland (sixty-five out of the seventy-one) where at the previous election it stood in only twenty-three. Thus, the advance it made at this election has to be qualified by this and also by the fact that it lost its deposit in forty-two of the sixty-five seats. In the next general election, however, it maintained the rate of increase of its vote and in the election in October 1974 it fought every seat in Scotland and lost no deposits at all. Indeed in forty-two of the seats in which it did not win, it came second, displacing the Conservative or Labour Party. Thus the SNP is now represented, almost always strongly, in every constituency in Scotland.

Table 1.1 SNP votes and MPs⁴

Election year	Votes for SNP	SNP vote as % of the Scottish vote	SNP MPs
1945	30,595	1.2	—
1950	9,708	0.4	—
1951	7,299	0.3	—
1955	12,112	0.5	—
1959	21,738	0.8	—
1964	64,044	2.4	—
1966	129,112	5.1	—
1970	306,796	11.4	1
1974 Feb.	632,032	21.9	7
1974 Oct.	836,628	30.4	11

As a footnote to this discussion of the importance of the SNP in Scottish politics one should point out that the situation is serious for British politics. Only in the elections of 1945 and 1966 was the Labour Party able to command a majority of seats in England and Wales alone. In other words Labour won the elections of 1950, 1964 and the two elections of 1974 by depending on Scottish seats. If the SNP replaced Labour as the majority party in Scotland, the probability of Labour forming a British government would be seriously diminished.

The natural history of political parties

The rise of a political party is a rare event. In their recent description of party systems Rose and Urwin were able to point to remarkable stability not just since the Second World War, but since the First.⁵ Since 1945 there have been some innovations: in France, for example, the Gaullists and the MRP. More recently, in Scandinavia several small parties have appeared. These latter have had mixed fortunes and none of them is likely to transform the nature of politics in their countries.⁶ Thus the post-war European scene presents a picture of surprising stability.

There have been several recent pieces of research which suggest the possibility of change in the ground on which political parties are based. Ronald Inglehart has demonstrated the incidence of ‘post-bourgeois political values’.⁷ Art Miller’s work on the decline of political trust in the United States has been followed by studies showing similar trends in Britain⁸ and, again in Britain, Butler and Stokes have spoken about ‘the decline of the class alignment’.⁹ If these assessments are correct, one might expect major changes in the structure of Western politics in the future.

This background of discontent and changing social values is certainly important for the rise of any political movement. The increase in the SNP vote must, in other words, be seen in relation to political changes that are taking place far beyond the borders of Scotland. It is also important to recall that Scotland is not the only country which has a ‘separatist’ movement and we must see whether there are general tendencies in European society which have given prominence to nationalist movements at this time.¹⁰ I believe that general explanations do give us some guidance for the explanation of this specific phenomenon but that, to understand why a nationalist party has become prominent in Scotland at this particular time, we need to know something about Scottish history and conditions. Several events and processes peculiar to Scotland have affected more general movements in unexpected ways.

The second major preoccupation of this study is to describe the national movement. There are certain obvious characteristics which have to be dealt with: is it in favour of complete independence or Home Rule? Perhaps there is internal disagreement on this point. Is it left wing or right wing? Is the basic philosophy populist and is it, in any case, a movement or has it crossed the invisible line to become a ‘real’ political party? Although my major focus of attention will be the SNP I do not think that it is possible to give a coherent account of the party other than by understanding its relation to other aspects of Scottish life, including the development of a new consciousness of Scotland.

It is because of the relation between the political and other processes that this book has its particular organisation. In Chapter 2 I shall discuss some past accounts of nationalism and the ways in which this might bring certain characteristics of Scottish nationalism to our attention. In Chapter 31 shall outline my own explanation for the rise of nationalism in Scotland. This concludes the introductory part.

In the second part I shall trace the development of the new attitude of Scots towards Scotland. I shall describe some domains of Scottish life in which certain sorts of Scottish people have taken a new view of themselves and their country; a view which has led to nationalism for many. I shall devote Chapters 4 and 5 to a discussion of the political and economic history of Scotland from the end of the First World War to the present. I shall demonstrate that, for Scots, and for less affluent Scots in particular, the difficulties of Britain in the 1960s and 1970s have led to a new feeling for the community of Scotland. Chapter 6 will look at the rise of literary nationalism and cultural nationalism. This is a feature which affects only a tiny minority in a direct sense. In an indirect way it has been more influential and has been a mirror of the changing mood of the nation. Perhaps more than any other group the young have been associated with the new wave of nationalism in Scotland. In trying to explain this I shall look at the influence of the folk song movement and the influence of the educational system in Chapter 7. In Chapters 8–10 I shall discuss some Scottish institutions which might have been thought to contribute to the growth of nationalism but which have not done so. These institutions are the Church, the Scottish regiments of the armed forces, football, and the Press.

The third part deals specifically with the rise of nationalism. Its relation to the earlier section is that I shall show the connection between nationalism and other events in Scotland. In Chapters 11–13 the history of the political movement will be described and in Chapter 14 some organisational points will be discussed. Chapter 15 will conclude the book with an attempt to summarise the argument and to expand it.

2
The Substance of Nationalism

In the last twenty years social scientists have been more concerned with the integration of states than with separatism. Major work has been done by such scholars as Stein Rokkan on the relation between the centre and the periphery and there has been work on nation building by Lucien Pye and others.¹ Rokkan’s major contribution to this area has been to study the circumstances under which peripheral groups were integrated into the central culture.² Lipjhart and several others have contributed to this field.³ Although there has been some recent work on ethnicity⁴ there is no body of political theory of the same weight to explain modern separatism. We are, therefore, forced to turn to more traditional treatments. The studies which concentrate on modern European nationalism, such as those by Kedourie and Kohn, draw most of their examples from the nineteenth-century struggles of such countries as Prussia and Poland.⁵ Much of their attitude to nationalism is coloured by the experience of nationalist dictatorships in the 1930s and 1940s. For many of these writers nationalism is an evil, since nationalism is equated with the doctrine that the chosen nation should in some way lead the world.

The dominant attitudes in European politics have also been concerned with integration rather than separatism. NATO and the EEC have been important considerations in political thinking. Where the existence of nationalist movements was acknowledged they were regarded as quaint survivals rather than as serious figures in the political landscape.

In Britain at least, the situation has changed dramatically. The nationalist movement in Scotland is strong and shows signs of becoming stronger.⁶ Part of the argument of this chapter is that we need to develop new ways of describing it. I shall argue that Scottish nationalism is a modern movement responding to modern social and political conditions. As such we can more usefully look at it as similar to developments in the new countries of Asia and Africa rather than as a pure descendant of nineteenth-century European nationalism.

Let us, for the sake of argument, say that a classical nationalist position could be summarised in these (rather ambiguous) statements:

All Mankind is divided into nations: it is a natural division.

Each nation has a peculiar character.

A nation has a ‘right’ to run its own affairs.

Only when nations run their own affairs as independent states will their full potential be realised.

Nation states have the first claim on the loyalties of their members.

Most practising nationalists as opposed to political philosophers would not attempt to defend these concepts of ‘rights’ or ‘nature’. They would take them as self evident. It is not my purpose to discuss them either but simply to point out that they are part of a profession of belief by nationalists and that these appeals take precedence over other arguments.

The SNP would certainly pass the test as a true nationalist party. Its manifesto, prepared for the general election in October 1974 stated:

The vast majority of the people of Scotland recognise that Scotland is a nation and that it should exercise privileges and responsibilities as other nations do, through a Parliament entrusted with the sovereign rights of the people of Scotland.

The booklet assumes the existence of the nation of Scotland, with the right to the same status as other nations.⁷ Thus its most recent election programme is built on the basis of a traditional nationalist approach.

There are, however, some problems about this description of what nationalism means in Scotland. One of them is that various other arguments have been used by nationalists to justify their aim: the establishment of an independent government in Scotland. The chief of these is that such a government would run the country’s affairs better. This is an argument distinct from one saying that Scotland claims independence as a right. Even though the quality of economic and social life should collapse, it would be more ‘moral’ for Scotsmen to run themselves rather than be run from London. A related line of reasoning is sometimes used. It is argued that if a country is run by its own people there is released a flood of creative and artistic energy which is repressed by an alien rule, however caring and benevolent.

In practice nationalist movements use both sorts of appeals and it is this which gives rise to the ambiguity which surrounds the phenomenon. Is the nationalist voter responding to the promise of improved material conditions or to the ‘spiritual’ appeal of the national community?⁸ Many commentators have written that the rise in the SNP vote in the 1960s and 1970s was not due to ‘true’ nationalism.

Although this criticism applies mostly to the nationalist voter it can also be applied to the party members and even the leaders. In a later chapter we shall see that, from the mid-1930s until 1942, there was a strong group in the SNP who were motivated mostly by the second group of arguments: those for efficiency and increased sensitivity to the needs of Scotland. It was significant that such people, who were grouped around Sir Alexander McEwen and the Duke of Montrose, were federalists rather than advocates of complete independence. Often their rhetoric was such that it was difficult to distinguish the real arguments that they were putting forward but we shall see convincing evidence that they were ‘Home Rulers’ rather than ‘separatists’. It is essential to recognise, howe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• New Preface to the Re-issue of 2021
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Appendix A National Party of Scotland Constitution, 1931
• Appendix B SNP Constitution, 1948
• Notes
• Index