Political Change and Scottish Nationalism in Dundee 1973-2012 Thomas A W Stewart PhD Thesis University of Edinburgh 2019 Abstract Prior to the 2014 independence referendum, the Scottish National Party’s strongest bastions of support were in rural areas. The sole exception was Dundee, where it has consistently enjoyed levels of support well ahead of the national average, first replacing the Conservatives as the city’s second party in the 1970s before overcoming Labour to become its leading force in the 2000s. Through this period it achieved Westminster representation between 1974 and 1987, and again since 2005, and had won both of its Scottish Parliamentary seats by 2007. This performance has been completely unmatched in any of the country’s other cities. Using a mixture of archival research, oral history interviews, the local press and memoires, this thesis seeks to explain the party’s record of success in Dundee. It will assess the extent to which the character of the city itself, its economy, demography, geography, history, and local media landscape, made Dundee especially prone to Nationalist politics. It will then address the more fundamental importance of the interaction of local political forces that were independent of the city’s nature through an examination of the ability of party machines, key individuals and political strategies to shape the city’s electoral landscape. The local SNP and its main rival throughout the period, the Labour Party, will be analysed in particular detail. The thesis will also take time to delve into the histories of the Conservatives, Liberals and Radical Left within the city and their influence on the fortunes of the SNP. Through this, it will shed life on Dundee’s political development, the emergence of the SNP as a major force in Scottish politics and the reasons for the emergence of strong party traditions in particular localities more generally. Lay Summary This thesis will examine the political history of the small Scottish city of Dundee between the 1970s and the 2010s. Throughout this period, the Scottish National Party enjoyed far greater popular support in Dundee than it did in any other city. This thesis will attempt to explain why the SNP achieved such long lasting success in Dundee and not in other parts of Scotland. It will question whether Dundee was inherently prone to Nationalist politics as a result of its economy, demography, geography, history, and local media landscape. It will then point to the importance of the relative strength of local party machines, comparing the city’s SNP to its main rival in the Labour Party, and to the variety of smaller groups it competed with at various points in the period covered in the Conservatives, Liberals and Radical Left. Through this, it will shed light on Dundee’s political development, the emergence of the SNP as a major force in Scottish politics and the reasons for the emergence of strong party traditions in particular localities more generally. Word Count: 88,557 Date: 29/10/2019 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been completed without the assistance of a number of important people who have helped me along the way. Firstly, my supervisors Professors Ewen Cameron and James Mitchell have provided me with advice, guidance and suggestions over the past three years that have proven invaluable in bringing my ideas into focus and onto the page. I am grateful to the sixteen individuals that agreed to be interviewed by me during this project, whose insights held this thesis together. I would also like to thank the School of Scottish Studies for assisting me with the technical side of the oral history aspect of my research and for agreeing to archive my interviews. I owe a debt of thanks to those who gave me access to their private collections. Professor Bill Knox allowed me to make use of interviews he had conducted with political figures in Dundee, Alan McKinney let me view some of the documents from his career in the SNP and Donald Hay provided me with access to the wonderful collection that the city’s Conservative councillors have assembled over the decades. I also appreciate the help given to me by archivists across the institutions I visited over the past three years in navigating the collections they curate. On a personal side, two people stand out above everyone else. My mother, Laura Stewart, provided me the inspiration and encouragement to start doctoral study, while my fiancée, Therese Estall (soon to be Therese Stewart), gave me the love and support to finish it. Contents Introduction 1 Part One Chapter One: The Characteristics of Dundee 35 Part Two Chapter Two: The Dundee SNP 120 Chapter Three: The Dundee City Labour Party 189 Chapter Four: Dundee’s Other Parties 241 Conclusion 281 Appendix 297 Bibliography 313 Introduction Research Questions and Secondary Literature This thesis examines the politics of the small city of Dundee between the 1970s and the beginning of the 2010s. It seeks to understand why the Scottish National Party enjoyed far more electoral success in the city than it did in any other urban area. It will analyse the elements that contributed to the development of a local party tradition that has endured for successive political generations. While all focussed case studies carry their limitations when used to make more general observations, they offer the opportunity to go into greater depth and provide more character to events. Dundee, in particular, is an excellent location for a study of this type. Its relatively compact size allows for a more fully rounded analysis of the city and its politics than would be possible if a larger city or entire region were being covered. Although distinct in its own right, its social and political character bear a much closer resemblance to Scotland’s Central Belt mainstream than the other, largely rural, parts of the country in which the SNP achieved similar breakthroughs. Its electoral divergence from Scotland’s urbanised core since the 1970s brings attention to political differences among the nation’s cities, which have often been less appreciated than regional and rural-urban divisions within the country. At the same time, its demographic similarities to the historically industrial communities of West-Central Scotland that make up the largest part of Scottish society allow it to act as a case study for the analysis of broader developments in Scottish politics over the past half century. 1 This thesis will engage with a body of literature examining the development of Scottish politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.1 It will also make use of studies that question the importance of the activity of local political parties. Although grounded as a historical study, it will go beyond the writings of historians to engage with political science literatures as well. This material provides a different perspective to existing historical accounts, with greater focus on statistical evidence and the mechanics of both election campaigns and political parties.2 These texts are vital to a thesis that seeks chiefly to explain election outcomes. As such, it will place greater emphasis on the mechanics of party political competition than most other historical studies. As a highly localised case study, this thesis has the chance to address these ideas from a unique grassroots perspective. Furthermore, historians have yet to fully address developments in Scottish political history since the advent of devolution in 1999, making political science writing especially important to analysing developments in the twenty-first century.3 With more focus being given to the SNP than any other group, this thesis will offer a substantial contribution to historical understandings of the party’s development. In particular, it will examine the validity of the wide variety of theories that arose to explain 1 Ewen A Cameron, Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland Since 1880 (Edinburgh, 2010) James Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government: The Campaign for a Scottish Parliament (Edinburgh, 1996) Richard J Finlay, Modern Scotland 1914-2000 (London, 2004) I G C Hutchison, Scottish Politics in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, 2001) Andrew Marr, The Battle for Scotland (London, 1992) Michael Fry, Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland (Aberdeen, 1987) Catriona M M MacDonald, Whaur Extremes Meet: Scotland’s Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 2009) 2 Paul Whiteley, Patrick Seyd and Jeremy Richardson, True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership (Oxford, 1994) Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Labour’s Grassroots: The Politics of Party Membership (Oxford, 1992) 3 Paul Cairney, The Scottish Political System Since Devolution: From New Politics to the New Scottish Government (Exeter, 2011) Charlie Jeffrey and James Mitchell, The Scottish Parliament: 1999-2009 The First Decade (Edinburgh, 2009) 2 its initial rise to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a subject that has garnered a great deal of scholarly attention but has yet to be adequately explained. While few researchers have pointed to a single of the party’s rise, a number of key factors have been identified. The importance of the economic and political context of the period is widely recognised, with Scotland enduring a process of long-term industrial decline through much of the second half of the twentieth century that left its economy lagging behind England’s. Hechter and Nairn claim that this led to the emergence of a growing cleavage between the interests of Scotland and the rest of Britain.4 Richard Finlay, places primacy on the role played by these problems in encouraging Scots to be drawn to the SNP as a protest vote against the failures of different British governments to address the nation’s economic troubles.5 Other historians draw out further factors contributing towards the party’s rise.