Scotland and Independence Forthcoming In

“SCOTLAND AND INDEPENDENCE FORTHCOMING IN FEDERAL IDEA/ IDÉE FÉDÉRALE” Michael Keating In May 2011 the Scottish National Party (SNP) scored an overwhelming victory in elections to the Scottish Parliament. In spite of a rather proportional electoral system designed precisely to prevent it, they gained an overall majority, taking 69 of the 129 seats with 45 per cent of the vote. Since the SNP is pledged to a referendum on independence within the course of the new parliament, the result would seem to pose a serious challenge to the union. Yet Scottish independence remains a distant prospect as the rising fortunes of the SNP have so far been largely unconnected with it. This is the latest twist in the complex story of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom, an issue since the Union of 1707. This did not extinguish the Scottish nation but created an ‘incorporating union’, in which the Parliaments of Scotland and England were rolled into a single British Parliament, but the governing institutions of Scotland otherwise left mostly intact. The rise of the interventionist state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in increasing centralization and London control, but by the same measure in regular demands for more Scottish self-government within the union. The compromise was an extensive system of administrative decentralization, centred on the Secretary of State for Scotland, a member of the central Cabinet (and by convention a Scottish MP) who ran most domestic administration from Edinburgh. For the dominant parties in Scotland (Labour and Conservative after the First World War), this provided a privileged place within the United Kingdom and an opportunity to lobby for Scottish interests. To these instrumental considerations was added a doctrine of unionism, which freely conceded – indeed celebrated – Scottish nationhood while detaching it from the idea of self-government. 1 Palacio de la Aljafería – Calle de los Diputados, s/n– 50004 ZARAGOZA — Teléfono 976 28 97 15 fundació[email protected] — www.fundacionmgimenezabad.es Unionism was regularly challenged in the name of Home Rule, later known as devolution, a demand for self-government within the United Kingdom in a kind of federal arrangement. There were always home rulers within the Labour and Conservative parties, while it was the official policy of the Liberals, but it was always subordinated to unionism and to the priority of gaining power at Westminster. From the 1930s, with the emergence of the SNP, a third option was presented in the form of Scottish independence, although the dividing line between home rule and independence was never a clear one, and some prominent politicians have crossed back and forth. SNP leaders were characterized as ‘fundamentalists’ (favouring independence or nothing) and gradualists (who supported devolution at least as a first step). These party attitudes were confronted by a public opinion in which every single test of opinion over a hundred years, whether by polls, referendums (in 1979) or general elections in which it was a manifesto commitment, showed a majority of the population in favour or home rule within the United Kingdom. Traditional unionism became increasingly unsustainable from the 1960s in the face of a rising nationalist movement and a feeling that it was not delivering. It was fatally undermined during the 1990s, when a government with minimal support in Scotland imposed radical neo-liberal policies on it. The Conservatives, who in 1955 gained an absolute majority of the Scottish vote and seats, were reduced to a small minority and in the election of 1997 lost the last of their Scottish seats – presently they hold only one. After a false start in the 1970s, Labour rediscovered its historic home rule traditions and in 1997, after a hundred years of legislative proposals, a bill providing for a Scottish Parliament was supported in a referendum by a margin of three to one, and passed in Parliament. The first elections, in 1999, were won by the Labour Party, which, lacking an overall majority, formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The SNP emerged as the second party and official opposition. With the Conservatives now acquiescing in devolution, it looked as though the old three options had been narrowed down to two: devolution within the United Kingdom and independence. Nationalists proclaimed that they were all fundamentalists now, united in moving to the next stage. Labour leaders, for their part, proclaimed that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead. 2 Palacio de la Aljafería – Calle de los Diputados, s/n– 50004 ZARAGOZA — Teléfono 976 28 97 15 fundació[email protected] — www.fundacionmgimenezabad.es Neither was right. The constitutional issue has remained on the agenda but in a changed form. In the early years of devolution, polls recorded a seemingly contradictory set of attitudes. When asked whether they favoured independence, up to 50 per cent of respondents would say yes; but when asked to compare independence with devolution, support for the former fell to under a third. In pre-devolution days, this might be explained as devolution supporters citing independence as their second option, and indeed during the 1990s the majority of devolution supporters did indeed shift their second preference to independence rather than the status quo. After 1999, however, devolution was the status quo. There was even one survey, conducted by ICM regularly between 1998 and 2002, in which respondents were give a straight choice for against independence; then given a range of options including the no devolution, stronger of weaker devolution options, and independence. About half the respondents supported independence in response to the first question but only about a third in response to the second. This sort of finding is, of course, familiar in Quebec, and can also be found in Catalonia and the Basque Country. One explanation is the wording of the question, with harder questions, especially using the word ‘separate’, reducing independence support. It is also because the meaning of independence itself is so ambivalent, depending crucially on the details. Voters do not by and large recognize a sharp line between remaining in the UK and becoming independent, but rather a spectrum of greater or lesser powers. European integration further blurs the meaning of independence. The SNP, previously hostile, embraced Europe in the late 1980s as an external support system for an independent Scotland. With Labour also moving in a pro- European direction, this ensured that debate in Scotland centred on a shared commitment to Europe, in contrast to the way England was moving. It also allowed the nationalists to dismiss many of the concerns about independence, including market access and stability, as well as to present themselves as more cosmopolitan and outward-looking than many of their unionist opponents. Because of these ambiguities and the difficulties of wording, it is not easy to plot support for independence across time. Looking at broadly similar questions, it does seem that it fluctuated around 20 per cent from the 1960s to the 1980s, 3 Palacio de la Aljafería – Calle de los Diputados, s/n– 50004 ZARAGOZA — Teléfono 976 28 97 15 fundació[email protected] — www.fundacionmgimenezabad.es then increased to the low to mid 30s during the early and mid-1990s (Keating, 2009). This was the time of maximum alienation, as Scots repeatedly faced the re-election of Conservative governments (under Margaret Thatcher and John Major) with dwindling support in Scotland. Devolution in 1999 stabilized independence support at a slightly lower level, and since then it has been around 25 to 30 per cent. Since 1999, we have data from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS), an academic rather than a commercial survey, which asks a consistent question. This still does not provide us with clear trend data, as it is only an annual snapshot and is subject to the influences and events of the moment. The question asked between 1999 and 2009 was: Which of these statements comes closer to your view? Scotland should become independent, separate from the UK and the European Union. Scotland should become independent, separate from the UK but part of the European Union. Scotland should remain part the UK, with its own Parliament which has some taxation powers. Scotland should remain part of the UK, with its own Parliament, which has no taxation powers. Scotland should remain part of the UK without an elected Parliament. In 2010 there was a change in wording (see below), but Curtice (2011) has collapsed the responses from both into a three fold division, as has been done regularly in past. Figure I gives this version of results, merging the two independence and the two devolution options. Support for independence outside the European Union is minimal, and there is very little appetite for a return to the position before 1999, leaving devolution and independence as the main competitors. 4 Palacio de la Aljafería – Calle de los Diputados, s/n– 50004 ZARAGOZA — Teléfono 976 28 97 15 fundació[email protected] — www.fundacionmgimenezabad.es Figure I Reinventing the Nation In 2007, benefitting from Labour’s unpopularity as the incumbent government in Westminster, the SNP overtook them for the first time by one seat and formed a minority administration in Scotland. There was much comment at the time that this coincided with a fall in support for independence as measured by SSAS, from 30 to 24 per cent. The fall was not in fact indicative of a trend but rather of normal fluctuation (it was back at 28 per cent the following year) but it does at least show that the nationalist victory was not fuelled by a rising demand for independence. Opinion polls similarly suggested that the SNP victory was neither preceded nor followed by a surge in independence support. It is clear that, by promising a referendum on independence, the SNP had separated that question from the issue of who would form the government of Scotland.

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