Scottish Government Yearbook 1990 FACTIONS, TENDENCIES AND CONSENSUS IN THE SNP IN THE 1980s James Mitchell I bitterly regret the day I comgromised the unity of my party by admitting the second member.< A work written over a decade ago maintained that there had been limited study of factional politics<2l. This is most certainly the case as far as the Scottish National Party is concerned. Indeed, little has been written on the party itself, with the plethora of books and articles which were published in the 1970s focussing on the National movement rather than the party. During the 1980s journalistic accounts tended to see debates and disagreements in the SNP along left-right lines. The recent history of the party provides an important case study of factional politics. The discussion highlights the position of the '79 Group, a left-wing grouping established in the summer of 1979 which was finally outlawed by the party (with all other organised factions) at party conference in 1982. The context of its emergence, its place within the SNP and the reaction it provoked are outlined. Discussion then follows of the reasons for the development of unity in the context of the foregoing discussion of tendencies and factions. Definitions of factions range from anthropological conceptions relating to attachment to a personality to conceptions of more ideologically based groupings within liberal democratic parties<3l. Rose drew a distinction between parliamentary party factions and tendencies. The former are consciously organised groupings with a membership based in Parliament and a measure of discipline and cohesion. The latter were identified as a stable set of attitudes rather than a group of politicians but not self-consciously organised<4l. This distinction has value when considering extra-parliamentary parties. A third element identified by Rose was the non-aligned party membership. This element is critical and results from "an active concern with only the gross differences between electoral parties, from a passive attitude towards policy issues, or from a calculated desire to avoid identification with particular tendencies or factions in order to gain popularity within the whole electoral party". (S) Factions are often perceived to connote "illegality, if not malevolence and pathology". <6l A tendency may have considerable influence and consequently will not require to be consciously organised with a 49 Scottish Government Yearbook 1990 Scottish Government Yearbook 1990 membership, discipline or organised structure. A dominant tendency has the advantage of avoiding the connotation of illegality. Weaker tendencies The 1969 party conference involved a challenge to the leadership on may feel a need to organise in order to challenge the dominant tendency but the issue. The incumbent chairman was defeated by Billy Wolfe, who lose out by the very act of becoming an organised faction. Indeed, many believed that the party needed to develop a moderate left ideological who would otherwise be associated with a tendency might, having position. The dominant view during most of the post-war period, recognised this danger, disown or distance themselves from the faction. personified by the defeated chairman, had been that the SNP should be a The importance of the dominant tencency- or tendencies, as these differ in movement for independence rather than a conventional political party with terms of personnel depending on the issue- cannot be understated within a a programme of policies. However this was never fully developed during political party as open and democratic (almost to the point of disproving the 1970s partly because there was a feeling that it was somehow possible to Michels' iron law of oligarchy) as the Scottish National Party. develop a programme of policies without accepting a clear ideology. In fact, a left of centre ideology was developed though many senior party members The referendum in 1979, and the subsequent general election marked would deny this. Part of the reason was that most of the SNP seats won in a turning point in the fortunes of the SNP. They marked the outbreak of 1974 were won from Tories and there was a fear that it was necessary to play open and often bitter divisions and the emergence of the '79 Group which down the party's left-wing position. This misunderstanding of the SNP's established itself as a socialist republican grouping. Defeats and setbacks support - which was clearly not based on disaffected Tories but an anti­ have the effect of bringing to the fore existing and often deep rooted Tory coalition- played a part in the party losing support in 1979. divisions which are less obvious at times of electoral success. The staggering setback suffered by the SNP brought these to light, especially after the Left vs Right period of heady optimism which had preceded the Spring of 1979. Of course, left and right are relative terms, and compared with other Party vs Movement British parties represented in Parliament the SNP's centre of gravity is further to the left. In recent years debate over defence has been waged not The cliche that political parties are broad churches is as appropriate in over whether the party should be unilateralist. Unilateralism has never the SNP as any other party. While much of the debate is conducted in been seriously challenged in the SNP since it was adopted as policy in the conventional left-right language, the SNP's tendencies are more complex. early 1960s. The contentious issue has been membership of NATO. The This is not to say that Nationalist politics are not marked by debates along SNP was anti-NATO for a period in the 1960s and returned to this position conventional lines. Left-right divisions do exist and cannot be avoided. For at its 1981 conference in the context of the revival of the Campaign for any Nationalist party which is attempting to build support for its cause and Nuclear Disarmament and the international political climate. It is highly which has gained sufficient support to give it elected representation, significant that this was the only significant left-right division on an issue of whether at parliamentary or local government level, there will be a need for policy which came before party conference in the 1980s and emerged the party to decide how it should vote on the conventional issues which outwith the context of factional politic. dominate political debate. When socio-economic policy is considered, the SNP's consistent Not only do Nationalist parties operate and seek to gain support by position as a party of the left is evident. At the 1979 party conference which making known their position on socio-economic issues, they are obliged to is sometimes inaccurately interpreted as marking a lurch to the right saw the develop some kind of ideological image including a conventional left-right party enthusiastically accept a resolution accepting the primacy of the component in order to explain the kind of new state they wish to establish. public sector in the regeneration of the Scottish economy and demanded Nationalist parties will find it very difficult to portray themselves in that oil revenues be used to eliminate poverty and deprivation rather than exclusively nationalist terms sterilised of class politics. An ideal of self­ fund tax cuts. This was at a time when both the Labour and Conservative government which excludes any notion of socio-economic affairs would be Parties were vying with one another to be seen as providers of tax cuts. It is skeletal and lack appeal in modern liberal democracies where the notion of also notable that supporting the resolution were Stephen Maxwell and the state is so intimately connected with welfare, public sector intervention Margo MacDonald who were defeated in their bids to win the two leading and social justice. The distinctiveness of sub-state nationalism in developed offices in the SNP. liberal democracies, as opposed to Third World nationalism, is partly found in the nature of the existing state. Otherwise, as the SNP discovered in the A case could be made that the party vs. movement and left vs. right 1960s and 1970s, Nationalist parties leave themselves open to attack from tensions are one and the same. The lack of anything approaching a right­ both the left and right. wing prospectus and the existence of agreement on most policy issues 50 51 Scottish Government Yearbook 1990 Scottish Government Yearbook 1990 constitutional convention. The idea involved the election by proportional suggests that many described in internal SNP debates and beyond as "right­ representation of a Scottish convention which would determine Scotland's wing" are more accurately "cultural nationalists". Their aims are principally the maintenance of a sense of Scottish identity, not necessarily constitutional status. The constitutional options available to Scots would range from the Conservative's support for the status quo to the SNP's defined in terms of political institutions or citizenship. preferred option of independence within the European Community. The convention idea eventually won support at the party's 1984 conference. The Fundamentalist vs. Gradualist previous year's conference had defeated-by 173 to 141-an amendment to The fundamentalist position rejects the legitimacy of the existing state a resolution supporting a Convention. The idea allowed the party to and would perceive any measure of self-government short of independence campaign for independence, thus appealing to the fundamentalist wing, while not rejecting anything short of that goal. It amounted to self­ with suspicion. From this perspective, devolution might be viewed not as a step on the road to independence but as a sop designed to dissipate energies determination rather than self-government and was a modus vivendi between these two tendencies in the party. and appease national sentiment. The refusal of central authorities to countenance any measure of devolution prior to the emergence and growth of support for Nationalist parties can be expected to evoke cynicism and The convention idea has a curious pedigree.