The Scottish National Party

Abstract

In the First World War, Scotland lost 110 000 men, over 20 per cent of Britain’s war dead.¹ The absence of the promised ‘home fit for heroes’ fuelled radicalism both north and south of the Border; and the apparent possibility of the replication of Dublin in 1916 in Scotland inflamed unrealistic fears in some British politicians, most famously in the sending of troops and tanks to Glasgow following the unfurling of the Red Flag in George Square in 1919. What began as a protest for a 40-hour week was described by Scottish Secretary Robert Munro as ‘a Bolshevist rising’, to be quelled by 12 000 troops, 100 lorries and 6 tanks.² This absurd overreaction passed into the mythology of the Scottish Left, perhaps partly because the crisis of 1914–19 really did represent some kind of sea-change in Scotland’s economic fortunes. Before 1914, Scotland was a major economic power, producing 120 per cent of average UK output per capita; for the rest of the century it steadily underperformed in relative terms. Twenty-three per cent of those born in Scotland from 1911–80 emigrated; in 1911, Sweden’s population was 16 per cent higher than Scotland’s, today it is some 70 per cent higher. Such statistics indicate the contraction of twentieth-century Scotland from an economic powerhouse of native industry to an also-ran assembly plant for US and Asian multinationals. The development of nationalism against such a background is not surprising;³ what is perhaps more surprising is its limited impact, which can to some extent be put down to the skill of the Labour Party in particular in managing Scottish decline through the patronage of British subsidy, and in presenting itself as the patriotic party within Scotland.