Parliament, the parties and the Scottish question, 1974-1979

Abstract

This thesis investigates the rise and fall of the Scottish assembly project of the 1970s. It provides the first full-length historical study to focus on the devolution debate of the 1974-1979 Parliament. At the heart of the study lies one main question: why did the offer of Scottish political autonomy fail to materialise after 1974? Based on intensive archival research, this thesis argues that high politics at Westminster and strategies pursued by the main parties were pivotal to devolution’s demise. First, it demonstrates that devolution forged a far more important part of the respective strategies of the Labour and Conservative Party leaderships than is presently recognised in the historical literature. Placing devolution at the heart of the struggle for power in the dramatic 1974-1979 Parliament, this study shows how the Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan instrumentalised the assembly bills in a bid to prolong the life of his premiership. The Scottish question was scarcely any less important to the then Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher. Under her tenure, the Conservative Party mounted an unyielding parliamentary opposition to the Government’s proposals in the hope of ousting Labour from office. Second, the research seeks to highlight that the prospect of a Scottish assembly inspired a much more concerted and, indeed, fiercer pushback from within the Houses of Parliament than is generally appreciated. The resistance to devolution at Westminster is typically framed in terms of maverick individualism on the part of ‘rebel’ Labour MPs such as Tam Dalyell and George Cunningham. However, this study argues that the opposition was much more broadly based. In this way, the first half of the thesis shows how a cross-party alliance came into being to delay and, ultimately, wreck the Government’s legislation. Finally, this study offers a close analysis of the electoral contests that led to the decline of political nationalism and the collapse of devolution. Rejecting a compartmentalised view of these politics, this study presents a dynamic picture in which the electoral scene and power-politics at Westminster were intimately connected. To this end, the second half of the thesis is devoted to the crucial votes that took place in the latter part of the decade. After re-examining the fiercely fought (but largely forgotten) Scottish by-elections of 1978, the study then offers a fresh analysis of the assembly referendum of the following year. Reconstructing the strategies and interventions of the parties and the campaign groups, the final chapter shows how the anti-devolutionists produced a remarkable turnaround during the early months of 1979. It was a development with momentous consequences; for it was the indecisive result of the referendum vote that precipitated the fall of the Callaghan Government, paving the way for Margaret Thatcher’s watershed victory at the 1979 General Election.