Cameron, Ewen

Mitchell, James

Stewart, Thomas Alexander William

2020-01-07T13:04:08Z

2020-01-07T13:04:08Z

2019-11-12

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.

https://hdl.handle.net/1842/36678

en

The University of Edinburgh

Stewart, Thomas A W, ‘‘A disguised Liberal vote’? – third-party voting and the SNP under Gordon Wilson in Dundee during the 1970s and 1980s’, Contemporary British History, Vol 33 No 3 (2019) 357-382

Stewart, Thomas A W, ''Vote as you pray' - the success of the Scottish Prohibitionist Party in Dundee during the interwar period', International Journal of Regional and Local History, Vol 13 No 2 (2018) 105-17

Stewart, Thomas A W, ‘By-Elections and Political Change in a Local Context: The Case of the 1973 Dundee East By-Election and the SNP’, Parliamentary History, Vol 38 No 2 (2019) 88-103

SNP

Nationalism

political parties

elections

Scotland

Labour Party

Dundee

Political change and Scottish Nationalism in Dundee 1973-2012

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy