No Turning Back by Addison Paul;

Author:Addison, Paul;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

While nationalism stalled in Wales, the SNP advanced in Scotland. In October 1970 BP struck rich reserves of oil in the North Sea in what was later to be the Forties field. ‘The SNP oil campaign’, writes Tom Devine, ‘began in 1971 and brilliantly exploited the contrasts between, on the one hand, the fabulous wealth found off Scotland’s coasts and, on the other, the fact that by then the Scots had the worst unemployment rate in western Europe and were yoked to a British state that stumbled from crisis to crisis.’7 This was the point at which the SNP, campaigning on the slogan ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, took over from Plaid Cymru as the pacemaker in the deconstruction of Britain.

The initial response of the Wilson government to the emergence of the SNP was to procrastinate. In order to gain time and postpone a decision, Wilson set up in 1968 a Royal Commission on the constitution under Lord Crowther, who was replaced after his death by Lord Kilbrandon. The task of the Commission, though never of course stated in so many words, was to checkmate the SNP by proposing some alternative formula for the government of Scotland. The Commissioners, however, were divided. The majority came out in favour of Home Rule: a devolved Parliament with a Scottish Cabinet and Prime Minister, funded by the Treasury. The minority produced a Unionist solution with a Scottish assembly confined to matters of administration. A third group of commissioners produced a memorandum of dissent calling for a federal United Kingdom. The Commission had failed to resolve the divisions within Whitehall over the Scottish question, and its findings were, in any case, completely overshadowed by the looming energy crisis and the impending clash between the government and the miners. Nor had it succeeded in halting the SNP bandwagon.

Whatever the short-term fluctuations in the popularity of the SNP, the two general elections of 1974 confirmed a pattern of long-term advance:

Electoral performance of the Scottish National Party

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