How Unionist was the campaign for Scottish devolution after the 1960s?

Whether it’s the outburst which followed Boris Johnson’s alleged claims that ‘devolution has been a disaster’ and the Prime Minister’s subsequent clarification of what he had really meant, or Margaret Thatcher suggesting that Thatcherism represents real devolution by bestowing power upon the citizen and limiting the influence of the state, Unionist MPs have always felt obliged to accompany their rejection of independence with rhetoric that is sympathetic to the autonomy and interests of the Scots, or ‘devolution’ in some form or another. Of course, it is not just Conservative politicians who have pandered to this sentiment; former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, recently lamented how his 1998 devolution bill had failed to quell nationalist sentiment for independence, and his successor Gordon Brown has, whilst urging Scots to vote ‘no’ in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, proudly attributed the creation of Blair’s Scottish parliament to the Labour party and ‘not the nationalist party’.

It would appear that from the 1960s, Unionist parties, that is, principally the Labour and Conservative parties, have had to present themselves as absolutely the parties of devolution – the term being employed here very loosely – where they have wished to win the support of the Scottish electorate. Pandering to the Scots has less often been a concern of the Conservatives, yet when it is, this sentiment is present nonetheless. To call devolution a ‘campaign’, suggests that it involved an upward trajectory towards a devolved state. Close examination, however, shows that this was simply not the case as devolutionist sentiment was largely opportunistic – it was not carried by any strong ideological conviction and was characterised instead as a mid-way compromise policy, ultimately enacted at times the British establishment saw fit. It was Unionist, yet at the same time paradoxically contingent on the sporadic activity of nationalist groups.

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