FROM ITS INCEPTION IN May 1886, the SHRA had emphasised the comparative legislative neglect of Scotland. After its initial popularity, however, it went into decline, particularly after the death of John Stuart Blackie in 1895, and a resurgence of British ‘national’ sentiments, including the Conservative victory at the ‘khaki election’ of 1900. By 1902, the SHRA had, in Waddie’s words, ‘entered into a state of suspended animation’ due to Boer War jingoism. Nevertheless, between 1890 and 1914, measures proposing Scottish home rule were put forward no fewer than thirteen times in the House of Commons and were accepted in principle on eight occasions, yet none of the Bills succeeded in reaching Committee stage. According to Vernon Bogdanor this reflected the low priority attached to home rule even among parliamentarians sympathetic to the cause, and the appearance of Home Rule Bills was often part of a ‘ritual gesture’ by Labour and Liberal MPs.

Out of the House of Commons, and to an extent, mainstream politics, during this period, Graham wrote nothing about Ireland except obliquely in an article entitled ‘An Tighearna: A Memory of Parnell’, and nothing about the political situation in Scotland. His interest in Scottish home rule had mostly been pragmatic, a means by which legislation, particularly on labour matters and social change, could be more speedily implemented; Scottish and Irish home rule could be a means of undermining the ossified power structures he had hopelessly attacked as an MP. It is also likely that he saw home rule as a means by which the empire could be eroded from within, expressed in a letter to the Saturday Review: