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‘CRAMPED AND RESTRICTED AT HOME’? SCOTTISH SEPARATISM AT EMPIRE’S END*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2015

Jimmi Østergaard Nielsen  and
Stuart Ward
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Abstract

The emergence of Scottish separatism as a viable political force in the 1960s is often seen as a reflection of Britain's wider political fortunes in a post-imperial world. It is indeed the case that the Scottish National Party emerged from electoral obscurity to become a credible political alternative in the 1960s, culminating in Winifred Ewing's by-election victory in Hamilton in November 1967. That this occurred in the wake of Britain's retreat from empire fuelled speculation that separatist momentum in Scotland represented an inward manifestation of the same pressures that had torn the empire asunder. This paper draws on sources from local politics to make two key arguments: first, that post-imperial influences were neither as pervasive nor even particularly prominent in the local politics of devolution as may be assumed. Equally, however, global processes of decolonisation contributed to the separatist agenda in ways more subtle than has hitherto been acknowledged. Indeed, there are several striking similarities between the gathering political momentum of the SNP and the sweep of ‘new nationalisms’ through the remnants of the British world in the 1960s, particularly in the former British Dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Thus, the relative absence of decolonising discourse in the local electoral source material does not necessarily rule out these global undercurrents, although the exact nature of their influence needs to be more carefully evaluated.

Type
The Berry Prize Essay
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 25 , December 2015 , pp. 159 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a Velux Foundation research grant to the ‘Embers of Empire’ project at the University of Copenhagen. We thank our colleagues Peter Harder, Ezekiel Mercau, Christian Damm Pedersen and Astrid Rasch for detailed comments on an earlier version of the paper, and John MacKenzie for his advice and encouragement. We also thank Maria Castrillo, Manuscripts Curator at the National Library of Scotland, for locating several sources referred to in the paper. For valuable feedback on the work presented during a University of Copenhagen workshop in 2013 we thank Jamie Belich, Liz Buettner, Stephen Howe, Joanna Lewis and Bill Schwarz.

References

1 The preparation of this paper entailed extensive research using materials stored in various collections, among these: The National Library of Scotland (P.la.5746 PER, ‘Scottish National Party Press Releases 1966–1968’; P.la.7030, ‘Miscellaneous Pamphlets and Leaflets of the Scottish National Party 1957–1993’; Acc. 13099, ‘Political Correspondence of Dr Gordon Wilson, Secretary of the SNP’; Acc. 10090/113, ‘General Correspondence (1967–1968) of Dr Robert Douglas McIntyre, President of the SNP’; Acc. 10090/116, ‘Misc. Party Leaflets 1962–1969’). University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Gen. 890–2, 909–10, ‘Collection of Material relating to the Scottish National Party’). The National Archives of Scotland (SOE9/136 and SOE9/139, ‘Materials relating to the 1976 Devolution Debate, and Statements and Papers by Political Parties and Other Organizations’). The Library of the SNP Headquarters in Edinburgh (various materials relating to the 1967 Hamilton by-election).

2 Devine, T. M., ‘The Break-Up of Britain? Scotland and the End of Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 16 (2006), 163–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (1977).

4 H. J. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism (1969), 212.

5 Quoted in Robbins, Keith, ‘“This Grubby Wreck of Old Glories”: The United Kingdom and the End of the British Empire’, Journal of Contemporary History, 15.1 (1980), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Ibid., 22.

8 Ibid., 22, 23, 42.

9 Ibid., 129.

10 Ibid., 20.

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12 Ibid., 139.

13 Ibid., 137.

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30 Robbins, ‘“This Grubby Wreck of Old Glories”: The United Kingdom and the End of the British Empire’, 92.

31 Blaazer, David, ‘“Devalued and Dejected Britons”: The Pound in Public Discourse in the Mid 1960s’, History Workshop Journal, 47 (1999), 121–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat (2009), ch. 28.

32 Scots Independent, ‘Where Are the Empire States?’, 20 Febr. 1965.

33 Scots Independent, ‘State or Nation?’, 29 Oct. 1966; see also Scots Independent, ‘The British Crisis: Scotland Must Act Herself’, 3 Sept. 1966: ‘Where can Britain really go? Time is long past when Britain sat smugly on her islands and the world came to her door.’

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36 Quoted in Wolfe, Billy, Scotland Lives (Edinburgh, 1973), 148Google Scholar.

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38 Wolfe, Scotland Lives, 27.

39 Ibid., 10.

40 Quoted in ibid., 53.

41 Neil Douglas, How London Spends your Money (Edinburgh), undated, but most likely 1964 judging from its general context and file placement in the Arthur Donaldson Papers, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 6038/2, ‘Correspondence of and to Arthur Donaldson’, Folder 2.

42 Scotsman, ‘A Paltry Package’, 17 Jan. 1968; Glasgow Herald, ‘Small World’, 17 Jan. 1968; see also Scotsman, ‘Prime Minister's Axe Ends an Era for Britain’, 17 Jan. 1968.

43 Scotsman, ‘A Scotsman's Log: The Ship in a Terrible State’, 18 Jan. 1968.

44 Scots Independent, Arthur Donaldson's Diary ‘The True Significance of Devaluation’, 25 Nov. 1967.

45 Glasgow Herald, ‘Scottish Surprise’, 13 Jan. 1968.

46 Scots Independent, ‘History's Next Big Date’, 13 Jan. 1968.

47 Porter, Bernard, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004), xiiiGoogle Scholar; see also Thompson, Andrew, The Empire Strikes Back? (Harlow, 2005)Google Scholar.

48 See for example Scotsman, ‘By-election Frolics’, 18 June 1962; Glasgow Herald, ‘Protest Vote’, 16 June 1962.

49 Arthur Donaldson Papers, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 6038/2, ‘Correspondence of and to Arthur Donaldson’, Folder 1, ‘Sixth Revised Draft of Proposed Articles of a Provisional Constitution for Scotland’, 16 May 1963.

50 National Archives of Scotland, SOE 12/239, ‘Putting Scotland First’, 130–41.

51 Arthur Donaldson Papers, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 6038/6, Folder 1, ‘Memorandum to European Governments’, 31 May 1967.

52 E.g. National Library of Scotland, Acc. 11987/110, ‘SNP Research Department Interim Report’, 14 Mar. 1969.

53 National Library of Scotland, P.1a.7030, Hamilton Herald.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Hamilton Advertiser, ‘Which?’, 27 Oct. 1967.

58 Ibid.

59 Hamilton Advertiser, ‘“Scots wha hinnae” won for Winnie’, 10 Nov. 1967.

60 Hamilton Advertiser, ‘After the Ball’, 10 Nov. 1967.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Scotsman, ‘Vote Rebuff Turns Spotlight on Mr Ross’, 4 Nov. 1967.

64 Scotsman, ‘By-election Aftermath’, 4 Nov. 1967.

65 Ibid.

66 Glasgow Herald, ‘Aftermath’, 4 Nov. 1967.

67 Glasgow Herald, ‘Back Home’, 6 Nov. 1967.

68 Times, ‘A Scottish Victory’, 4 Nov. 1967.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Guardian, ‘“History Made” in Scotland’, 3 Nov. 1967.

76 Guardian, ‘Don't Laugh at the Threat, it Has Promise’, 17 Nov. 1967.

77 Ibid.

78 Guardian, ‘Seeds of Defeat?’, 5 Dec. 1967, emphasis in original.

79 Guardian, ‘After Hamilton, what now for Nationalists?’, 4 Nov. 1967.

80 This is the standard modernist interpretation, as articulated in e.g. Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (1983)Google Scholar; Wodak, Ruthet al., The Discursive Construction of National Identity (Edinburgh, 2009)Google Scholar.

81 National Library of Scotland, Acc. 6038/6, Folder 4, Memorandum by Dr Andrew W. Lees on Bannockburn Day, 7 Jan. 1968. See also papers relating to the enhanced status of Bannockburn Day in ibid., Folder 8.

82 Ibid.

83 On the ‘impact’ paradigm, see Ward, Stuart, ‘The MacKenziean Moment in Retrospect’, in Andrew Thompson, Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester, 2013)Google Scholar.

84 Fry himself dismissed this as a ‘cynical view’ in The Scottish Empire (Edinburgh, 2001), 498.

85 Economic historians have in fact emphasised the surprising resilience of the British economy during the decades of decolonisation, which saw unprecedented levels of sustained growth. See for example Feinstein, Charles H., ‘The End of Empire and the Golden Age’, in Understanding Decline: Perceptions and Realities of British Economic Performance, ed. Clarke, Peter and Trebilcock, Clive (Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar; Tomlinson, Jim, ‘The Decline of the Empire and the Economic “Decline” of Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 14.3 (2003), 201–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although some of the SNP's early successes were in areas particularly affected by industrial decline (Hamilton 1967, Glasgow-Govan 1973), this was not the case with Donald Stewart's win in the Western Isles at the 1970 general election.

86 Scottish emigration to Australia in the three decades after 1945, for example, was nearly three times the level of the preceding three decades. See Prentis, Malcolm, The Scots in Australia (Sydney, 2008), 77Google Scholar.

87 Although the major studies pay virtually no attention to Scotland; see for example Paul, Kathleen, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Post-War Era (Ithaca, 1997)Google Scholar; Hansen, Randall, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

88 Hopkins, A. G., ‘Rethinking Decolonization’, Past and Present, 200.1 (2008), 211–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 ‘Le dilemme du drapeau’, Le Devoir, 15 Aug. 1964. Granatstein, Jack L. saw fit to use a rhetorical question mark in his chapter: ‘The New Nationalism? Symbol vs. Reality’, in Canada, 1957–1967: The Years of Uncertainty and Innovation (Toronto, 1986)Google Scholar.

90 Donald Horne, ‘The New Nationalism?’, Bulletin, 5 Oct. 1968.

91 Sinclair, Keith, ‘The Historian as Prophet’, in The Future of New Zealand, ed. Pritchard, M. F. Lloyd (Christchurch, 1964)Google Scholar.

92 See Ward, Stuart, ‘The “New Nationalism” in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: Civic Culture in the Wake of the British World’, in Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures, ed. Darian-Smith, Kate, MacIntyre, Stuart and Grimshaw, Patricia (Melbourne, 2007), 231–63Google Scholar. On Canada, see Igartua, José Eduardo, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945–71 (Vancouver, 2006)Google Scholar; Champion, C. P., The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964–68 (Montreal, 2010)Google Scholar; for Australia, Curran, James and Ward, Stuart, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire (Melbourne, 2010)Google Scholar; on Rhodesia, Godwin, Peter and Hancock, Ian, Rhodesians Never Die: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia 1970–1980 (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 See Ward in Thompson, Writing Imperial Histories.

94 Webb, The Growth of Nationalism in Scotland, 74.

95 This reluctance to campaign on Scotland's cultural distinctiveness was remarked upon as early as the mid-1970s, with Michael Hechter going so far as to conclude that ‘the SNP tacitly admits the cultural indistinguishability of Scotland from England by resorting to [the economic] justification for national independence’. In Internal Colonialism, 308.

96 Quoted in the Observer, ‘Celtic Threat’, 18 Feb. 1968.

97 Dominion, ‘The Day Britain Let Us Down’, 18 Jan. 1968.

98 National Library of Scotland, Acc. 10090/113, Montrose to Ewing, 8 Dec. 1967. Ewing's side of the correspondence is not preserved in the archive, but there are clear indications in Lord Montrose's letter that her replies were decidedly cooler in tone.

99 Pocock, J. G. A., ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’, Journal of Modern History, 47 (1975), 21Google Scholar.

100 Scots Independent, ‘The British Crisis: Scotland Must Act Herself’, 3 Sept. 1966.

101 National Library of Scotland, Acc. 10090/113. Ludovic Kennedy, ‘The Disunited Kingdom’, transcript of BBC broadcast, 12 June 1968.

102 Hopkins, ’Rethinking Decolonization’, 246–7.