A WEE BIT OF HISTORY: The 2014 referendum vote coud lead to one of the most important changes in the Scottish political landscape since the 1707 Act of Union which led to the formation of the United Kingdom (Mackie, 1969). The potential ramifications of the referendum are enormous, not only for Scotland but the United Kingdom as a whole. Since the 1707 union, Scotland has experienced turbulent relations with its neighbour England. In 1715 and 1745, the Jacobites challenged the rule of the house of Hanover without success and led to events such as the Battle of Culloden and the Highland Clearances (Flamini, 2013). High taxes imposed by the British government led to protests in Scotland against economic hardship in 1820, whereby two of the lead protesters, Andrew Hardie and John Baird, were arrested and executed (Couzin, 2006). Although Scotland had integrated into the United Kingdom, it still retained its own legal, educational and religious institutions, which helped maintain the sense of a Scottish national identity and a distinctive culture (Kinealy, 1999, p13). At the beginning of the 1740s, Scots made significant contributions in fields such as moral philosophy, history, economics, science, literature, geology and mathematics. Thus began the origin of the Scottish Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Scots participated and played an important role in areas such as politics, the civil service, the army, navy, trade and economics and travelled all over the world (Davidson, 2000, p94-95), transforming and educating those that they came in contact with. Voltaire, a French philosopher and a leading figure in the French Enlightenment, was influenced by figures from the Scottish Enlightenment such as Adam Smith and David Hume, and remarked that ‘we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation’ (Education Scotland, n.d.), illustrating the impact that Scots were making out with the United Kingdom. The growth of Scots working and leading in many diverse fields, not only in the United Kingdom but around the globe, led to the re-introduction of the post of Scottish Secretary in 1885, which had been axed in 1745. This led to the creation of the Scottish Office in order to administer central government functions in Scotland (The Scottish Government, 2012). A period of unrest occurred after this time, culminating in the 1920s, where a number of individuals within Scottish society believed that Scotland needed to rediscover its own identity and culture in order to become a political entity in its own right. In 1922, Hugh MacDiarmid (real name Christopher Murray Grieve), a journalist and poet, founded the magazine Scottish Chapbook, whose motto was ‘Not traditions – precedents’, to reignite interest in Scottish literature (McCulloch, 2009). MacDiarmid was passionate about Scottish nationalism, and in 1928 became a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, which over time evolved into the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) (MacDiarmid, 2013). In 1967, Winnie Ewing won a historic by-election for the SNP in Hamilton (University of Glasgow, 1999). This led to the Labour government giving Scotland an opportunity to vote in a referendum on devolution in 1979. However, although a narrow majority voted for change, legislation required that at least 40% of the entire electorate turn out to say yes, which did not occur (Canavan, 2013). Devolution was not seriously raised again until Tony Blair, Labour Prime Minister, conceded after a referendum in 1997 to grant Scotland its own parliament with devolved powers in areas such as education and training, environment, housing and law and order, whilst powers in relation to tax, social security, defence, international relations and broadcasting were reserved by Westminster (White and Yonwin, 2004). Support for the SNP continued to grow, and in 2011 the party won an overall majority under the proportional system, which allowed the SNP to give the people of Scotland a referendum on independence. Extract from research project by David Crossan, University of the West of Scotland.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 13:57:45 +0000
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