“How history turned against Tory-voting Scotland”

How history turned against Tory-voting Scotland
Tom Devine
Sunday 14 September 2014

All this presents a major intellectual challenge for the historian. Little more than a generation ago, in the 1950s and early 60s, the union could not have been more secure. The Scottish Unionist party (only becoming the Conservative party in Scotland in 1965) had won a famous and overwhelming victory in the general election of 1955. The SNP at the time was but an irrelevant and eccentric sect rather than a mainstream political party. Indeed, despite the mythology of Red Clydeside, Scotland had voted mainly for the Tories in the 1920s and 1930s. The Labour landslide victory of 1945 can be seen as an aberration in that context.

We’re always told to stop harking back to the past and that romantic idea of William Wallace crying ‘FREEEEEDOM’ with Mel Gibson’s voice. History is important though and not just the distant past.

For Scotland to turn from a pro-Unionist country to a country with an almost 50/50 split on independence 60 years later, there must have been something to cause this dramatic shift in opinion.

Please read all of Tom Devine’s article linked above, as he goes into far more detail to what I will be in my blog!

The experience of Scotland in the 1980s is a critical factor in this narrative. Between 1976 and 1987 the nation lost nearly a third of its manufacturing capacity. The great heavy industries that had made Scotland’s global economic reputation over more than a century disappeared in a matter of a few years. A post-industrial economy did emerge in the 1990s, but the crisis left behind a legacy of social dislocation in many working class communities and created a political agenda north of the border in marked contrast to that of the south of England. Rightly or wrongly, the devastation was blamed on the Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher. Scotland soon became a Tory-free zone in electoral terms. Another bastion of the union passed into history.

For my generation growing up in the aftermath of the Thatcher years, I would never DREAM of voting Conservative as a Scottish person. Heck, that quote doesn’t even mention the Poll Tax which was introduced to Scotland before anywhere else in the UK! ‘Tory’ has almost been like a swear word growing up in Scotland. The shame of having a family member vote for them is unbearable for many people.

There may well be a no vote on Thursday. But a victory for unionism will be far from decisive or definitive. Nearly half the Scottish electorate will almost certainly vote yes and may not be easily satisfied by post-referendum devo max concessions that are also likely to further fuel resentments south of the border. If the yes campaign wins, Britain will never be the same. Three centuries and more of political union between England and Scotland will be consigned to history. It’s the possible end of an old political union rightly thought by many Scots to be no longer fit for purpose.

It probably doesn’t help that devo max was taken off the table or that it has only been in the last week that the three big UK party leaders left Westminster in a panic coming to Scotland to beg the Scottish people to stay. Last week there were already postal votes being sent in! For me, seeing Cameron, Clegg and Miliband leaving it so late to take this independence referendum seriously cemented my voting decision.