David Torrance: Raising the standard to change a nation

Published on Sunday 1 March 2009 20:14

THIRTY years ago, on 1 March 1979, Scots went to the polls to cast a vote on their constitutional future.

Perhaps they saw the avuncular image of Jim Callaghan as they did so. "Your future – you decide," the prime minister exhorted on a campaign poster. "Yes for a stronger Scotland." Campaign material for the "No" campaign, by contrast, implored electors to vote against devolution "For Scotland's sake".

It was the culmination of more than a decade of constitutional debate in Scotland, sparked by the SNP's victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In the interim there had been a royal commission, three white papers and a great deal of parliamentary time, political divisions, scheming, arm-twisting and inter-party negotiations.

That it all came – effectively – to nothing, which profoundly depressed committed devolutionists but delighted unionists such as Margaret Thatcher, who swept into Downing Street just months later as a direct result of the referendum. Crucially, an amendment to the Scotland Act had stipulated that 40 per cent of Scotland's electorate had to vote "Yes".

On the day, of those who voted, 51.6 per cent said "Yes" while 48.4 per cent said "No". But with 36 per cent of the electorate abstaining, the "Yes" vote represented only 33 per cent of the electorate, so the referendum failed.

It had been a colourful, if divisive, few weeks. Labour's "Yes" campaign ran alongside a cross-party umbrella group also urging a "Yes" vote, while many Labour politicians (notably Neil Kinnock) publicly endorsed the "No" campaign. The Tories were similarly split. While Malcolm Rifkind canvassed for a "Yes" vote, the Young Conservative Brian Monteith launched the Student Campaign Against the Devolution Act.

A decisive intervention also came from Lord Home, the former prime minister and architect of the Conservatives' own devolution plans back in 1970. He told The Scotsman "a No vote does not and need not imply any disloyalty to the principle of devolution", implying that the next Conservative government would bring forward a "better bill". Jim Sillars, then leader of the Scottish Labour Party, remarked caustically that having begun his career by helping to betray Czechoslovakia (as Chamberlain's PPS), Home had ended it by betraying his native land.

Mrs Thatcher also came north to declare that "A No vote … will ensure that we spend the 1980s together", while Mr Callaghan, never an enthusiastic devolutionist, half-heartedly urged a "Yes" vote. When the result was announced it seemed clear that the government's unpopularity, not least the Winter of Discontent, had had a negative impact. "For the moment," recalled Mrs Thatcher in her memoirs, "devolution was dead. Although I had not publicly campaigned for a 'No' vote in Scotland, that was the result I wanted."

The Scotland Act required the government to repeal the legislation as a result of the referendum vote. Privately, Mr Callaghan believed the best outcome for his government was for it to have appeared to try to devolve power, but to have failed. In the interim he tried to buy time. Mrs Thatcher, however, scented blood. Although the parliamentary session had only a few months left to run, the tactical advantage of bringing down the government through a vote of confidence was obvious.

After listening to Mr Callaghan's devolution statement on 22 March, in which he called for all-party talks on the way forward, Mrs Thatcher tabled a successful no-confidence motion, arguing that the government's proposals were "not for a dying parliament but for a new one". After winning the election that followed, Mrs Thatcher moved swiftly to repeal the Scotland Act.

Over the next decade or so a mythology built up about who was to blame for the failure of the referendum. One theory had it that by helping to bring down the Callaghan government the SNP had ushered in a Thatcher government and therefore killed devolution; another account maintained that the Tories needlessly repealed the Scotland Act to spite the opposition. In other words, it was everybody else's fault except Labour's.

"Within days of Mrs Thatcher's coming to power", wrote Gordon Brown in his polemic Where There Is Greed…, "hopes of a Scottish assembly were betrayed." Both myths were propagated by Labour politicians but, in truth, it had been compromising amendments from Labour's own backbenchers which compelled the new government to remove the legislation from the statute book. The worst Mrs Thatcher and her ministers could be accused of was zealousness in doing so.

It was nevertheless a turning point in Scottish and UK constitutional history. Instead of the state beginning to devolve power away from the centre, it began – under Mrs Thatcher – to centralise strongly, away from local government, and even from Whitehall departments, to an increasingly powerful Prime Minister in Downing Street, a process not reversed for 18 years.

Today, referendums – a novelty 30 years ago – are a standard political tool for deciding constitutional change. Indeed, having endorsed a Scottish Parliament via a two-question referendum in 1997, Scots could go to the polls again in 2010 if the minority Scottish Government manages to garner enough votes at Holyrood. This time, however, the question being asked will be of even greater significance than in 1979.