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Ethnopolitics in the New Europe, by John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning
6. The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in Great Britain
The ethnopolitical challenge to the British state has been a persistent, if marginal, feature of the relations between what is called the “Celtic fringe” and the English core. Although there are commonalities between the ethnopolitical parties of Scotland and Wales today, they originate from different social and political circumstances and have followed different trajectories across time. Devolution is now a fact, but it is more widely supported in Scotland than in Wales. Moreover, the Scottish Parliament has more significant powers, including the ability to vary the tax rate from that set by the central government in London, than does the Welsh Assembly.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) emerged in a Scotland where identification as a nation separate from England was rooted in history and culture, but not in language. Early Scottish ethnopolitics did have its share of romantics who favored the Gaelic language, but so few among the Scots spoke it that it was difficult to structure political demands around linguistic issues. Pragmatism, centered on the observation that Scottish socioeconomic needs were neglected by Parliament, became dominant within the SNP initially. The party has consistently favored constitutional methods. However, the British electoral system has made it difficult for third parties to gain representation in Parliament. In claiming to speak on behalf of Scottish interests, then, this has resulted in two problematic goals for the SNP: first, to convince Scots to vote in large numbers for a party that is unlikely to have much of a voice in government and, second, to convince the central government in London that it is a force with which to be reckoned. In response to these difficulties, the SNP, while remaining committed to the principles of democratic government and negotiated change, has also radicalized its rhetoric: It now demands independence for Scotland. Nevertheless, the SNP has expressed a willingness to accept autonomy, at least for the time being.
Plaid Cymru, by contrast, emerged in an environment where Welshness and language were more closely connected, even as the proportion of the population actually speaking Welsh continued to decline. Linguistic preservation and language rights were long central to the party, which on occasion expressed its frustration at its lack of success through extraconstitutional acts. Its association with such acts not only slowed its transformation into a political party fully committed to constitutional means, but it also slowed the diffusion of voter support among the population of Wales. The marginal support for the Welsh Assembly showed that, despite the strength of Welsh identity, Plaid Cymru’s demands have not taken hold among the region’s voters.
In both the Scottish and Welsh cases, ethnopolitics sought to reverse absorption into one British whole. Scotland preserved some of its unique institutions after the Act of Union with England in 1707, whereas Wales lost its institutions in its Act of Union with England in 1536. Conversely, Wales managed to keep its Welsh language alive, whereas Scotland all but lost its Gaelic. Despite the unique ability of a language to tie a people together, Scottish ethnopolitics has politically been more successful.
Historical Background
Scotland
Scottish ethnopolitics has deep roots and has been an enduring facet of the relations between Scotland and England. It has been argued that “Scottish nationalism is as old as the Scottish nation,” and the Declaration of Arbroath of April 6, 1320, has been cited as an early and significant event in the formation of a Scottish national identity. This declaration predated the union of 1707 with England, which stirred the nationalist imagination in literary circles in the eighteenth century; but this literary movement largely failed to capture the enthusiasm of the Scottish masses. 1
Historically, Scottish ethnopolitics has lacked a readily definable feature around which grievances could be structured. Linguistic or religious grievances have not played a role, as neither reliably differentiates the Scottish and English peoples. More important, on the political front, Scots have long enjoyed representation in the British government; the 1707 union resulted in the parliamentary representation of Scotland with forty-five members in the House of Commons and sixteen peers in the House of Lords. This gave the Scottish people a voice at the center of government, the lack of which often becomes a source of ethnopolitical grievances. Moreover, the union stimulated both economic and intellectual development. This does not mean that the relations between Scotland and England functioned smoothly from the start. The first half century was a period of adjustment and considerable discontent, because the expected expansion of Scottish commerce and industry was slow to materialize. Once the economic expansion took hold, however, discontent largely vanished, and the union went basically unchallenged for about a century. 2
Toward the latter part of this period, the Reform Act of 1832 redrew district boundaries and extended the franchise. Scotland gained a system of free elections, and for the next fifty years its MPs were almost exclusively Whig or Liberal. While Scottish politics thus played itself out through the mainstream political parties, there also emerged a recurrent criticism of the union. 3
As early as 1828 there was a call for the creation of a Scottish Office to handle Scottish affairs. Scottish nationalism did not emerge until the middle of the nineteenth century, however. H. J. Hanham argues that three distinct groups were attracted by nationalist ideas at the end of the 1840s: The first was made up of practical reformers and businesspeople in Glasgow, who argued that Scottish needs were neglected by the Parliament at Westminster. The second comprised the Scottish literary establishment in Edinburgh, which emphasized the need to restore Scotland to its former glories. Many among this group favored Gaelic, which was spoken by less than 2 percent of Scots. In fact, most of the Gaelic speakers were bilingual. Third, there were the few radical thinkers who wanted Scotland to stand on its own two feet. 4 The first group, while using the symbols of ethnic politics, represented issues central to all political decisionmaking: who gets what share of the government’s resources. It represented moderate demands. The second and third groups represented romantic notions of the nation and potentially more radical demands. Crosscutting the birth of ethnopolitics was the emergence of socialism, which had a profound effect on the political outlook of many Scots. 5 However, since class interests extended beyond national boundaries, they also tempered nationalist demands.
Most important, it was difficult to formulate the sort of grievances that compel people to join the nationalist cause. English rule was not particularly exploitative, and the government showed “a capacity and a willingness to respond, albeit slowly and reluctantly, to Scottish pressures.” 6 Nevertheless, the Scottish people did not perceive themselves as part of a single, integrated British nation. In fact, public opinion was generally favorably disposed toward the idea of greater autonomy for Scotland. 7 But this support did not frequently translate into political demands.
In 1853, the first nationalist organization emerged: the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights (or the Scottish Rights Society). The group’s support came primarily from literary and radical sources. One of its supporters was the Reverend James Begg of Edinburgh, who had earlier called for a stronger representation of Scotland at Westminster and for a secretary of state for Scotland. The group’s activities came to a halt when the Crimean War broke out in 1854. 8
Toward the end of the nineteenth century ethnopolitics reemerged. Now, demands for home rule were voiced in both Scotland and Ireland. In 1886, Prime Minister William Gladstone decided to support home rule for Ireland. The issue caused a split in the Liberal Party. In Scotland, one group saw it as a dangerous precedent: The implications of land tenure reforms and the consequences for business worried landowners and businesspeople. The other group saw it as an opportunity: It made home rule for Scotland seem acceptable and feasible. It is no surprise, then, that the very same year, the Scottish Home Rule Association was founded. However, the Irish question took precedence for the Liberal Party at Westminster, and Scottish home rule was supported more in word than in deed. In this time period, home rule became a popular idea among radical and labor leaders. Indeed, Hanham goes so far as to argue that the debate “brought to the fore a new type of working-class nationalism.” 9
Between 1892 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, proposals to grant Scotland a separate Parliament were introduced on a number of different occasions. There was support for the idea of a federal structure, not only by Liberals, but on the part of the Conservatives as well. Toward the end of World War I, a new Home Rule Association was formed. In the period subsequent to the war, the Labour Party emerged as one of the main bodies in Britain and Scotland. Although it was initially supportive of home rule, that support began to weaken in the early 1920s. Part of the problem was that the Labour Party in England needed the votes of its Scottish and Welsh counterparts. Devolution away from the unitary government in London would weaken the party’s support. Thus, it was not in the interest of the Labour Party to support devolution or home rule. Additionally, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, which had earlier supported the call for autonomy, increasingly emphasized solidarity with the international working-class movement, rather than with ethnic politics. 10
As the Labour Party’s support for Scottish autonomy began to weaken in the 1920s, the movement’s reliance on mainstream parties to achieve it began to look less and less promising. Up to this point, Scottish nationalists had worked within the established parties. Now, however, voices emerged within the Scottish Home Rule Association in favor of running independent Scottish candidates. 11
After the failure of yet another home rule debate in Parliament in 1924, Roland Muirhead, a small businessman who had been active in the pre-World War I Home Rule Association, became convinced that the existing political parties would never support the nationalist cause. He initiated talks with various organizations in Scotland to try to establish a Scottish ethnopolitical party. At first, there was little interest. Each organization had a different purpose. The Scots National League stood for breaking up Britain as soon as possible, whereas the Scottish Home Rule Association advocated autonomy within the existing structure of Britain. The Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association, which had been the by-product of a rectorial election at the university, eventually provided the catalyst necessary to bring the rival groups together. The result was the National Party of Scotland (NPS), which held its inaugural meeting on June 23, 1928, and entered the political arena as a left-leaning party with complete independence from England as its goal. The party almost immediately announced four candidates for Parliament and contested its first elections in 1929. The party did not do very well in those elections, partly because it had not yet built a grassroots organization that could support the campaign efforts. 12
The NPS became increasingly dependent upon John MacCormick, who had led the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association and who was the only person within the organization endowed with a talent for organizing electoral campaigns. MacCormick was a moderate: He favored autonomy rather than independence, and under his leadership, the NPS became associated with this goal. He aimed to win broad public support for his party and displayed an impatience with the more radical literary men within the party. 13
In the meantime, a second, more moderate party emerged, the Scottish Party (SP), which favored autonomy over independence. Prior to its creation, its leaders had consulted with MacCormick, and an eventual merger of the two parties was likely from the start. MacCormick saw the emergence of this second party as a way to broaden his party’s base and to steer the latter solidly in the direction of the moderate goals he preferred. He initiated a debate about the future of the NPS, and although his position initially looked precarious, he eventually won out: The radicals were expelled from the party, and on April 30, 1934, the two parties merged to form the Scottish National Party. 14
Wales
The incorporation of Wales into Britain proceeded differently from that of Scotland and took place at an earlier date. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, King Edward I of England had conquered Gwynedd. This event was the culmination of the conquest of Wales, which had taken place during the preceding two centuries. English control over Wales resulted in socioeconomic changes, such as the replacement of gavelkind, or equal shares inheritance, with primogeniture. Social upheaval accompanied these changes. The most notable of these was the revolt led by Owain Glyndwr at the start of the fifteenth century. For a decade, he controlled an independent state in Wales. Although his defeat marked the definitive end of Welsh independence, some today trace Welsh ethnopolitics back to Glyndwr’s actions. 15
The Act of Union of 1536 consolidated English control over Wales. It was part of a series of acts that not only affected Wales, but also centralized government control more generally, and hastened the end of feudalism. However, the end result was that Wales, in contrast to Scotland, lost its indigenous political and social institutions. In addition, the Act of Union specified that non-English-speaking persons were prohibited from holding office. Consequently, the Welsh elite became anglicized, but the peasantry did not. It is important to note that the requirement for officeholders to speak English was not a deliberate attempt to suppress the Welsh language; rather, it was an administrative convenience. 16
These English actions concerning Wales yielded a different situation than that experienced in Scotland. As a consequence, Welsh ethnopolitics was founded on different bases, with Welsh language and the prevalence of nonconformist religions being central features. The two are intertwined here, for during the eighteenth century, missionaries taught the Welsh to read the Bible in their own language, which resulted in both a religious awakening and a revival of the Welsh language. The same era also witnessed the formalization of the Eisteddfod, a folk festival with competition in Welsh poetry, prose, and music. This annual event became a focal point for development of Welsh ethnopolitics. 17
Although the enclosure of land had been possible in Britain since the late seventeenth century, Wales did not experience enclosures on a significant scale until the nineteenth century. The changes the enclosures wrought on the rural, agrarian society caused much discontent, which expressed itself in the Rebecca Riots of the early 1840s and other protests. In the same century, industrialization made inroads. Technological improvements allowed the iron industry to prosper and made local coal reserves usable in its manufacture. As a result, the rural areas rapidly depopulated as people shifted to the locales of the coal and iron industry. 18
These economic changes were accompanied by changes in religious affiliation. At the start of the nineteenth century, most Welsh belonged to the established church, but half a century later, nonconformity was dominant. It spread especially rapidly after the Calvinistic Methodists formally broke with the established church in 1811. By some accounts, three-quarters of the population belonged to various nonconformist denominations at midcentury. These denominations played a role in Welsh ethnopolitical sentiment, which coalesced around efforts to disestablish the church in Wales. A first attempt was made through a private member’s bill in 1870 and was followed by several others; the disestablishment of the church finally materialized in 1920. Ethnopolitical sentiment thus focused on religious issues rather than political ones, and the first home rule for Wales bill was not introduced until 1914—as disestablishment appeared to be forthcoming by that time—somewhat later than Scottish efforts to attain a measure of self-government. 19
The Reform Act of 1832 served to increase Welsh influence in the British Parliament slightly and produced a small extension of the franchise, but the balance between county and borough representation was not changed. According to Gareth Jones, it was “deliberate policy in England and Wales to reinforce the landed interest despite population changes.” 20 Yet the 1867 Representation of the People Act resulted in more fundamental change. The subsequent election of 1868 gave Wales its first nonconformist MP, Henry Richard, who was elected in the industrial constituency of Merthyr Tydfil. More generally, this election increased the Liberal Party’s share of the vote. However, only after the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872 did the Liberal Party solidly take hold in Wales. 21
Gladstone’s support for home rule for Ireland had a somewhat different impact on Wales than it did on Scotland. According to Jones, Gladstone was sympathetic to Wales on many issues, and such Welsh politicians as Tom Ellis and David Lloyd George rose to prominence and succeeded in obtaining some special legislation for Wales. Both also played important roles in the Cymru Fydd (Wales to Be) movement of the 1890s, which was the first Welsh ethnopolitical organization. Self-government was its main objective, although it had been established as a cultural and literary organization. Founded in London, it consisted primarily of Welsh intellectuals who resided there, and it later established branches in Wales. Cymru Fydd aimed to influence the Liberal Party to adopt the goal of self-government for Wales. After this failed, the group’s leaders pursued their political careers within the Liberal Party. Lloyd George eventually became prime minister of Britain in 1916. Although he surrounded himself with prominent Welsh Liberals, this was not an era of Welsh ethnopolitical activism: Disestablishment had been achieved, and the influence of the landed estates on politics had eroded substantially. 22
In the early twentieth century the Labour Party grew rapidly and gained influence, especially in the industrial areas of Wales, and came to dominate Wales from about 1922 to 1974. Although Wales’ first Labour MP, Keir Hardie, was a supporter of Welsh national identity, cultural differences were de-emphasized during this time of Labour dominance in favor of class differences. 23 For many in industrial Wales in the 1920s, unemployment and other economic issues took precedence. This same pattern of sympathy for ethnic aspirations but emphasis on class issues was found in early Flemish ethnopolitics as well.
Meanwhile, in 1925, six Welshmen met during the National Eisteddfod at Pwllheli, in the northern Wales region of Gwynedd, to create Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (Nationalist Party of Wales), with the objective of obtaining dominion status for Wales. The party’s name was changed to Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) after World War II because of the stigma attached to the term “nationalist.” Its founding was the result of a merger of several groups, none of which were political parties: Byddin Ymroelwyr (the Welsh Home Rule Army), Byddin Yr Iaith (the Language Army), Y Gymdeithas Genedlaethol Gymreig (the Welsh National Society), and Y Mudiad Cymreig (the Welsh Movement). One additional group, Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (Nationalist Party of Wales), had existed only since December 1924. Although this last group called itself a party, it never contested an election, and it functioned more like a pressure group. All these groups were small and their memberships overlapped. 24
The Scottish National Party
The debate within the NPS prior to the merger with the SP set the SNP on a moderate course, but the debate between moderate and more radical elements within the party continued to simmer. In 1942, the Scottish role in the war industrial effort, and the party’s reaction to it, became the catalyst for a split within the party. This time, MacCormick left the SNP to form the Scottish Convention, which aimed at a federal Britain. The SNP now became a more radical party that began to include once again some of those who had been expelled from the NPS prior to its merger with the SP. 25 However, at the conclusion of World War II, the SNP took a course for moderation under the leadership of Robert McIntyre.
In a by-election in 1945, McIntyre briefly held the parliamentary seat for Motherwell district for the SNP until it was lost again in the general election that followed six weeks later. He became party chairman in 1947 and remained in that position until 1956. Even before he rose to that position, he influenced the party with the argument that it should decide where it stood and then remain committed to that position. 26
McIntyre was successful in unifying the various voices within the party behind his program, and the party did stay on the course outlined in its 1946 policy statement. This statement was libertarian in tone and emphasized small-town democracy. Most significant, it did not contain a section on Scottish culture because the party’s appeal was to the smallholder and lower-middle-class Scot “to whom culture was something that he had already.” 27 In other words, the audience to which the party sought to appeal took for granted that it had a distinct way of life—this did not need to be asserted. This audience was also inherently suspicious of the state, so the claim that Scotland was not always well served by decisions made in London did not fall on deaf ears. The focus on local decisionmaking prompted the SNP to concentrate its efforts in municipal elections and to contest parliamentary elections only in districts where it already had a solid base. 28 The period of McIntyre’s leadership was one of relative unity, but success in the general elections remained absent. The party contested only a few districts during this period, winning none of them, and its support remained at around 0.5 percent of the vote (see Table 6.1).
| Table 6.1 Scottish National Party Election Results, 1929-1997 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Election | Party | % Scottish Vote | No. Seats | No. Contested | No. of Constituencies in Scotland |
| 1929 | NPS | 0.5 | 0 | 2 | 71 |
| 1931 | NPS | 1.0 | 0 | 5 | 71 |
| 1935 | SNP | 1.3 | 0 | 8 | 71 |
| 1945 | SNP | 1.2 | 0 | 8 | 74 |
| 1950 | SNP | 0.4 | 0 | 4 | 71 |
| 1951 | SNP | 0.3 | 0 | 2 | 71 |
| 1955 | SNP | 0.5 | 0 | 2 | 71 |
| 1959 | SNP | 0.5 | 0 | 5 | 71 |
| 1964 | SNP | 2.4 | 0 | 15 | 71 |
| 1966 | SNP | 5.0 | 0 | 23 | 71 |
| 1970 | SNP | 11.4 | 1 | 65 | 71 |
| February 1974 | SNP | 21.9 | 7 | 70 | 71 |
| October 1974 |
SNP | 30.4 | 11 | 71 | 71 |
| 1979 | SNP | 17.3 | 2 | 71 | 71 |
| 1983 | SNP | 11.7 | 2 | 72 | 72 |
| 1987 | SNP | 14.0 | 3 | 71 | 71 |
| 1992 | SNP | 21.5 | 3 | 72 | 72 |
| 1997 | SNP | 22.1 | 6 | 72 | 72 |
| Sources: Butler and Sloman, British Political Facts; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism; Kellas, Modern Scotland; Lutz, “Diffusion of Nationalist Voting”; Scottish National Party, A Short History; British Election Pages | |||||
In the early 1960s, the SNP changed course again when a group of younger men took over the leadership. More pragmatic in orientation than the radicals earlier in the century, these men exploited economic grievances to rally the Scottish people to demand independence, giving the party a vaguely left-of-center line. They changed the internal workings of the party as well and built an effective publicity machine. Two men in particular played a central role in this transformation of the SNP: William Wolfe and Ian Macdonald. The former was later to become the chairman of the party. 29
The SNP began to contest elections in more districts and started to improve its showing at the polls: In the 1964 general election, it contested fifteen districts, and although it did not win any seats, it gained a larger percentage of the vote than it ever had. In the subsequent general election of 1966, the party ran an even larger number of candidates and doubled its percentage of the vote. The twenty-three SNP candidates who were on the ballot in 1966 contested seats primarily in the industrial heartland of Scotland; the party concentrated its efforts there rather than in the Celtic fringe, as had been the case for its predecessor, the NPS. 30 Nevertheless, it still did not net a seat in Parliament.
The breakthrough came in a 1967 by-election when Glasgow lawyer Winifred Ewing won the Hamilton seat. Like McIntyre’s seat earlier, it was lost again in the following general election. Still, the Hamilton by-election had given the party a renewed confidence. 31 By 1970, the party won the seat for the Western Isles district in the general election and, more important, once again doubled its voter support. 32 The more significant breakthroughs came in the 1974 general elections. In the February election, the SNP netted seven seats in Parliament, and in October, it increased its parliamentary presence to eleven seats. This success, however, was to be short-lived.
In response to the SNP’s success in the late 1960s, the Labour Party in 1969 had appointed a Royal Commission on the Constitution. The report of this commission was released in 1973. It paved the way for the 1978 Scotland Act, which provided for an elected Scottish Assembly with limited powers. 33 However, a condition had been attached to the bill specifying that it could be implemented only if it secured the endorsement of 40 percent of the electorate at a referendum. On March 1, 1979, the Scottish electorate voted on this referendum. Although 51.6 percent of the votes cast favored the provisions of the Scotland Act, this fell short of the necessary support, for it constituted 32.9 percent of the electorate, just shy of the 40 percent the law required. In effect, not voting in the referendum was counted as equivalent to a negative vote. 34
The subsequent general election of May 1979 brought another blow to the SNP. After it had voted with the Conservatives to bring down the Labour government, it was presented with a crushing defeat: Voter support fell dramatically, and representation in Parliament was reduced to two seats. All in all, 1979 became the most traumatic year in the SNP’s history. It resulted, not surprisingly, in struggles within the party to determine its identity and direction. These struggles were personified in the form of the 79 Group, which was originally called the Interim Committee for Political Discussion. It consisted of middle-class professionals who were generally younger than most other SNP members. The group assumed that its voters had defected to the Labour Party, although there was evidence that the SNP lost support across the political spectrum. This assumption dictated the group’s subsequent strategy, which aimed at the Labour vote with a socialist platform. The 79 Group did not succeed in capturing control of the party and in 1982 was asked to disband. Some of its committee members were expelled from the party, among these Stephen Maxwell and Alex Salmond, who later rose to prominence within the SNP. 35 The expulsion was subsequently turned into a six-month suspension, but the party had clearly taken a position against a too obviously socialist platform.
The next election, in 1983, saw a continued decline of the SNP’s voter support, although the party managed to hold on to its two seats. The decline was halted in the 1987 election, which gave the party a net gain of one seat. The three seats it captured in this election actually represented two new seats and the loss of its only urban constituency of Dundee East. A by-election in 1988 netted the party yet another seat. Jim Sillars won the Labour stronghold of Glasgow-Govan. 36
The party interpreted this by-election result as an endorsement of its new strategy—specifically, independence in Europe. Britain had become a member of the European Union in 1973, and the SNP’s argument in the late 1980s centered on the premise that, as part of the EU, Scotland would be able to avoid the problems of being a small, independent state, while gaining representation at the European center, and be part of decisionmaking there, rather than to rely on the London government to do its bidding. 37 Independence in Europe would thus present Scotland with the benefit of gaining representation at the European level, while also affording continued access to the European market.
In the period leading up to the 1992 general election, several other by-elections were held. Although the SNP in each case performed respectably, it did not win any additional seats. It did, however, gain a fifth MP as a result of Dick Douglas’s defection from the Labour Party. Both his seat and the one won by Sillars in the Glasgow-Govan by-election were regained by the Labour Party in the 1992 general election. The SNP maintained the three seats it had won in the previous general election, all in rural areas, rather than in the urban centers of Scotland. Each of the urban seats it has held, usually as the result of a by-election, it lost again in the subsequent general election. In short, “Each success in the urban industrial belt has proved an unreliable indicator of the SNP’s future prospects.” 38 Without the support of the urban centers, the SNP is unlikely to present a serious challenge to the status quo. Part of this problem may be explained by the difficulty the British electoral system presents for a third party, but the structural impediments to gaining representation do not entirely explain the SNP’s lack of success.
Plaid Cymru
The six founding fathers of Plaid Cymru were Moses Gruffydd, H. R. Jones, Fred Jones, Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine, and D. E. Williams. Of these, two were ministers and one was a former quarryman who had become a grocery salesman. Saunders Lewis was the most distinguished of the lot: A former librarian, poet, novelist, and lecturer in Welsh at the University of Wales College at Swansea, he went on to become president of Plaid Cymru in 1926 and remained in that position until 1939. The party’s leadership agreed on the importance of preserving the Welsh language and expressed a preference for dominion status for Wales. Under Lewis’s leadership, the party was primarily a single-issue pressure group that idealized a pre-English and preindustrial rural Wales. 39 In short, the party espoused a cultural and linguistic ethnopolitics.
It contested very few seats and won none. In 1929, Reverend Lewis Valentine became the first Plaid Cymru candidate in a parliamentary election. In the subsequent general elections of 1931 and 1935, the party contested two seats and one seat, respectively, but again to no avail. Four years later, in 1939, Saunders Lewis’s presidency of the party ended. In the years that followed, J. E. Daniel and Abi Williams took their turns as president of Plaid Cymru. On the whole, the party seemed to suffer from disillusionment during this period, which was perhaps best expressed by its foray into violence. In 1936, three top leaders of the party, Lewis, Valentine, and D. J. Williams, went to jail after burning some buildings at the construction site for a new air force bombing school in Wales. 40
Plaid Cymru charted a new direction under the leadership of Gwynfor Evans. He had joined the party as a student and had learned Welsh as a second language. Having been vice president during Abi Williams’s tenure, Evans was just thirty-two years old when he was elected to the party’s presidency in 1945. Under Evans, the party began to move away from the influence of Saunders Lewis and to contest elections more widely. However, it was not until 1959 that Plaid Cymru contested the majority of seats in Wales, as is shown in Table 6.2. 41
| Table 6.2 Plaid Cymru Election Results, 1929-1997 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Election | % Welsh Vote | No. Seats | No. Contested | No. of Constituencies in Wales |
| 1929 | 0.0 | 0 | 1 | 32 |
| 1931 | 0.2 | 0 | 2 | 35 |
| 1935 | 0.3 | 0 | 1 | 35 |
| 1945 | 1.2 | 0 | 7 | 35 |
| 1950 | 1.2 | 0 | 7 | 36 |
| 1951 | 0.7 | 0 | 4 | 36 |
| 1955 | 3.1 | 0 | 11 | 36 |
| 1959 | 5.2 | 0 | 20 | 36 |
| 1964 | 4.8 | 0 | 23 | 36 |
| 1966 | 4.3 | 0 | 20 | 36 |
| 1970 | 11.5 | 0 | 36 | 36 |
| February 1974 | 10.7 | 2 | 36 | 36 |
| October 1974 | 10.8 | 3 | 36 | 36 |
| 1979 | 8.1 | 2 | 36 | 36 |
| 1983 | 7.8 | 2 | 38 | 38 |
| 1987 | 7.3 | 3 | 38 | 38 |
| 1992 | 9.0 | 4 | 38 | 38 |
| 1997 | 9.9 | 4 | 40 | 40 |
| Sources: Butler and Sloman, British Political Facts; Craig, British Electoral Facts; Lutz, “Diffusion of Nationalist Voting”; British Election Pages. | ||||
In the meantime, Plaid Cymru engaged in formal and informal cooperation with other organizations to further its aims. One such example was its involvement in the Parliament for Wales campaign, which was modeled after the movement for a Scottish covenant in 1949-1950. Only toward the end of the 1950s did the party begin to concentrate its efforts on strengthening its own organization. Although it had not yet won any seats, the results of two by-elections prior to the 1955 general election had bolstered the party’s morale. The party now also began to contest elections in the urbanized and largely English-speaking regions of south Wales. This was the result of a conscious decision by the party to leave behind its previous, exclusively Welsh-speaking image, which was also reflected in the new focus on a bilingual Wales and a demand for a Welsh Parliament. 42
The results of the 1959 general election, in which the party for the first time contested more than half the seats in Wales, proved disappointing: The vote was scattered, and no seats were won. The equally disappointing results in a subsequent by-election in 1962 led to internal dissension and, again, a resort to violence. This time, two members of the party attempted to sabotage the power supply at the site where the dam for the Tryweryn Reservoir was under construction. This reservoir would submerge part of Wales, but it would benefit industrial development in Liverpool. 43 The party’s constitutional strategy appeared to be failing, and its leadership began to lose control over its members. The party’s attitude toward violent action remained ambivalent: Emrys Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s general secretary at the time, declared that the party was not in favor of violent action in general, but that it was justified if used “to force the Government to respect the wishes of the people of Wales.” 44
However, violence damaged the cause and the party. Increasingly, the leadership began to dissociate itself from violence in favor of constitutional methods, but its control over its membership and the separate organizations that were formed was weak. In the meantime, the party began to formulate more clearly its stance regarding the economic problems of Wales and to discuss the role of the Welsh language in its politics. 45
The most notable transformation of the party came as the result of a by-election held several months after the 1966 general election in which the Labour Party had won a comfortable majority. In Carmarthen, a constituency with a large proportion of Welsh speakers, Plaid Cymru won its first seat. Gwynfor Evans thus became the party’s first MP. 46 Plaid Cymru had now shown itself a credible alternative to the major parties. However, it did not win subsequent by-elections in 1967 in Rhondda West or in 1968 in Caerffilli, although it did receive a respectable proportion of the vote in each. The party’s membership increased, and it made organizational changes. One of these was the establishment of the Research Group, initially based in London, which was to aid in policy formulation. In 1969, the party produced for the first time a platform that was strongly oriented toward economic issues. Its focus was on the economic problems of the industrial south, rather than the rural north. In addition, it now specifically stated a bilingual Wales as its objective, rather than the previous emphasis on a return to an all-Welsh-speaking Wales. In 1971, it also created a more centralized administrative structure based in its Cardiff office. 47
Although Plaid Cymru lost its one seat in the 1970 general election, for the first time it contested all Welsh constituencies and more than doubled its electoral support. It did enter Parliament again after the 1974 general election, winning two seats in February and three in October. It has had a continuous presence in Parliament since. Yet, while the SNP saw its support climb to just over 30 percent of the vote in the October 1974 general election, Plaid Cymru’s support continued to hover around 10 percent. On the other hand, the SNP’s support fell dramatically after the 1979 referendum, whereas Plaid Cymru’s support declined only modestly. The latter also lost only one of its three seats in Parliament. Support for devolution was much less strong in Wales: Only 20.3 percent of those voting, or 11.9 percent of the electorate, voted for the Wales Act. 48
Although the referendum is often described as a humiliating defeat for ethnopolitics in Britain, Plaid Cymru was not devastated by it. In its aftermath, the party completed its transformation from a cultural organization to a political party with a socialist orientation. A leading advocate of this new direction was Dafydd Elis Thomas, who would serve as Plaid Cymru’s president from 1984 to 1991. 49
Plaid Cymru maintained its two seats in Parliament in the 1983 election and added one in each of the following two elections. Interestingly, its 1987 gain of one seat was achieved as a result of the concentration of the vote, because its overall proportion of the vote was smaller than in the previous election. The party’s 1992 gain of one seat was matched by a gain in terms of its overall proportion of the vote. Although the party did gain more votes in the 1997 election, it remained at four seats. Of these, one is held by Dafydd Wigley, who succeeded Thomas as president in 1991.
Despite the party’s transformation to a socialist-oriented political party, it has made few inroads into the traditional industrial areas dominated by Labour. Like the SNP, Plaid Cymru’s support is based in rural, rather than urban, areas. However, whereas the SNP has held urban seats for short periods of time, usually as a result of a by-election, Plaid Cymru has had more consistent success with its rural constituency.
Like the SNP also, Plaid Cymru suffers from the structural impediments the British single-member district system presents to third parties. Plaid Cymru’s vote is more concentrated than the SNP’s: In the aftermath of the 1979 referendum, it has consistently matched or exceeded the SNP in terms of seats with a substantially lower proportion of the vote. In other words, Welsh ethnopolitics is a less widely shared sentiment than its Scottish counterpart.
Structure of Incentives
Social and Economic Pressures
Scotland. Scotland and Wales, as well as Ireland, are part of the so-called Celtic fringe of the British Isles. Although each has a well-defined and separate identity, they share Celtic roots, and it is these roots that set each apart from the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the English. Nevertheless, taken together, they are only a small proportion of the British population: The Scots constitute about 10 percent and the Welsh about 5 percent of the population of Britain (see Table 6.3).
| Table 6.3 Composition of the British Population, 1951-1991 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | 1961 | 1971 | 1981 | 1991 | |
| Scottish (%) | 10.4 | 10.1 | 9.7 | 9.5 | 9.2 |
| Welsh (%) | 5.3 | 5.2 | 5.1 | 5.2 | 5.2 |
| English (%) | 84.3 | 84.7 | 85.3 | 85.4 | 85.6 |
| Total population | 48,854,303 | 51,283,892 | 53,978,538 | 54,147,300 | 54,156,067 |
| Source: Statesman’s Yearbook, 132nd ed., 1995-1996. | |||||
Despite the common heritage of the two regions, Scottish and Welsh ethnopolitics are different. For example, language does not play a role in Scottish ethnopolitics, as it does in the Welsh ethnopolitical movement; too few Scots speak Gaelic to successfully employ language as a political instrument. Furthermore, the problems of Northern Ireland have had an impact on the Scottish: The SNP’s anti-English statements are quite moderate, the party does not condone any form of political violence, and it is committed to democratic and electoral avenues to achieve its goals. There is some indication that the Scottish people, while intensely proud of their distinctive identity, would not support violence to assert that identity politically. 50
The explanation for such moderation lies in part in the economic opportunities the union with England brought to Scotland. Initially, these opportunities provided a powerful incentive to understand, and to acculturate to, the culture, politics, and intellectual life of England. However, the benefits derived from the Act of Union did not remain so obvious when Scottish industry lagged during the interwar period. All of Britain was affected, but Scotland was hit especially hard since its main market was England and the economic depression there had a severe impact. In addition, Scotland was strongly focused on traditional heavy industry, such as coal, steel, and shipbuilding. Toward the end of the 1930s, the economic problems of Scotland were eased by the efforts of the Economic Committee and the Scottish Development Council, which helped to bring new industries to Scotland. Early on, this mainly involved the manufacture of munitions as part of the wartime industrial effort, but it also led companies to locate high-technology production facilities in the region. 51 In the immediate postwar period, the Marshall Plan helped maintain economic investment, but around the mid-1950s, the economy slowed down once again.
Scotland’s economy has historically relied on foreign investment and British government spending in the form of regional subsidies, a practice that continues today. Scotland has been termed both a “branch-plant economy” and an “economic colony.” 52 This meant that decisions of crucial importance to the Scottish economy are not made in Scotland. Tom Gallagher argues that this reliance on the British state and foreign investment created “a culture of dependency resistant to the nationalist project which could easily be depicted as entailing a great deal of risk and uncertainty.” 53 However, although Scotland lacked indigenous entrepreneurs and depended on subsidies, its economic structure was not very different from that of Britain. Scotland therefore lacked the sort of economic grievances and subsequent successes that fueled Flemish ethnopolitics in Belgium. In short, the lack of indigenous Scottish industry made ethnopolitics less attractive than it otherwise might have been. Moreover, the British economy is not strongly interconnected with Europe. Trade with the EU accounts for just over half of both its exports and imports. If trade with the rest of Europe is included, the figures are about ten percentage points higher (see Table 6.4). In contrast, the Belgian economy is more thoroughly integrated in the European economy.
| Table 6.4 British Trade with Europe, 1990 | |
|---|---|
| Trade | % of Total |
| Exports to the EU | 52.9 |
| Imports from the EU | 52.3 |
| Exports to all of Europe (including the EU) |
61.9 |
| Imports from all of Europe (including the EU) |
64.8 |
| Source: The International Yearbook and Statesman’s Who’s Who. | |
During the 1950s and 1960s, the competencies of the Scottish Office were gradually extended. This office did not have policymaking powers and reflected a decentralization of bureaucratic functions instead. Although the office was intended to have a purely administrative role, its secretary of state and senior civil servants became an effective lobby for Scottish interests. However, the effects of the decline of the British economy had severe repercussions for Scotland: It lost a large proportion of its manufacturing labor force, had an unemployment rate nearly double that of Britain, and a per capita income substantially lower and a cost of living significantly higher than that of Britain. Yet these economic circumstances did not result in a surge in nationalism. National sentiment was important in sociocultural terms, but the Scottish did not perceive their economic situation as a justification for ethnopolitical action; they did not perceive their economic situation in terms of oppression. 54
Meanwhile, large deposits of natural gas and oil were discovered in the North Sea, which was to have important effects on the economies of Scotland and Britain during the 1970s. By the end of that decade, natural gas had supplanted the use of coal as an energy source. Oil was first discovered in 1969, and in little over a decade, Britain was to become an exporter, rather than an importer, of this energy source. The first oil came ashore in 1975. Five years later, Britain was self-sufficient in oil, and a year after that a net exporter. The commercial development of North Sea oil had been made feasible by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries price increases of 1973-1974. North Sea oil was most important as a source of revenue to the central government and its positive effects on Britain’s balance of payments. It did not generate large numbers of jobs in Scotland, and although its effects were not insignificant, North Sea oil did not make up the earlier loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector. Overall, the oil industry had rather limited effects on the remainder of the Scottish economy and did not lead to its regeneration. 55 Although unemployment is lowest around Aberdeen (Grampian), the center of the oil industry, Scotland’s unemployment rate is still markedly higher than that of Britain as a whole (see Table 6.5). Despite this higher unemployment, Scotland’s labor force is structured similarly to the British average, although there are marked variations among the different regions. Moreover, the areas with the highest unemployment are not the ones in which the SNP has won seats (cf. Tables 6.5 and 6.6).
| Table 6.5 Structure of Employment in Scotland | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employment (1989) | ||||
| Region | % Unemployment (1990) | |||
| % Agriculture | % Industry | % Services | ||
| Borders | 6 | 39 | 55 | 5.0 |
| Central | 1 | 34 | 66 | 9.3 |
| Fife | 1 | 39 | 60 | 8.7 |
| Lothian | 1 | 25 | 74 | 7.4 |
| Tayside | 2 | 28 | 70 | 8.7 |
| Dumfries and Galloway | 8 | 32 | 60 | 7.5 |
| Strathclyde | 1 | 30 | 69 | 11.2 |
| Highland | 4 | 21 | 75 | 9.2 |
| Islands | 5 | 28 | 67 | 7.3 |
| Grampian | 2 | 35 | 63 | 4.7 |
| Scotland | 2 | 30 | 68 | 9.2 |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 30 | 69 | 6.3 |
| Source: Eurostat, Portrait of the Regions, vol. 2. | ||||
| Table 6.6 Scottish Election Results by Region, 1983-1997 | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||
| Table 6.6 Continued | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Source: British Election Pages. | ||||||||||||
|
Note: Numbers in parentheses under each region indicate the number of districts within that region. a. As a result of redistricting, Strathclyde lost one seat and Grampian gained one. The total number of seats for Scotland remains the same in the 1997 general election. |
||||||||||||
The discovery of oil did have an impact on Scottish politics: It was argued that it was “Scotland’s oil” and should therefore benefit Scotland primarily. Indeed, support for the SNP has been strongest where the oil industry has had its clearest impact, in Grampian and Tayside. The central government, in contrast, assumed that the oil revenue should benefit Britain as a whole. 56 While the Scots would have liked to benefit to a greater extent from the revenues of “their” oil, Scottish dependence on investment and subsidies from England militated against acting on this desire.
Wales. Language has long been a feature of Welsh ethnopolitics. Although Welsh is certainly more widely spoken in Wales than Gaelic is in Scotland, there has been a definite decline in the number of Welsh speakers over time. At the turn of the century, about half the population of Wales were Welsh speakers. By the 1990s, this had declined to one-fifth. These Welsh speakers are not uniformly distributed across Wales: In parts of northwest Wales, as much as 80 percent speaks the language. 57 Welsh speakers are thus predominant in the areas of Wales least touched by industrialization. Accordingly, Welsh ethnopolitics has long been colored by romantic notions of the Welsh countryside and folklore.
It is therefore not surprising to find that support for Plaid Cymru is strongest in the most rural areas (see Table 6.8). The rural regions of Gwynedd and Dyfed have elected Plaid Cymru candidates to Parliament. In the industrial south, Plaid Cymru’s support is strongest in Mid Glamorgan, which has experienced the highest unemployment in the south of Wales. The last couple of decades have witnessed a dramatic transformation of the Welsh industrial economy. The recession of the early 1980s had a particularly strong impact on the Welsh steel industry. Since then, substantial restructuring has taken place, and although the region has suffered substantial unemployment, it is now closer to the British average and markedly lower than in Scotland. 58 Furthermore, unemployment differences among the various regions of Wales are less stark than those among the various Scottish regions (cf. Tables 6.5 and 6.7).
| Table 6.7 Structure of Employment in Wales | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employment (1989) | ||||
| Region | % Unemployment (1990) | |||
| % Agriculture | % Industry | % Services | ||
| Clwyd | 2 | 39 | 58 | 5.8 |
| Dyfed | 7 | 23 | 69 | 6.7 |
| Powys | 10 | 28 | 62 | 3.7 |
| Gwynedd | 4 | 24 | 72 | 8.5 |
| Gwent | 1 | 40 | 59 | 6.9 |
| Mid Glamorgan | 1 | 42 | 57 | 7.7 |
| South Glamorgan | 0 | 20 | 80 | 7.1 |
| West Glamorgan | 1 | 32 | 68 | 6.8 |
| Wales | 2 | 32 | 66 | 6.9 |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 30 | 69 | 6.3 |
| Source: Eurostat, Portrait of the Regions, vol. 2. | ||||
| Table 6.8 Welsh Election Results by Region, 1983-1997 |
|---|
|
| Source: British Election Pages. |
|
Note: Numbers in parentheses under each region indicate the number of districts within that region. a. As a result of redistricting, Clwyd and Dyfed each gained one seat, bringing the total number of seats for Wales to forty in the 1997 general election. |
Yet the lower unemployment figures obscure the fact that, on average, the standard of living is lower in Wales than in Britain: Household incomes are significantly below the British average, and Welsh households spend a greater proportion of their incomes on basic necessities. Like many other areas that once depended largely on mining and heavy industry, the Welsh economy experienced substantial restructuring in the post-World War II era. Heavy industry was replaced with light manufacturing and the growth of the service sector. Particularly in south Wales, these new industries have not always compensated fully for the job losses in the older industrial sectors. Much of the new investment in Wales has come from foreign companies, whereas the development of the service sector has largely resulted from an increased role of the state in the economy. 59 Like Scotland, Wales has depended on subsidies from England. Unlike Scotland, however, Welsh ethnopolitics does not constitute a straightforward reaction to the region’s economic dependency.
Political Incentives
Political Structures. The history of both the SNP and Plaid Cymru is in part the story of the difficulties faced by a third party in a single-member district system with a plurality rule. This system has also been characterized as “first past the post”: The candidate with the largest number of votes wins the seat, irrespective of whether this represents a majority of the votes cast. Such a system makes it difficult for third parties to gain representation because voters often choose to vote for the candidate who can win, rather than the one they prefer. 60 Third parties, like the SNP and Plaid Cymru, nevertheless do emerge and can gain seats, provided their support is concentrated enough to secure the plurality of votes within a specific district. This presents these parties with a strategic dilemma: On the one hand, the party will not win seats unless its support is concentrated in specific districts. On the other hand, concentrated support will not gain the party credibility as the representative of its region’s interests. Only broad-based support can achieve the latter, but it has the drawback of gaining the party fewer seats and, thus, less political clout.
Interestingly, the SNP and Plaid Cymru since the 1979 referendum have done about equally well in terms of seats, but not in terms of overall support. The SNP receives a higher proportion of the Scottish vote than does Plaid Cymru of the Welsh vote. In addition, the Plaid Cymru vote has not fluctuated a great deal since the 1970s, whereas the SNP has received between 30 (1974) and 12 (1983) percent of the vote. The SNP has also steadily improved its share of the vote since the 1983 election.
As a comparison of Tables 6.6 and 6.8 shows, support for the SNP is more evenly spread among the various Scottish regions, whereas Welsh support for Plaid Cymru is clearly concentrated in Gwynedd and Dyfed. Despite their current similarities as left-leaning ethnopolitical parties, the SNP clearly has a more broad-based support than Plaid Cymru. Thus, the former more easily claims to speak for the Scottish than the latter for the Welsh.
In addition to the structural impediments that single-member district systems pose for third parties, the elections are held at irregular intervals. Parliaments may last a maximum of five years, but they can be dissolved earlier if the government wishes to do so. The incumbent party can thus call an election at a time that it perceives as advantageous to its own fortunes, increasing the difficulties faced by the opposition, including such ethnic parties as the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
The Structure of Competition.
Scotland. Despite the fluctuations across time in the Labour movement’s stance on Scottish autonomy, it is still the case today that the majority of Scottish constituencies elect Labour MPs. For example, the 1992 general election returns showed the Labour Party winning fifty of seventy-two Scottish constituencies (see Table 6.6 above), which amounts to 69.4 percent of Scottish seats. In Great Britain overall, the Labour Party won 271 out of 651 constituencies, or 41.6 percent of the seats in Parliament. While the contrast between Labour’s performance in Scotland and Britain changes somewhat depending on the results of any specific election, Labour has generally performed better in Scotland than in Britain more generally. The Labour Party has nevertheless often played into Scottish ethnopolitics when in the opposition. Once in government, however, there have always been matters of higher priority pushing Scottish demands onto the back burner. The party assumed that while Scottish voters supported the idea of home rule in the abstract, they were not committed enough to this issue in practice to have it determine their vote. 61
In the early 1960s, the Liberals also played the ethnopolitical card. William Wolfe, the SNP’s chairman at the time, offered the Liberals a pact. The goal was to make the Liberals take a clear stance on the priority they attached to Scottish autonomy. The Liberal Party turned down the offer, but in the subsequent election of 1964, the two parties did not contest the same districts. 62
In 1987, the SNP did not contest the seats for the Western Isles, but it made a pact with the Orkney and Shetland Movement (OSM), which contested the election for that district. Its candidate obtained 14.5 percent of the vote, about the same as the SNP candidate in the previous election and a little more than the SNP candidate who contested the subsequent election.
In the 1974 elections, the SNP appeared to have broken through as a viable alternative. Although its share of the vote had increased prior to those elections, in 1974, it first won seven and later eleven seats. The party’s support in the 1992 election is comparable to the proportion of the vote it received in the first election of 1974, but it received far fewer seats. This means that the SNP’s support among the Scottish electorate is now more diffused than in 1974. Fiona Davidson notes that since 1987, support for the SNP has become more evenly distributed. In addition, she notes that its support in the 1992 election increased most substantially in areas where it was traditionally weak. 63 This diffusion of support is underscored by the fact that the party was the second-largest vote getter in thirty-five districts in the 1992 election and in forty-three districts in the 1997 election. However, the first past the post system means that a second-place performance does not net the party any representation in Parliament.
Broadened support for the party emerged in the aftermath of the 1979 devolution referendum, but this was part of a trend that started in the early 1960s: A new generation of moderate leaders steered the party to a vaguely left-of-center line that the party has never abandoned. As a result, the policy positions of the SNP and the Labour Party often are quite similar. 64 The main difference is the ethnopolitical aspect of the SNP. As long as it is phrased in sufficiently moderate tones, the SNP is likely to remain a viable competitor to the Labour Party in Scotland.
Wales. In Wales, too, the Labour Party has long been the main competition for Plaid Cymru. In 1992, twenty-seven of the thirty-eight seats went to Labour—71.1 percent of the Welsh seats. Hence, Wales repeats the pattern seen in Scotland: Labour does better in both areas than it does in Great Britain as a whole. Also, in Wales, Labour has often been ambivalent about devolution. The political ambition of some Welsh MPs, such as Neil Kinnock, led them to openly oppose devolution in 1979. 65
Plaid Cymru never attained as high a share of the vote as the SNP, but neither did it experience as precipitous a drop in support after the 1979 referendum. More problematic is the fact that Plaid Cymru’s support is concentrated in specific regions of Wales—Gwynedd and Dyfed, both mostly rural areas with high proportions of Welsh speakers. Although the party has never attained a seat in Mid Glamorgan, it has received some support there. The latter area has experienced the highest unemployment among the industrial regions of Wales. Hence, despite broadening its appeal to non-Welsh speakers and pursuing a left-of-center line, Plaid Cymru has only marginally broadened its voter support. In 1992, it won four seats and came in second in two additional districts. In 1997, the party did not win any additional seats but came in second in four districts.
Plaid Cymru has continued to represent an ethnopolitics that contains a stronger cultural element than the SNP. Yet attachment to a separate Welsh identity has not led to electoral support for Plaid Cymru, largely because the party has been associated with extremism and violence. There is also some indication that, even among Welsh identifiers, there is less support for self-government in Wales than in Scotland. 66
Evolution of the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru
Scottish National Party
The election of 1979 not only brought the SNP a crushing defeat, it also brought to power the Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher. Her politics affected the attitudes of many Scottish voters toward the central government. Thatcher dismissed the idea of devolution, and as a result of her policies, it now became easier to perceive the London government as oppressive. This did not immediately translate into greater support for the SNP, but it did lead to the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (CSA). Its objective was to gain cross-party agreement on, and support for, a strategy to create a Scottish representative body. Eight years after its formation, in 1988, the CSA published a report titled “A Claim of Right for Scotland.” It recommended the creation of a Constitutional Convention, which would serve several purposes: One, it would show the strength and unity of Scottish dissatisfaction with the government in London; two, such a unified movement could put pressure on the government to enter into negotiations with Scotland; three, it would serve as “a forum for drawing up a new constitution for Scotland.” 67 The report thus focused on autonomy rather than independence. While it did not rule out the latter option, it certainly did favor a strategy of gradual and negotiated change.
The Constitutional Convention proposed in the report held its first meeting in March 1989. The convention brings together a wide array of social groupings. Among its member organizations are churches, trade unions, business organizations, ethnic minority groups, women’s movements, local authorities, and a number of political parties such as the Labour Party, the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the Social Democratic Party, the OSM, and the Scottish Green Party. 68 Many of these parties have not fared very well under the current electoral system. Only the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have seats in Parliament. The Orkney and Shetland Movement contested the 1987 election for the Western Isles seat in an agreement with the SNP, but it did not win the seat.
The Labour Party chose to participate in the Constitutional Convention to underscore its concern with Scotland’s welfare. The Conservative Party declined to participate early in the process, a stance that was to be expected: Since the mid-1970s the party has consistently argued that Scotland is an integral part of Britain. The SNP did participate in some of the preparatory work, but it eventually chose not to join the Constitutional Convention. Its nonparticipation is on the surface more surprising. Gallagher notes that the SNP perceived the Labour Party’s decision to participate in the convention as a threat. Although Labour has indeed often appealed to the very same constituency to which the SNP appealed, the apprehensions of the SNP probably run even deeper: The Constitutional Convention complicates the ethnopolitical landscape in Scotland. The SNP is no longer the only option available to voters who wish to express their support for Scottish autonomy. In other words, the Constitutional Convention has broken the SNP’s monopoly as the representative of Scottish political aspirations. 69
The Constitutional Convention stresses autonomy. Importantly, issues such as national security, foreign affairs, and social security and economic policy would remain in the hands of the London-based government. The Parliament proposed by the Constitutional Convention builds on the current parliamentary districts, with the exception that Orkney and Shetland would become two separate constituencies. In addition, the eight constituencies currently in use for the election of representatives to the European Parliament would be used to elect seven additional members for each of those eight districts. The Scottish Parliament would thus consist of 129 seats. Of these, seventy-three would be directly elected using a single-member district plurality rule. The remaining fifty-six would be elected using a party list system, with the aim of making the final result more proportional to the share of the vote cast for various parties in each district. In assessing proportionality, the results from both the single-member district and party list elections will be considered. 70 The Constitutional Convention thus seeks to maintain the traditional Scottish districts while achieving a greater degree of proportionality than is possible under the current system.
The SNP, on the other hand, has emphasized independence. In other words, the SNP’s aim is an independent Scotland within the framework of the European Union. Robert McCreadie argues that the attraction of this scheme stems primarily from the fact that the EU umbrella would assure Scotland a political status it could not attain on its own. 71 It nevertheless remains to be seen whether the Scottish are committed enough to this idea to support the SNP in sufficiently large numbers to allow that party to make its case convincingly to the London government. An opinion poll published in February 1992 showed that 50 percent of the respondents supported full independence, but far fewer voted for the SNP in the subsequent general election. 72 Although later opinion surveys have shown continued support for a change in the way Scotland is governed—three-quarters of Scots support either devolution or independence, according to poll results—less than one-fifth claim it is the most important issue facing Scotland. In addition, a 1994 poll showed that of the 82 percent of Scottish voters who favor constitutional change, 44 percent support devolution, whereas 38 percent favor independence. 73 In short, although support for change is strong, more Scots favor autonomy than independence.
Alex Salmond, the SNP’s current leader, appears to be well aware of this. He has made clear that his party intends to participate in elections for a Scottish Parliament. Moreover, he has stated that he will aim to win a mandate for the SNP in such a body to use as a springboard toward Scottish independence. In the aftermath of the September 11, 1997, referendum, Salmond was quick to position his own party for the planned 1999 elections for a Scottish Parliament. The centerpiece of the SNP’s manifesto will be an independent Scotland, which the SNP’s leader now believes will be achieved in his lifetime. Indeed, the 1997 referendum yielded results quite different from those of 1979: 74.2 percent voted in favor of a Scottish Parliament, and 63.5 percent supported tax-varying powers. Moreover, a majority within each local authority area supported the proposed Parliament, and only two out of a total of thirty-two local authority areas did not support taxation powers for it. 74 Whether the Scottish electorate is prepared to move beyond autonomy to demand outright independence is an open question. Indications are that autonomy suits most Scots just fine, but much will depend not only on attitudes within the Scottish electorate and the central government in London, but also on the further evolution of the European Union.
Plaid Cymru
The election following the 1979 referendum did not result in as dramatic a loss for Plaid Cymru as it did for the SNP. Nevertheless, voter support continued to decline slightly until the 1992 election, when the party won its fourth seat in Parliament. Plaid Cymru now held more seats than the SNP, which had remained at three. Yet, while the SNP’s platform reflected widely shared sentiments in favor of self-government, Plaid Cymru found itself at the margins of Welsh politics. At the same time, both public discourse and public opinion shifted in its favor, and its current platform consequently reflects demands and arguments that are now much more broadly held than in the past. The long dominance of the Conservative Party has also had an impact, as Plaid Cymru claimed Wales to be suffering from “Tory colonial suppression” and the “dictatorial domination by sleazy right wing politicians.” 75
The Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties both called for a Welsh Assembly by the 1990s and thus played to Plaid Cymru’s goal of self-government. In addition, pressure groups such as Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society), which had been founded in 1963, successfully campaigned for language rights. A Welsh television station was created in 1982, Welsh acquired a more prominent role in the education system, and by the 1990s, the use of Welsh was on the rise after many decades of decline. 76 In sum, the competition faced by Plaid Cymru largely took the form of extraparliamentary action focused on cultural and linguistic rights, rather than on political autonomy.
Interestingly, Plaid Cymru has consistently used terms like “self-government” as opposed to “independence.” Even though one of its principal aims has remained the desire to secure for Wales the right to become a member of the United Nations, the party is now focused on a place for Wales in the “Europe of the Regions.” The difference from the SNP’s approach is subtle but significant: Whereas the SNP has expressed a desire for “independence in Europe,” Plaid Cymru has avoided such terminology altogether in favor of an emphasis on localized decisionmaking powers and democracy. Welsh ethnopolitics has thus become an argument for subsidiarity (or decisionmaking at the smallest appropriate unit of government), rather than for nationalism under its traditional definition. This was perhaps a logical step for a party that operates in a region where ethnic identity has manifested itself primarily in cultural and linguistic, as opposed to political, terms. 77 However, this development must also be seen against the backdrop of the party’s previous association with militant extraparliamentary action: Plaid Cymru has had a greater need than the SNP to convince its electorate that it is fully committed to constitutional means to achieve its objectives.
The lack of a widespread enthusiasm for political autonomy was evidenced in the 1997 referendum. With a turnout of just over 50 percent of the electorate, Welsh voters approved the creation of a Welsh Assembly by a very slight margin: 50.3 percent of those voting, or 25.2 percent of the total electorate, voted yes. In fact, only half of the eight local authority areas voted positively by majority vote (see Table 6.9). Those areas included regions where Plaid Cymru’s support is strongest but were not limited to them. Majorities in the areas with the highest levels of unemployment also voted in the affirmative, but unemployment is not a reliable predictor of greater support. Nevertheless, a report published just eight days prior to the referendum argued that a Welsh Assembly would benefit the region’s economy.
| Table 6.9 The 1997 Welsh Referendum Vote | ||
|---|---|---|
| Region | % Yes | % No |
| Clwyd | 41.3 | 58.7 |
| Dyfed | 57.2 | 42.8 |
| Powys | 42.7 | 57.3 |
| Gwynedd | 53.0 | 47.0 |
| Gwent | 42.8 | 57.2 |
| Mid Glamorgan | 56.4 | 43.6 |
| South Glamorgan | 42.0 | 58.0 |
| West Glamorgan | 57.8 | 42.2 |
| Wales | 50.3 | 49.7 |
| Source: British Election Pages. | ||
Despite a well-defined separate Welsh identity, Welsh ethnopolitics has not managed to convince the people of the region that separate political institutions are in their best interest. As the referendum result has shown, there is much ambivalence about a political assertion of Welsh identity. In comparison to Scottish ethnopolitics, the Welsh movement has focused more strongly on cultural and language issues. In part, it was in a better position to do so. Although the number of Welsh speakers has declined throughout most of the twentieth century, the language was a viable part of the Welsh social fabric to a much greater degree than was Gaelic in Scotland. Ironically, the inability to focus on linguistic aspects of a Scottish identity made it possible for pragmatists to rise to prominence in the SNP much earlier than they did in Plaid Cymru. Whereas the SNP from the beginning had strong moderate elements that prevailed in the party after 1945, Plaid Cymru’s leadership in the 1960s was hard-pressed to maintain its focus on a constitutional strategy rather than direct action. As recently as 1962, Saunders Lewis argued in a British Broadcasting Corporation radio lecture that the preservation of the Welsh language was more important than self-government. In fact, the preservation of Welsh was important enough to engage in direct action, such as painting over road signs in English. 78 The legacy of extraconstitutional action and Plaid Cymru’s perceived association with such tactics has impeded its progress toward widespread acceptance as a viable alternative. The relatively stable proportion of the vote it has received across the years indicates that the party has a core of loyal supporters but has not effectively managed to attract votes beyond this core. The SNP, on the other hand, has seen marked fluctuations in its proportion of the Scottish vote, which has been explained as a “protest vote”; voters dissatisfied with politcs as usual apparently viewed the SNP as an acceptable alternative but did not necessarily continue to vote for it across elections. 79
Discussion and Conclusion
The ethnopolitical parties in Scotland and Wales were founded around the same time, but they followed very different trajectories. The histories of the SNP and Plaid Cymru are in part a function of the differences in the environments within which they emerged. However, the differences in their leaderships and the priorities these set for their respective parties are significant as well.
The Scottish National Party has represented different forms of ethnopolitics at different times in its history. The moderate ethnopolitical course charted by the SNP is partly due to a power struggle during the early years of the party; as a result, the SNP lost its attachment to romantic notions of nationalism and the nation and took a more pragmatic and moderate stance. After the 1979 debacle, a new generation of leaders gained prominence and began to argue for independence. Under Alex Salmond’s leadership, the party was (and is) at once more militant in its rhetoric and more savvy in its politics. Its main political rival, the Scottish Constitutional Convention, argued instead for Scottish autonomy within Britain.
Plaid Cymru’s emphasis on socialist values and bilingualism is the result of a transformation to pragmatism that emerged within the party in the 1960s but only fully took hold in the 1980s. Romantic notions of an all-Welsh-speaking nation and extraconstitutional action to advance the ethnopolitical cause long appealed to the party and its members. After the 1979 referendum, Plaid Cymru metamorphosed definitively into a political party committed to constitutional means to advance its cause. Despite having contested all Welsh seats since the 1970 general election, the party has not yet effectively broadened its appeal. In addition to seats won, it came in second in just two districts in 1992 and four in 1997—perhaps an indication that the party has begun to broaden its appeal.
Despite its militant history, Plaid Cymru today is a party thoroughly committed to constitutional means. Indeed, its rhetoric has consistently emphasized self-government over independence. The SNP’s rhetoric is somewhat more militant in that it explicitly demands independence. However, the two parties are similar in that they both envision their regions as autonomous units within an integrated Europe. Despite their subtle differences, both Plaid Cymru and the SNP have more in common with the Flemish Volksunie than with the Vlaams Blok in Belgian ethnopolitics. All three have adopted left-of-center politics and the idea of “independence in Europe.” 80
The political institutions, economic conditions, and strategic choices made by both the SNP and Plaid Cymru have made it difficult for the parties to gain the kind of political presence necessary to force the London government to seriously consider their ethnopolitical demands, albeit for different reasons. Although both Scotland and Wales depend on British subsidies, the former’s unemployment rate has deviated more from the national average. This might lead to the expectation that ethnopolitics in Scotland would take more extreme forms than in Wales, but the reverse was true prior to the 1980s. More recently, the two parties differ in their rhetoric, but their basic aim is similar. Both regions have depended heavily on economic subsidies from the central government. If British subsidies are understood as a conscious effort by the government to lessen the gap between Scotland or Wales and the rest of Britain, this is consistent with Expectation 2a in Chapter 1. The British government thus appears to have been able to contain the ethnopolitical challenge from the Celtic fringe, while in Belgium, a gap between the economic performances of Flanders and Wallonia has contributed to the increasing strength of Flemish ethnopolitics.
The expectation that economic downturn would lead to greater extremism (Expectation 2b) is not supported by either the Scottish or the Welsh case, since the level of unemployment in these regions does not predict the level of support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru. In other words, in neither Scotland nor Wales does there appear to be an association between unemployment and ethnopolitics, while in Flanders there is some correlation between the two. The association between economic downturn and ethnopolitical demands is therefore, at best, mixed for the Western European cases.
The Scottish case shows the benefits of including ethnic groups in decisionmaking: From the time of the Act of Union of 1707, the Scots acquired representation in the British Parliament. Although the Scots at times found the London government less than responsive, they did have representation and were able to voice their demands (Expectation 5). This strategy of inclusion was expected to lead to a moderate form of ethnopolitics. The relations between Scotland and England certainly support that expectation. The Welsh case is somewhat different: Wales was incorporated into Britain earlier and was more thoroughly absorbed into the English government structure. Its elite became thoroughly anglicized, and although Wales had representation in Parliament, its representatives were not necessarily friendly to the ethnopolitical cause. In essence, Welsh representatives often functioned as English nationalists, which would explain the frustration and extraconstitutional tactics that were long a part of Welsh ethnopolitics. However, it does little to explain the more recent moderate stance of Plaid Cymru. This more moderate stance is perhaps better explained as an artifact of the incentives presented by the well-entrenched nature of the political institutions in Britain: In order to appeal successfully to a larger constituency, the party must play by the rules of the democratic game. The party cannot give in to frustration and extremist rhetoric if it wants to position itself as a credible alternative.
Of the two Western European cases, Belgium is more integrated into Europe than is Britain. It may therefore be expected that the former’s ethnopolitical parties are less extreme than the latter’s (Expectation 3); however, the case studies have shown the reverse to be the case. Although the Volksunie, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru have taken similar positions regarding the role of their respective regions in Europe, the electoral systems of Belgium and Britain provide different incentives. Whereas the British single-member district system makes it difficult for ethnopolitical parties to gain representation, thus forcing the ethnic movement to rely largely on existing parties to have their demands heard, the Belgian PR system facilitates the representation of ethnopolitical parties in government, thus legitimizing them. Not only does the Belgian system make it easy for new parties to gain representation, it also makes it easy for differences of opinion within the ethnopolitical party to lead to the formation of new parties. This, in turn, easily leads to the radicalization of ethnopolitics: There is little incentive to bridge ideological differences when breakaway groups can easily gain representation. In that case, the willingness of the voters to support a particular brand of ethnopolitics provides the only constraint. In Britain, on the other hand, the SNP’s difficulty in gaining representation forced the party to settle its differences and remain unified. Plaid Cymru’s internal struggles in part explain its failure to gain wider support (supporting Expectation 6).
The Western European cases do not support Expectation 4a: In the Belgian case, the scope of representation is broader than in Britain, yet Flemish ethnopolitics is also more radical. However, the expectation that representation based on individual, rather than group, competition will lead to less extremist ethnopolitical demands (Expectation 4b) is borne out: The Belgian PR system is based on party lists, whereas the British single-member district system favors individual competition within each district. The Labour Party has remained the strongest party in both Scotland and Wales, despite a mixed record regarding devolution, because individual Labour MPs have acquired the support of their districts.
In sum, the Belgian and British cases show that gaps in economic performance among ethnic groups can create the sort of grievances that lead to ethnopolitical movements. However, the electoral system plays a significant role in structuring both the potential for success and the quality of ethnopolitics: First, it determines the likelihood that an ethnopolitical party gains representation; and, second, it determines whether the party remains broad based and moderate or fragments and radicalizes. In fact, the Welsh case supports the notion that, if political institutions are well entrenched, they can become a convincing argument for moderation. Although moderate policies took longer to prevail within Plaid Cymru, the lack of them explains why the party’s appeal has remained localized. In sum, within the established democracies of Western Europe, a single-member district system serves to constrain ethnopolitical parties, whereas a proportional representation system encourages their radicalization.
Endnotes
Note 1: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 64-66. Back.
Note 2: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 252; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 66-68; Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 4-5. Back.
Note 3: Norton, The British Polity, 40; Moore, Social Origins, 33; Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 233; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 71-72; Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 6. Back.
Note 4: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 71-73; Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 26. Back.
Note 5: Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 6. Back.
Note 6: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 255. Back.
Note 7: Ibid.; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 158. Back.
Note 8: Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 7; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 75, 77. Back.
Note 9: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 82, 88, 92; Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 8-9; Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 241, 252. Back.
Note 10: Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 9-11; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 106-108, 113-114, 116. Back.
Note 11: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 95-96, 118. Back.
Note 12: Ibid., 108, 117-118, 143, 150; Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 273; Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 12. Back.
Note 13: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 155-159. Back.
Note 14: Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 12; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 157, 159-160, 169, 171; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 155-156; Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 9. Back.
Note 15: Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 84-85; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 37-39; D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 12-17, 39. Back.
Note 16: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 40-41; D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 33-36, 38; Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 10. Back.
Note 17: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 38, 47, 49; D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 273. Back.
Note 18: Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 91, 95; D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 206-211, 213- 214; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 51. Back.
Note 19: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 50, 72-73, 80; D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 246-249; Jones, Modern Wales, 251; Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 12. Back.
Note 20: Jones, Modern Wales, 226. Back.
Note 21: Ibid., 226, 238-245; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 63. Back.
Note 22: Jones, Modern Wales, 245, 247, 256; Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 12-13; Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 103, 121-123; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 79; D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 282. Back.
Note 23: Jones, Modern Wales, 254; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 81, 89; Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 14; Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 123. Back.
Note 24: D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales, 292; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 97-99, 205-206, 216. Back.
Note 25: Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 12-13; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 169, 171-172. Back.
Note 26: Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 9; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 173, 176; Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 262. Back.
Note 27: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 175. Back.
Note 28: Ibid., 177, 179-180. Back.
Note 29: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 272; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 240, 254; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 177. Back.
Note 30: Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 157, 184. Back.
Note 31: Donaldson et al., “Scottish Devolution,” 15; Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 264; Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 9; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 247; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, 185-186. Back.
Note 32: Scottish National Party, A Short History, 9. Back.
Note 33: Bayne, “The Impact of 1979,” 46; Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 265. Back.
Note 34: Kellas, Modern Scotland, 147; MacIver, “The Paradox of Nationalism,” 141. Back.
Note 35: Bayne, “The Impact of 1979,” 46, 57-60. Back.
Note 36: Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 12 Back.
Note 39: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 97-98, 158, 206; Jones, A History of Modern Wales, 214, 260; Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 21. Back.
Note 40: Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 127; Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 21; Jones, Modern Wales, 266. Back.
Note 41: Philip, The Welsh Question, 73-74; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 173, 215. Back.
Note 42: Philip, The Welsh Question, 81-84; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 221; Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 22. Back.
Note 43: Philip, The Welsh Question, 87, 91; Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 227-228. Back.
Note 44: Cited in Philip, The Welsh Question, 94. Back.
Note 45: Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 132; Philip, The Welsh Question, 97-100, 102-103. Back.
Note 46: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 243; Philip, The Welsh Question, 105. Back.
Note 47: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 261-262; Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 133. Back.
Note 48: Sharpe, “Devolution,” 88. Back.
Note 49: Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 137. See also Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 22. Back.
Note 50: Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 105, 119; Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 254. Back.
Note 51: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 256; Saville, “The Industrial Background,” 5, 17-18. Back.
Note 52: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 256-257; Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 106, 120; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 165. Back.
Note 53: Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 106. See also Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 167. Back.
Note 54: McCreadie, “Scottish Identity,” 43; Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 105; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 169-171, 174-175; Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 258-259, 267. Back.
Note 55: McDowall, “Coal, Gas, and Oil,” 296-297, 301, 309. See also Brand, Mitchell, and Surridge, “Social Constituency,” 621. Back.
Note 56: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 268. Back.
Note 57: Combs, “The Party of Wales,” 116; Eurostat, Portrait of the Regions, vol. 2, 266. Back.
Note 58: Eurostat, Portrait of the Regions, vol. 2, 267. Back.
Note 59: Ibid., 264, 268; Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 64-65; Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 164. Back.
Note 60: Leonard, Elections in Britain Today, 3; Lutz, “Diffusion of Nationalist Voting,” 263. Back.
Note 61: Esman, “Scottish Nationalism,” 261. Back.
Note 62: Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 243. Back.
Note 63: Davidson, “The Fall and Rise of the SNP.” Back.
Note 64: Brand et al., “Social Constituency,” 629. Back.
Note 65: Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 93; Jones and Wilford, “Further Considerations,” 18. Back.
Note 66: Balsom, Madgwick, and van Mechelen, “The Political Consequences,” 178. Back.
Note 67: McCreadie, “Scottish Identity,” 46, 50; Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 13; Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 121. Back.
Note 68: Scottish Constitutional Convention, Scotland’s Parliament. Back.
Note 69: Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 15; Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 124; “The Thirty-nine Steps to Home Rule,” Economist, February 1, 1992, 66; Scottish Constitutional Convention, Scotland’s Parliament, 9; McCreadie, “Scottish Identity,” 50. Back.
Note 70: This proposed system closely corresponds to the German double ballot system, with the exception that the Constitutional Convention’s proposals do not mention a threshold. Back.
Note 71: McCreadie, “Scottish Identity,” 47. See also Gallagher, “The SNP Faces the 1990s,” 25. Back.
Note 72: Economist, “The Thirty-nine Steps,” 66. Back.
Note 73: “For Auld Lang’s Syne,” Economist, March 6, 1993, 59; “John Major’s Hogmanay Madness,” Economist, January 7, 1995, 46. See also Gallagher, “The SNP and the Scottish Working Class,” 121. Back.
Note 74: “Labour’s Devolution Plans: Toil and Trouble,” Economist, February 18, 1995, 59; “Scottish Nationalism: Salmond Leaping,” Economist, October 2, 1993, 63; Shirley English, “Margin of Victory for Double ‘Yes’ Campaign Is Emphatic,” Times (London), September 13, 1997; Paul Routledge, “Yes, Yes to a New World: Labour Played Good Old-Fashioned Politics to Bring in the Scottish Devolution, but They Are Proud of What They Have Done,” Independent (London), September 14, 1997; Robert McNeil, “SNP and Lib Dems Cosy Up as Salmond Urges ‘New Politics,’” Scotsman; British Election Pages. Back.
Note 75: Plaid Cymru’s home page. See also Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 27. Back.
Note 76: Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 25-26; Adamson, Class, Ideology, and the Nation, 137; Davies, Welsh Nationalism, 54-56. Back.
Note 77: Christiansen, “Plaid Cymru in the 1990s,” 32-37. Back.
Note 78: Jones, Modern Wales, 268. Back.
Note 79: Brand et al., “Social Constituency,” 620-622; McLean, “The Rise and Fall of the Scottish National Party,” 357-372; Bochel and Denver, “The Decline of the SNP,” 311-316. Back.
Note 80: This type of ethnopolitical aim is akin to what John Hall has termed “nationalism by trade” (“Nationalisms,” 19). Back.
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