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Having slumped in the
1970 General Election, the SNP could not really expect to recover its
position in a short period of four years, but that is just what
happened.
By-election results in
the period were no real guide to the change in electoral fortunes. As we
have seen, Stirling, Falkirk & Grangemouth was held by Labour in
1971 and the successful candidate, Harry Ewing, went to Westminster to
see on 28th October, 1971 sixty-nine of his Labour colleagues cast their
votes in favour of the Conservative Government’s terms on Europe. This
group of Members included former Labour Ministers like Roy Hattersley
and Roy Jenkins and, of course, a future leader of the Party, John
Smith, then MP for North Lanarkshire.
In embarking on this
action, they defied a "THREE LINE WHIP" (the Tories having
been given a free vote) and many subsequently were put under severe
pressure by their constituency parties and sponsoring organisations. It
is fair to ponder what would have happened had these individuals not
acted in such a fashion and the UK had stood aside from the EEC once
again. There is a valid point in relation to defining the nature of the
acceptable terms, but the chance of getting the best terms was passed up
in the 1950’s and it is obvious that, whatever subsequent terms were
put to the UK, these would not be equal to those which could have been
attained earlier, and the further delay and hostility which would have
arisen if the 1971 terms had been rejected would almost certainly have
ensured that worse terms would have been offered in any future
negotiations.
However, there is no
gainsaying that Harold Wilson, as Labour Leader, had a most difficult
job of holding his Party together - a task which he considered to be of
supreme priority - and the conflict between Wilson and Heath had the
effect of giving a substantial portion of the electorate a jaundiced
opinion of politics and politicians.
In this atmosphere, it
might be expected that the SNP would prosper but a by-election in Dundee
East in March, 1973 saw Labour hold on. Later in the year, there were
contrasting circumstances for the SNP in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The
Tories held on in Edinburgh North, where Willie Wolfe was the SNP
candidate, but, in Govan, Margo MacDonald won by 571 votes and made her
way to join Donald Stewart at Westminster - albeit for a short period.
Her sojourn in the House of Commons was not easy for Margo, given the
intense political rivalry of the time, and the industrial situation
highlighted by the conflict between the National Coal Board and the
Miners’ Union.
She displayed a high
standard of debating skill and not a little courage, as the House of
Commons was not inclined at this period to sustain a listening mood and,
if the new MP did not wholly understand all the complexities of a
subject, her opponents showed little patience.
As 1973 drew to its
close, the issue which Heath sought to put before the electorate was
that of, "Who governs you, the National Union of Mineworkers or the
elected Government?" Wage negotiations between the NUM and the Coal
Board had been handled badly and the result at the end of 1973 was an
intensifying of their dispute, which resulted in a state of emergency
being declared and the declaration of the three day week, in response to
the NUM’s overtime ban: all this on top of the Yom Kippur War in
October and OPEC’s oil prices hype.
But a General Election
has a momentum of its own and cannot be restricted to one issue. What
transpired was that the whole of Heath’s government record was the
issue in February, 1974 and the electorate’s pronouncement was
anything but clear. They did not like the Tories, but they were not
really ecstatic about Labour either. Labour attained 301 seats and 37.2%
of the vote and the Tories 297 seats and 38.2% of the vote. The result
was a hung Parliament and, after some hesitation on Heath’s part,
Harold Wilson returned to office as Prime Minister.
For the Scottish National
Party, the result produced a transformation in the level of support in
parliamentary representation, reaching nearly 22% of the vote and
winning seven seats. Whatever tactics the SNP were employing, the
electorate was favourably impressed and giving support. A key element in
this was the issue of North Sea oil and its potential. benefits, mainly
of a fiscal nature. Party leaders gained expertise in the understanding
of the economics and politics of oil production. Among those who were
most prominent in this connection were Gordon Wilson and Douglas
Crawford. But the Party as a whole used the issue to dispel fears
relating to the ability of an independent Scotland to pay its way. The
February, 1974 Manifesto suggested that oil and gas revenues would be
used to finance, "... what would otherwise be a budgetary
deficit". (It is no injustice to state that all the experts in the
SNP could not have anticipated just how many hundreds of billions of
pounds would accrue to the Exchequer to finance deficits and underwrite
the failures of successive UK governments).
But, in No 10, with
Liberal backing was not a situation which Wilson could tolerate for long
and he thus chose the earliest opportunity for Labour to return to the
electorate in October, 1974.
After the dramatic
increase in the SNP vote in the Burgh’s by-election in 1971, it was
natural that Dr Mcintyre would be the Party’s candidate in February,
1974. Again, the vote was increased, on this occasion to 17,836 votes,
and Labour’s majority was reduced to 3,849. The trend was going in the
right direction and it certainly looked as if, given reasonably
favourable circumstances, the SNP could take the constituency in a
future contest.
Since Hamilton in 1967,
increasing attention in Scotland had been focused on "the
constitutional issue" and part of Labour’s response to this in
government was to set up a Royal Commission on the Constitution in 1969.
Its remit was comprehensive and designed to deal not only with the
"functions of the central legislature and government in relation to
the several countries, nations and regions of the United Kingdom; but
also to embrace developments in local government organisation and
administration".
Originally under the
chairmanship of Lord Crowther, after his death that responsibility
passed to Lord Kilbrandon, the Committee fulfilled the epithet given to
Royal Commissions in that they "sat for years to take minutes"
reporting eventually in 1973 in favour of a directly elected single
chamber assembly possessing both legislative and executive powers.
Running almost parallel
to these developments relative to the Labour Government were the
outpourings from the Conservatives. Heath, as Leader of the Opposition,
had made his Declaration of Perth in 1968 and had set Sir Alec
Douglas-Home the task of devising suitable proposals. He had come
forward with what amounted to a third tier of a Scottish
"legislative" process. An elected Assembly of 125 members
should meet in Edinburgh to deal with certain stages of Scottish
legislation, leaving the final decision to the Westminster Parliament.
However, even this weak proposal was too much for the Scottish Tories
who rejected it in 1973.
Despite the advocacy of
the Kilbrandon Report, Labour in Scotland went into the February, 1974
election with no manifesto commitment to devolution and thus, with the
Tories, appeared to set itself against any changes in the constitutional
position of Scotland. To both the major British parties, the February,
1974 result in Scotland proved a shock and an embarrassment, While the
Tories were inactive, Labour began the task of re-appraisal. Within
their ranks in Scotland, feelings were stirring up that the Party might
change it stance. But it was an uphill struggle, as illustrated when a
poorly attended meeting of Labour’s Scottish Executive in June, 1974
voted by 6 votes to 5 to reject all the schemes for devolution which the
Government proposed.
This rebuff was not
accepted by the Labour hierarchy who virtually insisted that steps be
taken to have the Executive’s decision reversed and to have a Special
Conference called.
This Conference met in
the Dalintober Street Hall, Glasgow of what was then the Scottish
Co-operative Wholesale Society. In a strange sense, the hall fitted the
occasion. The SCWS had foundered on the inability of the Society to
control the operations of its leading bank official and its affairs had
to be taken over by the Co-operative Wholesale Society in Manchester.
The Dalintober Street hall was where the meetings of the SCWS
shareholders (i.e. the retail co-operatives) were held to discuss the
affairs of the Wholesale Society. With its demise, they would have to
take instructions from Manchester, as the Labour Party took instructions
from London.
Labour, in Scotland, on
this warm September day discussed a series of motions, the result of
which was to ensure that it would go into the oncoming election
committed to setting up "a directly elected Assembly with
legislative powers within the context of the political and economic
unity of the UK.
Barely a month later, on
10 October, 1974, the election was held which produced an even greater
shock than the ballot of February and, in many ways, October was a
re-run of February, 1974, with the obvious proviso that the UK political
leaders had to adjust their position. When the UK result was finally
declared, Labour had a majority of 4 seats, with a reduced vote, but the
Tories had lost 20 seats from their February total.
From the viewpoint of the
campaign in Scotland, there were some indications of shifts in policy
positions. Labour was committed to "devolution" and was moving
towards a referendum on the issue of the "renegotiated" terms
for Europe. The Tories under Heath made little change from the earlier
election, as was also the case with the Liberals.
The SNP made a few
adjustments partly, it appears, in order to combat the accusation of
selfishness on the profession of, "ITS SCOTLAND’S OIL". They
appeared to move towards conservation and a willingness to constrain
production to meet Scotland’s domestic and revenue needs. While these
elements had been there in February, what now was apparent was a change
of emphasis.
On Europe, the SNP made
it plain that, "The Scottish people must have the right to choose
for themselves in a referendum whether or not they wish their country to
be part of the Common Market".
When the results came
through, they had a seismic effect on Scottish and British politics. The
SNP had won eleven seats and achieved 30.4% of the vote. Additionally,
the Party was placed second in forty-two of the remaining seats. While
some of the majorities were narrow, 30 in Galloway and 22 in
Dunbartonshire East, the overall performance was stunning but, for some
who might have, with good reason, thought that they could win, there
must have been some tinge of regret amongst the celebrations. In West
Lothian, Willie Wolfe surely felt the pangs of disappointment in having
raised his vote from 21,690 in February to 24,997 in October, to see
Labour still in command by 2,690 votes.
Stirling, Falkirk and
Grangemouth saw an even closer contest. Labour must have thought that
they had gone with a tide which surrounded them. Dr Robert McIntyre’s
vote had increased from 17,836 to 20,324 but Labour retained the seat by
1,766 votes.
A number of factors could
be said to have gone against the SNP. The Liberal Candidate polled 1,477
votes, whereas that party did not challenge in February, but one cannot
set aside the fact that, in an area with intense local rivalries, the
role which Dr McIntyre played in the advocacy of Stirling’s cause,
notably with regard to the new University, did not necessarily go down
well in the other Burghs.
The result was a Party
triumph, but there were some understandable personal misgivings which
could be best assuaged by doing what Robert McIntyre had done all his
life- get on with the tasks in hand: in this case, his medical work and
continuing to serve the SNP and the Burgh of Stirling. Unfortunately, in
the latter case, this had not long to run. |
