Independence movement in Europe
Scottish independence (; ) is the idea of Scotland regaining its independence and once again becoming a sovereign state, independent from the United Kingdom. The term Scottish independence refers to the political movement that is campaigning to bring it about.
Scotland was an independent kingdom through the Middle Ages, and fought wars to maintain its independence from England. The two kingdoms were united in personal union in 1603 when the Scottish King James VI became James I of England, and the two kingdoms united politically into one kingdom called Great Britain in 1707. This movement united the countries which ended the wars of independence and created relative peace. Political campaigns for Scottish self-government began in the 19th century, initially in the form of demands for home rule within the United Kingdom. Two referendums on devolution were held in 1979 and 1997, with a devolved Scottish Parliament being established on 1 July 1999.
The pro-independence Scottish National Party first became the governing party of the devolved parliament in 2007, and it won an outright majority of seats at the 2011 Scottish Parliament election. This led to an agreement between the Scottish and UK governments to hold the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Voters were asked: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" 44.7 percent of voters answered "Yes" and 55.3 percent answered "No", with a record voter turnout of 85 percent. This resulted in Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom.
A second referendum on independence has been proposed, particularly since the UK voted to leave the European Union in a June 2016 referendum and since pro-independence parties increased their majority in the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. In June 2022 Nicola Sturgeon proposed the date of 19 October 2023 for a new referendum on Scottish independence, subject to confirmation of its legality and constitutionality. In November 2022 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that the Scottish Parliament did not have the power to legislate for a second referendum.
History.
Kingdom of Scotland.
Scotland emerged as an independent polity during the Early Middle Ages with some historians dating its foundation from the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin in 843. The level of independence of the Scottish kingdom was fought over by the Scottish kings and by the Norman and Angevin rulers of England who petitioned the Pope and other foreign rulers.
A watershed in the Scottish kingdom's history was a succession crisis that erupted in 1290 when Edward I of England claimed the right of appointment to the Scottish throne. The Auld Alliance of Scotland and France against English interests was first invoked at that time and remained active through to the 16th century. The Wars of Scottish Independence ended in a renewed kingdom under Robert the Bruce (crowned 1306), whose grandson Robert II of Scotland was the first Scottish king of the House of Stuart.
Union.
From 1603 Scotland and England shared the same monarch in a personal union when James VI of Scotland was declared King of England and Scotland in what was known as the Union of the Crowns. After James II and VII was deposed in 1688 amid Catholic-Protestant disputes, and as the line of Protestant Stuarts showed signs of failing (as indeed occurred in 1714), English fears that Scotland would select a different monarch, potentially causing conflict within Great Britain, and the bankruptcy of many Scottish nobles through the Darien scheme led to the formal union of the two kingdoms in 1707, with the Treaty of Union and subsequent Acts of Union, to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. Scottish Jacobite resistance to the union, led by descendants of James II and VII including Bonnie Prince Charlie, continued until 1746.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed by the Acts of Union 1800, which united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. Following the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) and the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the war, Ireland was partitioned into two states: Southern Ireland, which opted to become independent (and is now known as Republic of Ireland), and Northern Ireland, which – given its geographical extent which tended to ensure a Unionist majority – chose to remain within the United Kingdom.
Home rule movement.
The "Home Rule" movement for a Scottish Assembly was first taken up in 1853 by the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, a body close to the Conservative Party. A key element in this movement was the comparison with Ireland. The original movement broadened its political appeal and soon began to receive Liberal Party backing. In 1885, the post of Secretary for Scotland and the Scottish Office were re-established to promote Scotland's interests and express its concerns to the UK Parliament. In 1886, however, Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone introduced the Irish Home Rule Bill. It was not regarded as an immediate constitutional priority however, particularly when the Irish Home Rule Bill was defeated in the House of Commons.
Immediately before the First World War, the Liberal Government led by H. H. Asquith supported the concept of "Home Rule all round", whereby Scottish home rule would follow the Irish home rule proposed in the Government of Ireland Act 1914. Asquith believed that there was an iniquity in that the component parts of the United Kingdom could come together to act together in common purposes, but those components could not deal with internal matters that did not require consent across the UK. This was not a nationalist philosophy, but instead Asquith was acting in the belief that federalism was the "true basis of union" and that centralising power in Westminster was a political blunder. A Scottish Home Rule bill was first presented to Parliament in 1913, but its progress was soon ended as Parliament focused on emergency measures necessitated by the First World War.
Unlike Ireland, which rebelled in the Easter Rising and fought a War of Independence, Scotland did not resist central rule. There was, however, a persistent demand for Scottish home rule. The Scottish Office was relocated to St Andrew's House in Edinburgh during the 1930s. The Scottish Covenant was a petition to the UK Government asking for home rule. It was first proposed in 1930 by John MacCormick and formally written in 1949. The petition "was eventually signed by two million people" (the population of Scotland was recorded as 5,100,000 in the 1951 UK Census). The covenant was ignored by the main political parties. In 1950 the Stone of Destiny was removed from Westminster Abbey by a group of Scottish nationalist students.
The question of full independence, or the less controversial home rule, did not re-enter the political mainstream until 1960, after the famous Wind of Change speech by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. This speech marked the start of a rapid decolonisation in Africa and the end of the British Empire. The UK had already suffered the international humiliation of the 1956 Suez Crisis, which showed that it was no longer the superpower it had been before World War II. For many in Scotland, this served to undermine one of the principal raisons d'être for the United Kingdom and also symbolised the end of popular imperialism and the Imperial unity that had united the then-prominent Scottish Unionist Party. The Unionist Party subsequently suffered a steady decline in support.
1979 First devolution referendum.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) won their second-ever seat in the House of Commons in 1967, when Winnie Ewing was the unexpected winner of the 1967 Hamilton by-election. The seat was previously a safe Labour Party seat, and this victory brought the SNP to national prominence, leading to Edward Heath's 1968 Declaration of Perth and the establishment of the Kilbrandon Commission. The discovery of North Sea oil off the east coast of Scotland in 1970 further invigorated the debate over Scottish independence. The SNP organised a hugely successful campaign entitled "It's Scotland's oil", emphasising how the discovery of oil could benefit Scotland's struggling deindustrialising economy and its populace. At the February 1974 general election, seven SNP MPs were elected. The general election resulted in a hung parliament, so Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a second election for October 1974, when the SNP performed even better than in February, winning 11 seats and obtaining over 30% of the total vote in Scotland.
In January 1974, the Conservative government had commissioned the McCrone report, written by Professor Gavin McCrone, a leading government economist, to report on the viability of an independent Scotland. He concluded that oil would have given an independent Scotland one of the strongest currencies in Europe. The report went on to say that officials advised government ministers on how to take "the wind out of the SNP sails". A common myth regarding the report is that when handed over to the incoming Labour government and classified as secret because of Labour fears over the surge in Scottish National Party popularity, the document came to light only in 2005, when the SNP obtained the report under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. McCrone himself has rejected this claim.
The Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson, won the October 1974 general election with the very narrow majority of only three seats. Following their election to Parliament, the SNP MPs pressed for the creation of a Scottish Assembly: a viewpoint which was given added credibility by the conclusions of the Kilbrandon Commission. However, opponents demanded that a referendum be held on the issue. Although the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party both officially supported devolution, support was split in both parties. Labour was divided between those who favoured devolution and those who wanted to maintain a full central Westminster government. In the SNP, there was division between those who saw devolution as a stepping stone to independence and those who feared it might detract from that ultimate goal. The resignation of Harold Wilson from office in 1976 brought James Callaghan to power, but his small majority was eroded by several by-election losses, and the government became increasingly unpopular. Deals were made with the SNP and Plaid Cymru to hold referendums on devolution in exchange for their support, helping to prolong the government's life.
The result of the referendum in Scotland was a narrow majority in favour of devolution (52% to 48%), but a condition of the referendum was that 40% of the total electorate should vote in favour in order to make it valid. But the turnout was only 63.6%, so only 32.9% of the electorate voted "Yes". The Scotland Act 1978 was consequently repealed in March 1979 by a vote of 301–206 in Parliament. In the wake of the referendum, the supporters of the bill conducted a protest campaign under the slogan "Scotland said yes". They said that the 40% rule was undemocratic and that the referendum results justified the establishment of the assembly. Campaigners for a "No" vote countered that voters had been told before the referendum that failing to vote was as good as a "No". It was therefore incorrect to conclude that the relatively low turnout was entirely due to voter apathy.
In protest, the SNP withdrew their support from the government. A motion of no confidence was then tabled by the Conservatives and supported by the SNP, the Liberals and Ulster Unionists. It passed by one vote on 28 March 1979, forcing the May 1979 general election, which was won by the Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher. Prime Minister Callaghan described the decision of the SNP to bring down the Labour government as "turkeys voting for Christmas". The SNP group was reduced from 11 MPs to 2 at the 1979 general election, while devolution was opposed by the Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
1997 Second devolution referendum.
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Supporters of Scottish independence continued to hold mixed views on the Home Rule movement, which included many supporters of union who wanted devolution within the framework of the United Kingdom. Some saw it as a stepping stone to independence, while others wanted to go straight for independence.
In the years of the Conservative government after 1979, the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly was established, eventually publishing the Claim of Right 1989. This led to the Scottish Constitutional Convention. The convention promoted consensus on devolution on a cross-party basis, though the Conservative Party refused to co-operate and the Scottish National Party withdrew from the discussions when it became clear that the convention