Written after the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, this chapter of Duerr’s book covers the history and character of the Scottish National Party. The SNP has a fairly long history, beginning in 1934 as a merger of two Scottish nationalist parties. It slowly became relevant by winning by-elections beginning in 1945 and peaking in membership in the 1960s, collapsing, and then very quickly growing again in the 2010s. It won a rigged game in the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood by creating a majority government in 2011 with a system designed to prevent such a thing, and was able to pass the bill that became the Scottish referendum. This book was apparently written before the SNP’s bloodbath of Labour seats in the May 2015 UK general election, with 56 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster.
Duerr spends a lot of time talking about the careful distinction the SNP makes that it is a civic nationalist party rather than an ethnic nationalist one. SNP nationalism isn’t even based on a distinctive national language, with Gaelic being spoken by less than 1.5% of the population. The SNP also denies a distinctive Scottish national culture, with one MSP Christina McKelvie calling Scotland “a wee melting pot”, although at the same time, MEP Alyn Smith says, “We’ve got a clear self-image since our borders haven’t changed for hundreds and hundreds of years…So we have a very clear concept of nationhood, which is distinct from our concept of statehood.” Given the ethnic homogeneity of Scotland (96% white and 84% ethnic Scotch) but the distaste that many have for ethno-nationalism, the SNP has to do a bit of a tightrope walk regarding this issue.
The SNP’s success at obtaining their independence referendum was many years in the making. A 1979 referendum to create devolved legislatures in Wales and Scotland failed for lack of turnout, and devolution did not occur until a second referendum on the same issue in 1997 was a success. The Prime Minister at the time, John Major, expressed the opinion that devolution “is the Trojan horse to independence”. This is more or less what Jason Sorens was talking about in Secession when he explained why governments often oppose autonomy movements, as they fear a slippery slope where confidence in self-government leads to growing support for secession. In this case, Major may have been right that the SNP’s success in Holyrood lead to the narrow 45/55 split during the 2014 referendum. However, the UK government and the Scottish government peacefully agreed to honor the results of the referendum, a very important and noteworthy difference from many historical and contemporary secession movements and the toleration of them by their ruling governments.