The Study Of Modern Scottish National Movement

A referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country will take place on September 18th,2014. Its union with England, which was established in 1707, will face probably the most serious threat ever. The referendum marked a summit for the Scottish nationalism movement, so how has it developed to such an extent and why is the 300-year-old union confronted with such a challenge? To understand more about these questions, the writer intended to do a deeper research and this is the motivation for writing this paper.The evolution of the Scottish National Identity happened since the early Middle Age. During the formation of Scotland, the idea of the nation grew as well as the set-up of church, dynasty and government. Though in the past it had all kinds of connections with England, a strong neighbor in its south, it remained independent. Then, from late 13th century to early 14th century, between the two neighbors happened long-lasting wars, which, according to Scottish, was named "Independence War". At last, Scotland won the war and declared its independent sovereignty by a series of diplomatic treaties and the royal families of the two countries built a relationship through marrying each other. In 1603, Queen Elizabeth from England died without leaving any heirs behind, so the throne passed to her nephew, James VI from Scotland. He began the House of Stuarts and the dynasties of the two countries were united together. There were always intentions to build a stronger tie between these two kingdoms, but often failed due to Scotland’s unwillingness. This condition finally changed in late 17th century, when Scotland met with succession of crisis and the united dynasties of the two kingdoms also faced inheritor problem. After negotiation, both of them signed treaties in May 1707, which brought a union of parliament, giving birth to the new country of union, Great Britain, and at last realized a complete union between the two kingdoms. The parliament of Scotland was cancelled after this. In turn, it sent members to attend the new parliament in London. Meanwhile, an autonomous system including religion, education, law and local government was carried out in Scotland, thus provided basis for its national identity. Since the union was founded, Scotland, though comparatively backward, developed rapidly and made great contribution to the birth of the British Empire. And the British national identity found its way to grow among Scottish. In the late 19th century, because of the Irish autonomous movement, there appeared political appeals demanding Scottish Autonomy. However, either its scale or its influence fell far behind the Irish movement.After the First World War, Scotland gradually fell into serious trouble because of an irrational economic structure. Meanwhile, the demand for autonomy was growing bigger. Those who supported autonomy used to be depended on the Liberal Party, while at this time they were more likely to go to the side of the Labour Party. But on the contrary, the latter did not put it into practice though they seemed to hold a very positive view to autonomy. In 1920s, after twice failure of the autonomy bill, the national group supporting Scottish autonomy began to show their discontent to major parties and seek for other possible ways. During this period, there arose many national groups in Scotland, among which the Scottish National League, SNL, became very representative. It eventually formed a national party and promoted national appeals through political election. Driven by many factors, several groups established National Party of Scotland in 1928, which started the formational of Scottish national parties. In 1932, some nationalists with conflicting ideas set up Scottish Party on the opposite side. However, with meditation of John MacComick, an significant figure of NPS, and with the compromise made by NPS, two parties united together in 1934 and formed the Scottish National Party. But in its early years, it was limited by all kinds of factors and did not performed well in the elections, thus arousing various conflicts inside. In the annual conference in 1942, SNP was split. The moderate autonomous nationalists left NPS and its guidelines were adjusted to be more accorded to the former NPS. During the two decades after the Second World War, SNP was not more than a minor political group, struggling to survive. Yet, after 60 years’ development, the growing SNP grasped advantageous opportunity and won the Hamilton by-election in 1967, which achieved its breakthrough in history. Following, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party paid more attention to the issue of Scottish independence. During the two elections in 1974, SNP leaped in the development and directly pushed the Labour Party to promote a discussion of the issue, thus to avoid its ballot to be split by SNP. The 1979 Scottish Devolution Referendum failed due to a failure to meet its required ratio. Owing to the adjustment and split inside the SNP and the Labour Party, the Conservative Party became the only winner of the 1979 failure. However, the Thatcher administration, which came into power in 1979, practiced privatization reform causing Scotland great damage, and objected to transfer some of the authority to Scotland. As a result, it evoked resentment to the Conservative Party and Thatcher herself among the Scottish people. Even though they voted for the Labour Party in the following several elections, the Conservative Party still held its advantage because of England, thus it maintained in the office for another 18 years. Driven by "the democratic deficit" and the national feelings, the devolution was promoted by the Scottish civil society whose space of rights was being pressed and the parties who supported it. After the Labour Party came into the power in 1997, it soon realized its promise of devolution. Another Scottish Devolution Referendum was held in September. It received huge support and pushed forward the pass of 1998 Scotland Act 1998. The Scottish Parliament was established in 1999 on this basis, and Scottish national movement stepped into a new phase since then.After the establishment of Scottish Parliament, the new election system benefited SNP and it showed great achievement and performed only in the second place to the Labout Party, thus becoming the largest opposition party. However, it suffered failure in the first several elections in 21st century. John Swinney, the SNP leader began an interior reform in 2003, shaping it more professional and better suited for election and the need to be in the office. Since that, SNP experienced another round of expansion. In 2007, led by Alex Salmond, it won the Scottish Parliament Election by a small majority and organized a minority government. During its four years’ in the office, SNP stand the test and made certain achievement, laying foundation for its following reappointment. In the 2011 election, SNP obtained overwhelming success. The aim of the new election system to restrain one party autocracy was broken and SNP surprisingly organized a majority government. It finally had the chance to carry out the bill, for which it had been working since 1990s. In early 2012, both English government and Scottish government issued the policy intention about Scottish independence referendum. After negotiations, both sides signed Edinburgh Agreement on October 15th,2012. The Agreement admitted that a referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country will take place in the autumn of 2014, and it was recognized by both of the two governments. Since then, groups for and against it began a fierce debate around several big questions if Scotland got its independence. The people who favored the idea of independence took up 30 percents since 1990s. And the percentage went down ever since the formal referendum election. Now, as the day for vote is coming, the statistics shows a further downward tendency, while the ratio of the uncertain people is going up vividly. It is suggested by the canvass that there is little possibility for the referendum to be passed, though it will definitely have an important impact on both the Scottish history and the building of UK in the future.The body of this thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter describes the development of the nation of Scottish from three perspectives, namely its early history, its union with England and its own growth in the union. The second chapter explains how the contemporary Scottish national movement was originated and promoted. It is carried through in three aspects as well, namely the development of Scottish local autonomy, the establishment of Scottish national parties, and SNP in its early stages. The following two chapters focus on the period since 1960s. The third one depicts the major clues of the Scottish national movement, likely the rise of SNP, the manipulation of major parties on the devolution movement, and the driven factors due to Thatcher administration, until the final establishment of the Scottish parliament. Meanwhile, the fourth one discusses how the SNP was given to a advantageous platform in post-devolution era. Thanks to its inside reform and an outstanding leadership, with its competitors becoming weaker, SNP came into power in 2007 and maintain its overwhelming advantage since then. Soon the issue of the Scottish independence became a hot topic due to this. The writer analyses the influential factors to Scottish national movement from both inside and outside perspectives, and gives a discussion on the impact that the referendum will leave. Apart from these, the writer also generalizes the Scottish national problem at last. From research above, the writer maintains that the contemporary Scottish national movement was arose and promoted by both inside and outside factors. The latter refers to the history of the Scottish ethnicity and its preservation of its culture, together with the set-up of SNP and a way to go through political election, while the latter means the fact that there is a lack of constitution text with a norm of national movement, a disadvantage of the electoral politics which might cause the major party to make compromise on national issued for election interest, and a lack of consistent for the national policy among the political leaders. Besides, the development of localization and the decline of nation-state both provided a beneficial background for the Scottish national movement.Through the research on contemporary Scottish national problems, we do not only acquire a general consideration of Scottish independence referendum and a better understanding of the political system and the inside national problem in UK, but also we get to know more about the same problems in Western developed countries. This research will as well help with our discussion on home questions, and it will produce some reference value.