Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.

(K. Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 2nd para.)

Introduction: Kilbrandon and Scotland's Oil

This chapter analyses the bases for support for devolution in Scotland and Wales in the 1970s and since. As it was events in the mid‐1970s that set the path that devolution subsequently followed, we focus most closely on that period. Did devolution emerge as a consequence of changing attitudes, or changing party alignments? How much was support for devolution a proxy for other (temporary?) political attitudes such as disillusionment with the main parties? Was support for SNP a result of its stand on independence, or a more general shift away from Labour and Conservative parties? Was there a significant difference between attitudes in England and those in Scotland and Wales with regard to regional self‐government? The circumstances of devolution today are, as Marx realized, circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.

The issue of Scottish devolution leapt to prominence when the SNP snatched the safest Labour seat in Scotland in the Hamilton by‐election of November 1967 (Chapter 7 ). It was part of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's statecraft to send difficult issues such as devolution and trade union reform to a stately Royal Commission with a distant reporting date. His response to Hamilton was to appoint the Crowther (later Kilbrandon) Royal Commission on the Constitution, which was constituted in 1969 and reported in 1973. It commissioned research on attitudes to devolution (OPCS/SCPR 1973), which we reanalyse in this chapter. Kilbrandon's research, which was conducted in 1970, remains the only Great Britain‐wide survey whose samples (p. 182 ) were big enough in each region of England, as well as in Scotland and Wales, to compare attitudes to devolution across each of them. They turned out to be remarkably uniform (Table 8.1 ).

Table 8.1 shows that Scotland was, as predicted, the region where the demand for self‐determination was highest, but it was closely followed by East Anglia and the south of England. However, the East Anglia National Party and the Southern Separatist Party failed to materialize. Albeit within a narrow range, demand for self‐determination was lowest in Wales and in south‐west England.

The conclusions of this attitude survey did not deflect Lord Kilbrandon (a Scottish judge), nor Lord Crowther‐Hunt (a member of the Kilbrandon Commission who was Wilson's constitutional adviser during the preparation of the Scotland and Wales Bills in 1974–7). Although there was no evidence that demand for devolution was higher in Scotland than elsewhere, and some evidence that it was weaker in Wales than elsewhere, the Royal Commission majority proposed a legislative assembly for Scotland to deal with matters that would be transferred from Westminster under a devolution statute that specified the transferred powers and reserved all others to Westminster.

When Kilbrandon reported, the SNP was rising fast again, because it had discovered its most effective slogan ever: ‘It's Scotland's Oil …’. Oil was discovered in marketable quantities in the North Sea in the 1960s, but not until just after the 1970 general election did it emerge as a potent political issue (Chapter 7 ). The SNP won a by‐election in ‘safe Labour’ Govan within a week of Kilbrandon reporting.

Table 8.2 gives the time series for vote intention and actual votes in Scotland from the 1966 to the October 1974 general elections.

In the February 1974 general election, the SNP won 22 per cent of the Scottish vote. The electoral system had protected Labour by giving the SNP only 10 per cent of the Scottish seats for this 22 per cent of the vote, but if the SNP vote share were to rise to somewhere between 30 and 35 per cent, the system would flip from punishing the SNP to rewarding it—and politicians knew that. The plurality electoral system treats concentrated and dispersed parties differently. Small concentrated parties—as the SNP was in 1970, and as Plaid Cymru and all the Northern Ireland parties have always been—can achieve their population share of seats or more, because their votes are efficiently distributed to win seats in just the few places where they are strong. So the SNP won the Western Isles in 1970, and Plaid Cymru has held at least one of the half‐dozen Welsh‐speaking seats since 1966. Large concentrated parties, such as Labour in 1983 and the Conservatives in 1906 and 1997, when each remained strong in its heartlands but lost badly in the rest of the country, win a smaller share of seats than of votes.

(p. 183 )

(p. 184 )

With dispersed parties, the effects are opposite. A small dispersed party, such as the Green Party, will win no seats at all. When it was a small party within Scotland, neither did the SNP. But as it became large, dispersal would turn from a curse to a blessing. With an evenly distributed 35 per cent of the vote, it could win more than half of the seats in Scotland as Labour did in most elections. Were it to do so, it would start to negotiate for Scottish independence. Through the year 1974, Labour's national elite focused on retaining the party's capacity to govern the UK. This entailed changing its policy from the welfare‐state unionism it had espoused for forty years (Chapter 7 ) to welcoming devolution.

After thirty years, participants' memories are clouding. James Callaghan ( 1987 : 503), who as prime minister commanded Labour's devolution flagship, misremembers that devolution was in the February 1974 Labour manifesto, as a response to Kilbrandon. It was not. It is important to trace the sequence accurately, as it turns out to depend crucially on polls conducted in the summer of 1974. Only after the February 1974 election led to a Labour minority government did the party move. Shirley Williams had been asked to prepare a rival prospectus to Kilbrandon (Ziegler 1993 : 451). According to Wilson ( 1979 : 48) she led an ad hoc subcommittee of the NEC, which provided much of the draft for the White Paper that launched the Scotland and Wales Bill. Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda, came out in favour: ‘I call upon you seriously to consider granting freedom and full independence to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, whose people have repeatedly demanded…their respective eagerness and wishes to become independent (p. 185 ) of London’ (Ziegler 1993 : 452, from Wilson papers, 11.10.1974). Roy Jenkins ‘broke in angrily to protest that it would be insanity to break up the United Kingdom for the sake of a few extra seats at a general election’ (Ziegler 1993 : 452). Ziegler ( 1993 : 453) suggests that Wilson thought that devolution was necessary to bring government nearer to Scots, appeasing moderate opinion whilst maintaining the unity of the UK in the aftermath of the February 1974 general election. With Labour and Conservatives evenly matched in terms of seats, the Liberal, Ulster Unionist, and nationalist parties held the balance of power. Harold Wilson's decision to use the Queen's Speech to announce that the Government would consider devolution proposals and the publication of a White Paper in September 1974 came without any prior manifesto commitment. According to Rose ( 1982 : 189–90), the Labour devolution pledge was a panicky response to the threat to Labour posed by the SNP, sparked by an unpublished MORI poll that was interpreted (possibly mistakenly) as showing strong support for a devolution pledge. By revisiting this MORI poll (courtesy of MORI and the UK Data‐Archive (Worcester and Gosschalk 1977 ) ) we can examine the extent to which the Labour response was a correct reading of national attitudes, and how it compared with other assessments of opinion regarding devolution carried out at the same time.

The Labour Party MORI poll was carried out in August 1974, interviewing 976 people using a quota sample in 36 Scottish constituencies. Amongst those who expressed a vote preference, 41.4 per cent said they would vote Labour, compared to 25.2 per cent SNP, 26.1 per cent Conservative, and 6.9 per cent Liberal. This suggested a swing since February away from the Conservatives, and towards Labour and the SNP. However, rumours at the time suggested that poll evidence showed the Labour party under threat. Bob Worcester of MORI is reported as claiming that, if the Labour Party did not change its policy on devolution, the party would lose up to thirteen seats (Keating and Bleiman 1979 : 165). ¹

Looking again at the August 1974 MORI survey, it is not clear how attitudes to devolution relate to changing patterns of party support. Whilst it does ascertain respondents' views on devolution, and their party preferences if a general election were held immediately, there is no question regarding their vote in February 1974, or in earlier elections. At a first glance, the evidence for strong support for devolution seems sparse. Without prompting, only 6.9 per cent of respondents mentioned the creation of a Scottish Parliament/Assembly as the most important issue, behind inflation (33.1 per cent), unemployment (17.3 per cent), and North Sea Oil (8.9 per cent), and just ahead of strikes (6.6 per cent), balance of payments (5.9 per cent), and housing (5.0 per cent). Of those who mentioned a (p. 186 ) Scottish Parliament/Assembly as the most important issue, 60 per cent were SNP supporters, the remainder split between Conservative and Labour.

According to Rose, Labour concern was sparked by a question presenting three options for Scottish constitutional reform:

• q. 11c.…would you personally like to see…
•  A completely independent Scottish Parliament separate from England (20.8 per cent)
•  A Scottish Assembly part of Britain but with substantial powers (58.1 per cent)
•  No change from the present system (17.2 per cent)
•  Don't know (3.7 per cent)

But as Rose notes, the evidence illustrated by this response is ‘ambiguous’, since the question of ‘substantial’ powers is highly subjective (Rose 1982 : 189). The question itself was asked as a follow‐up to one presenting more detailed options:

q. 11a. For running Scotland as a whole which of these alternatives would you prefer, overall?

•  Leave things as they are at present (10.3 per cent)
•  Keep things much the same as they are now but make sure the needs of Scotland are  better understood by the Government (17.2 per cent)
•  Keep the present system but allow more decisions to be made in Scotland (26.6 per  cent)
•  Have a new system of governing Scotland so that as many decisions as possible are  made in the area (21.7 per cent)
•  Let Scotland take over complete responsibility for running things in Scotland (21.1  per cent)
•  Don't know (2.7 per cent)

Asking the question in this way indicates support for the status quo plus tinkering (the first three options) stands at 54.1 per cent. Support for a devolved assembly with substantial powers (option 4) came from only 21.7 per cent of the respondents. Looking at the 58.1 per cent of respondents who answered q. 11c in favour of a Scottish Assembly, and comparing their views on the more detailed option listed in q. 11a, shows just under a third (32.6 per cent) associating a Scottish Assembly with option 4, a new system of government, and 6.9 per cent associating it with a completely independent assembly. The majority, however, saw a Scottish Assembly as a means of allowing more decisions to be made in Scotland (36.6 per cent) or ensuring the needs of Scotland were better understood (20.2 per cent), whilst maintaining the present system. Tables 8.3 – 8.7 present our reanalysis of that fateful poll.

(p. 187 ) Table 8.3 shows attitudes expressed regarding constitutional reform in Scotland, broken down by party support. Labour supporters are the most widely dispersed across the range of options. Although a majority of Labour supporters favoured a Scottish Assembly, they also had the highest proportion in favour of no change. The SNP vote was clearly skewed towards the independence option, and both the Conservative and Liberal supporters clustered around the range of options offering more Scottish autonomy (p. 188 )

with an Assembly. Respondents who expressed a preference over the party they were likely to vote for at the next general election were also asked if they had definitely made up their mind; 80 per cent of respondents said they had, with the Labour vote appearing solid (82.5 per cent definite). The right‐hand side of Table 8.3 distinguishes between those Labour supporters who said they had definitely made up their minds, and those who were unsure. Whilst the Labour core support appears to be slightly more likely to be against change, and those who are unsure slightly more likely to favour Scottish independence or an Assembly, the differences are not significant when measured using a chi‐squared statistic.

In order to examine the solidity of the Labour and SNP votes, respondents' second preferences were examined (q. 7 If you were not to vote for xxx how would you vote instead?). Table 8.4a shows (reading across) that the SNP was favourite recipient party of other parties' second preferences, although a substantial proportion of both Labour and Conservative sup (p. 189 ) porters declared their support to be non‐transferable. Reading down, it shows, as might be expected, that unsure Labour supporters were much more likely to award a second preference to the SNP than were definite Labour supporters. Voters whose first or second preference was for the SNP were asked whether an SNP vote was mainly a protest vote. Table 8.4b shows that the two categories diverged sharply. Modally, firm SNP supporters denied that it was a protest vote, while second preference SNP supporters believed that it was.

Table 8.5 shows that respondents were unclear about the parties' constitutional position, with one glaring exception. They were overwhelmingly convinced that the SNP stood for independence. However, their beliefs as to the constitutional position of Labour and Conservatives were evenly spread. This was not surprising, as both parties' constitutional positions had recently changed and were internally controversial.

Table 8.6 shows what each group of constitutional choosers would think about a Scottish Assembly if the number of Scottish MPs at Westminster were to be cut, and/or if the post of Secretary of State for Scotland were abolished. The results have to be treated with caution. It was a hypothetical question about remote constitutional matters generating a high proportion of ‘Don't knows’. But it was probably the crucial question in the survey for political reasons. Labour politicians—according to Dalyell ( 1977 : 106–7) they included John Smith—had warned the Scots that they could not have devolution and expect to retain their overrepresentation (McLean 1995 ) in the shape of seventy‐one seats in the House of Commons, in addition to a Secretary of State for Scotland remaining in the Cabinet. Respondents cared more about keeping a Secretary of State than about keeping seventy‐one MPs. Probably the crucial number in Table 8.6 is that 53.2 per cent of those favouring a Scottish Assembly would no longer favour it if the post of Secretary of State were abolished. Within days of these findings, the Dalintober Street ‘compromise’, as Keating and Bleiman ( 1979 : 167) quaintly call it, was to set in stone the pattern of devolution that we now have. Labour's national executive ‘compromised’ by offering the Assembly, that one side wanted, and retaining the seventy‐one MPs and the Secretary of State, as the other side demanded.

‘Rich Scots or Poor Britons’ was one slogan of the SNP oil campaign. Almost as important as the results of Table 8.6 are those of Table 8.7 .

Table 8.7 shows that Labour supporters were less likely to display a ‘unionist’ attitude towards the distribution of government spending and North Sea oil revenue than the population at large. The Labour profile to each of these three questions lies in between the SNP profile and that of Liberal and Conservative supporters, but clearly Labour and SNP voters form one cluster and Conservative and Liberal voters form another. The first cluster believed strongly that ‘profits from North Sea Oil should be kept for (p. 190 )

the benefit of the Scottish people’ and that ‘Scotland gets less than its fair share of economic help from the British government’. The responses to Table 8.7 confirmed how terribly dangerous the SNP oil campaign was to Labour. Labour promoted its own oil policy (viz. to take a majority stake in North Sea oil) with the magnificently ambiguous slogan Make Sure It's Your Oil, Vote Labour. The almost complete segregation of the Scottish and UK media helped. Very few Scottish readers saw papers originating in England—the English broadsheets had trivial circulations in Scotland, and the mass‐market papers all had Scottish editions. Because the Borders are thinly populated, almost nobody in Scotland picked up English broadcasts. BBC broadcasts all emanated from BBC Scotland. As to ITV, there was a very small broadcaster called Border TV, which covered the Scottish Borders, Carlisle, and the Lake District. ² Butler and Kavanagh ( 1975 : 131) suggest that Make Sure It's Your Oil, Vote Labour was only used in Scotland. A Labour party election broadcast in October 1974, screened only in Scotland,

(p. 191 )

repeatedly described the proposed Scottish Assembly as a ‘Parliament…primed by North Sea Oil so that the benefits of oil go to the ordinary working people of Scotland’—somewhat more than was offered by the party's manifesto published in London. (Miller 1980 : 20) ³

A few bemused viewers in Carlisle and Keswick may have realized what Labour was up to; almost nobody else outside Scotland did.

The MORI poll from August 1974 does not give a clear picture of the changing pattern of party support in Scotland, since it only records their political preference at one point in time. More academically useful, although less politically important at the time, is the British Election Study, which was carried out in the aftermath of the October poll. The survey included a special booster survey in Scotland, interviewing 1,178 people (69 per cent of the 1,704 targeted), and asking them a similar range of questions touching on devolution and political attitudes to the MORI poll, but including questions on voting behaviour in 1970 and the two 1974 election. This poll, therefore, allows a more accurate picture of the changing nature of party affiliation in Scotland over this period.

Table 8.8 shows the distribution of party support for each of the three general elections in the early 1970s, as recalled by Scots after the October 1974 election. The figures show a slightly lower recall of voting for the SNP in 1970 than their actual vote share (which was 11.4 per cent, see Table 8.1 ). However, the general shift shown in the responses is roughly in line with what actually happened, showing the SNP steadily gaining; the Labour party losing support between 1970 and February 1974, but holding its vote share between February and October; and the Liberals gaining very slightly between the first and second general elections in the period.

In order to examine how people recorded their changing party votes over the period, the pattern of vote switching/retention is examined in Table 8.9 . The two matrices in Table 8.9 show how party supporters in the 1974 elections had voted in the previous general election, illustrating the inflow of party support from one election to the next. The top row shows that 85.6 per cent of those who said that they voted Conservative in February 1974 said that they voted Conservative in 1970; that 1.5 per cent of those who said that they voted Conservative in February 1974 said that they voted Labour (p. 192 )

in 1970; and so on. The figures suggest that both the Labour and Conservative parties were dependent on their core support, gaining few converts from other parties in each of the 1974 general elections. For the SNP, which gained the most votes over the period examined here, the table indicates that it gained most support in February 1974 from those who had not voted in 1970. It also managed to pull in support from those who had voted Labour in 1970 (22.6 per cent of its February 1974 support) and Conservatives (15.4 per cent). Between February and October 1974 the party gained support mainly from Conservative voters.

The questions in the British Election Study were similar, ⁴ but not identical to those asked in the earlier MORI poll. The pattern of responses shows a similar enthusiasm for some constitutional change that would reflect Scottish concerns. The proportion of people favouring the status quo (8.0 per cent of those who expressed a view) and Scottish independence (21.3 per cent) was very similar to the earlier study. This left a large proportion who wanted better understanding from the London government (26.2 per cent) or more decisions to be made in Scotland (44.5 per cent). Asked if they were in favour of a Scottish Assembly, 82.3 per cent of respondents with an opinion were either very much or somewhat in favour. Again, whilst the concept of a Scottish Assembly undoubtedly had very different implications for respondents, it had an extremely high level of support.

(p. 193 ) The relationship between partisanship and preferences for Scottish constitutional reform is shown in Table 8.10 . This compares the constitutional preferences of those who supported Labour for each of the three elections, the core Labour vote, and who said that they switched from either Labour supporting or another option to voting for SNP in either February or October 1974.

Table 8.10 shows that all those who switched to supporting the SNP favoured some form of constitutional change, but not all of them were in favour of the most extreme option of Scotland running its own affairs. Of those who switched from Labour to SNP between 1970 and February 1974,

(p. 194 ) 60 per cent were in favour of one of the more moderate options, whereas, of the smaller number who switched between February and October 1974, 52 per cent were in favour of the more moderate options. Whilst any conclusions based on such small numbers (only sixty‐five respondents in all) have to be extremely tentative, it does support the view that the Labour commitment to constitutional reform may have had some influence in reducing the number of people who switched to the SNP in October 1974. Whether the Labour party would have lost thirteen seats without its commitment to devolution is hard to say. Miller ( 1980 ), using the recall and perception data from the 1974 BES (our Tables 8.8 and 8.10 ), estimates that Labour would have lost fifteen seats had it not moved (in Scotland only) closer to the SNP position than did the Conservatives. However, his method necessarily involves heroic extrapolation and his estimate cannot be robust.

Change Over Time in Scotland

Table 8.11 gives a time series for constitutional options in Scotland, drawn from six surveys conducted between 1970 and 1979. Inevitably, differences in question wording cloud interpretation, but the overall picture is clear, especially if the first pair, and the second pair, of options are grouped. The second pair have to be grouped because option 4 was not always asked, and the pattern of response when it was not suggests that its supporters then defaulted to option 3 and not to option 5. The first pair should also be grouped as ‘Keep things much the same but more govt understanding’ is constitutionally no different from ‘leave as they are’. (Indeed, given option 2, it is hard to understand why any attentive respondent chose option 1. People who wanted less government understanding, presumably.) Support for the status quo varies only from a low of 26.7 per cent in 1970 to a high of around 34 per cent in October 1974 and 1979. Support for independence is in the remarkably narrow range from 21.0 per cent (1979) to 24.1 per cent (1975). It thus varies much less than does support for the SNP (Table 8.2 ). By subtraction, support for intermediate options is also very stable.

Table 8.11 shows that the Conservatives were on safe ground when they abandoned their support for Scottish devolution in 1975. As related in Chapter 7 they had been the first of the major parties to swing toward devolution, with their Declaration of Perth in 1968. However, the accession of Margaret Thatcher to the leadership in 1975 swung them back. An instinctive unionist, Mrs Thatcher took constitutional advice from the Oxford political scientist Nevil Johnson. Johnson, a believer in the Diceyan sovereignty of Parliament, was bitterly opposed to the Labour Government's devolution plans (Thatcher 1995 : 324; Johnson 1980 , 2004). Abandoning the (p. 195 ) Declaration of Perth, as Mrs Thatcher did in 1975, fitted her own constitutional instincts. The Conservatives' private pollster, ORC, provided her with evidence that it did not put their vote at risk (see Table 8.11 , col. 5).

There is a long‐standing belief that Scots are more left‐wing than English people, and that Scottish support for devolution has been linked with that. To be sure, devolution attracted some left‐wing Scots because it held the promise that they could develop more left‐wing—or at any rate more statist—policies than their counterparts in England, as has happened since 1997.

For two decades Professor William Miller and associates have been studying the hypothesis that the Scots are more left‐wing than the English. They have never found any evidence for it. Their most recent evidence comes from massive paired samples of the British (n = 2060) and Scottish (n = 1255) people in 1996. The samples overlapped—255 of the Scots were also in the British sample (Miller et al. 1997: 371, 464–6). Table 8.12 shows the differences between social attitudes in Scotland and in Britain.

It is very interesting that the only issue on which Scottish opinion is to the left of British by as many as 10 points out of 200 is ‘sympathy for the socially disadvantaged’. That is a core theme of Scotland's second‐greatest thinker, Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), whose key concept is ‘sympathy’. Most Scots have not read Adam Smith. But they have read his popularizer Robert Burns, the last stanza of whose ‘To a Louse’ summarizes Smith in two lines: O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!

This is not to deny that there was a big shift in Scottish opinion between 1979, when the majority in favour of devolution was too small for it to be enacted, and 1997, when both the Parliament and its tax‐raising powers were

(p. 196 ) approved by comfortable majorities. But it is wrong to read that shift as reflecting something fundamental about Scottish culture or attitudes.

And to a Lesser Extent Wales

It has ever been the fate of Wales to be tacked on to other people's devolution plans, usually with the condescending phrase ‘and to a lesser extent Wales’ popping up in the description. The majority report of the Kilbrandon committee proposed an elected assembly for Wales: ‘some members would give it legislative functions and others deliberative and advisory functions’. The minority report by Lord Crowther‐Hunt and Alan Peacock proposed seven ‘Assemblies and Governments’ of equal standing, one each for Scotland, Wales, and five regions of England (Cmnd 5460, para. 1217; Cmnd 5460‐I, para. 16).

Table 8.13 gives the only time series we have been able to construct for constitutional preference in Wales. Typically for its ‘lesser extent’ status, far fewer opinion surveys were conducted there than in Scotland, so unfortunately we are unable to track the dramatic move in opinion that occurred between February 1974 and 1979.

(p. 197 )

As already noted, Wales began the 1970s with one of the lowest levels of nationalist support of any GB region. Despite the existence of Plaid Cymru (‘Party of Wales’), the Kilbrandon cross‐section found fewer separatists in Wales than in East Anglia or southern England. By February 1974 devolution is more popular, although the level of support for ‘Wales should completely run its own affairs’ is less than half that for Scotland, and the status quo support is double the Scottish level. The 1979 survey was taken after the devolution scheme in the Wales Act 1978 had been rejected by a 4–1 margin in the referendum of March 1979. ‘No change’ then got, at 71.4 per cent, (p. 198 ) more than double the share of the vote that it ever got, in any territory of Great Britain, in any year of the decade.

The absence of surveys between 1974 and 1979 robs us of detail but not of the big picture. Many accounts confirm that Wales was divided politically and socially between the rural, chapel‐going, Welsh‐speaking north and west and the rest of Wales (e.g., Madgwick et al. 1973 ; Philip 1975 ). The Plaid Cymru vote was concentrated heavily in the former, which accounts for only about 20 per cent of the population of Wales. It has always been more a cultural nationalist party, and less a party of economic grievance, than the SNP. Accordingly, the very features of Welsh devolution that appealed most to its Welsh‐speaking supporters appealed least to its non‐Welsh‐speaking opponents. Both saw it as an institution that would preserve (privilege) the language and culture of north Wales. In 1979, the ‘Yes’ campaigners' Welsh‐language publicity stated that a ‘Yes’ vote would protect the special status of the language. Its English‐language publicity denied that it would give Welsh speakers any special status (Ellis 1979 ). Unfortunately for the ‘Yes’ campaign, the former perception leaked into anglophone Wales.

According to the Kilbrandon Survey in Wales, there was some association between attitudes towards constitutional change and those respondents who spoke Welsh. This was particularly apparent when Welsh speakers were divided into fluent and non‐fluent speakers (Table 8.14a ). Fluent Welsh speakers were more likely to favour a new system of regional government or the option of letting government take over complete responsibility. The Welsh Election Survey of 1979, which included 242 Welsh‐speaking respondents (out of a total of 858, or 28.2 per cent), also showed a distinction in attitudes towards devolution between Welsh speakers and other respondents (Table 8.14b ). In this survey there was little difference between the attitudes of fluent and non‐fluent Welsh speakers. Welsh speakers were more likely to favour the reform options than non‐Welsh speakers. Whilst over half of the Welsh speakers in the sample (55.8 per cent) lived in the ‘North‐West and West’ region of Wales, no distinctive regional effect on attitudes towards devolution is evident from the survey data. However, the linguistic basis of Plaid Cymru is clear. Table 8.15 shows that Plaid Cymru gained almost all its support from Welsh‐speaking respondents (who comprised 80 per cent of the total number of supporters). As Table 8.16 shows, the Plaid Cymru supporters were the subset of all Welsh speakers with very strong pro‐devolution views.

The Rebirth of Devolution

The story of the rebirth of devolution is told elsewhere in this book. Was it driven by public opinion, or did the elites drive it? Much earlier in this book (p. 199 )

(Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1 ) we showed the time‐series for the ‘Moreno question’, which asks people to choose between their local (English/Welsh/Scottish) identity and a British identity. That series shows that in Scotland a high and stable 60 per cent or more of respondents prefer one of the more Scottish self‐descriptions to a neutral or more British one. In Wales, the (p. 200 ) proportion choosing a more Welsh identity rose sharply (just) in time for, and after, the 1997 referendum and the creation of the National Assembly. In England, the proportion choosing ‘English’ rather than ‘British’ seems to be slowly rising, perhaps in reaction to devolution elsewhere in the UK, but it is not a majority choice (Figure 1.1 ).

This evidence postdates the rebirth of devolution among political elites, which can be dated back to the creation of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 (Chapter 7 ). Unfortunately, we cannot prove cause and effect. The first measurement of attitudes to the Moreno question was in 1992. At the previous general election in 1987, nobody had thought to ask the Moreno question, so we simply cannot say whether a popular groundswell of devolutionism antedated the creation of the Convention. Our best guess is that there was a groundswell of grumpiness, as people in Scotland and Wales became aware that a government that they had not voted for introduced the highly unpopular Poll Tax. But, if public opinion in 1989 resembled that in the 1970s, it is unlikely that there was a strong demand for Scottish autonomy.

If the return of devolution to Scotland in 1989 was elite‐led, it is fair to add that by 1997 the elites had the people with them. By the 1997 referendum campaign, a peak of 37 per cent of Scottish respondents wished to see Scotland independent from the UK. Most of those, however, voted for, not against, the offer of a devolved parliament (SNP fundamentalists were unable to convince many people to vote against the Scottish Parliament in the hope of getting Scottish independence later on). By the time of the first Scottish Parliament election in 1999, the Scots were more satisfied with what they had. Support for independence had dropped to 26 per cent, and over half (51 per cent) of respondents most preferred what they had got, namely a Scottish Parliament with tax‐varying powers (Paterson et al. 2001 : Table 6.1 ).

(p. 201 ) The place where opinion changed most between 1979 and 1999 was Wales. This went in two distinct steps, the first leading up to the referendum in 1997, and the second from there to the first National Assembly for Wales election in 1999. Whereas in 1979 support for a Welsh Assembly was highly localized to Welsh speakers and Plaid Cymru supporters (Tables 8.15 and 8.16 ), by 1997 it had spread to supporters of all parties except the Conservatives. The biggest movement was among Labour identifiers. In 1979, Labour was perceived as divided (because it was). In 1997, although there were still Labour antis, almost everybody in Wales perceived Labour, as well as Plaid Cymru, as favouring a ‘Yes’ the Conservatives, again correctly, as favouring a ‘No’ and they tended not to know where the Liberals stood (Wyn Jones and Trystan 1999 , Table 4.3). This sufficed to bring the majority of Labour identifiers who voted into the ‘Yes’ camp (ibid.: Table 4.1 ), and hence to the knife‐edge ‘Yes’ victory. Table 8.17 shows how, although fluent Welsh speakers were still the core of the ‘Yes’ vote, the ‘Yes’ camp, unlike in 1979, made significant inroads into the rest of the Welsh electorate. However, only the higher turnout of Welsh speakers than of non‐Welsh speakers delivered a ‘Yes’ on the night.

The second step‐change took place from 1997 to 1999, and it was probably concentrated in the immediate run‐up to the first National Assembly election in 1999. As related above, Labour decided to introduce an Additional Member System of proportional representation in both Scotland and Wales. In Scotland, Donald Dewar's statecraft involved protecting the UK from an SNP majority in the Scottish Parliament—that could (can) only arrive if the SNP attain nearly 50 per cent of the vote. In Wales, Ron Davies' unacknowledged statecraft was probably to avoid a National Assembly with an overwhelming Labour majority in terms of seats, which might in itself have reduced the legitimacy of the National Assembly. However, Labour was so hegemonic in Wales that everybody expected it to control the National Assembly comfortably even with PR. In the event, there was a ‘quiet

(p. 202 ) earthquake’ that deprived Labour of an overall majority of seats. The results are at Table 11.2 . More detailed analysis (Trystan et al. 2003 ) shows that Plaid Cymru benefited from differential turnout (like the ‘Yes’ side in the 1997 referendum). Trystan et al.'s logistic regression model, shown in simplified form in Table 8.18 , reveals the social grounding of Welsh politics.

Table 8.18 shows that attitudes to constitutional futures and national identity were the best predictors of a vote for Plaid Cymru. Welsh speakers were less inclined to vote for any of the other parties than were non‐Welsh speakers. Otherwise, the strongest predictors of vote for or against the two big UK parties were UK orientations, such as social class (significant only for Conservative voting) and attitudes to UK issues. As often, Liberal voters were harder to characterize, although the non‐Welsh born were significantly more pro‐Liberal than the Welsh‐born.

In both Scotland and Wales, the second devolved assembly elections, in 2003, had a feel of a return to ‘normal politics’. In Scotland, support for independence had dwindled from its peak of 37 per cent at the time of the referendum to 26 per cent, while support for the new status quo of a Scottish Parliament with taxing powers was the modal preference, at 48 per cent. In Wales, too, the status quo was the modal preference—41 per cent opting for an assembly without taxation or law‐making powers. It was rather grumpy support. The blissful dawn of both assemblies had turned into grumbling; and most people by 2003 believed (once again) that the UK Government had more influence than the devolved assembly on how their country was governed. Most Scots and Welsh respondents thought that their assembly had made no difference to the quality of their government, although those who

(p. 203 ) thought it had got better outnumbered those who thought it had got worse by about 20 percentage points (Curtice 2004 , from Figures 9.6–9.8). In both countries, the nationalist parties fell back sharply in the 2003 elections (Tables 11.1 and 11.2 ).

Conclusion: Giving Them Devolution versus Giving Them More

We can now return to the questions posed at the start of this chapter. To answer them, we must return to the 1970s, when the present stance of the UK parties was set in stone, and the events that were to lead to devolution set in train, even though they then stalled for eighteen years.

Did devolution emerge as a consequence of changing attitudes, or changing party alignments? Attitudes to devolution did not change much in England or in Scotland between 1970 and 1979. In Wales, they became weakly more favourable and then strongly more hostile. Devolution did not emerge as a consequence of changing attitudes. It did emerge as a consequence of changing party alignments. Those changed in Scotland only, in the shape of a rise in SNP support at the expense mostly of the Conservatives but also of Labour. But they induced government proposals for devolution to both Scotland and Wales.

How much was support for devolution a proxy for other (temporary?) political attitudes (such as disillusionment with the main parties)? Was support for SNP a result of its stand on independence, or a more general shift away from Labour and Conservative Parties? In relation to Scotland and the SNP we can take these questions together. Our tables show that the answers are ‘a proxy for other political attitudes’ and ‘a more general shift away from Labour and Conservative Parties’. That shift was fuelled by an increase in the demand not for independence, but for North Sea Oil proceeds. Labour and the Conservatives moved (the former in Scotland only) in a Downsian way towards the policy position of the SNP on this. Table 8.7 shows that such a move may have been necessary for Labour to save its position.

In relation to Plaid Cymru, and support for devolution in Wales we have limited survey evidence for this period (because of the small size of the 1979 Welsh sample) and must also rely on other sources (McLean 1976 , 1977 ). All aggregate evidence suggests that support for devolution and for Plaid Cymru were very highly correlated with each other and with the ability to speak Welsh. Therefore, for Wales, support for devolution was a proxy for other (at root cultural) attitudes, and was not part of a more general shift away from the Labour or Conservative Parties. Plaid Cymru did score some by‐election victories in anglophone Wales, which may have fitted the SNP pattern, but did not sustain those gains.

(p. 204 ) Was there a significant difference between attitudes in England and those in Scotland and Wales with regard to regional self‐government? For Wales, see the previous paragraph. Between England and Scotland, the answer is ‘No’. Although the only survey where the numbers for the English regions are large enough to be worth reporting in full is the Kilbrandon Survey (Table 8.1 ), Table 8.14 adds some suggestive details from the 1979 BES cross‐section.

Table 8.19 reports the constitutional preferences for Scotland and Wales of the people of those territories, of England, and of the English regions that border on Scotland and Wales. The Northern Region of England was the only one to border Scotland. ⁵

The West Midlands is the English region with the longest border with Wales. The cases differ sharply. Respondents in the Northern Region were distinctly hostile to Scottish devolution, unlike those in Scotland or in

(p. 205 ) England as a whole. This probably reflects the local politics of the devolution defeat in 1977 and Northern complaints of unfair treatment (Guthrie and McLean 1978 ). They also disliked devolution for Wales. In contrast, respondents in the West Midlands were keener on devolution or independence for Wales than were the Welsh.

The 1974 offer of devolution to Scotland and Wales was double overkill. The offer to Wales was not justified by anything in Welsh public opinion, as the Kilbrandon Commission's own opinion research showed. The offer to Scotland was well founded, from the perspective of Labour Party statecraft. However, it created constitutional problems that have still not been resolved. Perhaps it achieved nothing that the tripartisan willingness to siphon off North Sea oil revenue into Scottish public expenditure would not have sufficed to achieve. It is dangerous to form policy while ignoring (1970) or overinterpreting (1974) the survey evidence that you have gone to the trouble of collecting.

None of this implies that the grant of devolution in 1998 was trivial, nor that there is any great likelihood of a reversal. Devolution is here to stay. If the settlement unwinds, the reason will probably be some mixture of representational (Chapter 9 ) or fiscal (Chapter 10 ) instability. To these we must now turn. (p. 206 )