If Catalonia holds a referendum on independence, it will likely look to Scotland as a guide. Scotland’s existence as an independent state ended in 1707, when the Scottish parliament entered into the Treaty of Union with England.The Treaty dissolved the Scottish parliament and transferred ultimate political authority to London. One Scottish parliamentarian of the time lamented that the day on which the Treaty was put to a vote in the Scottish parliament was “the last day Scotland was Scotland.”
But Scotland “entered the United Kingdom with a distinct institutional trajectory of its own,” and following the union it retained a robust civil society, including its own legal and educational systems, social welfare programs, and established the Presbyterian church. Scots also made significant contributions to the British Empire, which “did not dilute the sense of Scottish identity but strengthened it by powerfully reinforcing the sense of national esteem and demonstrating that the Scots were equal partners in the great imperial mission.”
Although Scottish culture and identity flourished in the United Kingdom and the Empire, Scottish nationalism as a political force largely lay dormant until the 1960s, when the SNP surprised the British establishment by winning a parliamentary by-election. The discovery of oil in the North Sea in 1970 led many nationalists to argue for greater Scottish control over its own resources and revenues and to claim that Scotland could survive economically as an independent state. Diverting the flow of North Sea oil revenues from London to Edinburgh remains a central plank in the SNP’s economic platform.
During the 1970s, in an effort to co-opt Scottish national sentiment and maintain its position as the dominant political party in Scotland, the Labour Party announced plans for the devolution of political authority to Scottish institutions, but its proposal failed to obtain a sufficient number of votes in a 1979 referendum. The issue of devolution was shelved during the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Conservative Party governed the United Kingdom. The Conservatives followed an unabashedly pro-Union line, which alienated many Scottish institutions accustomed to being afforded a wide berth by London and in turn increased Scottish support for autonomy.
When the Labour Party returned to power under Tony Blair in 1997, it promised devolution of powers throughout the United Kingdom, in part to“‘lance the boil’ of independence.” In 1998, the Labour government introduced the Scotland Act, which provided for the creation of a local Scottish parliament. In contrast to the failed devolution referendum of 1979, Scottish voters enthusiastically backed the Scotland Act, and in 1999 the first Scottish Parliament since 1707 met in Edinburgh. Ultimately, the Scotland Act formed part of a broader pattern of devolution that also resulted in the establishment of a Welsh Assembly and, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, a power-sharing government composed of unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland.
Although the Labour Party initially controlled the devolved Scottish Parliament, in the 2007 elections the SNP cut deeply into Labour’s majority, and the SNP’s leader, Alex Salmond, became First Minister in an SNP-led minority government. The SNP’s decisive May 2011 victory pushed independence to the forefront of Scotland’s political agenda. On January 25, 2012, the birthday of the Scottish national poet Robert Burns, Salmond announced plans to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in the autumn of 2014, which would coincide with the 700th anniversary of the victory of Scottish forces over English invaders at the Battle of Bannockburn. The government of Prime Minister David Cameron came out forcefully in opposition to Scottish independence. Nonetheless, in the Edinburgh Agreement reached on October 15, 2012, the British government granted the Scottish Parliament authority to hold a referendum, and the two governments agreed to the ground rules for the referendum process.
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