19
Labour came into office on 2 May 1997. The White Paper titled Scotland’s Parliament,
sketching the bill and explaining the referendum came out in July. It would have two questions.
The first would ask if the voter supported a parliament as outlined in the White Paper; the second
would ask if the parliament should have the power to vary income taxes by 3%. By then Labour,
the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP agreed to campaign together for a “Yes-Yes” vote in favor
of an affirmative answer to both questions. Pro-devolution strategists, including moderate SNP
leaders, agreed that a unified campaign would be more impressive and cost-effective. A No-No
campaign counselling a No to both questions also started up (called Think Twice). Despite its
best efforts it was unable to find significant supporters who were not implicated with the
Conservative Party (when Thatcher appeared in Glasgow during the campaign to address a
convention of travel agents and argued against devolution, it was generally agreed to be a public
relations disaster for the No-No campaign). What was most striking about the campaign is the
weakness of the No-No camp and the strength of Yes-Yes. The victory for devolution was more
than enough to establish that there was a mandate for devolution in Scotland, and the Parliament
was duly established (the majorities were 74.3% for the establishment of the Parliament, 63.5%
for tax-varying powers).
Summary: the coalition for devolution
It is not particularly novel to argue that Margaret Thatcher was the progenitor of
devolution in Scotland as we have it today (to quote a civil servant’s joke, “Thatcher put the
Great back in Britain but took the United out of Kingdom). The interesting question– and the one
that should determine the nature of generalizable lessons from Scotland’s experience with
devolution– is of what process explains the conversion of Scotland’s regional establishment to
devolution during those years. Was it predominantly the changes in the welfare state? The
electoral threat of the SNP in an alienated electorate? I argue that it was the blanket threat to the
environmental stability and organizational autonomy of regionally organized– Scottish–
organizations that came with the rapid policy changes and “conviction politics’ style of the
Conservative governments from 1979, and particularly after the 1987 election, when the
governments began to alter public services rather than macroeconomic policy or state-owned
enterprises. For regional organizations such as the Scots lawyers, educational policymakers,
medical professional leaders, and small business organizations, the prospect of an autonomous
regional government for Scotland offered a far more congenial environment. Since devolution,
the next section suggests, they have gained just that– a policymaking process that represents
Convention