The
Scottish National Party (SNP) ( ; ) is a
centre-left nationalist political party which
campaigns for
Scottish
independence. In the last few decades, the SNP has normally
polled the second highest number of votes for a
political party in Scotland.
However, the
European
Parliament election, 2009 saw the party top the poll with
almost 100,000 votes more than the
Scottish Labour Party.
As a result of the
2007 elections,
it is the largest party in the Scottish Parliament
, and is running a minority administration in the Scottish Government. The SNP is
to propose the
Scottish
referendum bill 2010 to the Parliament in order to bring about
its flagship policy of independence via a referendum in November
2010.
The SNP
holds 47 of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament but failed to gain the support of Scottish Labour,
the Liberal Democrats or the
Conservatives as a result of
its pro-Scottish Independence
policy, preventing them from forming a majority government. The party also hold 2
of 6 Scottish seats in the European Parliament
, 7 of 59 Scottish seats in the UK Parliament
, and 364 of 1,224 Councillors in local government, helping form 12
out of 32 local administrations.
History
The SNP was formed in 1934 from the merger of the
National Party of Scotland and
the
Scottish Party. Professor Douglas
Young, who was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1942
to 1945 fought for the Scottish people to refuse conscription and
his activities were popularly vilified as undermining the British
war effort against the Nazis. Young was imprisoned for refusing to
be conscripted.
The SNP first won a parliamentary seat at the Motherwell
by-election in 1945, but Dr Robert
McIntyre MP lost the seat at the general election three months
later. They next won a seat in 1967, when
Winnie Ewing was the surprise winner of a
by-election in the
previously safe
Labour seat of
Hamilton. This
brought the SNP to national prominence, leading to the
establishment of the
Kilbrandon
Commission.
The high point in UK General Elections thus
far was when the SNP polled almost a third of all votes in Scotland
at the October 1974
general election and returned 11 MPs to Westminster
, to date the most MPs it has had. The SNP is
unusual in that the brand of nationalism it reflects is left wing
and not right wing. Scholars of nationalism, like Eric Hobsbawm,
cite Scottish nationalism as being unique in its character by not
conforming to the general characteristics that tend to define the
phenomenon.
Party organisation
The SNP consists of local branches of party members. Those branches
then form an association in the constituency they represent (unless
there is only one branch in the constituency, in which case it
forms a constituency branch rather than a constituency
association). There are also eight regional associations, to which
the branches and constituency associations can send
delegates.
The SNP's policy structure is developed at its annual national
conference and its regular national council meetings. There are
also regular meetings of its national assembly, at which detailed
discussion (but not finalising) of party policy takes place.
The party has an active
youth wing as well as a
student wing.
There is also an
SNP Trade Union
Group. There is an independently-owned monthly newspaper,
The Scots
Independent, which is highly supportive of the
party.
The SNP's leadership is vested in its National Executive Committee
(NEC) which is made up of the party's elected office bearers and 10
elected members (voted for at conference). The SNP parliamentarians
(Scottish, Westminster and European) and councillors have
representation on the NEC, as do the Trade Union Group, the youth
wing and the student wing.
According to accounts filed with the
Electoral Commission for the year
ending 2008, the party had a membership of 15,097 in 2008, up from
9,450 in 2003. In 2004 the party had income of approximately
£1,300,000 (including
bequests of just under
£300,000) and expenditure of about £1,000,000.
Policy platform
The SNP's policy base is, by and large, in the mainstream European
social democratic mould. For
example, among its policies are a commitment to
unilateral nuclear
disarmament,
progressive
personal taxation and the eradication of
poverty,
free state
education including support grants for
higher education students and a pay
increase for nurses.
It is also committed to an independent Scotland being a full
member state of
the European Union, to the country
joining the single European currency at the
appropriate exchange rate and is
against membership of NATO
(however
this remains controversial).
Contrary to the expectations of many outside the party, the SNP is
not expressly
republican, and its
general view is that this is an issue secondary to that of Scottish
independence. Many SNP members are republicans, however, and both
the party student and youth wings are expressly so.
The SNP is committed to an independent Scotland within the
Commonwealth of Nations.
In August 2009 as part of its third legislative term in the
Scottish Parliament, the Government proposes to debate the
Scottish referendum bill 2010,
which would set out a planned referendum for November 2010 on the
issue of Scottish independence. It was not however expected to
pass, due to opposition from all the major opposition parties in
the Parliament.
Party ideology
Although it is has a representative majority of the moderate
left-of-centre politicians, this has not always been the case.
Almost from the party's foundation there have been internal
ideological tensions. This was largely a product of the way in
which the left-of-centre
National Party of Scotland
amalgamated with the right-of-centre
Scottish Party. Nowadays, ideological
tensions within the SNP have been partially resolved.
However, by the 1960s, the party was starting to become defined
ideologically. It had by then established a National Assembly which
allowed for discussion of policy and was producing papers on a host
of policy issues that could be described as
social democratic. Also, the emergence of
William Wolfe (universally known as
Billy) as a leading figure played a huge role in the SNP defining
itself as a left-of-centre
social-democratic party. He recognised the
need to do this to challenge the dominant political position of the
Scottish Labour Party.
He achieved this in a number of ways: establishing the SNP Trade
Union Group; promoting left-of-centre policies; and identifying the
SNP with labour campaigns (such as the
Upper-Clyde Shipbuilders
Work-in and the attempt of the workers at the Scottish
Daily Express to run as a
cooperative). It was during Wolfe's
period as SNP leader in the 1970s that the SNP became clearly
identified as a social-democratic political party.
There were some ideological tensions in the 1970s SNP. The party
leadership under Wolfe was determined to stay on the left of the
Scottish political spectrum and
be in a position to challenge Labour. However, the party's MPs,
mostly representing seats won from the
Conservatives, were less keen to
have the SNP viewed as a left-of-centre alternative to Labour, for
fear of losing their seats back to the Conservatives.
There were further ideological and internal struggles after 1979
with the
79 Group attempting to move the
SNP further to the left, away from being what could be described a
'social-democratic' party, to an expressly 'socialist' party. 79
Group members including current leader,
Alex Salmond, were expelled from the party.
This produced a response in the shape of the
Campaign for Nationalism in
Scotland from those who wanted the SNP to remain a 'broad
church', apart from arguments of left vs. right.
The 1980s saw the SNP further define itself as a party of the left,
for example running campaigns against the
poll tax. It developed this platform to the
stage it is at now: a clear, moderate, centre-left political party.
This has itself not gone without internal criticism from the left
of the party who believe that in modern years the party has become
too moderate.
The ideological tensions inside the SNP are further complicated by
the arguments between
gradualists and
fundamentalists. In essence,
gradualists seek to advance Scotland to independence through
further devolution, in a 'step-by-step' strategy. They tend to be
in the moderate -left grouping, although much of the
79 Group was gradualist in approach. However, this
79 Group gradualism was as much a reaction against the
fundamentalists of the day, many of whom believed the SNP should
not take a clear left or right position.
The position of fundamentalists within the SNP is further
complicated by the fact that modern fundamentalists are unlike the
old-style. They tend to be on the left of the party, critical of
both the gradualist approach to independence and what they perceive
as a moderation of the party's socio-economic policy
portfolio.
This grouping of "neo-fundamentalists" have their roots within the
camp of the former high-profile Labour Party MP
Jim Sillars who left Labour to form the
short-lived Scottish Labour Party in the 1970s (it had no
connection with the UK Labour Party or the current Scottish Labour
group in the Scottish Parliament). Sillars eventually joined the
SNP, winning the Govan, Glasgow, by-election in 1988 to become an
SNP MP. He lost the Westminster seat at the 1992 general election
and expressed his disappointment by calling the Scottish people
'Ninety minute patriots'.
European Free Alliance
The SNP retains close links with
Plaid
Cymru and
MPs of both parties co-operate
closely with each other.
They work as a single group within the
House of
Commons
, and were involved in joint campaigning during the
2005 General Election
campaign. Both are in the European Free Alliance (EFA), which
works with the European Green
Party to form a grouping in the European Parliament: the Greens - European Free
Alliance. Although there is no coalition in the Scottish
Parliament (the SNP having run a minority government since May
2007) the Scottish Greens supported the appointment of the
government under an agreement which also specified areas of common
policy and gave the Greens input to the budget process and
convenorship of the parliamentary committee on transport,
infrastructure and climate change.
Ministers and spokesmen
Party leaders
Party leaders in the Scottish Parliament
Electoral performance
Criticism
Accusations of anglophobia
The SNP have been charged with being "
Anglophobic". In 2000, the Labour party said
that two SNP members of the Scottish Parliament were anti-English
after they "registered their support for Germany's (2006 Football
World Cup) bid on its official website".
SNP's German support condemned The SNP responded that
they "have no position on where the World Cup is held" and that it
was "silly to describe the website entry as anti-English".
In 1999, the comedian
Billy Connolly,
a staunch Labour Party supporter, was quoted as saying, "the
Scottish Parliament is a joke"; he also claimed that "this new
racism in Scotland, this anti-Englishness" was "entirely their [the
SNP's] fault".
UK Scots 'anti-English' - survey The SNP
responded that Scots "are enthusiastic about the parliament and
will dismiss his absurd remarks about the SNP for the nonsense they
are." The SNP has fielded English and English-born candidates, such
as
Mike Russell.
Prominent figures in Scottish politics such as Labour's
George Foulkes, Baron
Foulkes of Cumnock and the Liberal Democrats'
Jamie Stone (and subsequently
Danny Alexander) have publicly apologised
for calling the SNP "xenophobic". SNP MSP
Ian
McKee has by contrast pointed out his own status in the
Scottish Parliament chamber as an Englishman as evidence of there
being no such anti-English feeling. Indeed, McKee is one of six
English SNP MSPs, along with other prominent figures such as Mike
Russell and Christine Grahame.
Accusations of 'cash for policies'
The party has been criticised over a £500,000 donation from the
transport businessman
Brian Souter. One
month later, in April 2007, the SNP's commitment (made at the
party's 2006 conference) to re-regulate the
bus network was not included in their
2007 manifesto, although the SNP denies any direct link..
Opposition politicians suggested that the donation and policy shift
were linked and that it was a case of "cash for policies".
Brian Souter went on to make a further
donation of £125,000 to the SNP, making him their single biggest
donor.
Souter made approaches to the SNP government
for a £3 million subsidy for his company, Stagecoach, to develop a hovercraft service between Kirkcaldy
and Portobello
in Scotland. The service had already
received subsidy from the previous Labour administration for the
pilot scheme, but was put on hold pending "clarification" of the
public sector's involvement.
See also
References
- Independence SNP - Scottish National Party
- BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | SNP begins coalition
discussions
- Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780
- SNP's membership surges by 60%,
The
Scotsman, 1 January 2009
- The Scottish National Party at Ask.com
- The Scotsman
- The Scottish Parliament - Official Report
- SNP under attack after bus U-turn
- SNP accused of dumping bus plan to please
millionaire backer
- SNP faces hovercraft dust-up
- SNP donor in £3.3m hovercraft subsidy plea
- BBC NEWS | Scotland | Edinburgh, East and Fife |
Row over Forth hovercraft freeze
Further reading
- The Flag in the Wind, by John MacCormick, 1955
- The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power, edited by Gerry
Hassan, Edinburgh University
Press 2009, ISBN 978 0 7486 39918 ( article in the Sunday Times Scotland, 4 October
2009)
- Scotland Lives: the Quest for Independence, by
Billy Wolfe, 1973
- Scotland: the Case for Optimism, by Jim Sillars, 1985
- SNP:The History of the Scottish National Party, by
Peter Lynch, 2002
- Stop the World; The Autobiography of Winnie Ewing, 2004
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