A Day of Destiny (copyright all media outlets)

On the day of Scotland's independence referendum, here's an extract from my book Crisis? What Crisis? remembering the 1979 referendums in Scotland and Wales:

The issue of devolution dominated the last period of James Callaghan's administration. Support for some form of separate legislatures in Scotland and Wales was by now running too high for the Labour government to ignore, while there was pressure too from its parliamentary partners in the Liberal Party, who were long-standing supporters: ‘Unlike the other two parties,’ Jeremy Thorpe had pledged in the 1970 election campaign, ‘I would see that Scotland and Wales had their own parliaments, running all domestic affairs.’

Even the Conservatives, while opposing devolution, were wary of sensibilities north of the border. Back in 1973, in the days of Edward Heath, a proposed set of stamps commemorating great Britons had been amended at the last minute to remove Edward I (‘the Hammer of the Scots’) and to replace him with Henry V; to be on the safe side, Robert the Bruce was also included. And behind the scenes was the fear of another Ulster if some sort of concession were not made. ‘I don’t want them to turn to violence, of course,’ said Michael Foot, ‘but I think it’s quite likely.’

And so the Scotland Act and the Wales Act of 1978 were passed, allowing for the creation of assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff that would take over the functions of the appropriate Whitehall departments, but only when and if referendums in the territories concerned showed a clear majority in favour. And, controversially, that was defined as entailing not simply a majority of those voting, but also the expressed support of 40 per cent of the entire electorate.

This requirement, this one final hurdle for the nationalists to overcome, was not of the government’s making. Desperate to stay in office, Callaghan was keen to appease the MPs of the SNP and Plaid Cymru and to see the devolution proposals through with as few quibbles as possible, but there was considerable disquiet amongst his own backbenchers. In Wales Neil Kinnock, a rising star of Labour, became known for his vociferous denunciations of nationalism, even claiming that there was a ‘linguistic racism’ operating in the principality against non-Welsh-speaking children.

Since the language question was of paramount importance to Plaid – the party’s first manifesto, written in 1925 by John Saunders Lewis, had insisted ‘We can aim at nothing less than to do away with the English language in Wales’ – it was not surprising that he became the target of nationalist attacks, including a 1977 pamphlet titled ‘Neil Kinnock and the Anti-Taffy League’.

A more subtle approach to linguistic sensitivity was displayed in 1974 when Selwyn Lloyd, as speaker of the House of Commons, allowed the two Plaid MPs to swear their oaths of allegiance in Welsh, so long as they also did so in English: ‘I thought that the two members concerned were slightly disappointed that I had deprived them of the chance of a public protest on behalf of the Welsh language,’ he chuckled.

Also opposed to devolution was Tam Dalyell, who, as Labour MP for West Lothian, raised what Enoch Powell promptly dubbed the West Lothian Question: How could it be right to propose that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs sitting in a Westminster Parliament should be able to pass laws affecting the population of England but not their own constituents? And, as a corollary, what was the point of him representing a Scottish constituency if he couldn’t have any influence over domestic affairs there?

When therefore an amendment was placed before Parliament calling for a mandate of 40 per cent of the electorate, there were many Labour MPs inclined to support the idea, seeing it as a reasonable prerequisite for such a major constitutional change, as well as being a way of snatching victory from the jaws of the nationalists. Thirty-four joined the Conservatives in the voting lobbies and ensured that the requirement was passed into law, despite the opposition of their own government. It was to prove a crucial decision in determining the subsequent fate of the Callaghan premiership, though the assumption was still that some form of devolution was probably inevitable and even perhaps, in some quarters, desirable.

‘Thank God they’re going independent,’ reflected Regan in The Sweeney. ‘We’ll be able to put that wall up again.’