The General Election where the SNP came of age

Regular readers will know that I don’t normally write about events that occurred less than 50 years ago, but the election on Thursday, October 10, 1974 is on the cusp of 50 and was a genuinely historic event for Scotland in particular because of the performance of the SNP and because devolution was a major issue in the campaign.

It was also a huge turning point in Britain electoral history, as the House of Commons changed from being totally dominated by the Conservatives and Labour – from 1950 to 1970 they had averaged 92% of the vote between them – to a multi-party presence which we still “enjoy” or “suffer”, depending on your point of view, to this day.

The SNP had risen from being frankly an amateurish fringe party in the 1950s to winning the Hamilton by-election in 1967 and then winning their first seat at a General Election in 1970 when Donald Stewart defeated Labour’s incumbent Malcolm Macmillan in the Western Isles constituency. Winnie Ewing lost her Hamilton seat at that election, but for the first time, the party polled more than 300,000 votes – some 11% of the popular vote – and that made the Conservatives and Labour take notice of the SNP’s increasing political presence.

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By the time it came to the General Election of February 1974, the SNP had doubled their numbers in the Commons thanks to Margo MacDonald’s stunning upset in the November 1973 by-election in Glasgow Govan. She held on to the seat for only three months but in that February election in 1974, the SNP ran a superb campaign with the slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil”.

Labour and the Tories tried to downplay its significance but privately they conceded that the slogan and the reality that it signified – that Scotland would not get its proper share of the North Sea bonanza while still in the Union – played a huge part in the SNP’s successes that February.

From virtually nowhere just a few years previously, the SNP’s share of the vote rose to 22% with more than 633,000 votes cast for the party.

Of course in the mad fix that is the first-past-the-post system, the SNP went up to just seven MPs, but that number included some serious heavy hitters such as future party leader Gordon Wilson in Dundee East who, as chair of the SNP’s oil committee, was credited with coming up with the campaign slogan.

The front page of the Telegraph & Argus on October 11  1974Other new MPs included the broadcaster and journalist George Reid, who would later become the presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament, and the superb orator Douglas Henderson, while Winnie Ewing re-entered Parliament as MP for Moray and Nairn.

Labour won that February election but had no overall majority in a hung parliament, and after Tory leader Edward Heath lost the support of the Ulster Unionists over the signing of the Sunningdale Agreement with the Irish Republic, he had to try and do a deal with the 14-strong Liberals under Jeremy Thorpe to stay in power.

Thorpe demanded electoral reform as the price of his party’s support but Heath was reluctant. No arrangement could be made and the removal vans were soon spotted outside No 10 Downing Street as Heath left, to be replaced by Harold Wilson, winning a second term as prime minister after having won two elections during his first period from 1964 to 1970.

It wasn’t so much a case of Labour winning but more about the Conservatives losing, though Wilson cleverly promised a referendum on the continuation of the UK’s membership of the common market.

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Wilson sorted out some of the issues which had skewered Heath, including dealing with the miners that had led to Heath fighting on a “who governs Britain” platform. Wilson was thus able to end the hugely unpopular “Three-Day Week” and the economy also slightly improved over the summer of 1974, though inflation remained high. It was still a surprise and a risk when in September, he decided to go to the country to seek a mandate to govern.

Labour basically fought a campaign on wanting to continue the work they had started, while Heath fought hard as he knew another election loss would end his career. Despite Labour’s deep split over Europe, the wily Wilson was able to divert attention to Tory failures and the opinion polls forecast a Labour win, which duly happened – albeit by an overall majority of just three,

Devolution was much discussed, with Wilson promising to introduce legislation for a Scottish Assembly. He also campaigned in Scotland and went on a memorable walkabout in Leith.

The SNP, meanwhile, ramped up the “It’s Scotland’s Oil” campaign and many years later, Tam Dalyell admitted it had really hit home on the doorsteps which is why Labour in particular avoided talking about it.

But there was even greater proof of how scared the Labour government was of the oil issue and that was the Government’s suppression of the McCrone Report which stated how rich an independent Scotland with control of its oil wealth would be. The truth of that suppression has only emerged in recent years.

Even without the report, the SNP still won 30% of the popular vote in that October election and the SNP had 11 MPs going to the Common, making them the fourth-largest party in the House with only two MPs fewer than the Liberals.

The first of what would be several Tory reversals in Scotland saw them lose five seats to have only 16 MPs in Scotland – this by the party which in 1955 had secured a majority of the popular vote in the country, the only time that happened in the 20th century.

With Plaid Cymru winning three seats and the Northern Irish vote split, the era of multi-party politics had begun and the Conservatives were on the back foot in Scotland. Waiting in the wings, however, was a certain Margaret Thatcher …