Learning the lessonS of '79

One of the clearest lessons of the 1979 devolution referendum is that a Yes vote cannot be taken for granted, despite recent opinion polls and the general election result. In January 1979 support for the Scotland Act stood at 64% for to 36% against. Into February, support for devolution declined climbing into the 40% bracket and reaching 50% the day before the referendum.

Those who assume that devolution is the settled will of the Scottish people therefore need to understand that the current distribution of opinion on devolution, independence, and the status quo may change during the referendum campaign itself, despite having appeared fixed for more than a decade. Indeed, recent opinion polls have detected rising support for the status quo.

In addition, though the constitutional debate has featured prominently in the media over the past decade, Yes campaigners should not assume that voters understand the Constitutional Convention's proposals or the details of Labour's future White Paper on devolution. Yes campaigners have only a short time in which to educate the public about proposals for a Scottish parliament let alone mobilise support for devolution itself - particularly because the referendum appears scheduled for early September.

One clear lesson from the 1979 referendum for supporters of change is that the suppression of partisan interests and avoidance of disunity is vital to the Yes campaign. This means that the traditional Labour-SNP conflict must be suspended for the bulk of the campaign. Both parties have to be mature enough to avoid unnecessary conflict, which will benefit only the Conservatives and the No campaigners, and find some means for constructive co-operation.

There is also the question of attracting the independence voters to the double Yes vote. At this stage, it is difficult to predict the SNP's exact role in the referendum campaign. However, it is clear that supporters of independence and SNP voters (who are not always the same thing) have the potential to play a vital role in the Yes coalition. Labour's statements about the incompatibility of devolution and independence during the election campaign have now come back to haunt it.

Claiming that the electoral system for the Scottish parliament was designed to prevent independence and that the devolved parliament would be barred from turning itself into an independent parliament may have seemed like a good idea to appeal to Unionist voters at the election, but they don't look quite so clever now. Both Labour and the Yes camp therefore need to keep offering olive branches to the nationalists, because they are the voters who can be relied upon most to turn out and vote for change in September.

In 1979, Labour tried to go it alone and eschewed a cross-party approach. The party ran its own campaign because it wanted to gain the sole credit for the establishment of a Scottish parliament, prevent the SNP from gaining credibility for propelling the devolution issue, and prevent Labour becoming identified with separatism.

Labour has established its own official Yes campaign - which should help to unify and galvanise the party and neutralise any remaining opponents within Labour's ranks from 1979 - but it is also much more open to cross-party campaigning than in 1979. This situation is a result of the success of the Constitutional Convention in generating co-operation between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the advent of a range of pro-Home Rule groups in the 1990s, and the early establishment of the cross-party Scotland Forward. Each of these developments has contributed to a much more cohesive and less partisan Yes campaign in 1997.

The devolution referendum presents the Conservatives with both problems and opportunities. The recent electoral wipe-out and the need to present a more pragmatic, pro-Scottish face at future elections to a Scottish parliament would appear to have placed a veil over Conservative attempts to fight an unequivocal No campaign in September. However, many Conservatives will certainly campaign against the creation of a Scottish parliament.

They have convinced themselves that devolution is wrong and will see the referendum as an opportunity to hit back at Labour. One thing the Conservatives cannot do in the next campaign with any credibility is to claim that they will institute a better scheme of devolution than Labour. In 1979, Lord Home stated that the Tories were not opposed to devolution, just to Labour's devolution plans, a persistent theme during the Tory campaign. Mrs Thatcher and Francis Pym even promised a constitutional convention on the future government of Scotland. History has shown that such statements were tactical at best and politically dishonest at worst.

Though it has been suggested that current No campaigners might seek to offer something better than the Labour/Liberal Democrat plan for devolution, it is difficult to see how they can offer an alternative. After the past 18 years of unequivocal Conservative opposition to devolution, it will be impossible to call for a No vote through promising that the Conservatives will bring forward more effective devolution proposals than those contained in Labour's White Paper.

The public will simply not believe them, nor should it. The strongest card the Tories could play with any credibility is a promise to increase the powers of the Scottish Grand Committee (again) or devolve more administrative powers to the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. Neither is enough to repeat Lord Home's spoiling tactics in 1979 and both were dismissed by Scottish voters in decisive fashion at the 1997 election.

As the Conservatives are currently in such an ambivalent mood over devolution, largely because of a belated sense of self-preservation, it is difficult to see exactly where the No campaign is going to come from. Business has been a traditional opponent of constitutional change, but, despite occasional flurries of interest, the Scottish business community has adopted a cautious attitude towards devolution. Such caution was based on an expectation that Labour would win the election and make devolution a reality that business would have to accept. Business efforts were therefore put into developing contacts with the Labour Party and seeking to prevent the devolution package from damaging business interests.

The CBI's recent talks with the Government over tax levels for small businesses is a good example of the current business approach to devolution. Though the decision to hold a referendum on devolution and taxation powers created the potential for business to confront the devolution issue more directly, business has not really responded. The scale of Labour's election victory and expectations of a clear Yes vote in the referendum in September would seem to have reinforced business caution over the devolution issue.

The business community's diffidence over devolution is surprising and could seriously disable the No campaign. In 1979, business played an active role in the Scotland Says No campaign. Much of the campaign was organised by the business community with the assistance of major industrialists and Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. Scotland Says No spent around #100,000 on the campaign, which helped the No camp to spend twice as much as the Yes camp during the referendum, and produced a vast amount of material during the campaign.

The September referendum may see a similar situation emerging, with sections of the business community financing campaign offices, telephone canvassing, and poster sites across Scotland. But there seem to be few signs at present that business is prepared to take an active role in the No campaign. If business does get behind a No campaign, then supporters of constitutional change will face a well-financed opponent, though not one with the grassroots networks of Scotland Forward or the political parties.

Whatever type of No campaign emerges, Yes campaigners should be optimistic about their prospects in the devolution referendum. In 1979, there was a majority for the Yes campaign and it was the 40% rule which delivered success to opponents of devolution. Indeed, No campaigners in 1979 always had the comfort of knowing that they didn't have to win the devolution referendum outright, but could use the 40% hurdle to aid their campaign.

However, Scotland has changed considerably since 1979. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are much more firmly in favour of devolution than in the 1970s and Scotland has also seen the emergence of a stronger and more self-confident civic society since the last referendum. Artists, writers, pop stars, and non-party organisations such as Scotland United, Common Clause, Democracy for Scotland, and the Campaign for a Scottish Parliament have all appeared on the political scene to take a place within the constitutional debate. Many of the activists from these organisations, and from the political parties, have coalesced into Scotland Forward.

However, one cannot expect too much of Scotland Forward. It will prove useful in galvanising non-party support for devolution but it cannot operate as effectively as the political parties because it is so new. Scotland Forward has never contested an election and does not have the information, let alone the infrastructure, to compete as effectively as the political parties in support of the Yes campaign.

The organisation has pledged to create its own campaigning organisation to match the parties but it is difficult to see it build a strong and effective organisation in such a short time. Where Scotland Forward will prove useful is in demonstrating the level of cross-party and non-party support for change and launching more imaginative campaigning initiatives that reflect the style and spirit of the campaigning that swept across Scotland between the 1992 general election and the Democracy Day rally in Edinburgh on December 13.

Scotland Forward will also act as a medium for cross-party co-operation: allowing nationalists and pro-devolution Conservatives to make common cause with Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Indeed, it would seem that Scotland Forward will be the medium through which both the SNP and nationalist activists take part in the referendum campaign.

However, it is the political parties which hold the key to mobilising voters in support of the Yes campaign because they have monopolised electoral campaigning and political information on individual voters across Scotland. Scotland has become a permanent electoral battle ground over the past 20 years.

Since 1974 there have been seven general elections, two referendums, four European Parliament elections, six regional elections, six district council elections, and the first elections to the new unitary local authorities. In many of these contests, the political parties have built up detailed information about the electorate. Many Scottish voters will have been canvassed at these elections, with their political preferences logged on to manual and also computerised indexes.

It is the parties who hold the detailed information, skilled personnel, and campaigning infrastructure to conduct the referendum campaign, and how the parties and their activists act during the campaign will prove vital in determining the result. Therefore, it is important to ask questions about the willingness of the parties to invest heavily in the referendum campaign. Will Constituency Labour parties commit time and money to fighting the referendum campaign as they would a normal election, with canvassing, leafleting, and staffing of polling booths?

Will Scottish Liberal Democrats pound the streets of Corstorphine, Hawick, Inverurie, and Lerwick in support of a double Yes vote? And will SNP members, if not leaders, actively seek to mobilise support across Scotland in favour of change? The responses of party leaders and activists and their willingness to get involved will therefore play a key role in the campaign and substantially influence the result.

The Yes campaign is clearly in a much more advantageous position than in 1979. There is no longer to prepare for the campaign and such preparations have already begun. However, delivering devolution through the referendum is likely to remain a hard slog lasting throughout the summer and into early autumn.

The most encouraging feature of the referendum for supporters of change is that Yes campaigners appear to have learned some of the lessons of the 1979 experience and are determined to prevent history repeating itself.

Their biggest obstacles may therefore be ignorance and apathy among a Scottish electorate that has become bored by the constitutional issue because it has dominated politics for so long. Finding ways of making a Scottish parliament seem relevant to voters and communicating a measure of excitement about the changes that such a parliament will deliver in Scotland will therefore be just as important as learning the lessons of 1979.

n Peter Lynch is a lecturer in Politics at Stirling University and author of Minority Nationalism and European Integration (University of Wales Press).