Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

While all of the United Kingdom is governed by the parliament in Westminster (London), Scotland got back its parliament in 1999 and this presides over matters particular to Scotland. I was living in Scotland during the momentous events leading to the re-establishment of the Scottish parliament and here is my personal potted history of the institution. A summarised timeline of events is follows with a further description following that again.

The above picture was taken a few days before the first election to a Scottish parliament since 1707, when the previous parliament voted itself out of existence in dubious circumstances. In that case, bribery was suspected and two Jacobite rebellions followed in 1715 and 1745. The photo showed a banner in front of what was then to be a home, albeit temporary, of the Scottish Parliament: the New College of the University of Edinburgh.

The idea of the banner was to count down the time to the election, facilitated by a referendum of the people on devolution of power from Westminster that was held in September 1997. A previous referendum towards the same end faltered in 1979 because less than the required majority voted in favour of devolution, a constraint added by a beleaguered Labour government trying to appease its backbench MP’s. 40% of the electorate were needed to pass the referendum but turn out was 63.8% and 51.6% of this supported devolution (32.9% of the total electorate). This was to remain an open sore in Scotland for many years. In 1997, there was no such mistake: turnout was 60.4%, 74.3% of which supported the setting up of a parliament and 63.5% supporting its having tax-raising powers.

The new Scottish Parliament opened at its temporary home in May 1999 with the swearing in of the new parliament members, known as MSP’s, and the election of the Presiding Officer and the two Deputy Presiding Officers. Sir David Steel, a.k.a. Lord Steel, was elected as presiding officer. On the following day, the late Donald Dewar was elected as First Minister. Despite these activities, the parliament was not fully operational until after the first day in July 1999 when it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth.

The parliament and its Executive have control over issues such as health and education and has tax-raising powers. However, areas such as foreign policy are still controlled by the U.K. parliament at Westminster in London with Scotland being represented at U.K. government level by the Secretary of State for Scotland. It had a shaky start in the beginning but is now well into its stride despite the loss of two First Ministers in as many years. The first one, Donald Dewar, died as a result of a brain haemorrhage on October 11th 2000; while the second, Henry McLeish, resigned due to financial irregularities connected to his constituency office. He was replaced by Jack McConnell who was the incumbent up to last May’s elections.

Elections in 2003 resulted in the re-election of the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, a decrease in the number of MSP’s from the Scottish Nationalist Party and an increase in the representation of smaller parties such as the Scottish Socialist Party and the Green Party. The retirement of Sir David Steel allowed for a new presiding officer but it still had to await its ever more expensive permanent home near Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh until the latter part of last year. And it is that which you can see above.

2007’s election saw a resurgence of SNP fortunes at the expense of smaller parties and Labour. The result was a minority SNP administration with Alex Salmond at its head. A consequence of this is that the issue Scottish independence has reared its head to a greater degree than before and the SNP is asserting its influence with the new title of Scottish Government in place of the previous label of "Scottish Executive", a perhaps more apt title in view of the its lack of a governing majority. The parliament lives on and the ups and downs of consensus politics could provide a lot of intrigue over the years ahead, not only in Scotland but maybe across the U.K. as well.

Timeline

Find Out More

Scottish Parliament

Scottish Government

Scotland Office

Here are some websites that tell you even more about the institutions mentioned here. The third of these even lets you in on some of its history as well.