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When the Queen took over the throne 25 years ago, the Scottish Nationalist movement, led by Wendy Wood, responded by burning post boxes, in protest against her use of the title of Elizabeth II. Today in Jubilee year, the SNP acted quite differently. Loyalty and humility were on the order of the day, and the party's 43rd annual conference went on record as giving overwhelming support for constitutional monarchy.
This question of monarchy arose during the discussion of the SN's proposed Scottish Constitution, where the Queen's role as Head of State was confirmed. Essentially the aim of document was to ensure that all the arthritic features of British bourgeois demoracy would be built into any independent Scotland. British parliamentary sovereignity, with its absense of federalism, its contempt for even the pretence of popular accountability, its cretinist worshiping at the feet of the judiciary - all were encapsulated in the SN's vision of Scotland. The only novelty was the interesting non mention of the national Kirk, which has disappeared from theelectorally conscious SN's program.
Robert McIntyre, the party's President, introduced the Constitution. Mcintyre epitomises all the worst parochialism and Parliamentary cretinism of the SNP, a small town democrat of long standing in the party. However, any notion of personal bias in the party's reformism was removed later that afternoon, when the unofficial leader of the party's radical wing stood up to speak. Stephen Maxwell, ex-press officer for the SNP, and privately worried about the more "vulgar" forms of nationalism inside the SNP, was at the rostrum to motivate the proposal of an initiative referendum. However, Mr. Maxwell's radicalism wasn't really too serious. His model for this referendum proposal, which in his own words "extended the very boundaries of democracy as we know it", was that well known home of radicalism - Switzerland! Beneath the superficial differences in style, there is a political coherence and joint conservatism which unites even the "backward" McIntyre to the "progressive" Maxwell.
Certainly the party seems to have the self confidence and political competence to unite the most diverse strands of dissent. The comparison with its Tory and Labour rivals who met recently in Perth is a striking one. Unlike the contrast between young and old, which is so characteristic of the Labour party for instance, the bulk of the SPs cadre come from the immediate post war generation - the town planners, the teachers,
the media, the skilled scientific workers who prospered in the years of the New Town and the expansion of white collar employment. Naturally enough they are among the most self confident and aggressive section of modern Scottish society, today a natural base for the SNP. The political perspective of the party, its constitutional reformism and its defense of the "mixed" capitalist economy, fits exactly into their concerns and aspirations.
Kilts and Gaelic slogans were still on display and the stalls in the foyers were selling all the junk of nationalism, from ashtrays to platic passport holders for "Alba" citizens. 'However, it is the "new middle class" who are the real driving force in the party. Like the 19th century Victorian ruling class in Britain, self confident in its economic security, much of the SNP sees ideology as irrelevant, demogogy as bad taste, and tartan and tartanary as positively vulgar. Instead the SNP is seen as a vehicle for carefully planning out how modern Scottish Switzerland is to be run.
Ot course with the spoils of Europe's fastest growing political party for the taking, personal tensions break out in the leadership as a matter of course. However, to read into these squabbles, any right versus left contest would be inaccurate. For instance, Margo McDonald's constant appearances on the telly were more important in her election as vice chairman than any views she held on policy.
Beneath this unity there are however, two tendancies at work which may wreak havok in the longer term. The first is that of Douglas Henderson, MP for East Aberdeen, and a particularly nasty right wing populist. At last year's Motherwell conference of the • SNP, he openly denounced the "devolution
is a stepping stone..." argument of the leadership, throwing his hat into any leadership contest in the process. Today, although isolated in the party, he is content like many other Westminster notables to wait in the wings, confident that events will shortly return him to the centre of power.
On the other side of the party, there is the small but frowing band of SNP trade unionists. The party has recently employed its first full time officer for this work in the shape of Steve Butler, a young ex-ASTMS steward from Rolls Royce. The dramatic rise of the SNP has given its members in probably every factony in Scotland, and Butlers job is to organise them. To that end' the SNP has been active in redundancy fights in West of Scotland plants like Beatties of Drumchapel, Weirs of Yoker and Rolls Royce of Blantyre. Already they have organised caucuses in trades councils all over Scotland, mainly however, outside the trade union big city areas. Obviously it would be wrong to exaggerate this trend, and it is noticeable that at leadership level no campaign is planned against the political levy to the labour movement at all.
As a conference, there three days in Dundee were a non-event. It was carefully stage managed. The question of the Devolution Bill its fate (and future) was not even mentioned. However, as a milestone in the development of the SP, it had its importance, confirming yet again that the danger of the nationalists to the labour movement does not lie in their supposed flag waving hysteria. In fact the opposite is true, for it is the constitutionalism, the atomised electoralism and the fierce hostility to any collective action which may yet prove the force which drives the wedge between working people and the labour movement in Scotland.
NEIL WILLIAMSON (in Dundee)