Months after the SNP’s first Scottish parliament election win in 2007, George Foulkes, then a Labour MSP for the Lothians region, appeared on the BBC’s Scotland at Ten radio programme. Discussing the SNP’s early performance in government, Foulkes argued that the party were “on a very dangerous tack. What they are doing is trying to build up a situation in Scotland where the services are manifestly better than south of the border in a number of areas.” Colin Mackay, the show’s presenter, was confused. “Is that a bad thing?” “No,” admitted Foulkes, “but they are doing it deliberately…” The exchange has deservedly assumed a mythical status among nationalists, for it encapsulates something profound about Scottish Labour’s attitude not only to the SNP but to the whole idea of a distinctive, democratic Scottish politics.
The idea that policy might be a political battleground, rather than an issue of administrative competence, remains somewhat baffling to an old guard trained, in the decades before Holyrood arrived, to passively sweep up the votes of an understated nation. Overstated influence at Westminster and in local government allowed “Labour in Scotland” to hold Scottish democracy at arm’s length, often by the throat; the party’s response to electoral competition – especially from the SNP – has tended to be furiously tribal, and its determination to undermine Harold Wilson’s plans for devolution in the mid-1970s led to an extraordinary stitch-up being imposed on the Scottish party by the UK leadership. A special conference in 1974, at which Labour’s Scottish MPs were forced to submit to devolution through intense behind-the-scenes pressure, became known as the “Dalintober Street Massacre”.
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