Tommy Sheppard: Schisms too great to replicate convention

The National

15 hours ago

It was one of a mix of ideas that percolated in the vacuum created by Westminster denial of the Scottish Parliament's majority wish for a new referendum.
Former first minster Nicola Sturgeon seemed to embrace the concept back at the beginning of 2020. For the last year, groups as diverse as the Alba Party and Believe in Scotland have been advocating a convention, admittedly probably not the same one.
And now current First Minister John Swinney has announced he wants one too. The idea has most definitely grown legs.
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This sort of thing has happened before. The Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC) was established in 1989 to campaign for devolution.
There's nothing wrong with seeking inspiration from the past, but to learn from it we need an honest appraisal of what happened and the context in which it did.
It is true the SCC brought together political parties, trade unions, churches and what we now call the third sector. But only at the top.
The convention published its blueprint for a Scottish Parliament in 1995. At the time, the Dundonian MP John McAllion was George Robertson's deputy, representing the Labour Party on the convention.
By 2013, he would describe the body as self-appointed and elitist and argue it shouldn't serve as a model for future campaigns.
The convention did bring together the elite of Scottish society at the time. But it still got the job done; legitimising and advancing the onset of devolution. To understand why it worked, we need to look at the political context of the 1980s.
Remember, people in Scotland had voted in their majority for devolution in 1979. That decision was blocked by the 40% rule imposed by Westminster, which allowed abstentions to be treated as votes against. And before it could be dealt with, the Callaghan government fell and Thatcher came to office.
The majority support that was there in 1979 grew and grew under the excesses of Thatcher's first decade as deindustrialisation ravaged Scotland. By 1987, the Tories were reduced to 10 out of the 72 parliamentary seats.
So, in 1989 when the convention was established under joint chairs David Steele and Harry Ewing, it could command the support of more than 85% of Scotland's political representatives.
At the time the SNP, then with three MPs, supported the move. They would later be forced out when Labour insisted people in Scotland should be able to choose the form of government they wanted, provided they didn't choose political independence. Nonetheless, independence supporters could hardly oppose moves towards devolution, no matter how inadequate they believed them to be.
Between them, Labour and the Liberals corralled the trade union general secretaries and council leaders behind the initiative.
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The two main churches joined in too. Only the diminishing Tories opposed the convention. With the Scottish body politic united behind the idea, grassroots mobilisation wasn't even necessary.
Today we face a very different situation. Scotland's political leadership and its people are divided down the middle. There is no consensus. And as Robin McAlpine remarked last week, there's no point trying to lift the trophy when the game is still at nil-nil.
The 1989 convention was about giving focus and edge to an already existing majority, letting it percolate through the structures of Scotland's establishment – media included – so that in time it would become what John Smith called the settled will of the Scottish people.
If we attempt to replicate that process behind the objective of independence, we will fail. The schisms and opposition are too great. So, we need to think what objective might work.
It is just possible that the principle of the right to choose, the foundation of the Claim of Right, might cleave Scotland into a huge majority and a small minority. But even this is far from guaranteed. The two parties most involved in advocating that right in 1989 seem content to be silent about it now.
And how would a convention relate to the political process, especially the election in nine months' time? Previous arguments by Believe in Scotland have sounded like an expression of anti-politics, civic conventions replacing political parties. Elsewhere in the spectrum, Alba want a convention set up immediately and for it to mobilise some sort of pro-indy alliance next May.
A constitutional convention needs to demonstrate breadth and unity of support behind its aim. The whole has to be greater than the sum of its parts. Otherwise, what's the point?
The best role a convention can play is to develop and embed a popular belief in the right of people to govern themselves.
It can be one of a number of tools Scotland's political leadership should use to ensure that the journey to self-government takes the people with it.
In that sense its purpose will unfold after, not before, the next election, and the chances of its success will be inextricably bound up with who wins.