Liberalism, Scottish nationalism and the home rule crisis, c.1886-93

The present scholarly focus on Unionist-nationalism has obscured crucial features of late nineteenth-century Scottish political life. In a period of acute political crisis precipitated by the introduction of William Gladstone’s first Irish Home Rule bill, there emerged a movement for the restoration of an Edinburgh parliament. Led by the Scottish Home Rule Association, campaigners promoted a fundamental reassessment of Scotland’s post-1707 history, and argued that only a reinstated legislature could arrest a process of decay which they associated with the failures of a London-oriented Union. In setting out to demolish what we have come to understand as the Unionist-nationalist case, Home Rulers initially sought assistance from the Liberal party, which had been electorally dominant in Scotland since 1832. Their virulent attacks on the party, its organisational machinery and its leaders are far more illuminating for our understanding of how Liberalism operated after 1886 than has previously been understood