Twentieth century Bannockburn

This thesis deals with the challenge posed to post-imperial British identity by the rise of Scottish political nationalism and its voice the Scottish National Party (SNP) from the late 1960s to 1980. With the ultimate decline of the British Empire in the decades following the Second World War, Britishness, which had been forged through the imperial experience, was fundamentally challenged by older national identities within the United Kingdom. Scottish nationalism was one of these identities which had been subsumed by an imperial British identity for over two hundred years. A combination of the collapse of the industry of empire in Scotland, relative economic deprivation in the 1960s and 1970s, and other Scottish political grievances prompted increased support for the SNP. Scots, viewing themselves as a nation and as distinct in many ways from the rest of the United Kingdom, reacted to the decline of the British unitary state and encouraged the growth of Scottish political nationalism. The political success of the SNP in the late 1960s and 1970s forced the main Westminster parties to address the issue of Scottish nationalism and Scots' sense of alienation from the centre of power. The Royal Commission on the Constitution and the resulting debate over devolution in the late 1970s, prompted by the growth of nationalism, represented the greatest challenge to the legitimacy of the United Kingdom since the Treaty of Union of 1707