Scottish politics has become more polarised since devolution – not less

Scottish politics has become more polarised since devolution – not less

“An Honest Man’s the Noblest work of God”. 

It was the English writer Alexander Pope who first penned these lines, though most Scots believe it was Burns.

Our national bard was an aural magpie. If he heard a vivid phrase, he would borrow, burnish and immortalise it.

Pope’s words were quoted in Burns’s anthem to the common man, The Cotter’s Saturday Night, to capture the quiet decency of a landless labourer reading to his family. 

“From scenes like this, old Scotia’s grandeur springs, 

“That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad,

“Princes and Lords are but the breath of kings

“An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

The phrase, often used in eulogies, is particularly fitting when applied to Iain Lawson, whose funeral took place recently in the solemn beauty of Paisley Abbey.

Lawson was never elected to any parliament, but his influence on modern Scotland’s political direction was more significant than that of many long-serving MPs and MSPs.

With hundreds of others, I went to pay my respects at the abbey, because he made such an impression on me at a young age, albeit from a distance.

By the mid-1980s, the certainties we had all grown up with in Scotland were crumbling as rapidly as the factories, engineering shops and shipyards around which our communities were built.

Iain played a leading role in the campaign to save Scottish steel, which became symbolic of the wider struggle against the policies of Margaret Thatcher’s government.

The crisis started with the announced closure of Gartcosh, which flattened sheet steel for use in everything from shipping containers to sinks.

Gartcosh was the main client for the steel produced by the massive Ravenscraig plant. The fate of the two was inseparable, so the Motherwell site was doomed as well. 

But how could Scotland respond to consumer demand for manufactured goods if we lacked the steel to make them? The threat was not just to Lanarkshire, but to Scotland’s entire industrial base. We still live with the consequences.

Lawson was among those who marched from Scotland to London in the bitter dead of winter alongside the steelmen, church leaders and politicians from all parties. 

The campaign, reminiscent of the 1930s hunger marches, received massive publicity and gripped the country. It was driven by some remarkable personalities, not least the legendary shop steward Tommy Brennan and female organiser Mary McKenna. But Lawson also stood out – for his confidence, intelligence and a gruff bass voice, best described as Clyde-built.

But he was extraordinary for another reason – he was a Tory. 

A successful businessman, he stood for the party in the high-profile Garscadden by-election in 1978, increasing its vote share. His reputation made him a rising star and he was chosen to lead the Conservative Parliamentary Candidates’ Association. His decision in 1985 to quit in protest at the planned closure of Gartcosh was big news.

This was a time when people of all parties and none collaborated for the good of the country. Even some Tory MPs lobbied behind the scenes, albeit with limited success, to protect Scottish interests. When Ravenscraig eventually closed in 1992, they too were extinguished.

It does seem strange, ten years after a referendum in which we came so close to choosing independence, that the pre-Holyrood years offer the best examples of Team Scotland in action. 

It was a time when the country came together in common cause, often led by people like Iain, who had demanding day jobs but put in a shift for the greater good. There were unifying figures, such as Canon Kenyon Wright, who led the Scottish Constitutional Convention, and Campbell Christie, general secretary of the Scottish Trade Union Congress. It is difficult to identify their equivalents in polarised public life today.

Collective anger was roused by the poll tax, mass unemployment, astronomical interest rates, the shift of business leadership to the City of London. This culminated in the Scotland United movement, in which civil society and different parties campaigned for constitutional change as a form of self-protection.

A key date in this period was 1988, when Jim Sillars won the Govan by-election for the SNP. A massive Labour majority was “swept away like snaw off a dyke”. 

Pressure on the Labour Party – from voters as well as from pro-devolutionists inside its ranks – led eventually to a manifesto commitment to create a Scottish Parliament. When Tony Blair won a landslide in 1997, abandoning the promise was unthinkable.

Inevitably, Iain Lawson had a hand in Govan as well. Delivering the political eulogy at his friend’s funeral, Sillars explained why. In 1988 he – Sillars – was considered a left-wing upstart by some in the SNP. To stop him, a right-of-centre faction invited Lawson, by then a party member, to put his name forward as an alternative by-election candidate.

Lawson duly did so. But when he stepped before the selection committee, he used his speech to tell them why they should pick Sillars instead, which of course they did. To paraphrase Burns – or Pope – it was the action of an honest and noble man. It also made history.