Politics and the People: Scotland, 1945-1979

by Malcolm Petrie

Overview

This book reappraises Scottish politics in the decades after 1945, augmenting existing accounts of this period by foregrounding the importance of ideology and language. Founded upon original archival research, the book recovers the central role played within modern Scottish politics by an individualist, anti-bureaucratic critique of central government. Deployed initially by those on the political right to attack the programme of nationalisation implemented by the post-war Labour government, by the 1960s this rhetoric was being exploited by advocates of constitutional change. As liberty came to be framed in constitutional rather than economic terms, understandings of political representation also changed: crucially, the arrival of the referendum in British politics granted credibility to the belief that there existed a distinctive Scottish tradition of popular sovereignty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474456999
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2025
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Malcolm Petrie is Lecturer in Late Modern Scottish History at the Universityof St Andrews, and the Co-investigator of the AHRC-funded Scottish Magazines Network that inspired this edited collection. He has written widely on Scottish politics in the twentieth century, and is the author of Popular Politics and Political Culture: Urban Scotland, 1918-1939 (EUP, 2018). His most recent book, Politics and the People (EUP, 2022), examines political culture and national identity in post-war Scotland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; List of Tables; Introduction: Democracy, Sovereignty, and the Constitution: Scotland, 1945-1979; Chapter One: Unionism, Liberalism and Anti-Socialism: Politics in Scotland after 1945; Chapter Two: Too Complex, Too Remote? Scottish Politics in the 1960s; Chapter Three: Combatting Centralisation: Europe, Local Government, and the Rise of the SNP, 1967-1975; Chapter Four: Letting the People in? Direct Democracy and Popular Sovereignty in post-war Scotland; Conclusion: 1979 and after; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

Malcolm Petrie has provided a new reading of post-war Scottish political history. His ideas challenge the received opinions across the political spectrum. His book will both delight and infuriate and should be on the reading list of everyone with an interest in Scottish political history, including members of the Scottish and UK parliaments.

Ewen Cameron

Malcolm Petrie, in Politics and the People: Scotland 1945-79, challenges much of the received wisdom about an era – after the war, before Thatcher – that is gradually fading from collective memory. He does this by focusing on political culture itself, rather than the great tectonic plates of economics, technology and social structure which have usually undergirded the narrative. This aligns his approach with what is known as the ‘new political history’, a historiographical tendency that has made great strides in England since the 1980s but is still finding its feet north of the border.

London Review of Books - Rory Scothorne

[Petrie's] second major work on Scottish politics, after Popular Politics and Political Culture (Edinburgh, 2019), is well written and succinct yet thoroughly and extensively researched, with hundreds of notes and an extensive bibliography. Covering a critical period between two major electoral events, this book provides a fascinating look at the politics and political shifts in Scotland. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates and graduate students.

CHOICE connect - S. J. Stillwell Jr.

Petrie's book will be an essential reference point for all scholars of post-war Scotland. It presents a sophisticated revisionist account of the key conflicts and orientations that reshaped the political landscape.

Scottish Historical Review - Ewan Gibbs