ABSTRACT
The referendum on Scottish devolution held in September 1997, less than five months into the new Labour government's term in office, was the second to be held on this issue. Eighteen years before, in the dying days of the previous Labour administration, the Scottish electorate was asked to decide in a referendum whether, as proposed by the government, a Scottish Assembly should be established. A narrow majority of those who voted agreed that there should be an Assembly but this was not enough to overcome the qualification (that 40 per cent of the eligible electorate had to support the measure for it to be passed) which had been imposed by Parliament at Westminster. The change in the use of language between 1979 and 1997 is itself significant. By the time of the second referendum the debate was about creating a Scottish ‘Parliament’, not an ‘Assembly’. There were other changes which were more than symbolic, however. A substantial change of attitude had occurred among Scots although few home rulers could have anticipated this in 1979. Shortly after the first referendum, a cartoon appeared in a Nationalist newspaper. It showed a picture of a boy reading a book about ‘EVOLUTION’ with a picture of dinosaurs on its cover while his father was reading a newspaper with ‘DEVOLUTION LATEST’ on the front page. The caption below summed up the feeling of many supporters of Scottish devolution at the time. ‘No son — they're not the same thing — devolution takes longer!’, the father explained.
