History of The Scottish National Party - Early Years

Early Years

The party was founded on 20 April 1934 as the result of a merger between the National Party of Scotland (NPS) and the Scottish Party. The merger was the brainchild of leading NPS figure John MacCormick who desired unity for the nationalist movement in Scotland, and upon learning of the Scottish Party's emergence moved to secure it.

Initially, the SNP did not support all-out independence for Scotland, but rather the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly, within the United Kingdom. This became the party's initial position on the constitutional status of Scotland as a result of a compromise between the NPS, who did support independence, and the Scottish Party who were devolutionists. John MacCormick wanted a merger between the two parties and knew that it would only be through the support of devolution rather than independence that the Scottish Party would be persuaded to merge. However, the SNP quickly reverted to the NPS stance of supporting full independence for Scotland.

Professor Douglas Young was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1942 to 1945. Young fought for the Scottish people to refuse conscription and his activities were popularly vilified as undermining the British war effort against the Nazis. Young was imprisoned for refusing to be conscripted.

John MacCormick left the party in 1942, owing to his failure to change the party's policy from supporting all out independence to Home Rule at that year's SNP conference in Glasgow. McCormick went on to form the Scottish Covenant Association, a non-partisan political organisation campaigning for the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly. This Covenant in itself proved politically challenging for the SNP, as it stole their nationalist platform. It also deprived the party of many members who left with MacCormick.

The Covenant managed to get over 2 million signatures to a petition demanding Home Rule for Scotland in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and secured support from across the parties, but it eventually faded as a political force.

The SNP's early years were characterised by a lack of electoral progress and it wasn't until 1945 that the SNP's first member was elected to the UK parliament at Westminster. The party's first MP was Robert McIntyre who won a by-election for Motherwell under unusual wartime conditions, but he lost the seat in the general election later that year.

McIntyre's brief spell did not particularly galvanise the SNP. The 1950s were characterised by low levels of support, and this made it difficult for the party to advance. Indeed, in most general elections they were unable to put up more than a handful of candidates.

A split occurred in the SNP in 1955 (although not as large as that of 1942) when a grouping styled the 55 Group started an organised campaign of internal dissent. This group was formed mainly of younger SNP members frustrated at the lack of progress of the party. This split proved to be minor and involved only a few members, mainly located in the city of Edinburgh, and the new National Party of Scotland made no impact whatsoever in the long-run.