History of The Scottish National Party - Highpoint in The 1970s

Highpoint in The 1970s

However, at the 1970 General Election, the SNP improved their vote over 1966 but did not make a serious breakthrough. Ewing lost her Hamilton seat and the only consolation for the SNP was the capture of the Western Isles with Donald Stewart becoming their only MP. Thereafter though the 1970s was a period of sustained growth for the SNP, which followed the pattern of the 1960s with a number of strong showings in individual by-elections.

There was a minor setback in the early 1970s when a small number of party members in Dundee left to form a Labour Party of Scotland. This new party contested the Dundee East by-election of 1973, and the number of votes they captured was more than the Labour candidate's margin of victory over the SNP candidate, Gordon Wilson. However, in the long-run this new party folded, and most of its members returned to the SNP.

They were bolstered by their capture of the Glasgow Govan seat with Margo MacDonald as their candidate from the Labour Party in a by-election in 1973. This again signalled to Labour that the SNP posed an electoral threat to them and in the February 1974 General Election they returned 7 MPs. The failure of the Labour Party to secure an overall majority prompted them to quickly return to the polls to secure such and in the October 1974 General Election the SNP performed even better than they had done earlier in the year, winning 11 MPs and managing to get over 30% of the vote across Scotland. The main driving force behind the growth of the SNP in the 1970s was the discovery of oil in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. The SNP ran a hugely successful It's Scotland's oil campaign, emphasising the way in which they believed the discovery of oil could benefit all of Scotland's citizens.

Former SNP leader William Wolfe has argued that along with this campaign, the SNP was aided by their support for the workers in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in, being led by Jimmy Reid, as well as supporting the workers at the Scottish Daily Express when they attempted to run the paper themselves and other such campaigns.

The SNP continued to ride high in the opinion polls throughout the 1970s, and many members are convinced that if the Liberals, led by David Steel hadn't maintained the Labour Government of the time in power, the SNP might have made further electoral gains in the resulting general election. It did well at the local elections of 1977, making 98 net gains and leaving much of Scotland under hung councils. However 1978 saw a Labour revival at the expense of the SNP, at three by-elections (Glasgow Garscadden, Hamilton and Berwick and East Lothian) and the local elections. The general election did not come until 1979, by which time the SNP's support had dwindled.

In 1979, the SNP Parliamentary Group voted against the Labour Government in a Vote of No Confidence, causing the dissolution of the government and subsequent election. The then Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan famously described this decision by the SNP as that of, 'turkeys voting for Christmas'. This statement would prove true, as the no-confidence vote by the SNP led to the loss of their Westminster seats and the dawn of Margaret Thatcher.