‘Standing up for Scotland’: The Scottish Unionist Party and ‘nationalist unionism’, 1912–68

Scottish nationalism has long interested political scientists and historians but has often been interpreted narrowly as the desire for full independence from the multi-national United Kingdom. A broader definition, however, reveals what this article calls the ‘nationalist unionism’ of the Scottish Unionist Party (1912–65), and its surprisingly nuanced view of Scottish national identity as well as Scotland's place in the UK. Drawing on nationalist theory, Smith's ‘ethno-symbolism’, Billig's ‘banal nationalism’ and Bulpitt's interpretation of the Conservative Party's ‘territorial code’ are deployed to analyse this phenomena, supporting the argument that it rested upon myths and symbols from the pre-modern era; pushed what it perceived as ‘bad’ nationalism (the desire for legislative rather than administrative devolution) to the ‘periphery’ of Scottish political discourse and, finally, demonstrated the willingness of the unionist ‘core’ to allow the Scottish Unionist Party to pursue a relatively autonomous strategy for electoral dominance. Furthermore, this article argues that the Scottish Unionist Party presented itself – most ostentatiously between the early 1930s and mid 1950s – as the main ‘guardian’ of a distinct Scottish national identity, while celebrating and protecting Scotland's semi-autonomous place within the UK.