The campaign was to take their messages to towns and cities
throughout Scotland to get signatures for the petition asking
for a Scottish Parliament. The tent featured in the image is an
earlier version of the stall.
When was it used?
It was used from 1993 to September 1997, when the results of a
national Devolution Referendum confirmed overwhelmingly that
Scotland would again have its own parliament.
The main vigil for the Scottish Parliament was set up
on Calton Hill after the General Election of 1992, with a
pledge to keep it continuously occupied until a Scottish Parliament
was achieved. After 1,980 days of continuous occupation its
work was done.
Politics of Scotland
The Politics of Scotland formed a distinctive
part of the wider politics of the United Kingdom.
Constitutionally, the United Kingdom is a
unitary state with one sovereign parliament and government.
However, under a system of devolution adopted in the late 1990s,
three of the four countries of the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland, voted for limited self-government, subject to
the continuing sovereignty of the UK Parliament in Westminster.
The head of state in Scotland is the British
monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth (since 1952). Under devolution,
executive and legislative powers in certain areas have been
constitutionally delegated to the Scottish Government and the
Scottish Parliament, respectively.
The United Kingdom Parliament retains active
power over Scotland's taxes, social security system, the military,
international relations, broadcasting, and some other areas
explicitly specified in the Scotland Act 1998 as reserved matters.
The Scottish Parliament has legislative authority for all other
areas relating to Scotland, and has limited power to vary income
tax.
History of Scottish devolution
Both the English and Scottish Parliaments were
dissolved by the Act of Union of 1707 to become one kingdom, with
the same monarchy and succession, a single parliament of Great
Britain. The pre-1707 Scottish Parliament was
a single-chamber assembly consisting of three distinct
representative groups known as the ‘three estates’. However, on the
eve of the Union the representatives were drawn from the nobility,
the barons and the burgesses of Scotland's towns.
Suggestions for a 'devolved' Parliament were
made before 1914, but were shelved due to the outbreak of the First
World War. A sharp rise in nationalism in Scotland during the late
1960s fuelled demands for some form of home rule or complete
independence. A referendum was held in Scotland in 1979 for a
devolved Scottish Assembly but it was unsuccessful.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, demand for a
Scottish Parliament grew. In the aftermath of the 1979 referendum
defeat, the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly was initiated as a
pressure group, leading to the 1989 Scottish Constitutional
Convention with various organisations, political parties and
representatives of industry taking part. Publishing its blueprint
for devolution in 1995, the Convention provided much of the basis
for the structure of the Parliament.
New Scottish Parliament
Devolution became part of the platform of the
Labour Party which, in May 1997, took power under Tony Blair. In
September 1997, a referendum of the Scottish electorate secured a
majority in favour of the establishment of a new devolved Scottish
Parliament, with tax-varying powers, in Edinburgh.
An election was held on 6 May 1999, and on 1
July of that year power was transferred from Westminster to the new
Parliament. Since September 2004, the official home of the Scottish
Parliament has been a new Scottish Parliament Building, in the
Holyrood area of Edinburgh.