50 th ANNIVERSARY - COALITION-BUILDING IN SCOTLAND

 From their inception in the late 1950s, peace organisations in Scotland and the rest of the UK have worked closely together. We have attended each other’s demonstrations and reproduced in our own areas the activities that seemed to be effective elsewhere. However there has been one aspect of the Scottish peace movement that has always been more difficult to recreate in the English context. It has been easier in Scotland to put together broad anti-nuclear and anti-war coalitions and over the past 50 years this has been characteristic of the Scottish movement.

While there had been activities in Scotland leading to the establishment of SCND and some local groups in 1958, the big ‘take-off’ here came with the announcement in 1960 that the Macmillan Government had negotiated a deal with the United States to establish an American Polaris base at the Holy Loch near Dunoon. Not only was this seen as an acceleration of the nuclear arms race, it was also allowing them to site a nuclear base closer to major population centres than would have been allowed in the US. This gave a very concrete focus for the anti-nuclear movement. The British Government would have no control over this base and any attack or accident could wipe out the majority of Scotland’s population.

The recently formed SCND, the trade unions, sections of the Labour Party in Scotland, the SNP, the Iona Community, the smaller left parties, the Committee of 100 joined together to campaign against the base. While there were all the usual tensions among the various groups, an Anti-Polaris Co-ordinating Committee was formed and met regularly in Community House, the Iona Community’s headquarters in Glasgow. In addition to a wide range of activities against the Holy Loch base, there was also in the following years opposition to the Faslane base after the decision to expand this to house a British Polaris system.

Much of the breadth of support diminished after the election of the Wilson Government in 1964. Some leading political figures distanced themselves from the movement once the new government made it known that they were going to continue with the Faslane base. Also there was the predictable decline in activity when people ceased to believe that there was a chance of closing the Holy Loch and Faslane bases.

The next major growth in the anti-nuclear movement took place in the 1980s with the cruise missile programme and the decision to expand Faslane/Coulport to accommodate the ‘British’ Trident. This escalation took place in the midst of heightened cold war rhetoric. In Scotland we had Labour, SNP, some of the Liberals, Trade Unions, SCND and other groups like Parents for Peace involved in shared activities but, by this time, there had been change in the Scottish Churches. The Church of Scotland declared its opposition to nuclear weapons and the Scottish Catholic Bishops issued a statement to the same effect. So there was an even wider range of collaborative campaigning not just at the national level in Scotland but among the many local groups that had sprung up throughout the country.

The third major wave is the one in which we are still working. Much of the past decade has been focused on anti-war activity initially in the Coalition for Justice not War and there was also high-profile anti-Trident direct action spear-headed by Trident Ploughshares. The formation of a new coalition - Scotland’s For Peace – continued the tradition of working in a broad partnership. The Government’s decision to support a new Trident replacement programme sparked an intensive period of demonstrations and lobbying involving cooperation among people from different organisations at national and local level in Scotland.

Why have we found it easier to build alliances here? It is partly because, as a small country, there is more institutional networking and a past history of working together on campaigns like that for a Scottish Parliament and against the Poll Tax. Another reason is that our principal churches have shown more decisive leadership on peace and disarmament issues and our trade unions have been more consistent, particularly through the STUC. We also have more centre/left political parties in Scotland.

Cooperation has given us greater strength and has succeeded in marginalising those in Scotland who still support nuclear weapons. It is important that we continue to nurture those broad coalitions.

Isobel Lindsay