[BITList] Rise of the SNP

[John Feltham]

Just wondering. Is the town of Daziel pronounce ‘dee el” like the detective ibn  that TV serial?







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McIntyre,  Robert Douglas  (1913-1998), Scottish nationalist and medical practitioner, was born in Dalziel, near Motherwell, on 15 December 1913, the third son of the Revd John E. McIntyre and his wife, Catherine Morison. Educated at Hamilton Academy and Daniel Stewart's College, McIntyre went on to study medicine at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, where he specialized in public health. It was at university that he became interested in politics and joined the Labour Party in 1936.

By the advent of the Second World War, McIntyre had become disillusioned with the Labour Party's commitment to Scottish home rule and had joined the Scottish National Party (SNP). He had already formed the core of his political beliefs, which were broadly centrist. He believed in the primacy of community, had a distrust of large-scale bureaucracy, and had a passionate belief in the rights of individuals. The acceptance of the totalitarian Soviet regime by many Labour activists had been a factor in his growing disillusionment with the Labour Party. Steeped in Scottish history and Scottish culture, he refused to accept the idea of British national identity. He believed in the right of small nations to self-government and was active in supporting nationalist groups within the Soviet Union. As SNP membership secretary from 1940, he set about revitalizing the party's organization and encouraged new members to join. McIntyre gravitated towards the radical wing of the party, and in the split of 1942 he backed the anti-conscription leader Douglas Young against the moderate John MacCormick. McIntyre was himself a conscientious objector. Following the defection of John MacCormick, McIntyre set to work to rebuild the party's electoral strategy and this paid dividends in the Kircaldy by-election of 1944, when Douglas Young was only narrowly defeated by the Labour candidate.

In the Motherwell by-election in April 1945 McIntyre beat the Labour candidate to become the SNP's first member of parliament. Even though it lasted only twenty-one days, his victory was a watershed in the history of the SNP, as it demonstrated the party could attain its goal of Scottish independence by winning elections to secure an electoral mandate. This policy was enshrined in the SNP constitution of 1946, which McIntyre largely composed along with Arthur Donaldson, and which has become the basic template for nationalist policy ever since. McIntyre was party chairman from 1948 to 1956. He also worked hard to give the SNP a political identity separate from the other main British parties. By choosing a broadly social democrat basis for nationalist policies, it was hoped that the SNP would be able to distinguish itself from Labour and the Conservatives in socio-economic policies. Although the nationalists made little headway in the 1950s and early 1960s, McIntyre worked hard to keep the SNP to its principles of contesting elections as a separate and distinctive political party in order to secure an electoral mandate for independence. This policy was borne out by the failure of the national convention in the early 1950s, which largely gave the SNP a monopoly of nationalist political activity. In 1959 McIntyre married Latitia Macleod, a psychiatrist.

A shrewd political operator, McIntyre insisted on discipline in the party and recognized that there would be no quick fix for attaining independence. Consequently, much time was spent in the 1950s and early 1960s on organizational matters, building up an electoral machinery, and recruiting new members. McIntyre was keen to present the SNP as a moderate and reasonable party, and was largely responsible for expelling those who promoted anti-English sentiment and violent or illegal tactics. He practised what he preached, and was one of the few nationalist candidates to stand at a general election in the 1950s. Yet it was through such tenacity that the SNP was able to increase its number of parliamentary candidates from three in 1950 to twenty-three by the general election of 1966. McIntyre's efforts to build up the party infrastructure paid dividends in the mid-1960s, when an influx of new members was able to meld into a mature party organization; it took advantage of growing dissatisfaction with the Labour government to secure a by-election win in Hamilton in 1967 and make sweeping gains in local government in 1969. It was another facet of McIntyre's strategy to contest elections at local government level. He was provost of Stirling from 1967 to 1975 and argued that the best way that the SNP could convince voters that the party was a serious organization was to demonstrate that they could exercise power in a responsible manner. McIntyre made great play with the fact that as provost he was able to play an important role in securing new housing, municipal facilities, and a university for the town of Stirling. His position within the community was further enhanced by his work as a local doctor.

The period from 1974 to 1979 was tumultuous in Scottish politics and McIntyre, as SNP president (1958-80), worked hard to steer the party through many difficult obstacles. Ever the pragmatist, he tried to ensure the SNP would stick to its key objective of securing an electoral mandate for independence. He was suspicious of attempts to move the party to the left in an endeavour to capture disaffected Labour supporters, and opposed endeavours by nationalist militants to take direct action following the defeat of the 1979 referendum on devolution. He favoured expelling militants who, he argued, were diverting the party from its key objectives.

Although he resigned the party presidency in 1980, McIntyre still continued to play an active part in politics by contributing to policy debate, working for his constituency party and canvassing at elections. Unlike the SNP leadership, he lent his support to the Scottish convention in 1989, arguing that the party should not be dogmatic in its attitude about co-operating with others for home rule. Given the subsequent success of the convention, it proved to be a remarkably prescient observation. More than anybody, he is credited as the father of modern Scottish nationalism. McIntyre died at the Royal Infirmary, Stirling, on 2 February 1998 and was buried four days later at St Thomas cemetery, Stirling. His wife survived him.

Richard J. Finlay 

Sources  NL Scot., McIntyre MSS + R. J. Finlay, Independent and free: Scottish politics and the origins of the Scottish national party, 1918-1945 (1994) + WW + The Scotsman (5 Feb 1998) + Glasgow Herald (5 Feb 1998)
Archives NL Scot., political corresp. and papers | NL Scot., Donaldson MSS SOUND BBC WAC
Likenesses  portrait, Stirling Region Archives · B. Landry, photograph, 1945, Getty Images [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £301,436.29: confirmation, 28 April 1998, CCI



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