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Jim Sillars, among the last of his generation's working-class politicians, has had a prominent role in Scottish public life for more than six decades, during which he moved from being a Unionist Labour MP to becoming deputy leader of the SNP and now a sharp critic of the party's cult of personality. In this candid memoir, he records a controversial political life from local councillor to Westminster MP, during which he had dealings with many prominent politicians of the day. But he also reflects on what moulded him in his early years, the added influences of his service in the Royal Navy, his time in Hong Kong, his trade union activity and his non-political business engagements in the Middle East and Asia. Bringing the book up to date to address contemporary issues, he offers views on Brexit, Russia, the Middle East, climate change, the Alex Salmond trial and the consequences of the 2021 Holyrood election. He and Margo MacDonald, to whom he was married for thirty-three years, were a formidable political partnership until her death in 2014. He pays a heartfelt tribute to her in this book.
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Argues for the passing of the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, and proposes how, following that, a socialist government could make the country a better place in a world of global capitalism.
Traces the development of the ideology of modern Scottish nationalism from the 1960s to the independence referendum in 2014.
Analyses the last 30 years of Scottish Labour, from the arrival of Thatcherism in 1979 to the aftermath of the party's defeat in the 2007.
For most of the time that the Scottish National Party (SNP) has existed, public attitudes towards it have ranged from indifference to hostility or bafflement. Until fairly recently it was hardly taken seriously as a political grouping and was largely ignored. All this changed in May, 2015, when in the General Election for the Westminster Parliament, the SNP won 56 of 59 seats in a historic landslide. It is generally acknowledged that much of the credit for this victory goes to Scotland's chief minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who far outmatched any of the other political leaders in pre-election debates. Paradoxically, it appears to have been the campaign and the aftermath of the previous referendum on Scottish Independence in which the "no's" won, that led to a phenomenal rise in SNP membership. With the defeat of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, the SNP now replaces the latter as the third force in Westminster politics. Scottish Independence now seems nearer than ever.
The inside story of Scotland's first General Election - a record of events in public and behind the scenes as witnessed by Murray Ritchie, Scottish political editor of The Herald newspaper. A personal record provides a study of how rival politicians and parties campaigned to win over electors and to impress public opinion through the media. Political strategists resorted to the black arts, placing unprecedented pressure on newspapers, as they conducted the toughest campaign in Scottish history. An account of how politicians reacted before the cameras and in private to the peaks and troughs of a fascinating campaign.
By any measure, the story of the Scottish National Party is an extraordinary one. Forced to endure decades of electoral irrelevance since its creation in the 1930s, during which it often found itself grappling with internal debate on strategy, and rebellion from within its own ranks, the SNP virtually swept the board in the 2015 general election, winning all but three of Scotland's fifty-nine seats in Westminster. What's more, under the current leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP has never been a more important force in the landscape of British politics. The leaders who have stood at its helm during this tumultuous eighty-year history - from Sir Alexander MacEwen to Nicola Sturgeon and Al...
Based on an unprecedented survey of the entire membership and over 80 elite interviews The Scottish National Party is the definitive account of the nature of the SNP following its election as a party of government for the first time in its eighty year history.