The ‘Scotland is British’ Campaign, 1976-8

The 'Scotland is British* (SIB) campaign was launched on 23 November 1976. Its objective was to shape parliamentary and public opinion in opposition to the Labour government's Scotland and Wales Bill. SIB saw itself as providing a focus for anti-devolution feeling in Scotland in the absence of any one political party playing such a role . The campaign attempted to represent a broad swathe of interests, and it drew support from industrialists and trade unionists and both Conservative and Labour MPs and Councillors. Its chairman was Sir John Toothill, a former manager of the firm Ferranti, and author of a report on the state of the Scottish economy which was published in 1961. With its emphasis on planning and regional policy this report signally influenced the thinking of the Scottish Labour Party on its publication (Wood 1989). One Labour MP who sat on the Party's Scottish Council Executive at the time of the report was George Lawson who represented the constituency of Motherwell at Westminster. He had been MP since 1954 and he rose to become a Government Whip when Labour took power in 1964, and Deputy Chief Whip during 1966-7. He was part of what Jim Sillars later called 'the snobbish clan' which ran Scottish Labour affairs in the 1960s (Sillars 1986, p.39). Lawson joined forces with Toothill in 1976 to oppose the government's devolution legislation: he became Director of SIB and its key strategist and propagandist until his death in July 1978 when his widow, Margaret,