page_title: Scottish Assembly
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Scottish Assembly / History / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: The Royal High School in Edinburgh.
context_page_description: The Scottish Assembly was a proposed legislature for Scotland that would have devolved a set list of powers from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Labour Government led the Scotland Act 1978 through Westminster which provided for the establishment of the Scottish Assembly.
  Although the majority of those who voted at the referendum on 1 March 1979 voted in favour of the Act, the provisions were not put in place due to the additional requirement that 40% of the total electorate also vote in favour. The Scottish National Party subsequently refused to support the government in a later vote of no confidence. Home rule for Scotland would not become a reality until 1999 following the Scotland Act 1998 establishing the Scottish Parliament.
context_section_description: However the SNP had a disappointing result in the 1970 general election, and for the first part of the 1970s devolution under Heath's government was off the cards. But significant SNP advances in the general elections in 1974 brought the issue to the fore again.
  In 1978 the Labour government passed the Scotland Act which legislated for the establishment of a Scottish Assembly, provided the Scots voted for such in a referendum. However, the Labour Party was bitterly divided on the subject of devolution. Despite officially favouring it, vast numbers of members opposed the establishment of an assembly, and this division caused the failure to reach the required 40% of the electorate voting in favour of an assembly (that itself was a quota only added to the Scotland Act by an amendment proposed by a Labour MP).
  The ensuing general election in 1979 proved electorally disastrous for both Labour and the SNP, and it seemed that the prospects for a Scottish Assembly were remote. However, in the early 1980s a number of Labour Party and SNP members decided to form the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, which pamphleteered and lobbied for devolution.  This campaign, combined with growing resentment at the fact that despite a majority of Scots voting against the Conservatives they were forming their government, increased demands for the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly.
caption: New Parliament House, the proposed site of the Scottish Assembly
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