“It’s Scotland’s Oil!”: The use of nationalist rhetoric in SNP

propaganda

Sabrina Elena Sotiriu

April 2011

University of Ottawa

Sotiriu 1

ssoti026@uottawa.ca

It should come as no surprise that nationalism has been

employed for political purposes both by partisan groups

(political parties, or social movements). This is the general

view of those considering nationalism to be instrumental, or

situational, as opposed to primordial, or perennial. Even though

a distinct Scottish national consciousness has existed for

centuries as historical examples illustrate, it has only started

appearing in political discourse arguably with instrumental

purposes from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, when the

union between Scotland and England started to no longer be seen

as beneficial/fruitful for the former (Brown et al, 1998;

Connell, 2004).

Arguably influenced by modernism and the growing importance

of party politics, nationalism has been politically employed

throughout the twentieth century not just in Scotland but in

other Western European case-studies as well (Spain, Italy,

Sotiriu 2

Belgium, Ireland), to increase electoral support and/or shift

policy agenda to their favour (of nationalist parties). In

Scotland this goes as far back as the suffragist movement of the

first two decades of the past century, which adopted a

nationalist “tartan” flavour to attract supporters for the cause

(Brown et al, 1998). The topic of this paper thus is the

purposeful usage of nationalist rhetoric in Scottish partisan

politics, and where specifically this was illustrated. More

precisely, the research question is how the Scottish National

Party (SNP) used nationalist rhetoric in the North Sea Oil

campaign of the 1970s in its propaganda materials. My hypothesis

is that the SNP employed the discovery of oil off the Scottish

coast as a regionalist campaign1 around which nationalist and

secessionist rhetoric was employed in its campaign strategies and

aims. The North Sea Oil campaign thus became the first issue that

1 “Regionalist campaign” is a term that in my opinion describes well theemphasis of the SNP on issues that its members associated and actively promoted with secessionism and empowering Scotland (contradictions arose whether empowerment should be limited to devolution or further autonomy, or full out independence, given that support in the polls for the latter was lower than for the former). “regionalist campaign” is of my creation, by associating the more general agenda of the SNP (some authors agreed that the emphasis on Scotland and Scottishness is more territorial at this point- Leith, 2008), with a milder/moderate electoral enterprise instead of “crusade”which was the initial choice.

Sotiriu 3

the SNP adopted, starting the trend that would make academics

label the party as conducting issue-politics2 (Pittock, 1991,

158). After the oil campaign lost “its freshness in the late

1970s; the civil disobedience campaign of the early 1980s was

based on a low level of support and was an immature mimic of

anti-Thatcher protests carried on better by Labour; and in 1988-9

the anti-poll tax campaign failed to live up to the targets set

for it by the SNP” (Pittock, 1991, 158). I chose the North Sea

Oil Campaign as the case-study for this research and analysis

because it has been seen as the starting point for partisan

political nationalism in Scotland (Lazer 1977, McCrone 2001,

Thomsen 2010, Mitchell 2009). The issue was also seen by the same

authors as representing the foundation on which the SNP

consolidated as a party, and Scottish nationalism began to be

constructed on, party members hoping that further down the road,

oil would eventually lead to further autonomy or even

independence. While the North Sea Oil Campaign did not bring with

it the bold goals of the SNP, it began by the 1980s to lose its

value and yet it remained to this day one of the “myths of modern

2 Issue politics refers to the dependence of a political party, or more,on the political issue of the day for their electoral support.

Sotiriu 4

Scottish politics” (Mitchell, 2009, 35), this issue being still

present, albeit to a smaller extent in the SNP manifestos of the

twenty first century (SNP Manifesto, 2011, 40).

This paper will first address the theoretical conceptions

employed in the research and analysis henceforth. Next I will

outline a brief background on the general usage of nationalism in

Scotland as mentioned by scholars, as well as a factual

description of the North Sea Oil situation (when, where etc).

Finally I will illustrate with specific visual and rhetorical

propaganda materials how the SNP utilized the Oil issue as a

regionalist campaign and tied it in with its previous demands for

self-government.

The perspective of this analysis will thus lie, as

mentioned, in the instrumentalist camp of nationalism (as opposed

to primordialism). What follows is an account of the theoretical

assumptions underlying the ulterior analysis and findings. In a

simplified manner, instrumentalism states that nationalist

movements and national identities are purposefully and

artificially created by elites through founding myths, political

symbols etc, based on the pre-existence of a proto-ethnic, or pre

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modern distinctiveness, or awareness. National identities thus

more or less have a historical starting point from which they

develop and consolidate, backed by popular support and driven by

elite decision-making. Instrumentalism has been theorized by

David Brown (2000) under the name of situationalism, and this is

how will be elaborated on from now on, because the term is more

helpful in describing the oil issue as an opportunity snatched by

the SNP and used as a reference point around which autonomist and

secessionist demands were spun around.

For Brown, situationalism explains ethnic and national

identities “not as natural instinctual ties to organic

communities, but rather as resources employed by groups of

individuals for the pursuit of their common interests” (2000,

13). Thus situationalism also relies on rational choice theory

and through it, as the type of “threats and opportunities with

which people are faced change, so do their options and their

responses” (2000, 13). The term for Brown refers to the fact that

“both the utility of ethnicity and nationalism, and the form

which they take, will vary in response to changing situations”,

and how easily these situations are manipulable (2000, 14).

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Individuals through this approach rely on information supplied by

elite activists who can “explain the nature of the situational

threats or opportunities to them, and who can mobilise support

for an appropriate group response” (Brown, 2000, 16). The

manipulation of threats or opportunities comes into play when

elite activists may “dramatise the situation so as to explain it

in simple comprehensible terms, and may sometimes offer

misleading information to their audiences, but false diagnoses

are unlikely to be given credence” (Brown, 2000, 16).

Situationalism sees ethnic and national identities as linked

together, and depicted as a form of “class consciousness, as with

the ‘cultural division of labour’ approach” on which Michael

Hechter (1975) wrote extensively (Brown, 2000, 16). Hechter

refers to uneven development between peripheral regions and the

core which in his opinion led to the emergence of “new peripheral

nationalisms directed against the state” (quoted in Brown, 2000,

18), such as Scottish nationalism, as reiterated below. The

result of uneven economic development was the emergence of

“ethnic consciousness among each regional community, and thence

of ethnic rivalry” (Brown, 2000, 18). In the cases where

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peripheral communities had access to “political elites and

intelligentsia who could articulate and mobilise their ethnic

identity in support of claims to regional resource and autonomy

claims, then their ethno-regional consciousness could provide a

basis for nationalist movements” (Brown, 2000, 18). Thus, ethnic

and nationalist movements can become “vehicles for the defence of

such interests [common to members of those movements] in the face

of economic or power disparities” (Brown, 2000, 19), and

nationalism for situationalists will reflect this exact defence

of common interests, with the end goal of establishing an

effective state to achieve the economic and security aspirations

of a group.

Related to Hechter, and his internal colonialism and

cultural division of labour, lies an argument within

situationalism entitled the reactivity perspective, which states

that all “nationalisms, whether civic or ethnocultural, are

necessarily reactive in that their origin is in assertions of an

identity demarcating the us from the them” (Brown, 2000, 65).

With respect to development and Hechter’s assertions, in the

reactive ethnicity argument a “particularistic allocation of

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roles and resources may accompany structural differentiation

[when...] the most desirable rewards are reserved for members of

the core cultural group while members of the peripheral cultural

group are assigned to inferior positions” (Ragin, 1979, 621).

Despite the reactive perspective, Hechter argues that the

“potential for ethnic mobilization may remain dormant for decades

following industrialization, to be sparked only by specific

political and economic factors” (Ragin, 1979, 621), which the

North Sea Oil will be seen as one such factor. Reactivity will be

noted in the dialectic contrast within some of the nationalist

rhetoric employed, between Scots and England, or Scotland and the

British Government, and not necessarily with respect to ethnicity

(which the reactive argument is sometimes used for).

In Scotland, nationalism has been seen at least until after

the Second World War as non-ideological, transcending class and

focusing more on Home Rule and independence as general end goals.

Scottish nationalism has been accused of lacking a coherent

unity, and this can be seen as attributed to a lack of emphasis

on cultural distinctiveness in favour of economic disparity, and

the absence of a clear, unifying ideology bringing together its

Sotiriu 9

supporters under a strong party. The Scottish Nationalist Party

has been arguably3 employing nationalist rhetoric in political

and economic issues of the day, hoping that by focusing on

individual issues, one of them would one day bring with it

independence (Pittock, 1991, 158). One of the failures of this

strategy has been the reliance on economic matters, which has

been seen as short-lived (hence the repeated appearance of

nationalist rhetoric attached to these issues, as opposed to an

uninterrupted emphasis on more traditional questions of Scottish

cultural distinctiveness and national unity) and not as

successful as expected (Pittock, 1991, 159). Also absent has been

a concern with “the issues of Scotland’s history and their

legacy” (Pittock, 1991, 159) which would have multiplied the

dimensions of Scottish nationalism. Another important implication

of the political usage of nationalism in Scotland is that the

support of one has not been an adequate translation of the other-

the support of ethnonationalism has not been measured properly by

the partisan support of Scottish nationalism. This has been 3 Arguably, because academics researching the topic have noted it so but

it has not been acknowledged by SNP members and activists, who would most

likely deny it, employing primordialist-populist stances.

Sotiriu 10

justified by the proportion of voters who have been using their

electoral influence as a proof of short-term non-violent protest

(Studlar & McAllister, 1988, 57).

The use of nationalism also leads more generally to the

creation and expansion of shared values that in turn requires

distinctive administrative institutions in which they can

materialize. These values in Scotland have gained a predominant

economic dimension (collectivist and egalitarian), while in other

nations shared values emphasized cultural, linguistic and/or

historical commonalities (Belgium, Spain etc). For example

Scottish Gaelic, which has stopped functioning as a public

language and has been spoken by less than one hundred thousand

Scots, has only been picked up by the SNP in a determination to

“protect Gaelic but not to resuscitate it as English’s equal”

(Hamilton, 2004, 659). This has been justified by a “lukewarm”

attitude based on the belief that “Scottishness ought not to be

tied to a particular linguistic group or cultural expression

(Hamilton, 2004, 659). The economic values, on the other hand,

emphasized by Scottish nationalism politically supported the idea

of the need for a parliament to protect Scottish economic

Sotiriu 11

conditions, and evolved in stark opposition to the rise and

influence of English Conservative priorities (Henderson & McEwen,

2005, 179-184).

The emphasis on socio-economic priorities has also meant

that for much of its existence, Scottish nationalism did not

adopt an official ideology, contouring it only as late as the

1970s with the North Sea Oil campaign, partially because of the

ideological differences and tensions between the members of the

party, and the impossibility of adopting a unified ideology.

Until then, the SNP was seen as being driven by a “‘ruling myth’,

neither of the left or the right but it constituted a new

politics that sought to put Scotland first” (Lynch, 2009, 623)

and this was mildly successful for a while with the electorate.

The party was seen more as a solidified movement, but not a

coherent partisan structure. Given that this non-ideological

strategy proved to be only partially successful, the party

declared an officially social-democratic stance at the 1974

elections, after having won constituencies previously held either

by the Conservative or Labour party. Nationalist rhetoric

generally thus ended up employing left-wing stances in its

Sotiriu 12

demands for further devolution and a more equitable distribution

of power from the UK to Scotland throughout the second half of

the twentieth century, starting with the North Sea Oil campaign.

In 1965, British Petroleum (BP) his gas off the coast of

East Anglia, and following this, oil was found in Danish and

Norwegian waters. In 1970 BP announced it had found an oil field

which “by 1977 was producing 500 000 barrels of oil a day,

equivalent to a quarter of Nigeria’s entire daily production”

(Harvie&Jones, 2000, 97). Initial forecasts indicated that from

the oil fields would be extracted “from 12m tons to 158m tons by

1980- and as oil prices were steadily rising, oil indeed promised

to make Scotland a wealthy society” (Thomsen, 2010, 66). The

timing of the discovery was fortuitous for the SNP, allowing them

the option of taking advantage of the oil issue or not, and for

Great Britain as well for the country was going through a post-

imperial recession. Robert McIntyre, a previously successful SNP

candidate, campaigned in a by-election in 1970 using the North

Sea Oil at “the first press conference of the campaign”,

featuring the “first electoral deployment of the oil issue by the

SNP (Lynch, 20002, 125). Even though BP discovered the oil

Sotiriu 13

fields, and Great Britain claimed it, Geoffrey Lee clarifies that

the “oil does not lie in U.K., British or Scottish waters, as is

frequently claimed, but is in international waters [and] insofar

as it is British at all, it is so by virtue of a series of

bilateral treaties signed in 1965 with states in the vicinity,

and ultimately by Britain's potential to prevent any unfriendly

power from seizing the reserves” (1976, 308). Despite of this,

the SNP based its case partially on the fact that the “boundary

between English and Scottish waters is the 55'50' parallel, and

that an independent Scotland would assume control of all

continental shelf minerals north of this line” (Lee, 1976, 308).

The parallel was referenced because it delimited that “area of

the North Sea subject to Scottish law from that subject to

English law, [and] was cited as a boundary by the Nationalists in

detailed works such as The Reality of Scotland's Oil by Nicholas

Dekker and in election handouts such as ‘England Expects . . .

Scotland's Oil’” (Lee, 1976, 308). Thus, whether this was true or

not, was not the case here, but what was important was the

dissemination of information, either for electoral purposes or

not, that would make people believe that they were entitled to

Sotiriu 14

the oil and its revenues, partially because of the geographical

location of the fields, and its proximity to the Scottish coast.

Analysis of the nationalist rhetoric of SNP propaganda

surrounding the oil issue will focus on the slogans and visual

aid of the party throughout the 1970s, and how these have evolved

throughout this regionalist campaign, and discuss the more

general statements or instances of the usage of nationalist

discourse, and their significance. Thus for the 1970 by-election

and 1974 national campaigns, oil propaganda took over the slogans

of the SNP which declared that “‘It's Scotland's Oil’, [and]

‘Scotland's Oil- To London With Love’” (Lynch, 2002, 127), meant

to inculcate the idea that the oil off the Scottish coast was

Scottish possession. The stand of the party was quite clear in

this regard that if this present generation of Scots have the

spirit to take what is theirs by right, we can rapidly overcome

the bitter legacy of centuries of poverty, inequality,

unemployment, emigration, and cultural neglect” (Fusaro, 1979,

374). Scots were also rhetorically asked by SNP slogans

"How would you like petrol at five bob (50p) a gallon? With 825 million pounds every year from Scotland's Oil, self-government will pay", "How would you like a job in

Sotiriu 15

Scotland? With 825 million pounds every year from Scotland's Oil, self-government will pay", "How would youlike your granny's pension doubled? With 825 million pounds every year from Scotland's Oil, self-government will pay" (Lynch, 2002, 127).

The SNP can be thus seen as appealing to the emotions of the

electorate, trying to stir indignation, optimism, and sympathy

for their own kin (families as well as fellow Scots), using the

repetition that “self-government will pay” almost incessantly to

help link the issue of oil with that of self-government in

people’s minds. Party propaganda thus tried to convey through

these slogans (and not just), that “things were happening [and

that] oil promised a better life for the East coast at least and

the SNP activists had an enthusiasm that was communicated to the

voters” (Brand, McLean&Miller, 1983, 471). The value of oil

revenues was even translated into “pounds per week for every

Scot, and a section [entitled] ‘What’s in it for you’ predicted a

minimum of 20,000 new and 30,000 modernised houses per year,

substantial increases in expenditure on education and social

services, and petrol at 25 pence a gallon” (Lee, 1976, 314) as

some of the slogans above illustrated.

Sotiriu 16

Through the slogans of this decade, the SNP is seen as

aggressively trying to infuse sentiments of empowerment in the

electorate, to build support from below and convey the

possibilities and ‘colourful’ future that self-government can and

will bring for everyone. Thus the impression obtained from the

slogans above was that “there was nothing that could not be done

with the enormous revenues, nothing less than the total

regeneration of Scottish social, industrial, and cultural life

was seen to flow from the oil revenues controlled by an

independent Scotland” (Farbey, Mitchell&Webb, 1980, 420). Oil

revenue possibilities varied from “pensions, the health service,

capital investment in Scottish industry, or the arts in

Scotland”, petrodollars being seen as replacing faith (Farbey,

Mitchell&Webb, 1980, 420). The SNP offered Scots even a

University at Inverness, making it seem that there was not a

single area in Scotland that could not benefit from oil revenues

(Lee, 1976, 314). From a cynical stance, one could even claim

that it seemed oil revenue was portrayed as the answer/salvation

to everyone’s problems in Scotland and that from one point of

Sotiriu 17

view the nationalist elites could be seen as marketing the oil

issue not necessarily in pragmatic or realistic terms.

Posters too conveyed the same aggressive empowerment and

entitlement that nationalists tried to convey through slogans,

especially in the first half of the decade, and they also did not

skip over the connection between oil and self-government. While

in the 1970 campaign, visual material was more aggressive, this

ended up changing later on

Figure 1: poster part of the “It’s Scotland’s Oil” campaign,launched in 1972. Photograph provided by SNP, found in Harvie &

Jones, 2000, p.97

Sotiriu 18

The effectiveness of this poster can be seen first through the

firm, direct, brief and simple message of the poster pointing to

the fact that benefits from oil can only return to Scotland

through self-government, if Scottish parties, and Scots, govern

Scotland, not far-away entities making decisions on behalf and to

the benefit of the whole British Archipelago. Stylistically, the

high contrast of the colours is meant to draw attention easily,

and the visual representation of oil reinforces the message, and

leaves little doubt as to what the forms are (a drop of oil),

especially in relation to the message printed.

The 1970 and 1974 SNP Manifestos continued the optimism of

the party slogans by evoking “positive images of a nation that is

independent and negative images where the nation is a ‘province’

or an ‘unimportant and underprivileged region’ of the UK”, this

attitude being also translated in the future of Scottish self-

government (Leith, 2008, 85). Self-government was conveyed as

necessary in manifestos too, with Scotland referred to as “‘an

exploited province’ and ‘extremism in England’ was highlighted”

(Leith, 2008, 86). There was also a sense of entitlement infusing

the manifestos through the ancestral identification of Scotland

Sotiriu 19

as “‘one of the oldest nations of Europe’” (Leith, 2008, 85),

which should have superseded the Westminster Parliament in the

allocation of revenues from natural resources (in this case, more

specifically oil).

In 1974 the SNP released its Manifesto, and later on a

supplement, and both documents “accentuated the oil discoveries

and the consequential prospects for Scotland” the main idea

presented being that “‘the enormous wealth of the oil and gas

fields off the Scottish coast, allied to our other vast

resources, offers ever-improving living standards to the people

of Scotland- when they demand a Scottish Government’” (Thomsen, 2010,

66). After this peak in oil propaganda, the issue starts slowly

to decrease in importance for the party, probably for the same

reasons as mentioned by Murray Pittock- that reliance and

promotion of a single issue in relation to independence did not

bring the latter, nor it increased the popularity of the SNP to

questionable level for the future of Scotland (1991, 158). In the

1977 manifesto oil is less dominant compared to the 1974

manifestos, the rhetoric changing as well: “The choice for

Scotland has become even more urgent. The discovery of massive

Sotiriu 20

oil-fields in the Scottish sector of the Continental Shelf has

given us a unique opportunity” (Thomsen, 2010, 66). Thus

“choice”, “urgency” and “opportunity” replaced the perceived

aggressiveness and bluntness in previous manifestos and

propaganda rhetoric. Despite this decline in importance, oil has

nonetheless remained part of SNP manifestos ever since the 1970,

even though the stance of the party became less aggressive on the

ownership of oil, and the issue can still be found in the

manifesto published just recently, surviving other campaigns that

the SNP fought through the years, such as the civil disobedience

and poll-tax campaigns of the 1980s.

As mentioned before, Scottish nationalism promoted the

territorial identity of Scotland during this decade, this being

also seen in the party manifestos where Scottishness was accepted

as given for all Scots, and the messages conveyed created a

“sense of belonging that encompassed and [was] clearly fixed on a

national dimension” (Leith, 2008, 86). Despite the constant

territoriality of Scotland, an important distinction needs to be

made in the titles of the two SNP manifestos of the first half of

the 1970s. Thus, the 1970 one is simply entitled “The New

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Scotland” which is most likely meant to indicate the momentum of

the oil campaign, and the possibility of renewal and

metamorphosis that oil revenues can bring to the region. The 1974

manifesto changes the novelty of Scotland into a reference about

its future and what lies ahead: “Scotland’s Future: SNP

Manifesto”. It is interesting to note the difference between the

1970 manifesto in which the SNP emphasized its “advance as a

political party and clearly hoped to overcome any perception of a

vote for it as ‘wasted’”, and the 1974 one for which the supposed

intention was to appeal “to individuals who had not supported the

party in the past” (Leith, 2008, 86) to broaden its electoral

foundation.

SNP attacks were not addressed however solely against the

government, oil companies were labelled as indulging in “‘blatant

profiteering ‘, were treating the Scots as ‘tartan coolies’ and

would make ten times as much profit in the North Sea as in the

Middle East” (Lee, 1976, 313). And the influence of these

companies extended so far that they had managed to induce the

“‘weak, incompetent and generally vulnerable’ U.K. Government to

‘sell out’ Scottish interests, although at the same time the

Sotiriu 22

Machiavellian Londoners saw the Scots as ‘suckers’ and were

deliberately out to steal their wealth” (Lee, 1976, 313). In 1979

the dialectic opposition between the Scots and the English

continued with respect to oil, the manifesto supplement arguing

that “Scotland's resources and taxation have made England

prosperous with little of that prosperity remaining in Scotland.

This drain... Continues apace with the drain of tax revenues from

Scotland's oil” (Thomsen, 2010, 67). Related to the anti-

Englishness or anti-Britishness rhetoric, one can find a new

slogan after the 1974 election that also suggests a dialectic

reactive relationship between the two groups: “Your Choice- Poor

British or Rich Scots”, shifting the focus away from Scotland

alone, and introducing Britain into the oil and separatist

equation. Even though the SNP was inundated with “accusations of

anti-English selfishness, [...] opinion polls suggested that a

good many Scots seemed to think that the Nationalists had a

point” (Harvie&Jones, 2000, 100). People thus started wondering,

with the oil campaign and the rhetoric surrounding it, why “their

nation was so resource rich, yet so plagued by poverty” (SNP,

2011, 40). With independence, SNP claimed, Scots would not longer

Sotiriu 23

be humiliated by the English, would not need to go “cap-in-hand

to London; [and] oil revenues would allow them to stand on their

own two feet” (Harvie&Jones, 2000, 99).

Even though the 1970 campaign resonated with many, and

triggered existential questions about national identity and

association, Geoffrey Lee cites evidence that it seemed to have

been put too “bluntly”. Specifically he refers to polls

commissioned by The Scotsman showing that around half of their

samples believed “the oil should be used to benefit all Britain”,

with 45 per cent of SNP voters concurring in 1974 (Lee, 1976,

314). After the 1974 election, surveys of the British Election

Study showed that “36.5 per cent believed Scotland should receive

a somewhat larger share than the rest of Britain, 31.5 per cent

that it should be shared equally, 23 per cent. that Scotland

should have by far the largest portion, and 8.25 per cent claimed

the whole” (Lee, 1976, 314). After these indicators of support,

and the fact that during the ’74 election SNP canvassers met

“some door-step resistance and muffled the oil issue” reinventing

the oil campaign with a “more human face-several old and needy

faces in fact with the caption ‘It’s his/her oil’” (Lee, 1976,

Sotiriu 24

314). The new faces of the deprived Scottish oil were, more

specifically “a pensioner, an unemployed industrial worker, a

child in poverty, a harassed housewife” (Maxwell, 2009, 122)

appealing to more than one demographics and illustrating the

extent of Scottish social problems, again with the same purpose

as in 1970- emotional triggers. This time however, given the

choices for the faces of the SNP campaign, and the specific

departure from text and forms to portraits in posters, the

emotions conveyed also change, few perceiving optimism or

empowerment, while indignation, sympathy and pity most likely

prevailed. This campaign directed the “SNP’s attack at the heart

of Labour’s traditional claim to be the champion of social

justice for Scotland’s working class” (Maswell, 2009, 122) and

led to the consolidation of the party’s ideology towards the left

of the political spectrum, after becoming the second party in

Scotland at the 1974 election.

An illustration of the new direction of the oil campaign can

be seen in one of the posters referred to above:

Sotiriu 25

Figure 2. “It’s Her Oil” poster (1977), found in the 2011 SNPManifesto

Thus, the poster maintains the feelings of entitlement of the

1970 ones through the direct and compact slogan. This set of

posters however contains more text than before, specifically

rhetorical questions relating oil revenue to poverty issues of

the elderly (in this case), which as stated on the previous page,

were meant to trigger human emotions (in addition to the

photograph) about the living conditions in Scotland. The idea of

self-government is no longer directly related to oil (through its

absence from the poster), the SNP moving away slightly from the

Sotiriu 26

territorial entity of Scotland towards its inhabitants and the

benefits that specific groups would enjoy from oil revenues.

However, a potential answer to the questions on the poster was

that Britain was the scapegoat, the reason why so many Scottish

elderly were cold, undernourished and died of hypothermia every

year even though Scotland “was” rich, and that by refusing to

allow oil royalties to be distributed to Scotland alone, the

benefits were only marginal for the overall British economy.

Thus, Scottish nationalism has been seen as benefitting, or

taking advantage of issue politics more transparently than other

nationalist parties in Europe, or other British parties

nationally. The beginning of this trend for the SNP was

identified as the North Sea Oil campaign, which was succinctly

illustrated in this essay through the electoral propaganda

machine that it developed throughout the 1970s after oil fields

were discovered in nearby international waters at the end of the

1960s. Even though the nationalist movement in Scotland was

formed at the end of the nineteenth century, the SNP has been the

most successful in mobilizing nationalist support, exploiting all

of its available options in its secessionist crusade (petitions

Sotiriu 27

for Home Rule-1950s Scottish Covenant; electoral propaganda and

party politics; media endorsements, parliamentary involvement,

and usage of any and all technological capabilities- social media

in the 21st century).

The oil campaign was not only the first issue that the SNP

campaigned for more unitarily en masse, but it was also the first

issue that brought the party more than one seat in the House of

Commons, and extended popularity in local governments, but

neither this nor any other issues picked up from the initial goal

of independence. The SNP celebrated the return of the Scottish

Parliament after almost three centuries of adjournment as one of

its successes and long term goals (even though the Labour

Government had been the louder advocate for devolution since the

1970s onwards) and it has also managed to become the party in

power at the regional level from 2007 onwards, with its current

leader Alex Salmond, being the most recent First Minister of

Scotland.

The SNP started a mass regionalist campaign with the North

Sea Oil that extended over half a decade, and the issue has never

left the manifestos of the party since, albeit has been present

Sotiriu 28

to less significant degrees. Slogans and posters complemented the

partisan rhetoric and helped diffuse the message that oil and

self-government were intrinsically connected, and still are, to

bring to Scotland the most benefits possible to a very worthy

region, with significant historical importance. Thus by analyzing

campaign media (posters, slogans and party manifestos), I have

tried to point to significant nationalist rhetoric, and the

instances/occasions in which these were used, painting a picture

of how one medium complemented the rest, and how they fit in the

overall Scottish partisan nationalism, as well as how rhetoric

has evolved from one election to another.

Sotiriu 29

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