Vox Populi

In 1997, a majority of the Scottish electorate voted to re-establish a parliament for Scotland. In this talk, BBC Scotland Political Editor Brian Taylor draws on his experience in reporting the referendum to show how party political aims and popular opinion came together to create this historic moment.

Acting both as a historian and an eye witness, Professor Christopher Harvie assesses the negative outcome of the 1979 referendum. He highlights the role of party politics and considers how the Thatcher era might have been different for Scotland with an Assembly. Chris Harvie is a former MSP and a Professor of British and Irish studies at Tubingen University.

What role have referenda played in Scottish political culture before the referendums of 1979 and 1997? Irene Maver shows how burgh and council governments from the mid-nineteenth century used voter plebiscites to determine local opinion on questions ranging from investment in free libraries to the prohibition of the sale of alcohol.

What did the Scots think of the new American republic, especially when that republic went to war against the British state? Emma Macleod examines a range of Scottish opinions as found in the newspapers of the day. Dr. Macleod is a Lecturer in History at the University of Stirling.

What did the Scots think of the Scotophobia expressed in John Wilkes’ North Briton newspaper? Rhona Brown uses letters and poetry from the Edinburgh-based Weekly Magazine as a conduit for Scottish opinion in the age of Enlightenment. Dr. Brown is a Lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow.

To what extent had Scotland developed a democratic political culture before the Union of 1707? While avoiding anachronistic claims for precocious modernity, Professor Keith Brown evaluates democratic practices at the local and national level in pre-Union Scotland. Professor Brown is Vice-President and Dean of Humanities at the University of Manchester.

Between 1603 and 1707, Scottish monarchs also ruled England and made repeated attempts to bring the two kingdoms together in a complete union. Dr. Karin Bowie assesses the role that the Scottish parliament and the people were believed to have in this process, showing how anti-unionists insisted on parliamentary and ultimately popular approval of closer union in order to block the monarch’s aims.

Andrew Melville infamously called James VI God’s ‘sillie vassal’, but what do his writings reveal about his views on kingship and the power of the people? In this seminar paper, Dr. Steven Reid, Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow, assesses Melville’s Latin poetry to provide a new angle on Scotland’s best-known Presbyterian thinker.

Professor Ted Cowan from the University of Glasgow and Professor Roger Mason of St Andrews University debate the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath and its legacy as part of the Vox Populi research seminar series, 2012-2013.