Decline of The 79 Group
Early in 1982, Sinn Féin wrote inviting a 79 Group speaker to its ardfheis (conference). With IRA violence ongoing, Sinn Féin were considered unacceptable to public opinion in the UK. Alex Salmond moved to reject the request and won, but minutes of the meeting were leaked to the press, linking the two groups. Soon after, the 1982 conference of the SNP voted to ditch "Scottish Resistance", despite a strong speech by Salmond claiming that to do so was to adopt "a defeatist and cringing mentality". Many non-79 Group members felt that the civil disobedience campaign had collapsed in farce.
The SNP leadership under Gordon Wilson finally decided that the group's activity must be stopped. At the 1982 SNP conference in Ayr, Wilson threatened to resign unless the conference passed a motion to proscribe all organised political groupings within the party (the motion covered Winifred Ewing's Campaign for Nationalism in Scotland as well). He won what was described as a Pyrrhic victory by 308 to 188. However the 79 Group's members mostly retained their offices within the party.
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