Unionist Party (Scotland) - Suez and After

Suez and After

Only a year after the 1955 triumph, one event signalled the unravelling of the thread that had until then united Scottish Unionist support: the humiliation of the 1956 Suez Crisis. The event was a symbolic end for the British Empire; not only was British power seen to be eclipsed by the United States, but the unity of the Empire itself came into question. It was at this time that Canada's Lester Pearson led the United Nations' calls for a negotiated settlement and even offered Canadian troops as neutral peacekeepers to replace British soldiers.

Furthermore, in 1960 Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made his "Wind of Change" speech to the South African Parliament. This signalled an end to the colonial administration of British Empire overseas possessions and began their emergence as independent states. The change in Conservative attitudes to the cohesion of the British Empire had been illustrated earlier in 1958 with the expulsion of the League of Empire Loyalists from the Conservative Party Conference.

Psychologically these events marked the end of the British Empire, and with it the central thread of popular imperial unity which had bolstered the Scottish Unionist Party until then. In the 1959 election that saw the Unionists' sister Conservative party increase their overall majority in the Commons, the Scottish Unionists' own vote declined, and four MPs lost their seats. In the Conservative defeat of 1964 eight more Unionist MPs were lost.