Impaled Upon a Thistle : Scotland since 1880

Ewen Cameron explores the political debate between unionism, liberalism, socialism and nationalism, and the changing political relationship between Scotland and the United Kingdom.

This closing volume of the ten-volume New Edinburgh History of Scotland analyses in detail the transformation of Scotland from the Victorian period-dominated by the Liberal party, the Presbyterian chruches, the British empire and hearvy industry - to contemporary times in which the industrial economy, the empire and the dominance of presbyterianism are things of the past.

Like the period it describes, this book has politics at its heart. It deals with the rise of the Labour party since the 1880s; the success of the Conservative party in the 1950s and its subsequent decline; the development of nationalism; the long and complex process leading to the creation of the Scottish parliament in 1998/9; and the 2007 Scottish parliamentary election. Ewen Cameron sets Scottish Experience alongside the irish, Welsh and European, and considers British dimensions of historical changes - involvement in two world wars, imperial growth and decline - from a Scottish perspective.

Cameron devotes particular attention to the period of enormous change since 1945. Considerable change has taken place within the Anglo-Scottish Union and the volume seeks to explain why this political settlement survived the twentieth century. Underlying the history is the evolution and growth of national self-confidence and identity which fundamentally affected Scotland''s destiny in the last century. the book ends with a consideration of how such forces may continue to transform it in this one.