AH:Challenge Keep the Scottish Tories flag flying high.

During the 1955 UK General Election, the Scottish Unionist Party(the Tories)won over 50% of the Scottish popular votes and 36/72 seats.

In 1997, they ended with 17% of the popular vote and no seats.

The challenge is simple. Keep them as the largest party in Scotland.
 
Somehow make Scotland wealthier espeicially the heavily populated area. Scotland was a socialist place cause they are poor
 
Somehow make Scotland wealthier espeicially the heavily populated area. Scotland was a socialist place cause they are poor
Scotland was the third richest region in the UK in 1997. Sure heavy industry declined, but that should only account for the central belt, and was replaced by it cand computer based jobs. Simply saying Scotland was poor is incorrect and a cop out.
 
Don't have large scale council housing estates developed post war. Don't stop conscription so the youth have access to something other than unemployment benefits.

To have them vote Tory, minamize the collapse of social cohesion in the regions, but more importantly in the cities.
 
Don't have large scale council housing estates developed post war. Don't stop conscription so the youth have access to something other than unemployment benefits.

Neither of these would make any sense. Any party that oppossed social housing after the war would be sunk, simple as. Leaving it to pre-war tenaments would be political suicide and be in contradiction of both Labour and Conservative policy since the 1930s.

While conscription! Macmillan ended National Service because it was hindering economic growth and soaking up millions that could be better spent elsewhere. Also you seem to be forgetting that the post-war consensus and the British economy after the war meant employment was high in Scotland in the shipyards and factories, your suggestion young people just walked en masse into the dole queue after school is groundless.

The problem for the Scottish Conservatives comes from backlash to Thatcher's dogmatic reforms that focused only on GDP, and weren't above letting Labour heartlands taking the brunt of it just for the sake. Arguably a small thing but a first might be keeping the Scottish Unionist Party seperate to the national Tories, simply so they have an element of independence and are able to oppose the worst of it. Also have monetarism enter government in a less radical form so large numbers in Scotland and others areas don't spend the early and mid 1980s out of work.
 
The idea that Scotland must automatically be socialist because it's poor is wrong.

Firstly, it's not especially poor, as others have said.

Secondly, there are traditional Scottish values that the Tories could have appealed to. Let us not forget that Adam Smith, the original apostle of the market, was himself a Scot. Thrift (or value-for-money), hard-work, personal liberty, self-reliance, UK-orientated (as opposed to Scottish-orientated) patriotism, are all traditional Scottish values - and natural territory for the conservatives to fight on.

What lost the Conservatives Scotland, I think is the perception that a bunch of English were lording over the Scots, harshly, and with no regard for Scottish opinion and without even having a Scottish mandate. Holding relatively few seats and ruling Scotland in what is perceived as a doctrinaire manner then becomes a cause to lose yet more seats, in a downward spiral.

Give Maggie a Scottish Willie (I mean as in a Willie Whitelaw type figure), who persuades her to temper her language with regard to Scotland, and take care to appear inclusive and understanding of Scotland, and the political situation there would be much different now.
 
To prevent the collapse of '97 have Michael Heseltine focus all his attention on Scotland instead of Merseyside (or maybe as well as Merseyside, he's a virile man, is Tarzan) and then become PM instead of Major.

The party's vote won't fall through the floor, they won't lose every seat they held in Scotland. I don't know if that counts as keeping the 'flag flying high', though.

Don't have large scale council housing estates developed post war. Don't stop conscription so the youth have access to something other than unemployment benefits.

Er, the British nation that provided young men for National Service isn't exactly the same nation of post-seventies unemployment rates (though they both shared public housing).

Why would continuing conscription change the individuals of that latter Britain/Scotland?

Lord Brisbane said:
To have them vote Tory, minamize the collapse of social cohesion in the regions, but more importantly in the cities.

I suppose you'll give us an equally tortured (& sketchy) rationale about how modern Scottish nationalism is a sympton of 'the collapse of social cohesion'.
 
One reason for the collapse of the Tory vote in Scotland was the rise in support for the Liberals/Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP). In 1955 the Liberals won one seat and the SNP none. In 2005 Labour won 41 seats, the Liberals 11 seats, the SNP 6, and the Tories 1.

In 1955 areas which elected Tories MPs were all the constituencies north of the central belt (except for three); middle class and mixed middle class/working class constituencies in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Renfrewshire, and Ayrshire; rural constuencies in the south. In 2005 the constituencies in the north went Liberal Democrat or SNP, those in the south (except one) went Liberal Democrat, while those in Edinburgh had gone Labour, except Edinburgh, West which elected a Liberal Democrat, and those in Glasgow, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire elected Labour MPs. Here is a map of the 2005 general election results in the UK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2005UKElectionMap.svg .

If in 2005 the Tories had won 8 Liberal Democrat seats, 4 SNP seats and say 7 Labour seats, that would have given them 20 out of 59 seats in Scotland. In the 1929 and 1966 elections which they lost, they won 20 out of 71 seats in Scotland.

Even in the Labour landslide of 1945 the Tories won 29 seats in Scotland, Labour 27, Independent Labour Party 3, Communists 1 and independent Conservative 1.

After 1979 the Tories lost the middle class vote in Scotland to Labour and the Liberals/Liberal Democrats.
 
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