The Flag in the Wind: the Story of the National Movement in Scotland

by John MacCormick

With a new introduction by the author's son, this updated edition of John MacCormick's seminal work examines the early years of the twentieth-century Nationalist movement in Scotland, providing an invaluable insight into people and events that help create and then shape the SNP and its campaign to secure a devolved Scottish Assembly.

Genres: Politics, Scotland

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

John MacDonald MacCormick was a Scottish lawyer, politician and advocate of Home Rule for Scotland. Between 1923 and 1928 he studied law at the University of Glasgow. In 1927 he left the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and formed Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association (GUSNA) which promoted Scottish culture and self-government.

MacCormick was a founder of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 and, with the merger of the NPS and the Scottish Party in 1934, he became a leading member of the Scottish National Party.

In 1942 he left the SNP and was instrumental in the forming of the Scottish Covention which went on to produce the Scottish Covenant in 1949, upon which nearly 2 million signatures of support for Scottish Home Rule were obtained.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this book, over a decade ago, from a dear friend who also happens to be a Scots nationalist. After giving up on another book about Scotland earlier this year, I was still in the mood to read about Scotland, so I gave The Flag in the Wind the good old college try. Not quite halfway in, I told my friend that I'd give it one more chapter, and if it didn't start getting interesting, I was going to put it back on my shelf. Sure enough, it didn't get any more interesting, and I shelved it in favor of something else. If you're an ardent Scots nationalist who's extremely interested in the minutiae of the Scottish national movement's development, you may be able to power through this book. If you're anyone else, you'll find this lackluster memoir of a political apparatchik from nearly a century ago to be utterly lacking in the sort of charm that would cause a reader to care. If this had been more of a history written with greater breadth, I might have been able to power through, but as it was, I couldn't force myself to finish. Ironically, when I told my friend that I'd given up, he said that he was surprised I'd made it as far as I did!