The auld sang resumes
On 1 July 1999, the Scottish Parliament met for the first time in 292 years. The ceremony at the Church of Scotland's General Assembly Hall on the Mound in Edinburgh was charged with emotion. Winnie Ewing, the oldest member of the new Parliament and a veteran of the Scottish independence movement, opened proceedings with words that sent a shiver through the hall: "The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March 1707, is hereby reconvened."
The road to devolution had been long and winding. Scotland had voted for a devolved parliament in a referendum in 1979, but the result was nullified by a controversial rule requiring 40 per cent of the total electorate — not just those who voted — to say yes. Eighteen years of Conservative government followed, during which Scotland consistently voted Labour but was governed from London by a party it had rejected. The sense of democratic deficit fuelled the demand for self-governance. A second referendum in 1997 delivered an emphatic result: 74 per cent voted for a parliament, and 63 per cent voted to give it tax-varying powers.
The Scotland Act 1998 established the new Parliament with powers over health, education, law, transport, the environment, and much else. Defence, foreign affairs, and macroeconomic policy remained reserved to Westminster. The first elections were held on 6 May 1999, using a mixed system of constituency seats and regional list seats designed to produce proportional representation. Donald Dewar, the Labour leader who had steered the devolution legislation through Westminster, became Scotland's first First Minister.
The Parliament moved to its permanent home at Holyrood in 2004 — a striking, controversial building designed by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles, who died before its completion. The building's design, inspired by upturned boats, the Scottish landscape, and the flower paintings of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, divided opinion as sharply as the Parliament itself. But the principle was established: Scotland would govern itself in Scottish matters, from a Scottish building, at the foot of the Royal Mile. The "auld sang" that the Earl of Seafield had declared ended in 1707 had found a new verse.