Without doubt the introduction of devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1999 has led to something of a boom for publishers. Numerous books, research reports and other forms of literature have emerged in recent years, each in their own unique ways offering specific insights regarding the nature of the devolution process and its impact on different countries within the UK – or on the UK as a whole. And it is Scottish devolution which has been to the fore in many of these accounts, reflecting the particular nature of the devolution settlement as it applied to Scotland – as well as the rise in Scottish nationalism in recent times.

One of the key strengths of this particular book in my view is that it attempts to offer an account of the emergence of devolution for Scotland that is located within an understanding of what has been a long and complex history – the ‘long history’ of devolution as Phillips puts it. Phillips is primarily concerned with the interplay of class and nation in the Scottish context – the complex and shifting entanglements of the politics of industrial conflict and the politics of devolution. This is played out here against a well-worked, though to those who know this ground, a largely familiar account, of some of the most memorable episodes in Scotland's post-War economic, industrial and social history. These include the establishment in the early 1960s of the Rootes (subsequently Chrysler and Peugeot-Citroen) car factory at Linwood near Paisley on Clydeside (the remnants of which are visible from the window at my desk where I draft this review), which was championed along with other new plants being developed in Scotland at the time as a way of weaning Scotland from an ‘over-dependence’ on ‘older’ and by that time largely declining industries such as shipbuilding, coal, iron and steel. Scotland was in the early stages of what was to be a long-drawn out process of economic decline and deindustrialisation at this time, which in turn helped to generate a rising nationalist sentiment, albeit sporadically and which was not reflected in election successes, with the SNPs victory at the Hamilton by-election in 1967 being a notable exception.

Support for home rule among some – though certainly not all – sections of the Scottish labour movement not only reflected Scotland's faltering economy but also ideas that gained in currency during the 1960s and 1970s that Scotland was being either neglected by Westminster or that the particular problems facing Scotland were of such a magnitude that a fundamental change in Scotland's political arrangements were required. The famous occupation (‘sit-in’) on the Upper Clyde Shipyards in 1971–72 was for many in Scotland, not least among some of the most militant sections of the Scottish working class, influenced by a view that Scotland required either greater home rule or particular policy interventions from Westminster. Within a year of the end of the UCS sit-in, the SNP were to win another famous by-election victory in Glasgow Govan, the constituency containing some of the key remaining Clyde shipyards. This interplay of class and nation was to become a recurring feature of Scotland for the decades that followed, mirrored also across the declining Scottish coal industry, which was also facing in the 1970s an increasingly radicalised workforce.

The arrival of North Sea oil in the early 1970s is often interpreted as advancing devolution, a viewed shared by Phillips. As The Economist pointed out in 1975, ‘Oil has added a new dimension to British politics’ (p. 146). And it has remained a key factor in British politics in the period since. Phillips, however, rejects the claims – oft made by the SNP among others – that North Sea Oil was a ‘wasted windfall’ for the UK and for Scotland in particular. Against expectations to the contrary, oil tended to eliminate rather than generate jobs in what was left of Scottish manufacturing, for example. However, the idea beloved of SNP campaigns during the 1970s and 1980s that ‘it's Scotland's oil’ fed the idea that Scotland was being cheated by successive Westminster governments, a view that reached new levels of intensity and popularity during the Thatcher and Major years in the 1980s and 1990s.

The interconnections between arguments over Scotland's economic health – or more often economic ‘problems’ − and the shape and direction of Scottish politics continue to be to the fore today in relation to the SNP Government's ambitions for full Independence, ambitions which have been seriously undermined by the impact of the global financial and credit crisis in the latter half of 2008. This study reminds us that such interconnections have important historical precedents.

Somewhat disappointingly, the book has no photographs of some of the key iconic industrial plants and sites that are mentioned or of the main episodes of industrial action that are also considered here, and I am sure that readers who are unfamiliar with the geography of Scotland would have benefited from some maps pinpointing the main industrial districts. Many of the issues explored in this book, not least around the key episodes of industrial strife and the stories of ultimately failed attempts to diversify the Scottish economy such as at Linwood, have been the subject of previous studies. However, Phillips has done a service to all of us who are interested in understanding the interrelationship between class and nation as it has developed in Scotland in recent decades – and which continues to shape the Scottish political scene today. The increasingly blurring of class and nation from the late 1970s onwards posed particular problems for the main unionist parties, not least for the Labour Party. He highlights here that tensions within the Labour Party between its Scottish and UK/London ‘branches’ around how to deal with nationalism are by no means a recent issue or one that can be said to have emerged only with devolution in 1999. Support for and the drive to devolution, it is argued here, emerged in great part from a sense of class differences but this in turn also sought – though by no means always successfully – to de-emphasise such class differences. It is discussion of the ways in which these entanglements between class and nation played out in Scotland during the period in question which are among the most important contributions of this book and which help to inform the ongoing debates and controversies around Scottish identity, Scottish politics and the demand for Scottish independence today.