The Shetland Movement was a pressure group and political party created in 1978 to advocate for greater autonomy in Shetland. [1] The group called for the creation of a Shetland Assembly or 'Althing' with limited legislative powers and control over direct taxation. [2] The group's membership included several key public figures in Shetland, including local author, politician and compiler of the Shetland Dictionary, John Graham and Shetland Islands Council Convener from 1986 to 1994, Edward Thomason.
The Shetland Movement did not begin as a political party. In the 1982 Shetland Islands Council election the movement promoted candidates supportive of autonomy for Shetland, who won a majority of council seats. [3] In the 1986 council election the Shetland Movement nominated candidates for the first time, winning 13.7% of the vote and five seats. The Shetland Movement decided to contest the 1987 general election for the Orkney and Shetland constituency, running John Goodlad as a joint candidate with Orcadian autonomists under the party label 'Orkney and Shetland Movement.' The Scottish National Party agreed to stand aside in favour of Goodlad, who won 14.5% of the vote.
It took part in the 1989 Scottish Constitutional Convention that developed a framework for the eventual Scottish devolution in 1999. [4]
In the 1990 council election the Shetland Movement increased its representation to six seats, a level it maintained in 1994. However this marked the high point of the movement's electoral success. After 1994 the group dissolved, never contesting another local or general election.
In 2015 a short-lived cross party movement, Wir Shetland, was created to campaign for greater self-government for the islands, comparing itself to the Shetland Movement. [5]
Election | Candidate | Votes | Position | |
---|---|---|---|---|
No. | Share | |||
1987 | John Goodlad | 3,095 | 14.5 | 4th |
Year | Vote share | Seats |
---|---|---|
1986 | 13.6% | 5 / 25 |
1990 | 31.4% | 7 / 25 |
1994 | 9.0% | 6 / 26 |
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Orkney and Shetland is a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. In the Scottish Parliament, Orkney and Shetland are separate constituencies. The constituency was historically known as Orkney and Zetland.
Tavish Hamilton Scott is a former Scottish politician. He was the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Shetland from 1999 to 2019, and Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats from 2008 to 2011. He stepped down as Leader after the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, in which the Liberal Democrats were reduced to five seats, down from 16 in the previous parliament.
The Orkney and Shetland Movement was an electoral coalition formed for the 1987 general election comprising the Orkney Movement and Shetland Movement, political parties which advocated autonomy for Orkney and Shetland. They agreed on selecting John Goodlad, the secretary of the Shetland Fishermen's Association, as a joint candidate for the Orkney and Shetland constituency. The Scottish National Party agreed to stand aside in favour of the coalition.
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Elections to the Shetland Islands Council were held on 2 May 1978 as part of Scottish regional elections, with 11 seats uncontested. The election saw 14 new councillors enter the Shetland Islands Council, an unusually large number, in part attributable to the charged political context surrounding the devolution debate of the late 1970s. Several of these incomers consisted of members of the pro-autonomy Shetland Group, later to become the Shetland Movement, and local Scottish National Party branch, registered as independents.
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