On this day · archive
Scotland votes a parliament back into being
On September 11, 1997, Scotland voted for a devolved parliament within the United Kingdom. The result moved an old constitutional question from argument toward institution, with a second vote granting the proposed body tax-varying powers.
8
events in todayish file
1997
Scotland votes to establish a devolved parliament within the United Kingdom.
A ballot asked whether national political life should again have a chamber of its own — and Scotland answered yes.
The referendum of September 11, 1997, put two questions before Scottish voters: whether Scotland should have its own parliament, and whether that parliament should have tax-varying powers. The answer was yes to both — 74.3 percent on the first question and 63.5 percent on the second.
A referendum result is a beginning written as a total. The ballots did not themselves build a chamber or draft its daily procedures, but they supplied the authority for the Scotland Bill introduced later that year and for the institution that followed.
The significance lies in the scale of the change and the limits carefully named around it. Scotland would have a devolved parliament within the United Kingdom: a new center of democratic power, established not as separation, but as a lasting rearrangement of where public decisions could be made.
The full record
8 entries from the day’s archive, filed year by year with a note on what each one leaves behind.
Hurricane Francine impacts the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane.
Landfall in southern Louisiana brought flash flooding, impassable roads, and power outages affecting hundreds of thousands of customers.
Disaster
Catastrophic floods strike Derna after Storm Daniel causes two dams to collapse, killing thousands.
The failed dams turn extreme weather into a city-scale catastrophe and leave a long work of mourning and rebuilding.
Disaster
A crane collapses onto the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing 111 people and injuring 394.
The collapse at Islam's holiest mosque killed 111 people, injured hundreds, and brought mourning into a place of pilgrimage.
Disaster
A major fire breaks out on a Channel Tunnel freight train.
The damage closes part of the tunnel for six months, showing how one fire can interrupt a continental link.
Disaster
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.
The arrival moves the mission from interplanetary travel to the patient work of observing another world.
Space
Scotland votes to establish a devolved parliament within the United Kingdom.
The referendum gives devolution a democratic mandate and clears the way for a new national chamber.
Civic
Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand begin the PCA World Chess Championship on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower.
The championship opened high above New York, beginning a match Anand would lead before Kasparov recovered to retain the title.
Sport
Chile establishes a new constitution under dictator Augusto Pinochet's influence.
Its origins under dictatorship remain central to the constitutional debate that followed.
Civic