Book review: devolution and the scottish conservatives:banal activism, electioneering and the politics of irrelevance

Devolution and the Scottish Conservatives is a unique ethnographic study of devolution and Scottish politics, exploring how Conservative Party activists who had opposed devolution and the movement for a Scottish Parliament during the 1990s attempted to mobilise politically following their annihilation at the 1997 General Election. Its central argument is that, having asserted that the difficulties they faced constituted problems of knowledge, Conservative activists cast to the geographical and institutional margins of Scotland became ‘banal’ activists by burying themselves in paperwork and petty bureaucracy. Andrew Crines recommends the book for anyone interested in grassroots Conservative activism.