Family, Language and the Scottish Independence Referendum

The idea for this article was sparked at the end of party conference season when it crossed my mind that (it seems) ‘the family’ features more heavily in British than in Scottish political discourse. To ‘test’ this proposition I searched the conference speeches of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond for mentions of ‘family’ or ‘families’. Cameron, Clegg and Miliband notched up five, 16 and 12 mentions respectively; Salmond, however, referred to family and families only thrice. This is far from conclusive evidence (a detailed content analysis would be required to test the proposition rigorously) but it does provide a premise for this short article: family issues are less prominent in Scottish than in British politics.

This is as comparative as this article will get, as it is primarily concerned with finding any relationship between voters’ family situations and their voting intentions in next year’s independence referendum.  There is a long line of literature – stretching back to Glaser’s (1959) ‘The Family and Voting Turnout’ – suggesting a close link between family ties and voting behaviour. Let us use this literary tradition to construct a hypothesis: a person’s family situation will affect his or her voting intention in the independence referendum. There is no agreed-upon definition of a twenty-first century British family but for our purposes – and also because of data limitations – we will use a loose ‘immediate family’ definition of at least one adult and one child.

The Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) 2012 survey asked respondents to provide the number of children aged four or under; aged between five and 11; aged between 12 and 15; and aged 16 or 17 in their households. For our analysis, these four variables have each been recoded [1] into straight-forward yes/no variables. These new variables take account not only of children’s biological parents but all other adults (i.e. other potential voters) within their households such as adult siblings, stepparents, foster parents and legal guardians. However, they exclude parents whose children do not live with them, as well as parents whose children are all 18 or over.

I have opted to use four separate age category variables rather than a single ‘number of children’ variable (which simply asked respondents to give the total number of children under 17 in their households). If we use the single ‘number of children’ variable we could, for example, discover those who live with children are more likely to vote Yes. This, however, could mask variations among different types of families: if one age category is highly supportive of independence but the remaining three are sceptical, the use of the single variable could skew the results, making families in general appear more supportive of independence than they actually are. The use of four separate variables will improve the reliability of the results by detecting any attitudinal uniformity among different types of families.

The same respondents were also asked to pick their favoured Scottish constitutional arrangement from a list of five options [2]. This has also been recoded into a yes/no variable similar to the question that will be asked in the referendum (and the question asked in most opinion polls): should Scotland be in independent country?

 

Table 1 – Attitudes to Scottish independence (percentages).
			Should Scotland be an independent country?
					Yes	No	DK
Do you live with children aged 4 or under?
Yes					32	61	5
No					23	73	4
Do you live with children aged 5 – 11?
Yes					26	66	8
No					24	73	4
Do you live with children aged 12 – 15?
Yes					27	67	7
No					24	72	4
Do you live with children aged 16 or 17?
Yes					32	59	9
No					23	72	4

 

Table 1 indicates that those with immediate families are generally more supportive of independence, particularly those who stay with children aged four or under and aged 16 or 17. Nonetheless it also shows that a majority still plan to vote No, regardless of family situation. This is not surprising given the nature of the survey question: as noted above, respondents were asked to pick their favoured constitutional arrangement from a list (see footnote [2]) rather than the yes/no question that will be asked in the referendum. This has likely reduced the number of Don’t Know responses, which comprised 32% of the responses in the latest opinion poll. Table 1 also shows that those with immediate families are slightly more likely to give a ‘Don’t Know’ response so it therefore appears that they are also more likely to be on the fence. Had the SSA survey asked a yes/no question, it stands to reason that those with immediate families would be shown to be more undecided over independence – and less supportive of the union – than Table 1 highlights.

Given these results we would be justified in assuming families are also more supportive of ‘devo max’, the yet-to-be-nailed-down term generally used to describe the devolution of full fiscal autonomy. However, Table 2 below shows no such pattern. There is little difference between those with and without immediate families. If anything, those without immediate families have slightly more confidence in devo max. 

 

Table 2 – Confidence in ‘Devo Max’ (percentages).
				How confident would you be for Scotland’s future with ‘Devo Max’?
								Confident		Neither		Worried
Do you live with children aged 4 or under?
Yes									35		32		33
No									37		26		36
Do you live with children aged 5 – 11?
Yes									36		33		31
No									37		26		37
Do you live with children aged 12 – 15?
Yes									36		29		34
No									37		27		36
Do you live with children aged 16 or 17?
Yes									37		34		29
No									37		27		37

 

The story becomes even more confused when we look at the findings detailed in Table 3 below. There are two notable features of these results. Firstly, those with immediate families are somewhat more comfortable with Holyrood controlling Scotland’s fiscal levers: 68% of respondents who stay with children under four support the devolution of tax powers, compared to 56% of respondents who do not stay in such households; and 64% of respondents who stay with children aged between five and 11 support the transfer of tax powers, compared to 56% who do not stay with children in this age category. Secondly, going on the results of Table 2, we would perhaps expect support for tax devolution to be low; instead, there appears to be broad agreement, regardless of family situation, that Holyrood should set tax levels for Scotland. This suggests there is public uncertainty over what devo max actually entails.

 

Table 3 – Attitudes to tax (percentages).
				Who ought to set levels of tax for Scotland?
								Holyrood		Westminster		Councils
Do you live with children aged 4 or under?
Yes									68		27		5
No									56		40		4
Do you live with children aged 5 – 11?
Yes									64		33		3
No									57		39		4
Do you live with children aged 12 – 15?
Yes									56		38		6
No									58		39		3
Do you live with children aged 16 or 17?
Yes									59		38		3
No									58		39		4

 

But is this confusion confined to devo max, or are there other language issues within the independence debate? After all, independence itself has yet to be defined (will Scotland be part of the EU? Will Scotland join Nato? Which currency will Scotland use?). As with devo max, voters may be reluctant to support the concept of independence if its meaning has not been clarified.  

The SSA survey also asked respondents ‘who should make government decisions for Scotland?’. Four response options were provided, ranging from full Holyrood to full Westminster autonomy, but with no reference to ‘independence’ or ‘devo max’. If there are language issues, we would expect to find higher support for full Holyrood autonomy in this set of responses than in the results detailed in Table 1. The findings are displayed in Table 4 below.

 

Table 4 – Government decisions (percentages).
			Who should make government decisions for Scotland?
				Holyrood only	Holyrood all but foreign policy	UK foreign policy/tax; Holyrood rest	UK all
Do you live with children aged 4 or under?
Yes				41	44	20	6
No				34	32	27	8
Do you live with children aged 5 – 11?
Yes				34	36	25	6
No				35	31	26	8
Do you live with children aged 12 – 15?
Yes				39	33	23	5
No				34	32	26	8
Do you live with children aged 16 or 17?
Yes				33	39	27	2
No				35	32	26	8

 

Table 4 shows support for full Holyrood autonomy is more popular when references to ‘independence’ are removed. In Table 1, we saw that approximately one quarter of those who do not stay with children supported independence this rises to one third when reference to ‘independence’ is taken out of the question. A family ‘effect’ also remains. Those in households with children aged four or under and aged 12 to 15 are more likely to support full Holyrood autonomy. Such support is not as marked in the other two categories but they are still more likely to back Holyrood autonomy save foreign policy (devo max?) than those not from such households.

The importance of language is further illustrated by the results in Table 5 below, which displays attitudes to defence and foreign policy. If we compare these findings with those in Table 4, we see the number of respondents who support full Holyrood autonomy is very similar to the number who believe Holyrood should set Scotland’s defence and foreign policies (for example, 34% of respondents who stay with children aged between five and 11 support full Holyrood autonomy; 34% also believe Holyrood should control defence and foreign policy). Again, those with immediate families appear more supportive of ‘independence’ – in three out of the four age categories, support for Holyrood’s control of defence and foreign policy is higher among those with immediate families. 

 

Table 5 – Attitudes to defence and foreign policies (percentages).
				Who ought to decide Scotland’s defence and foreign policies?
								Holyrood		Westminster		EU
Do you live with children aged 4 or under?
Yes									42		52		6
No									34		63		2
Do you live with children aged 5 – 11?
Yes									34		66		1
No									35		62		3
Do you live with children aged 12 – 15?
Yes									38		61		2
No									35		62		3
Do you live with children aged 16 or 17?
Yes									40		60		–
No									35		62		3

 

The overall results indicate a paradox in which voters are more likely to vote Yes if the end result is not referred to as ‘independence’. This presents an obvious problem for the Yes campaign: how to convince a country to become independent without actually mentioning the word? Voters are unmoved by abstract terms such as ‘independence’ and ‘devo max’ but appear more responsive to specific debates over where particular powers should be wielded.

The results, although they suggest a majority will vote No, do offer a window of opportunity for the Yes campaign. Voters with immediate families are more sympathetic to the independence cause, for reasons which are unclear from available data. Yes Scotland would do well to identify the most important issues and concerns for Scottish families and use them to boost their so-far uninspiring campaign (a family-friendly conference speech from Salmond next year would not go amiss either…) but until then, the advantage remains firmly with Better Together.

 

[1] Respondents were asked to provide the following four household characteristics:

1. 1.       The number of children aged 4 or under in their households
2. 2.       The number of children aged between 5 and 11 in their households
3. 3.       The number of children aged between 12 and 15 in their households
4. 4.       The number of children aged 16 or 17 in their households.

These have been recoded into four yes/no dichotomous variables:

1. 1.       Do you live with any children aged 4 or under?
2. 2.       Do you live with any children aged between 5 and 11?
3. 3.       Do you live with any children aged between 12 and 15?
4. 4.       Do you live with any children aged 16 or 17?

[2] Respondents were asked to pick their favoured Scottish constitutional arrangement from the following list of options:

1. 1.       Scotland independent, separate from the UK and the EU
2. 2.       Scotland independent, separate from the UK but part of the EU
3. 3.       Scotland in the UK, with own parliament and some taxation powers
4. 4.       Scotland in the UK, with own parliament but no taxation powers
5. 5.       Scotland in the UK with no Scottish parliament

These responses have been recoded into a yes/no dichotomous variable similar to the question that will be asked in the referendum, and the question asked by most opinion polls:

Should Scotland be an independent country? (options 1 and 2 recoded as ‘yes’; options 3-5 recoded as ‘no’).