For nationalism to become a major political movement, it requires the masses to engage with the idea of being members of a nation and to form a polity, or part of it. Nationalism is a community of the mind (Anderson's (1983) ‘imagined community’) linking together individuals sharing the same belief in membership of a national community. If political nationalism is to have any chance of success the masses must be engaged with the political system. Although there is clear evidence of nationalist activity and intent, including declarations in support of Scottish independence or home rule, prior to the emergence of mass politics within the UK many of the organisations involved lacked a mass connection. Even when mass politics began to emerge within the UK the extension of the franchise to all males over twenty-one and to most women over thirty was not in place until 1918, and it was only with the 1929 election that both genders achieved franchise parity. Furthermore, because of the widespread economic crises of the 1930s and the Second World War, it was not until the 1945 election that a clear partisan choice was available to the Scottish (and British) electorate, when all four major parties of the latter twentieth century were present, albeit that the presence of the SNP was very limited'. Therefore, we argue that an explicit age of nationalist and mass engaged politics in Scotland did not begin until the end of the Second World War.