There's an interesting debate to be had about Salmond (and to a lesser extent Sturgeon for a similar journey) as regards his political trajectory from left-wing 79 Group member to 'modern social democrat' with an eye to traditional Labour values. Not as 'extreme' as Blair but a similar modernising path, with Blair against any semblance of 'socialism' whereas with Salmond it was a battle with the (fundamentalists' some of whom, after he defeated them, are now loyal cabinet members and supporters). Sturgeons speech this weekend appealing to Labour voters to vote yes to get their party back is part of that appeal. She too made a move from her radical speeches and writings back in the post 1992 'Scotland United' period where she made near firebrand socialist speeches and her associating with the former SNP Leftist group at the time around the magazine 'Liberation'. The same magazine counted Roseanna Cunningham and Fiona Hyslop (both now Cabinet Ministers in the Scottish Government) among its supporters. Arguably it was Liberation who forced her adoption as the by-election candidate in Perth in 1995 against the gossipy and near slanderous opposition from the Ewingites and their more right-wing supporters in the NE of Scotland.
As an aside Cunningham, Salmond, Hyslop and Kenny MacAskill another Cabinet minister, were all expelled from the SNP for their 79 Group activities. All are now front benchers. Margo Macdonald, then a bit of an SNP hero for winning in Govan, resigned in protest at the expulsions.
Steeplejack would know more about some of the shennanigans in that part of the world but there's some interesting parrallels with Salmond and Sturgeons journeys and an interesting 'understory'to the SNP as opposed to the sweeping 'Tartan Tory' generalisation.
Yes it is an interesting story, the whole '79 Group scenario. Looking back now, that was the last twitch of the old romantic-nationalist SNP and the 80s (a bleak decade of purposeless opposition and near-total irrelevance) was the last decade when they wielded real power in the party. When Salmond took over the leadership in 1990, with Gordon Wilson stepping down, the Ewingite influence dropped year on year. The last redoubt of Ewing-ite nationalism is probably in Perth and parts of Angus, territory that used to be held by Tories like Fairbairn and Bill Walker (who if he had lived would undoubtedly be in UKIP today- a total loon).
The roots of the SNP were in the aristocracy and middle class intellectuals- the Duke of Montrose, and RB Cunnighame Graham, with a bonkers fringe represented by Hugh MacDiarmid and Fionn MacColla. The from the mid 30s under Andrew Dewar Gibbs leadership (and with Wendy Wood as an eminence grise) it became a solidly Tory formation with a nationalist fringe. A streak of radicalism was there with people like the pacificst Douglas Young, and the idealistic hot air of the post war Scottish Covenant, but it never amounted to very much.
The socialist / social democratic tradition in the SNP really gained traction under Billy Wolfe in the 60s, but the generation of my parents used to criticise the SNP for facing both ways- being radical in the central belt and Tory in Perthshire, Angus and the Highlands. "Tartan Tiry" was a Labour criticism specific to the context of the dying days of Callaghan and was a convenient generalisation that stuck.
Briefly, the left wing tradition was decimated by the failure of 1979 and the subsequent political infighting in the party. It rebuilt around Salmond after the brief expulsion episode (Salmond was first elected to Westminster in 1983 IIRC). I think we have to be careful in presenting it as a parallel to Kinnock and the rise of New Labour, though.
In the SNP, it was always about "fundamentalism" (i.e. old-right wing UDI style nationalism which had no truck with devolution) and "gradualism". That was at the root of the Salmond-Sillars fissure after the '92 general election, a fissure that never has been resolved. the fundies were swept away by the realities of devolution- something that required very careful internal negoatiations within the SNP to accept- and from then on, the fundies have been like an extinct volcano. They may very occasionally emit ome white smoke still, but there won't be any more eruption from them. the last "white smoke" was in the elderly Wilson's bigoted comments about gay / samesex marriage a few years back, but the speed and unanimity with which he was slapped down shows how far that tendency has fallen.
Fundamentalism was of its time and was an ideology born of a period of hopelessness in the SNP's history, when a Scottish parliament seemed light years away, let alone independence. The Salmond / Sturgeon wing has been about maneovering much more nimbly through successive rapidly changing sets of political realities than anything else.
