No, I don't agree with most of what you say there regarding Scotch Tories and the E&W Tories and the DUP. The Scots and the English parties were almost identical, and the Scotch Tories supplied 2 Prime Ministers and a Winston Churchill as a Tory minister. The reason for that was because of their similarity, their shared ethos and conservative politics.
Totally fair enough - they were referred to as the "Tories" in Scotland and I was being
somewhat pedantic but they did studiously avoid the word Conservative in favour of Liberal.
I didn't know Churchill was a member - I knew he addressed their conference but didn't put two and two together (Enoch Powell defected to the Ulster Unionists at some point as well, didn't he?).
I still contest, though, that a British Conservative Party without the backing of the kirk and the lodge wouldn't have been succesful in Scotland as the Unionist Party were and it suited the Conservatives to have the Jocks and Paddies vote on a sectarian basis.
I was reading that book last night (standard Scottish textbook for Modern Studies in the 90s I believe) and there was something else I didn't know.
ST probably knew this but I didn't.
The Liberals passed a motion for devolution in 1913 but it never came to pass because of the war.
Politics 100 years ago was so different to today - as were ideas of nationalism and duty.
When people debate WWI now they seem to fall into the lions led by lambs camp or the bloody waste of life for the sake of the aristocracy camp.
I think it was neither - people had "war fever" as it was called and rushed to join up which seems mental to us but as one old Tommy on that thing on TV said last night "we thought it would be a 6 month holiday"