As we’ve already noted today, Wings Over Scotland has the internet’s most excellent readers. Two of them have been working together over the last week or so, after we put them in touch, to share some fascinating Scottish history with the rest of us.

Click the two images in this post for an intriguing hour-and-three-quarters.

First up is “Scotland: A Time To Choose” – a BBC recording of a debate at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall in January 1992, hosted by Kirsty Wark and featuring Alex Salmond (for the SNP), Donald Dewar (Labour), Ian Lang (Secretary of State for Scotland in the Conservative government of the time) and Malcolm Bruce (Lib Dem), discussing Scotland’s constitutional future in front of a quite rowdy audience.

(Ian Lang’s opening assertion that Scotland has “prospered, flowered and flourished under the Union” is met by a chorus of boos and catcalls, and Donald Dewar also meets with considerable vocal disapproval when claiming that Labour has stood up for Scotland during what by that point had been 13 years of Tory government.)

The debate talked about a “Scottish Assembly”, but the entire thing was rendered moot by the surprise victory of the Conservatives in the following year’s general election, which leads us neatly into the second show.

“The Great Debate” took place in February 1995, and was a head-to-head between Alex Salmond and Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary of the time George Robertson (hosted by an unfamiliar raven-haired Lesley Riddoch) at the Royal High School in Edinburgh, which was then favourite to be the home of the still-notional Assembly.

It was explicitly a debate between independence and devolution, with the status quo apparently no longer even a consideration, despite a hostile Tory government being barely a year-and-a-half into its latest term of office. It was the birthplace of the “Lorraine Mann Question”, and plenty else besides, and if you only have time to watch one of the two debates, we’d say pick this one.

(It also featured a panel of London-based Scottish journalists, two of whom have been in the news this week – Andrew Marr, James Naughtie and Neal Ascherson.)

What you’ll probably be the most struck by on watching the two shows is an overpowering sense of deja vu. The arguments, particularly on the Unionist side, have barely evolved at all over the last 21 years. But other than that, we’ll leave you to form your own views. Enjoy.

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EDIT: Should the videos vanish from YouTube for any reason, you should be able to download copies from the following links:

A Time To Choose

The Great Debate