In the autumn of 2014 Scotland will have to decide upon their constitutional future in a referendum on independence, which could see United Kingdom being split up it the Scottish population want it to be so. The referendum is a culmination of the present debate on independence in Scotland, which is taken to the top of the national agenda by the Scottish government consisting of Scottish National Party from 2007 and on. The question arises: why is independence on the agenda in Scotland and why not before? This thesis researches and answers this question. Within the frame of a multiple case study, the period 1972-2012 will be analyzed through discourse analysis in order to detect and describe party attitudes during the mentioned period. As doing that I will analyze the party attitudes to independence in regard to the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Scottish National Partu. The analysis focuses on six events and periods. The first analysis concerning the period surrounding the period 1972-1974 in which Scottish National Party got their breakthrough in British national politics. The second analysis chapter concerns the 1979 devolution referendum, while the third chapter covers the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. The fourth analysis chapter centers round the 1997 devolution referendum, which resulted in a yes to a Scottish parliament. The two last analysis units concerns the Labour-led period in Scottish politics 1999-2007, as well as the SNP government period from 2007-2012. The analysis will be performed by the principles of Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model for discourse analysis, which operates with three levels of analysis. In order to put the analysis into a theoretical framework, the findings in research will be applied to historical institutionalism and The Garbage Can decision-making theory in order to see, whether the theories can be used as explanatory in the case of Scotland, or they prove to be insufficient. The main aim in relation to the thesis is to find out, whether the observed events in Scotland are a sign of a determinant path or to a large extent coincidental. The thesis in other words urges to find out, why and how the Scottish National Party succeeded in placing the subject of Scottish nationalism on the top of the agenda, even when only a minority within the population supports independence.