well, funny you should say that...
there was some chap on radio 4 yesterday evening with that very theory, well back a little further actually
his theory went:
Heath was minded to compromise with the Miners back in the early 70's but lost the election (by a critically low number whereby Scotland had a direct influence on the outcome).
Heath losing meant Wilson and then Callaghan got in, the mid 1970's happened and as a backlash Thatcher got voted in.
Thatcher then set about her terrible revenge on the workers, gleefully destroying communities across Scotland. As a result, the Scots woke up to the need for devolution to save themselves from the worst excesses of tory spite and self interest.
From there, they realised that just possibly, they were better off with Scottish idiots running Scotland from Scotland, rather than English and Scottish idiots running Scotland from London.
Hey, it's a theory.