• Secretary of State for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – Gordon Campbell

Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – Norman Wylie
• Solicitor General for Scotland – David Brand

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Clyde
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Grant
• Chairman of the Scottish Land Court – Lord Birsay

• 2 January – 1971 Ibrox disaster: a stairway crush at the Rangers vs. Celtic football match at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow kills 66 and leaves many more injured.^[1]
• 10 March – 1971 Scottish soldiers' killings: three young off-duty Royal Highland Fusiliers are lured from a bar in Belfast and shot by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
• 23 May – "The Unknown Bairn": The drowned body of a young boy is found washed up onshore at Tayport; he is never identified.^[2]
• 25 May – production begins at the Invergordon aluminium works.
• 15 June – Upper Clyde Shipbuilders enters liquidation.^[3]
• 2 July
  • Royal Scots Dragoon Guards formed as the senior Scottish regiment of the British Army at Holyrood, Edinburgh, by amalgamation of the Royal Scots Greys and 3rd Carabiniers.
  • Erskine Bridge opened over the River Clyde.
• 30 July – Upper Clyde Shipbuilders workers begin to take control of the shipyards in a work-in under the leadership of Jimmy Reid.^[4]
• c. August – Kyle of Tongue Bridge and causeway opened, replacing a ferry.
• 16 September – Stirling and Falkirk by-election: Labour retains the seat but the Scottish National Party takes second place with a surge of 20% in their support.
• 21 October – Clarkston explosion: a gas explosion in Clarkston, East Renfrewshire kills at least twenty people.
• 22 November – Cairngorm Plateau disaster: Five children and one adult on an expedition die of exposure in the Highlands.^[5]
• 2 December – last resident families leave the island of Scarp.^[6]
• Expansion of Erskine as a planned community begins.
• Spey Bridge at Aviemore opened.
• Tom Farmer opens the first Kwik Fit car servicing centre, in Edinburgh.

• 21 January – Alan McManus, snooker player
• 23 March
  • Kate Dickie, actress
  • Gail Porter, television presenter and model
• 27 March – David Coulthard, racing driver
• 31 March – Ewan McGregor, actor
• 1 April – Karen Dunbar, comedian
• 5 April – Charles Cumming, espionage novelist
• 18 April – David Tennant, actor
• 31 July – Craig MacLean, track cyclist
• 19 August – Paul McGrillen, footballer (suicide 2009)
• 30 August – Julian Smith, Conservative politician
• 6 October – Brian Conaghan, young adult fiction writer
• 7 October – Aasmah Mir, journalist and presenter
• 8 October – Michelle Mone, entrepreneur
• 13 November – Alberto Costa, Conservative politician

• 16 June – John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, broadcasting executive (born 1889)
• 25 June – John Boyd Orr, physician and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (born 1880)
• 28 August – Edith Hughes, architect (born 1888)
• 12 December
  • Torrance Gillick, Rangers F.C. winger (born 1915)
  • Alan Morton, Rangers outside left (born 1893)
• 22 December – D. Alan Stevenson, lighthouse engineer and philatelist (born 1891)

• 26 March – BBC Scotland television begins a serialisation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song, starring Vivien Heilbron.
• 18 November – Stewart Conn's play The Burning, concerning King James VI of Scotland, premieres.
• Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond's political thriller Scotch on the Rocks, concerning a terrorist group fighting for Scottish independence in the near future, is published by Collins.
• English composer Peter Maxwell Davies settles in Orkney, initially on Hoy.

• 1971 in Northern Ireland