SECOND CAPITAL EDINBURGH SUGGESTED AS COUNTERWEIGHT TO LONDON

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30724, 13 April 1965, Page 16

SECOND CAPITAL EDINBURGH SUGGESTED AS COUNTERWEIGHT TO LONDON

IBy

R.J. BROWN

in the “Guardian.“ Manchester)

(Reprinted by arrangement>

What can be done to neutralise London's over-powering magnetic pull? Failure to answer this question successfully could defeat the Government’s regional concept. The notion now tentatively emerging in Scotland is that Edinburgh should be designated as a second capital a counterweight to London in North Britain.

In 1962 the “Economist” floated the idea of creating Elizabetha in Yorkshire, a Brasilia-style capital to house Crown. Parliament, and Administration, which would still leave London’s finance and commerce intact (and the place big and powerful enough for that reason alone). At the time the difficulties implicit in Elizabetha were freely conceded and they seem no less formidable now. To uproot Crown and Commons from Westminster would be too much for British gradualism. But the Scots, forced to become pioneer theorists on regionalism bydint of economic stress over three decades, are imperceptibly drifting towards the idea of Edinburgh as a second capital. Defying The Ebb-tide Apart from London and Dublin, only Edinburgh in the British Isles already wears the capital air of a Royal town, majestic with palace, castle, courts, and all the panoply of Kirk and State that astonishingly enables it to remain a capital in defiance of the long ebb-tide from the Treaty of Union. But if Edinburgh fits the part by echoing much of London’s pageantry, elan, and general sophistication, it is not simply the braw hie heapit toun praised by the Lallans poet. It is modern, too, and- welb planned with its ancient core, cultured, civilised, and climatically agreeable amid magnificent coast and country, and conveniently accessible, not only to Glasgow and the Clyde’s industrial powerhouse, but to all Scotland’s extensive acres for recreation and leisure. Northern Need Few now dispute that London and the South-east possess the economic and social dynamic that is exactly what the Northern regions as a whole so badly need. What is imperative is to end I London’s congestion which destroys efficiency and makes metropolitan life chaotic and expensive. In the sixties. Government itself is a top growth industry generating its own jobs-momentum as well as sustaining the prolific scientific industries weaned on Government development and defence contracts.

Labour’s aim of diverting north and west much of London’s economic magnetism will be hard to accomplish unless a dramatic counter balance can be established. Pure ■ economics alone argues potently for the selection of one strategic area above all others capable of exerting alternative pull. If Edinburgh was a second capital it could be allocated substantial Ministries such as Economic Affairs, Techno-

logy. Power, Trade. Transport, Labour, Aviation. Defence. Overseas Development, and perhaps Colonial. Automatically Edinburgh would acquire a power concentration like London’s, something Scottish regional theorists believe indivisible from comprehensive growth, along with a Civil Service class which tables sophisticated demands for services, property, education, recreation, and entertainment. They would reinforce the Scottish Office’s existing staff of 6000 in a formidable professional caste embodying academics, bankers, accountants, lawyers, organisers, and industrial and commercial managers. The provision of proper telecommunications (utilising television and complementing first-class commuting links by air, road, and rail) could join Edinburgh Ministries with Ministers attendant in Parliament. Strict planning could limit Edinburgh (473,000 population now) to a maximum of 750,000 so that balancing London would not mean spawning another monster in the North. Edinburgh would thus stabilise all North England and Scotland, with industry and commerce able to locate itself strategically for the second capital throughout its 200-mile hinterland.

Tory Restoration The Government, by according Edinburgh formal status and function, stands to impart a revolutionary dimension to its regional planning. It would still no more than extend Edinburgh’s developing role as a second capital which was itself among the most radical and unpublicised consequences of 13 years of Conservative administration. Edinburgh’s citizens (often, for all their urbanity, as parochial and introspective as Londoners) do not themselves realise how the Tories re-

stored to the modern city many of its ancient duties Nowadays the Queen again resides regularly in Holyrood, and Whitehall is only at the I beginning of allocating prestige occasions and events formerly kept exclusively for London. But the Government is understood to be so satisfied with Edinburgh’s handling of the experimental State visit by King Olav of Norway in 1962 that something similar may follow soon. Last year’s important E.F.T.A. 'ministerial conference set the pattern for this summers UNESCO conference as well as a Commonwealth medical event still to be officially announced. International Appeal Every official visitor to Britain is now routed to Edinburgh; its international appeal as festival and conference centre multiplies annually; and if the World Health Organisation (as it may easily 1 do) chooses Scotland for its proposed £6O million research centre it could become one of the United Nations capitals along with Geneva and Rome. It is claimed that Scots law. because of its Roman origins, could make important contributions to international law.

Some Scots are excited, for all these reasons, about Edinburgh’s claims as a capital although little enough willingness exists yet to canvass the case formally or publicly No constitutional obstacle appears likely to apply (even in the ultimate of transferring Crown and Commons North). Indeed, the 1707 Treaty of Union, under which the Scots freely exchanged their own Parliament for trading rights with English colonies, also attempted to guarantee the kind of equality of economic opportunity for all parts of Britain that the Government now wants desperately to achieve.