SCOTTISH NATIONALISM WOULD SELF-GOVERNMENT ALLEVIATE PROBLEMS?

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31339, 8 April 1967, Page 12

SCOTTISH NATIONALISM WOULD SELF-GOVERNMENT ALLEVIATE PROBLEMS?

(By DAVID STttL. Liberal M.P. for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, writing in the "Guardian”, Manchester;

(Reprinted from the "Guardian" by arrangement) Since the Act of Union of 1707 Scotland and England have been jointly governed at Westminster. Once again people in Scotland are wondering whether the present arrangement works to the best advantage either of Scotland herself or the United Kingdom as a whole.

In the 260 yean since the Act of Union Scotland has maintained her own entirely separate system of law (which incidentally is doser to European traditions than is English law), her own distinctive and more naturally democratic system of education, and her own national Church which exercises a far greater influence on the country than does the Church of England. Indeed, it is worth noting that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland—which is the nearest thing we have to a Scottish Partiament—last year backed the demands for Scottish democratic control over Scottish affairs. Higher Unemployment Yet the English, of all this, innocently refer to Scotland as one of the “regions.” Since the war Scotland has regularly had an unemployment rate double that of the rest of the U.K, which means that when the times are bad they are very bad indeed in Scotland. The real unemployment level has itself been concealed by an annual emigration to England and overseas of as many as 40,000 Scots. Scotland both north and south of the central industrial belt has suffered serious depopulation. Per capita income is appreciably lower than in England (so much so that in the 1964 election when the Tories were proudly boasting of the people's prosperity some wit in my constituency most effectively brought home the Literal message by chalking on the back of a road sign outside one of the tweed mills “Vote Tory and keep your £l7 a week.”) The Scottish proportion of sub-standard housing is a national scandal, and the brain drain from the U.K. to the U.SA. pales into total insignificance beside the brain drain from Scotland to England. An Illusion Shattered It was therefore not surprising that in general elections and by-elections between 1959 and 1966 the Tories’ share of the 71 Scottish seats dropped from the bare majority of 36 to 20. In spite of the capture of five Scottish Tory seats by the Liberals with their Scottish self-government ' platform, the bulk of Scotland was prepared to believe that Scotland’s ills would be cured by the Labour Government Indeed the Labour Government of 1964 owed its very existence to Scotland. Two years later this illusion lies shattered. The migration rate has continued and in spite of assurances that Scotland would be protected from the freeze the unemployment rate has soared again. In spite of the energies of the Minister responsible (Dr. Dickson Mabon), the housing figures have failed to meet expectations and are almost as bad now as for the average of the Tory years—this largely because of the overall economic situation over which the Scottish Ministers have no control.

The selective employment tax seems even more lunatic in Scotland than it does elsewhere. A golden opportunity was lost of introducing a payroll tax on a regional basis. In the Highlands, heavily dependent on service industries, Selected Employment Tax will take out more cash than the Government is putting in via the Highland Development Board. All of this has caused more fundamental heart-searching

among the Scottish people. Willie Ross is as good a Secretary of State as we have had in recent years (though he should for his own and everybody else’s sake be reshuffled in the autumn after three years in the office) yet he has failed in what he set out to do for Scotland. Could anyone have done better? Yes, possibly, by threatening resignation from the Cabinet, but really it is an impossible job. He is answerable to Parliament for a whole range of policies in Scotland for which, in England, nine different Ministers would answer.

It is the system that is at fault With the great increase in the role of government in our everyday lives over the last 50 years, the existence of a Scottish administration with no Scottish executive or parliament has proved a source of weakness. For example, Scottish M.P.s have to store up all their questions for the rare appearance at Question Time of the Scottish Secretary. It is not a weakness that will be cured by the timehonoured remedy of appointing more Under-Secretaries. The Scottish M.P.s themselves face difficulties of distance and size of constituency which prevents recruitment into their ranks of many able but busy Scotsmen, and the Scottish Tory M.P.s have for years been totally unrepresentative of any cross-section of the Scottish people. Centre Of Power What Scotland lacks fundamentally is a centre of power and control such as used to reside in Parliament House in Edinburgh. From this basic laek all other weaknesses flow. Even in a reactionary political atmosphere, with infinitely greater problems of physical separation by sea, and in an unnatural economic entity, the Northern Ireland Government has been able to create more new jobs in recent years than has been done in Scotland, and has given direct financial aid for the promotion of tourism to give just two examples of power which Scotland does not have. Liberal Governments introduced Scottish self-govern-ment lills, the last of which would have been passed but for the outbreak of the first world war and subsequent eclipse of the Liberal Party. Current Liberal policy is reflected in another selfgovernment bill introduced by Russell Johnston, M.P., at present before Parliament. This gives effect to a resolution, approved by the Liberal

Assembly in 1961, and provides (amongst other things) for a separate Scottish Parliament, and for a Scottish Treasury which “should be responsible to the Scottish Parliament for the levying of direct and indirect taxation in Scotland, and should contribute to the United Kingdom Treasury the Scottish share of defence, foreign and Commonwealth Affairs expenditure." Total Separation The Scottish Nationalists want total separation and Dominion status, including a separate Scottish army, navy and air force, and control of industry in Scotland by Scottish shareholders. Few people in Scotland know their policy and fewer still support It But with the slogan "Put Scotland First” they captured a creditable protest vote at Pollock in a seat which the Liberals have fought only three times in the last 40 years, each time forfeiting a deposit Nevertheless self-govern-ment will never be achieved by the Scottish National Party alone. According to one poll, only 10 per cent of its supporters in Pollock will vote for it at a general election. But something might be done if the S.N.P. were prepared to transform itself from a party into a movement, which would endorse candidates of any party who were pledged to work and vote at Westminster for Scottish selfgovernment, and which would only contest on its own those seats where no candidate supported its platform. There are enough sympathetic Conservative and Labour M.P.s and candidates, as well as Liberals, to give such a movement a real chance in the future of obtaining a majority of the Scottish members.