Yours for Scotland

PERSONAL COLUMN LUDOVIC KENNEDY

To take the personal side first. I came back to live here eighteen months ago because this is

my mother's and father's country, where I was born and where I would like to die; its people are my people and I have loved its wild beauty ever since I can remember.

As a Liberal I had always supported the cause of Welsh and Scottish Home Rule, though at the two elections I fought in Rochdale in 1958 and 1959 this was hardly a burning issue. But the more I lived here, the more daft it seemed to me that we did not have it. As a television reporter during the past ten years I had seen one country after another, many of them far smaller and poorer than Scotland, come to independence with the blessing of the British Crown. Why not Scotland? We had a rich and ancient heritage which these countries lacked. We had our own systems of law, of religion, of education; our own currency, archi- tecture, music, literature. Why, having all this, did we not also have our own government? What conceivable reasons could there be against it?

At a meeting of the Scottish Liberal party council at Perth about this time last year I proposed a resolution demanding that Home Rule should now be 'the principal aim and object of our policy' and that in domestic matters 'all other issues should be considered in relationship to it.' To my great astonishment this resolution was first carried unanimously, and thereafter, and equally unanimously, ignored. Indeed, the Liberal candidate at Pollok thought so little of the subject that he devoted only ten out of a hundred and fifty lines of his election address to it.

With the noise of that candidate's deafening defeat still ringing in Liberal ears, I tabled a further resolution for the party conference in the summer, authorising the office-bearers to seek talks with the SNP to see if we could come to some temporary truce regarding seats we could win and they couldn't, and vice versa. I was accused by many of bad timing (and by some of bad taste) but it seemed to me that time was of the essence if we were not to destroy each other and put the Home Rule clock back even further. However, my resolution never came to debate; another, by Mr James David- son, NIP, took its place; this in essence said that if the SNP came knocking at our door (an un- likely event after Pollok) we would open up to them. It was passed by a narrow majority.

After this I realised, with a very great sense of sadness, that my days with the Liberal party were numbered. It wasn't that I disagreed with co-ownership and PR and payroll tax and all the rest, but that these things, admirable in themselves, were totally irrelevant to the present needs of Scotland. As Auberon Waugh wrote recently in this paper of the present failure of the Conservative party: 'If . politics is the language of priorities, there is nothing to be gained by trying to make every- thing top priority.'

I wrote my letters of resignation four weeks ago, but let them stay on my desk, loath to take the final, irrevocable step. By Monday of last week, having watched Mrs Ewing's campaign with growing sympathy and admiration and having heard her echo on more than one occa- sion what was in my own heart, I realised, if I was to be of any.help to her at all, that I could wait no longer. That afternoon I sent off the let- ters. Next day I received a telegram from Mrs Ewing inviting me to speak for her : it ended 'Yours for Scotland.' On Wednesday, at a huge eve-of-poll rally in Hamilton Town Hall, I did speak for her. I said, among other things, that if being a Liberal meant basically a concern with the freedom and dignity of the individual I hoped I still was one; but that as far as indi- viduals in Scotland were concerned, I thought this object could best be attained-by restoring to Scotland the powers that she voluntarily sur- rendered 250 years ago. The audience seemed to think that too.

I have been asked many times since then if I am going to join the SNP. I well may, but I want first to be convinced. of all their policies. Also I live in a constituency whose member, David Steel, is not only a first-class MP but a believer in Home Rule. As things stand at present I would find it impossible to support an SNP candidate against him.

I think that Mrs Ewing's victory was due to several things.

Firstly, the obvious things: high unemployi ment, low wages, mass emigration, Highland neglect, urban decay; the realisation that no central government, either Tory or Labour, would now ever solve these things because they did not care enough to solve them. Only Scots- men acting for Scotland (those whom Mr Heath had described as 'flower people seeking flower power' and whose cause Mr Thorpe had equated with 'the bazaars of Cairo and Damas- cus') would solve them because no elected Scottish government could afford not to.

Secondly, the quality of the candidate her- self; attractive, enormously bright, not to be diverted by irrelevancies, bang up on policy (sNP and others), very sharp with questions; a gift to any party, but particularly to the SNP at this time and place.

Then what one might call the invisible reasons, which perhaps few voters were even aware of. The vertical or historical reason, the fact that it was primarily the British Empire that made and kept us British, and now that it has gone, the word is almost devoid of meaning. (It is the English and not the Scots who say they are proud of being British.) The horizontal or geographical reason, the Common Market looming up ahead and the realisation that the bigger the political unit, the greater must be the autonomy within that unit if government is to have any contact at all with governed. And the further geographical reason, which I have mentioned, of many of our former colonies attaining nationhood and prospering.

But there was something else, too, I think: a revolt against the farce of power politics, as practised by successive Tory and Labour governments, a revolt against the absurdity of a nation teetering on the brink of insolvency having a two thousand million pound defence budget, a situation which has for a long time accounted for the fatuity, frustration and utter purposelessness of much of British life; and linked with this a belief that in a free and independent Scotland, which can cut its coat to match its cloth, newlknergies can be released and a new sense of purpose attained.

It is perhaps not coincidental that one of last Sunday's newspapers reported how Julian Amery was adopted as prospective Conservative candidate for Brighton. 'I refuse to believe that our mission in the world has ended,' he told the selection committee, 'our greatness lies ahead of us.' One doesn't know of course what grisly imperial mission old Julian has' in mind, but whatever it is most of us here want no part in it.

In another Sunday paper it was pointed out that Scotland gets a bigger per capita share of grants for social services (less police, fire service,

libraries and museums) than England and Wales. The SNP would counter this by pointing

out that wages in Scotland are lower and that out of the DM million raised by taxation annually in Scotland, only £600 million gets put back there. But neither argument is really

relevant. It is not a question of economics any more. Many Scotsmen now feel that despite

fringe benefits or losses, they, like the Irish and Norwegians before them, would be a great deal happier looking after themselves.

Of course the great unanswered question remains, looking after themselves to what degree? Whereas the Liberals want a federal

system with a Scottish parliament for all domes- tic affairs and a Lac parliament for foreign and defence matters, the Nationalists want to go all the way and have total independence under the Crown, with Scottish admirals, ambassadors and the rest. I used to think this idea as ridiculous as most Englishmen and many Scotsmen still do. But the more I live with it, the more logical and of a piece it seems. The trouble with the federal plan is that it wouldn't really work : who would want to offer himself

as a federal MP at Westminster, to talk only

about foreign affairs and defence? And if Scotland is to have her own voice in the Com- mon Market, as she surely must, how can that voice be effective if she does not have a sover- eign parliament to control her own foreign policy?

One thing is certain. This movement is much more than a protest vote: it is a serious bid for self-government. It will be checked at the next general election, when in the nature of things many will return to orthodoxy, but it will not

be stopped. I think it probable that by the elec- tion after next, a majority of Scottish seats will return SNP members to parliament.

In short, having just witnessed the dismem- berment of the British Empire, an event which

at one time many found unthinkable, we are soon to witness the dismemberment of the United Kingdom, an event which most people today find unthinkable. But we should not grieve. We shall all, and particularly the swing- ing English, be a great deal happier and better off.