Scottish self-sufficiency
Samuel Macpherson
Edinburgh
Events move fast in interesting times, and these are certainly interesting times in Scotland. A few months ago, the great argument was between those who saw any devolution as the first step on the wellgreased road to Scottish independence, and those who saw it as the one sure means of dishing the SNP. Whatever may have happened since in Westminster, the ground has shifted here: there are Scottish Labour MPs who anxiously alrgue against the referendum card, for fear 'that Scotland might now say yes to independence, however loaded the question: and this week's great issue is, "What happens when the English say no?"
The possibility that Scotland is now set on the road to total independence, so very recently but a dream for Nationalists and a nightmare for the more hysterical Unionists, sits firmly at the head of everyone's agenda. No matter how often their opponents point out that the SNP stands for "separatism", and that opinion polls in the past have always shown only minority support for this, the voters go on voting SNP. The Nationalists, who have always said that more than half the parliamentary seats, or more than half the parliamentary vote, would constitute a mandate for independence, are now seriously engaged in working out what to do when that mandate comes. The votes that they have been getting lately are of course at local government levels: but since the Labour Party made the cardinal mistake of declaring that East Kilbride would be a vote of confidence in the widely-derided White Paper, most realists admit that the electors are using local by-elections as a way of expressing national views.
Of course, the supply of such by-elections never stops. Although Scotland has not had
• a parliamentary by-election for two years— a statistical anomaly which will inevitably right itself quite soon—local councillors die, resign, or encounter little local difficulties over building contracts, at a steady rate. Edinburgh, having just seen safe Labour Drumbrae district fall to the SNP, is now fighting another Labour District at Willowbrae: last weekend, a Tory member of both the district and the Lothian region councils died, and the campaign will just keep rolling.
The Nationalists are very good at by-elections. Their troops are numerous, their funds probably higher than any other party's, their morale and discipline good. The gravest handicap they have is that they are now expected to win everything, and where a totally safe seat fails to collapse before ,them, it is greeted as a massive setback to the Nationalist juggernaut.
Not much has withstood them lately. Keir Hardie's birth-place, Cumnock in Ayrshire, held them off by a scant forty-five votes, and on Speyside, a classic Tory rural seat which was previously only contested by different brands of Conservative and Independent, they took well over a third of the vote at the first attempt. While Westminster parties cling to the simple majority system of representation, Scotland's six significant parties know full well that a third of the vote will on be enough. Ask Margaret Bain, or Malcolm Rifkind.
Six parties is what we have just now, and there are those who speculate about a seventh. Official Labour, Jim Sillars's provisionals of the Scottish Labour Party, the Liberals, the SNP, the Communists, may yet find themselves fighting two different brands of Tory. The split between the elected assembly devolutionists— Russell Fairgrieve. Alick Buchanan-Smith, Malcolm Rif kind—and the solid Unionists like lain Sproat, Teddy Taylor and Michael Clark Hutchison—is very wide indeed. It compares almost exactly with the chasm which has split the Labour ranks, and like theirs involves more than arguments of principle: what is happening, and may happen, in Scotland. affects the entire careers of men still young and honourably ambitious. Two Labour MPs are widely said to be seeking seats in England, and the possibility that Willie Ross will finally retire, far from exciting Labour members with prospects of promotion, fills them with dread: a Scottish job is seen as the ticket to oblivion.
The concerns of good party men— whichever party they may serve—are of votes, and of preferment. So have they ever been: but not customarily in' such cataclysmic terms. The worry for orthodox Labour and orthodox Conservative, if not for the others, is that the present swings of votes could prove sufficient to conjure up a political realm in which they would be discredited for a generation.
The Scottish Labour Party, of course, can be seen in this light not just as men of honour, ashamed of their party's electoral cynicism, but as shrewd tacticians, marking out the ground on which they at least can build careers (and socialism) after maximal devolution, or even UDI. There are some whose loathing and suspicion of Harold Wilson leads them to speculate that he may have entrusted Mr Sillars with a very special task indeed: but unless he supplies the new party with the funds to contest many more seats than seems at present likely, and is quite convinced that they will split the SNP, rather than the Labour, vote, this lacks conviction. Even so, they do appear to have more money than a claimed 2,000 members at £2 a year would generate: they have secured premises, and a full-time official, with surprising speed.
The Scottish Liberals, whose customary chorus of complaint about proportional representation has now been swollen by accusations that the Sillarsites have pinched their initials, are -inevitably taken more seriously in England than in Scotland. They stand for federalism, a view which attracts much support in the opinion polls and in the Scotsman, but very little indeed at real elections. They will be very lucky if they return more than one MP, David Steel, next time, and as a matter of fact, even if proportional representation were introduced, and they polled as well as they have ever done in the last forty years, they would be lucky to have half a dozen assembly members. This fact, which may be simply calculated, is seldom revealed to their party faithful, who are naturally in constant danger of defection, whether tactical or merely volatile: at Drumbrae, they bolted for the SNP, almost certainly winning the seat for the Nationalists, and destroyingall lingering hope of some Scottish Orpington. • The Communists, who have always been much stronger here than in the south—for is not everyone agreed that part of Scotland's grievance is that her economy makes Marx seem more plausible than he is in, say, lver, Bucks ?—have long plumped for maximal devolution. Their support is so heavily concentrated on two small areas, in Fife and in Dumbarton, that they might even get an assembly seat or two: but meantime, it is said that only intervention from the highest level prevented one whole CP branch joining the Scottish Labour Party, which has already been the target for penetration by the I MG, the IS, and other bizarre fringe groups.
Through all this turmoil, the SNP sails happily along, winning seats, gaining members, tucking away the cash for the general election at which it might now expect anything upwards of thirty-five MPs. They have candidates adopted for virtually every seat, no splits, and everyone in Scotland spends their time debating the one issue which is particularly theirs. If there is a danger, it is one of overkill: just how much more can Scotland stand of devolution talk and writing and television, and the strange mute heavings which have grasped the political establishments? The professionals, whether they are politicians or journalists or television producers, simply cannot make up their minds whether the endless concentration will lead to a sudden explosion of boredom, or whether the fermentation will continue, expectations rising until what Westminster has to say is as irrelevant to Edinburgh as it is to South Armagh. At present, bets are shortest priced on the second option.
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