Charivari

Freedom for England

It has been officially and joyfully stated that North Sea oil should make Britain self-sufficient in energy supplies by 1980. What has not been stated IS that at about the same time several other consequences of the present oil rush will start to Make themselves felt.

The Prime Minister gazed through the windows of the Cabinet Room towards Edinburgh Castle. The safest place in the country, she thought to herself With some envy. No car bombs inside there. She looked forward to visiting the Queen there later in the day. She had got into the habit of giving Her Majesty a personal report twice a week on developments in the struggle to crush the English Republican Army. "Mistress Ewing," the stage-Glasgow accent of the Minister of Food broke into her momentary reverie. "Mistress Ewing, dinna fash.yourser but I still say it's no use greetin' over last nicht's vote. We should call a general election and get a mandate to extirpate the sassenachs once and for all."

She had been thinking the same thing herself, but the man's manner irritated her. She never knew how serious he was. Besides he would keep Putting on that terrible accent. "Mr Freud," she said, "in the years since you settled here and joined the Scottish National Party You have amply proved your loyalty. No one questions your devotion to the party or the nation, a.nY more than they used to question your devotion to that dogfood – Tartan, wasn't it? – you used to advertise. Would you do me a kindness, therefore, and stop trying to sound like a Rangers supporter on a Saturday night."

The Minister of Food smirked. "Sorry," he said, reverting to his native southern tones. "Anyway that's my opinion." "Thank you. That leaves only the Foreign Secretary, I think, whose view we have not yet heard. Mr Taverne what do you say?" "MacTaverne, if you don't mind, Mrs Ewing. Have you forgotten 1 changed it by deed poll Yesterday?"

She sighed. It was a sigh of regret for the old clays when a Scot was a Scot, and the SNP's

bandwagon had scarcely begun to roll. Nowadays the party was full of these Johnny-come-lately English immigrants, each one protesting more loudly than the next what a good Scottish patriot he had become. But it was impossible to do without them, the party simply did not have sufficient native-born politicians and administrators to run a Scotland with its population swollen to 45 million, let alone the whole of the UK.

In some parts of Scotland almost everyone you saw was an immigrant. In Greater Aberdeen now the industrial and commercial centre of the country, the original inhabitants had become a drop in the ocean of the 10 million who lived there. She remembered how, touring the vast petrochemical complexes. she had heard nothing but cockney voices. Thank goodness the children all spoke like real Aberdonians.

And there was much to be thankful for. The immigrants could so easily have Anglicised Scotland, importing not only their possessions and their capital but their political affiliations as well. It has not happened that way. After Scotland had been granted its own Parliament in 1976, each wave of immigrants had adapted to the new environment in which it had found itself. The SNP having become the dominant party at local and provincial government level, and hence the chief source of patronage in a boom economy where patronage was all-important (housing and factory development permits in particular depending on it), the immigrants had flocked to join the party and declare themselves true, if new, Scots.

The change had been consecrated by the 1979 decision of the Queen to take up permanent residence in Edinburgh and proclaim the Scottish Parliament, which now after all represented the great majority of the people of the United Kingdom, to be her principal Parliament. Westminster had been downgraded to the position of a provincial Parliament with restricted powers similar to those of Stormont in the days before Ulster had become completely independent. Even those powers now extended only as far as the Welsh border (for Cardiff enjoyed the same measure of authority as London) and the Scottish border which now ran south of Newcastle. Westminister, at the centre of an area which, apart from designated tourist reserves, was being largely ploughed up for farmland, had become a haunt of old men. The Conservative and Labour Parties

shared what powers there were, with Deputy Prime Minister Heath finally reconciled to serving under Harold Wilson, but as far as the English troubles were concerned they had become an irrelevance.

It was the wild men of the ERA who were making the running with their demands for complete independence from Scotland. The bombings had started a year ago, with police stations in England as their first targets. Lately the ERA had launched an indiscriminate terror campaign, with car bombs wreaking havoc in the UK's principal cities – Aberdeen, Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh.

The cause of English independence had now been taken up by the official Opposition in Edinburgh, the Scottish Democratic Party. The SDP, founded by Jimmy Reid, as a Left-Wing nationalist movement, was the only party which had been able to make any inroads into the SNP's hold on the Scottish constituencies. Together with the English MPs in the Edinburgh Parliament, all of whom were since the last general election members of Albion, the political wing of the ERA, the SDP had just come within one vote of passing a motion in the House calling for Scottish troops to be withdrawn from England.

MacTaverne seemed undecided, "I agree that any attack on the integrity of the kingdom is to be deplored. But I must impress upon you that our partners in Europe take a very sympathetic attitude to the English resistance fighters . . . ." "Terrorists," interjected the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Hugh Fraser.

"Er yes, I meant terrorists. I think we have to be very careful before we implement the kind of draconian measures now contemplated. My own preference would go to a confederal solution. Perhaps Mr Reid can be persuaded to support that."

"Tommyrot," said Sir Hugh. "You know as well as the rest of us that the English are sitting on the world's biggest unexploited copper deposits in Lambeth. They can't be allowed to keep that for themselves."

"The Chancellor is right," ruled the Prime Minister. "We shall go to the people with that message. I shall ask the Queen for a dissolution today. And may God help us all."

Chad Babble