Correspondence
A Letter from Septlaud [To the Editor of THE SPECrATOR.]
Sm,—The Prime Minister is an expert at giving enigmatic answers to direct questions, and he was never more puzzling (at any rate to people on this side of the Border) than last week when he refused to accede to a suggestion made at question time is the House that a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the relations between Scotland and England should be set up. The initial suggestion this time came from the Convention of Royal Burghs, an historic and important body, the only, one representative of Scottish opinion that is left to us to-day, but the point was pressed in the House by a Labour member, Mr. Duncan Graham, because, as he was careful to remind the Prime Minister, a promise had been given four years ago by him to the Scottish Labour M.P.s that such an Inquiry would be instituted within two years. Nothing, of course, has been done since then, and piquancy is added by the fact that before he joined the Labour Party Mr. MacDonald was Secretary of the Scottish Home Rule Association.
The impression made in Scotland by the Prime Minister's tcfusal which, coupled with replies given to subsequent questions might have implied almost anything, has been ludicrously varied. The Glasgow Herald preferred to assume that Mr. MacDonald had considered public interest in Home Rule too small to warrant the taking of any action which might eventually disturb the peace of the status qua ; The Scotsman, on the other hand, upbraided Mr. MacDonald in a leading article for not taking the moderate and common- sense course, for as they rightly averred it is only the extremists for or against Home Rule that do not want an Inquiry ; and they further criticized bins for flouting the opinion of so representative a body as the Convention of Royal Burghs. Some newspaper correspondents seem to think that Mr. MacDonald feels that public opinion in Scotland favours Home Rule so widely that a Commission of Inquiry would be superfluous, others. that he has here proved himself a thoroughly disloyal Scot.
An important factor in stimulating lively controversy has been the publication in December last of the White Paper on the Financial Relations between Scotland and England for the year 1931-2. The first effect of this mass of figures was stupefying to the lay mind, but it soon became clear that this missile, hurled in blissful ignorance of Scottish character from Whitehall to confound the Home Rulers, was in effect a boomerang. . No self-respecting Scot could after all be expected to sit by doing nothing on hearing that his country had become a liability to the British Exchequer—the mass of figures purported to show that Scotland receives more in proportion than she should from London—and since an uphill task is stimulating to a Scot of normal calibre his natural instinct on hearing the news is to ask for a larger control over Scottish affairs, without which Development Councils and other laudable means of self-help can in effect only grope in a provincial twilight, or so some men think. The White Paper has at any rate revealed in no uncertain manner that Scotland is in a definitely unhealthy economic condition, the most telling deduction being perhaps that which shows that while England's Income-Tax Revenue has fallen by 3.6 per cent. during the past eleven years, Scotland's has dropped by 35.8 per cent., or at nearly ten times the English rate. Both countries are of course taxed on the same basis.
In view of the implications of Mr. MacDonald's reply it is worth analysing the present situation in Scotland. Political pinion about /Ionic Rule is I should say divided into three camps. On the left are the Scottish Nationalists wanting Dominion Status, led by Mr. Cunninghame Graham, Mr. Compton MacKenzie and Mr. John IsfacCormick ; on the right are the brave North Britons, or more rudely the " new con- I emptible's "— official Unionists like Sir Robert Horne and Sir John Gilmour, some business men and a few Liberals like Lord Maclay—while in the centre is the new group led by the Duke of Montrose, Sir Alexander MacEwen, Sir D. M. Stevenson, Mr. Rosslyn Mitchell and others, demanding a moderate measure of Home Rule framed on the lines laid down in The Spectator of October 29th, 1932. Fusion between the Scottish Party and the Scottish Nationalists does not seem
likely at present, but • shoyld the Nationalists be purged of their more extreme element closer co-operation between the two parties would probably occur. A waning public apathy is one of the chief bulwarks of the Right party.
As an offset to the gloomy statistics of the White Paper I am able to say that the sale of tweeds and woollen goods from different parts of Scotland—Harris, Shetland, Sutherland and Galloway—is actually • on the increase despite the acute depression. The organizer of an Edinburgh firm told me the other day that during the last three months of 11132 their annual payments to" the crofters and others engaged in this industry in rural areas have increased by as much as 30 per cent. over last year's figures. New markets have recently been opened up in the West of U.S.A. and in Canada, and while trade with London, France and Italy has shown an increase, the home market has remained quite firm. Great improve- ment has been achieved in recent years in colour-blending and in the increased production of light-weight tweeds, which may partly account for this surprising sign of trade revival. Of paramount importance, however, is the encouraging effect this revival must have in keeping men and women profitably employed at their own skilled craft and in theirown homes for most of the year in the outlying districts where agriculture alone would at present provide only the barest means of subsistence. Readers who know the conditions of living in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland will appreciate the difference that this developing source of income will probably make within the next few years.—I tun, Sir, &c.,
YOUR CORRESPONDENT IN SCOTLAND.
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