Scotland and devouttion
It must have come as something of an unpleasant surprise to the Prime Minister that the Scottish Labour Party has so totally and emphatically rejected all proposals for devolution for Scotland or the interposition of any new body between the Scottish people and their parliament in Westminster. Mr Wilson, it is said, was pondering the possibility of devolutionary legislation by the autumn, and he will now be opposed by the executive committee of his own party in Scotland with the just and forceful argument that devolution would be "irrelevant to the real needs of the people of Scotland" and "that constitutional tinkering does not make a meaningful contribution to achieving our socialist objectives." The Scottish socialists have, indeed, the fundamentals of the matter in them: the tragedy of the situation is that the present Government appears unwilling to take the many actions which really could benefit a Scotland long neglected, simply because of the general conviction that devolution, thought to be a first priority, is coming along fairly soon.
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