Billy Wolfe
March 20, 2010 by David Torrance
There’s a fine obituary of the former SNP leader Billy Wolfe in today’s Independent, written by the Education Secretary Mike Russell. There’s also an obituary by me in today’s Herald, as well as interesting television accounts by Bernard Ponsonby of STV and on the BBC website. Finally, there’s a good account of the tributes to Wolfe – including a minute’s silence at the opening of the SNP pre-election conference this weekend – by Robbie Dinwoodie, also in the Herald.
Photograph: Gordon Wright
SNP bloggergate
March 17, 2010 by David Torrance
Perusing coverage of the latest SNP blogging row, in which Nationalist Alan Clayton made some controversial remarks about the tragic death of a young Labour activist in Glasgow, it struck me that I’d seen Clayton’s name before. Could this be the same Alan Clayton who, ironically, was once a Labour activist himself before joining the SNP and becoming involved in its ’79 Group’ faction (which also boasted Alex Salmond, Kenny MacAskill, Stewart Stevenson and Roseanna Cunningham)? Even more interesting is the fact that when, at the 1982 SNP Ayr conference, the former SNP leader Gordon Wilson moved a resolution banning internal groups it was none other than Alan Clayton who seconded it. A few months later Salmond et al were expelled from the party. No surprise, then, that the First Minister hasn’t exactly been leaping to Mr Clayton’s defence…
Scottish Secretary/Barnett
March 12, 2010 by David Torrance
An interesting debate in the House of Lords today on the Barnett Formula, including a speech by the former Scottish Secretary, Ian Lang, in which he said that the position of Secretary of State for Scotland ‘no longer has any influence in the Cabinet’, ‘pads out the Cabinet’ and that ‘the position defies credibility’. Strong stuff, and certainly not the Conservative Party line.
Fittingly, perhaps, the most recent Public Finance magazine has an excellent article by David Scott on the post of Scottish Secretary, in which I am quoted.
Michael Foot
March 3, 2010 by David Torrance
So farewell then, Michael Foot, who died today aged 96. There’s a fine obituary already on the Daily Telegraph‘s website, with undoubtedly more to follow tomorrow, but his death has reminded me of perhaps his finest House of Commons performance, his winding up speech on a motion of no-confidence in James Callaghan’s government on 28 March 1979. In this he combined wounding humour with a solid analysis of where British politics was at.
A motion prompted by the SNP’s unhappiness and Sunny Jim’s inability to deliver devolution to Scotland, Foot said that no matter how misguided Donald Stewart, the SNP’s Westminster leader, ‘may be if he adheres to his apparent resolution to vote in the Lobby with those who are most bitterly opposed to the establishment of a Scottish Assembly, hon. Members who heard his speech must acknowledge the remarkable allegiance that the right hon. Gentleman commands from his followers. It is one of the wonders of the world. There has bean nothing quite like it since the armies of ancient Rome used to march into battle. It is only now that we see the right hon. Gentleman in his full imperial guise. Hail Emperor, those about to die salute you.’ As Callaghan remarked in his own contribution to the debate, the SNP Members were like turkeys voting for an early Christmas.
Foot then turned, most memorably, to David Steel, the youthful leader of the Liberals, who also proposed to vote with the Conservatives and against the Labour government. ‘What the right hon. Lady has done today is to lead her troops into battle snugly concealed behind a Scottish nationalist shield, with the boy David holding her hand.’ Steel, he added, had ’passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever’.
The always-eloquent Foot had good Scottish credentials. His mother was the daughter of a Scottish doctor named Mackintosh – Foot always stressed this as his middle name on visits to Scotland – while his brother, the improbably named Dingle Foot, was the Liberal MP for Dundee between 1931-45. Last, but by no means least, Foot, as Lord President of the Council in the ill-fated Labour governments of the late 1970s, was in charge of the equally ill-fated devolution legislation for Scotland and Wales. With his keen sense of history, Foot feared that by not devolving power to the Celtic fringe then the UK government risked repeating its mistakes in Ireland a century before.
The Red Duchess
March 2, 2010 by David Torrance
An interesting, if rather brief, documentary by the former political reporter Elizabeth Quigley on BBC Scotland this evening. Called The Duchess and the Fuhrer, it tells the much neglected story of the Duchess of Atholl, the Unionist (or Tory) MP for Kinross and West Perthshire in the 1920s and ’30s, who instigated a by-election on appeasement in 1938 and lost, mainly due to bad political timing. Liz Quigley also wrote an accompanying article for the Sunday Times on the programme. It’s well worth a watch.