This has been a packed month of intrigue and shifting sands in UK constitutional politics, starting with news that polls show support for Independence stiffening not collapsing in recession - and culminating in this weeks (conspicuously under-reported) visit of the First Minister to the USA , and today’s strange conversion of all political parties around ‘Devolution Max’ or is it ‘Independence Lite’?
The much traduced Calman Commission has been faced with the
conundrum of being meaningless or being a thorn in the side of Brown’s
attempt to rule Britannia.
Just as the ‘downturn’ – the euphemism we are all still coyly
clinging to - has revealed the relations between us and the banks, the
‘regulators’ (sic) and the State, the ongoing constitutional
disassemblage is revealing the relationship between Labour, the media
and the British Establishment.
Today as Radio 4
reported the meeting between Gordon Brown and the leaders of the
devolved nations, here’s how David Thompson reported the scenario:
“All sides taking part in today’s meeting say it won’t be about banging
tables or banging heads together. But while there may be a desire to
reach consensus, significant divisions do exist. Gordon Brown wants the
UK Govt to make efficiency savings worth £5 billion pounds. The SNP
Govt says that would mean £500 million in Scotlands budget and would be
economic madness. The other devolved administrations are also opposed.
The Scottish Govt is also talking about greater - and ultimately - full
control of Scotland’s finances, a demand rejected by Gordon Brown.
Todays meeting in Downing Street will test whether Welsh, Scottish and
Northern Irish leaders can put party politics to one side and work with
the British Govt to protect the UK as a whole from the global economic
crisis.”
You’ll note that in BBC Editorial analysis the leaders of Wales,
Northern Ireland and Scotland don’t represent the democratically
elected will of their nations but narrow party politics. Britain is the
one and only common arena, and to think otherwise is regressive
parochialism.
It’s worth transcribing in full because it exposes an extraordinary
level of anglocentricity in our notionally ‘national’ media (paid for
by us all). The view given by the Today programme is of course
jaundiced in the extreme, but is also overtaken by events. How will
today’s emerging consenus between all parties in Holyrood square with
this mornings report? As the Scotsmans Political Editor Hamish McDonell
wrote: “Radical changes to the Scottish Parliament – including
the addition of sweeping new financial powers – appeared inevitable
last night, after both Labour and the SNP announced major reviews of
their approach to the devolution settlement.”
The SNP are clearly thinking fiscal autonomy will be further
stepping stones to independence, while the Liberals and the Labour are
presumably assuring themselves it will assuage nationalist fervour.
What does Gordon Brown think, and how will this play with his ongoing
if incoherent Britishness project?
Death of the Scottish Press
The role of the media in all of this is crucial, and not just the
haplessly English Radios 1 through 6 and Televisions equivalent. This
week the Scottish Press, a bastion of Unionism, announced to anyone who
was still interested that it was folding like a discarded Sunday Post.
As Christopher Harvie wrote presciently
in the Guardian not so long ago, “High time to assist the slump in
taking a meat-cleaver to the established media and its daft cults of
celebrity…With any luck, the present downturn will last long enough to
wreck the economics of the conventional press and its ganglions.” Too
true.
Things may get worse not better, as Kevin Williamson points out at The Scottish Patient looking at the new editor of the Scotsman.
This week the Sunday Mail and Daily Record reported job cuts of 70, just after the unthinkable – the merger of the Scotsman and the Herald
was seriously suggested by a former editor of the Edinburgh paper. The
Scottish Press may be suffering the same crisis of the digital age but
it suffers too from having no owner or publisher willing to back the
independence line suported by – at last showing a growing 44% of the
nation.
The Times - to its credit – ran a story last week that exposed one
of the greatest myths of British Politics, that the Labour Party ‘gave’
Scotland devolution. This is a nonsense. The Labour Party and the
British State opposed it since the early 1970s and were forced to
concede devolution by a realist faction within the party and an
overwhelming civic society movement. The story, ‘Secret plan to deprive independent Scotland of North Sea oil fields’ written
by Magnus Linklater and George Rosie exposes documents detailing secret
government plans in the 1970s to prevent Scotland laying claim to North
Sea oil.
The lengths to which the British State and the Labour Government
were to go to prevent the will of the Scottish people being expressed
makes extraordinary reading, for anyone not familiar with this history.
One Treasury official even proposed that a local campaign for
independence in Orkney and Shetland should be encouraged so that
Scotland would be denied access to more than half the North Sea oil.
In a neat contemporary twist, among those advising Labour ministers
was Sir David Walker, who is investigating the banking crisis for the
present Government. As assistant secretary at the Treasury, he wrote in
May 1975 that “progress toward devolution should be delayed for as long
as possible”.
The Times story about the UK Governments plot to derail the SNP’s
“It’s Scotland’s Oil” campaign during the 1970s - actually appeared
first on BBC Alba. ‘Dìomhair’ (Secret), produced by independent TV
production company, Caledonia TV, was written by George Rosie. Dìomhair
revealed how, for more than half a century, successive Conservative and
Labour Governments set aside their antipathy to share a common agenda:
stopping the march to independence.
As one nationalist commentator wrote: “If you missed it first time
around, you can see it again on BBC Alba, (if you can receive it) on
March 6th at 9PM. What chance Newsnight Scotland doing their own
special investigation, like the one they did recently about the rise of
Anti Englishness? Don’t hold your breath.” The point he is making is
that BBC Alba, Scotland’s Gaelic channel, isn’t available on Freeview,
unlike such cultural necessities as Smile TV, Heat and QVC.
Plus ca change. Dirty Tricks are more subtle these days.
* Secret
