This week we will have the Annual Oliver Brown Award, going this year to Lesley Riddoch.\u00a0 As I followed the cantrips at Westminster I was reminded of one of Oliver\u2019s quotes regarding the Westminster Parliament\u00a0 \u201cThe Lord Privy Seal is neither a Lord, a Privy, nor a Seal\u201d. We still have Black Rod, whatever that is, and ‘Strangers in the Gallery’, all outmoded and belonging to another age.\u00a0 I am particularly aghast at the voting system; when a vote is called the Division Bell rings and MPs have about 15 minutes to get to the voting lobby, where their names are marked off by a clerk, or a Deputy Whip who counts the votes up and then goes to the Chamber where they stand in front of the Speaker- Ayes to the Right , Noes to the Left \u2013 or vice versa \u2013 who then announces the figures.\u00a0 The procedure probably takes about 20 minutes, just a guess on my part.\u00a0 The point of this is what an archaic method of counting.\u00a0 In the Scottish Parliament, every MSP has a voting button and this is done electronically.\u00a0 Other gems from Oliver Brown \u201cA shiver ran through the House looking for a spine to run up\u201d \u2013irrelevant as we now have SNP MPs, and \u201cAll a man needs in life is a good cause and the enmity of the Glasgow Herald, and he can be sure if he has the first the second will automatically follow\u201d\u00a0 – this comment needs to be amended to \u201cThe Scotsman\u201d.\u00a0 One of these days someone will republish Oliver, but I am now too old.<\/p>\n
It is a matter of great regret that I never met Oliver;\u00a0 I heard the news of his death on my car radio en route to the SNP Conference in Motherwell, 1976 I think.\u00a0 That was the Conference where the local authority would not let us fly the Saltire over the Conference Hall.<\/p>\n
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I do not think that the public in general appreciates what the current political situation is; on Saturday I went into\u00a0 the Local Tesco and had a brief glance at the headlines on the newsstand:\u00a0 most of them were concerned with a soap star who had died, but I noticed the Scotsman had a headline about an \u201cSNP spat\u201d, a trivialisation of what actually happened at Westminster last week.\u00a0 To be factually correct there was no \u201cSpat\u201d; the SNP Westminster leader moved a motion which was struck down by the Speaker; when Ian Blackford MP refused to sit down the Speaker expelled him from the Chamber. His colleagues followed him.\u00a0 Mr Blackford was lodging a protest as Westminster was depriving Holyrood of its powers, enshrined in the 1998 Act, and only 15 minutes was allowed for the debate, all of which was taken up by David Lidlington, an English Tory Minister, and no Scottish MP was allowed to speak.\u00a0 Mr Blackford was correct in his approach and the Speaker was scrabbling around in Erskine May, the House of Commons bible first written in\u00a0 1844, and last revised in 2011.<\/p>\n
As far as I understand the SNP is getting a debate; the Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell, has said the Westminster can now pass any legislation it wants on Scotland, thereby scrapping the Scotland Act of 1998.\u00a0 Dyed in the wool Unionists will be happy to see the end of the Scottish Parliament, which is the logical consequence of Westminster\u2019s actions, but this is only beginning to sink in.<\/p>\n
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A lot of advice is being taken as to\u00a0 what tactics the SNP should use as Westminster habitually ignores Scotland \u2013 for instance when the amendments to the bill were put through \u2013 the infamous Vow, the SNP put down dozens of amendments, to a generally empty House; when the division bell rang MPs left the bars and restaurants, arrived at the voting lobby and voted them all down. At this particular time the SNP had 56 MPs and there was 1 Tory, 1 Labour and 1 Liberal MP.\u00a0 We are now advised that we should disrupt Westminster, using their own rules, as was done by Irish MPs in the late 1800s under Charles Stewart Parnell;\u00a0 (Parnell died in 1891 but his words are still carved on the Monument in O\u2019Connell Street in Dublin\u00a0 \u201cNo man has the right to set the bounds to the march of \u00a0a nation.\u00a0 No man has the right to say to his country \u201cThis far thou shall go and no further\u201d) we will see if that comes to fruition.\u00a0 The Irish did not gain independence by parliamentary tactics, but as a result of the Easter Rising in 1916.\u00a0 After the rebels surrendered at the Dublin Post Office they were led away by armed guards and had rotten fruit thrown at them by the crowd;\u00a0 this consisted mainly of women whose husbands were away fighting in the First World War. The tide did not turn until the British Army started to shoot the rebels; the only one spared was Eamonn De Valera, who was an American citizen, and the action of shooting James Connolly, a Scot from Edinburgh was particularly abhorrent.\u00a0 He was badly wounded and could not stand, so they tied him to a chair and shot him.\u00a0 I believe that this was the catalyst for the independence movement.\u00a0 However we in Scotland are proceeding on a different path, one of peace and negotiation, but the UK almost always misjudges diplomacy, especially when dealing with their second class citizens which is how they regard the Scots.\u00a0 The whole Brexit situation is in chaos, the Welsh kowtowed, being run by the Labour Party, but the Scots will not be cheated\u00a0 and there is still a massive roadblock on the Irish Border, so the Gaels could dictate the outcome.\u00a0 Verily indeed, we live in interesting times.<\/p>\n
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A t the SNP Conference in Glasgow in November I went to a fringe meeting\u00a0 where Professor James Mitchell was presenting his book \u201cHamilton 1967\u201d; on the premise as to what effect by-elections have on the electoral cycle.\u00a0 I bought the book and put it on the shelf.\u00a0 I only discovered it last week, and it is fascinating reading, especially to those around at the time.\u00a0 I could not spend any time at Hamilton as I lived in Peterhead, roughly 160 miles away, but I knew some of the participants, but not Winnie.\u00a0 On the night of the by-election the Peterhead Branch members went to a house where somebody had a TV and it was riotous.\u00a0 I remember phoning my wife, probably about 2 am, to tell her we had won Hamilton; she already knew as the phone had never stopped ringing!\u00a0 We did not have a TV at that time.\u00a0 I came across one item in the book which I do not think I knew; Scottish Office civil servants based in Dover House, London were jubilant on hearing the result;\u00a0 this provoked Tam Dalyell to ask Willie Ross the rhetorical Parliamentary Question \u201cwhether it was with his authority that officials of his Department sent a congratulatory telegram from Dover House to the Hon Member for Hamilton on Friday 3rd<\/sup> November\u201d\u00a0 Ross replied that he was confident no senior official would \u201cforget his professional code\u201d and he did not intend to conduct an interrogation.\u00a0 As the book says \u201cHamilton tapped into a mood that went beyond support for independence or home rule\u201d.<\/p>\n As to the long term consequences of Hamilton it was only when reading the book that I was struck by these consequences\u00a0 for myself.\u00a0 After we lost Hamilton in 1970 Winnie was tasked with finding candidates.\u00a0 At one National Council she collared me \u201cJim Lynch- why are you not on the Candidates list?\u201d\u00a0 Being a smarty pants I answered \u201cWinnie, many things I would do for Scotland but to hell with going to live in London\u201d.\u00a0 Her riposte was \u201cI had to do it, what makes you so good?\u201d\u00a0 I was flattered, my wife less so, as being the Chairman of Corstorphine Branch, and I think Edinburgh West\u00a0 Constituency Association, took up a lot of time, but I went on the List, going on to fight two Elections in Edinburgh North, one in Central Fife (now Glenrothes) and finally in Dundee West in 1983 never losing a deposit, but completely changing my life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the Commission Report was published I received a copy on the Web and decided to run it off, but just before I pressed the Print button I saw 354 pages!\u00a0 I came out in a cold sweat at my wee printer churning out all these pages, so I thought I would get a copy at the Aberdeen Conference.\u00a0 I forgot, so I asked SNP HQ for a copy;\u00a0 it weighs a ton – or should I say tonne until Brexit?\u00a0 Anyway it has arrived and I have started to read it;\u00a0 Scotland\u2019s Future was 600 pages and took me about 8 weeks, so I think this one will take me about 6 weeks.\u00a0 I want to read it because I want to know what it says rather than what somebody else says it says!\u00a0 I am about Page 15.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As far as I can gather we had a debate on Monday 18 Jun;\u00a0 Ian Blackford said that David Mundell had stabbed Scotland in the back, giving headlines for The National;\u00a0 as for the business it was voted down by the Tories, some of whom might have been in the Chamber. At First Minister\u2019s Questions last week Nicola Sturgeon said the SNP had signed up 5085 new members;\u00a0 since then there have been more but I cannot find any trace of them \u2013 a rumoured figure of 10,000 has been hinted at, but things are moving very quickly.\u00a0 Watch this Space \ud83d\ude0a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week we will have the Annual Oliver Brown Award, going this year to Lesley Riddoch.\u00a0 As I followed the cantrips at Westminster I was reminded of one of Oliver\u2019s quotes regarding the Westminster Parliament\u00a0 \u201cThe Lord Privy Seal is neither a Lord, a Privy, nor a Seal\u201d. We still have Black Rod, whatever that is, and ‘Strangers in the Gallery’, all outmoded and belonging to another age.\u00a0 I am particularly aghast at the voting system; when a vote is called the Division Bell rings and MPs have about 15 minutes to get to the voting lobby, where their names are marked off by aRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2177,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions\/2177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Growth Commission<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Update<\/strong><\/h3>\n