Orders of the Day — Devolution (Scotland and Wales)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 15 January 1976.

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Photo of Mr Eric Heffer Mr Eric Heffer , Liverpool, Walton 12:00, 15 January 1976

I wish first to deal with the way in which we have arrived at our present discussion. It has been said that the Labour Party is fully committed to the election of Assemblies for Scotland and Wales, and that the commitment was in our manifesto covering the whole country—not the Scottish and Welsh manifestos separately, but the national manifesto for Ocotber 1974. That is true, but my hon. Friends must look at how the commitment came to be in the manifesto.

Devolution was last discussed, and to my knowledge it was the only time for many years, at our annual party conference in 1968, when a motion on the matter was moved by my right hon. and learned Friend who is now the Lord Advocate. That motion, which he moved on behalf of the Edinburgh Labour Party, was not accepted by the conference. The National Executive asked that it should be remitted, and it was; but in the course of the reply by my right hon. Friend the present Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, on behalf of the National Executive, there was a vague suggestion that the Government would look into the constitutional position. Out of that examination came the Royal Commission on the Constitution appointed in April of the following year.

After the appointment of the Royal Commission, whenever we started to discuss devolution we were told "You cannot discuss it, because it is being discussed by the Commission, and you must give evidence to the Commission." The Royal Commission published its proposals two days before the 1973 Labour Party conference. There were no motions about the subject on the agenda, and when one asked about discussing it one was told "It cannot be discussed, because no one has had a chance to look at the proposals."

The following February there was a General Election. The matter was not mentioned in our manifesto covering the whole of the United Kingdom, but there was some mention of it in the Welsh manifesto. There is only one problem about that, which is that I do not fight elections on the Welsh manifesto. I did not even know that there were such things as Welsh and Scottish manifestos. I thought that we put forward a manifesto covering the whole United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, the subject was dealt with in the October manifesto. The National Executive Committee had established a working party which produced a document which went before the Home Policy Committee. That Committee issued it on 25th September, not on behalf of the whole National Executive but on its own behalf. No doubt it was endorsed by the National Executive a few weeks before the October election, but it was never discussed by the annual conference. That is how we came to make the commitment.

My dilemma is that it was in the manifesto, and I have never believed in going back on manifesto commitments, although it is amazing how some people are prepared to be nailed to the cross on this one but not on many others.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars), who, I am sorry to see, is not here, was one of those who began to explain to me, when he entered the House, what was going on in Scotland and the growth of the nationalists. He gave me a pamphlet called "Don't butcher Scotland's future", which said: A separate Scotland would be competing against the rest of the present UK for projects floated by UK overseas capital. Scotland would not, as is the case now, be a specially favoured Development Area but an independent 'foreign' country depending entirely for attracting investment on her own resources and prospects. … In rejecting separatism, we feel we must also reject calls for a Scottish Parliament, even on a federal basis. As the trends in industry are proving to be towards bigger and bigger units"— and so on. I could read the whole pamphlet, and then I should have presented the whole case against the Government's policy.

The pamphlet helped to reinforce my views against nationalism. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) that nationality is one thing and nationalism is very different.

I always like to relate my experiences from real life. I once worked on a building site in Liverpool with a Welsh joiner, who always had to translate from Welsh into English before he could speak to me. He told me that if he lost his tongue it would be like having his right arm cut off. I understood him completely. Although a building worker, he was a highly educated Welshman. His cultural background was magnificent. Through his influence I went to evening classes at Liverpool University to study Welsh culture, which interested me. I was not near enough to Scotland, or I might have studied Scottish culture.

The point is that nationality is one thing but that nationalism, which takes a hostile attitude towards other nationalities, is a pernicious, dangerous influence. I ask hon. Members who constantly speak about the insensitivity of the English "How do you think we are beginning to feel, when we are constantly told that we are nothing but a bunch of imperialists, when we are told about a master-servant relationship, and so on?" I did not even realise that I was English until the Scot Nats entered the House, but I know it now, because they keep reminding me. If I feel as I do, how do members of the Scottish National Party think ordinary working men and women in the English part of the country will eventually feel? Dangerous forces of the worst kind could be unleashed.

I should like to read a letter I have received from a man now living in Scotland who wrote to me because he went there from Merseyside. He says: Since my arrival in Scotland four years ago from Merseyside I have been appalled at the hostility shown here towards the English. Indeed, the latter are the source of every ill, injury or insult felt by the Scots, whether real or imagined, and thus serve a similar role to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany. He must be exaggerating. I hope to heaven that he is. But, if that is so, we are unleashing forces of a very dangerous kind and they could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom.

We are caught by the commitment that was given in a manifesto on policies which I and my party in Merseyside and all other parts of the United Kingdom really did not determine. I appreciate that there were conferences in Scotland. Incidentally, the Welsh were not calling for anything like that which they are getting. They were calling for a top tier of local government—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment bangs the bench beside him, but I might point out to him that I have read all the evidence. Unlike many hon. Members, whenever we get involved in this kind of situation I read every document about it that I can. I have read all the documents thoroughly.

I am now in a state of confusion, as I am sure are most of my hon. Friends. We do not want it but we do not want to go against our commitments. We are in that position. Someone said that one of my hon. Friends was being dragged into a position screaming something that he did not want. He is not alone in that. Most of us are in that position. I do not know what I shall do about this White Paper, but I know that it is time for this country to be warned that, if we allow these matters to get out of hand and if we go too far, the risk that we run is that eventually we shall see the break-up of the United Kingdom and, even worse from my point of view as a Socialist, there will be no hope of ever achieving a democratic Socialist society in the whole of the United Kingdom.