Constitutional Reform

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Scotland – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 20 May 1992.

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Photo of George Galloway George Galloway , Glasgow Hillhead 12:00, 20 May 1992

That answer and the previous one, and the smirking arrogance with which the Secretary of State delivered them—with the baying ranks of English Tory Members behind him—are the cause of the anger felt in his country, the country over which he exercises power without any legitimacy. Does he not understand the contradiction between that and the Prime Minister saying yesterday that he would respect the democratic wishes of the people of Northern Ireland, or the contradiction about to be displayed in the Maastricht debate where subsidiarity—the right of people to take decisions as locally as possible—is a touchstone of the British Tory Government's policy? Those contradictions leave the Scottish Tory rump in tatters. In Edinburgh on D-day, Saturday 6 June, the demonstration of thousands will more than make up the paucity of letters that the Secretary of State says that he has received. Why will he not give us a simple, democratic referendum so that the Scottish people can decide peacefully at the ballot box how they want to be governed?