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Four decades on, Declaration of Perth is still fuelling debate

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Published Date: 22 May 2008
By DAVID TORRANCE
REVOLUTION was in the air during May 1968. From Beijing to Belfast and Paris to Prague, student protests shook the establishment. Even in Edinburgh the city's university had recently ousted Malcolm Muggeridge as rector, while the usually sleepy town of Perth witnessed a revolution of its own, albeit of a peculiarly British sort.
The unlikely setting was the annual conference of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association and the equally unlikely revolutionary was Edward Heath, Leader of the Opposition since 1965. As he rose to make his speech on the afternoon of Satur...



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  • Last Updated: 21 May 2008 8:46 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
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Dr. James Wilkie,

Vienna 22/05/2008 07:02:12
This is a case of navel-gazing if ever there was one. The Tories have never at any time got to grips with the nature of what is happening to Scotland and the UK. Resentment of the enforced and unwanted Union with England has been running through Scotland at grass-roots level ever since 1707. The cement that kept the Union together was the British Empire, and when that disappeared the foundation was gone. The movement for the restoration of political autonomy is only one aspect of a general Scottish national resurgence that has been gaining force since the mid-19th century and is now reaching rampant force.

Anyone with an eye for the overall trend can see that it is not going to be stopped by feeble tricks like the Calman Commission, which only expresses the confusion in the minds of those who cannot see what is going on around them. There is no point in blaming the SNP for the situation - it is only the political manifestation of a much more widespread national movement; the evidence is everywhere. There have been far too many abuses of Scotland's subservient and hitherto powerless position - fishing is only the most obvious one - and these are no longer going to be meekly accepted.

So Margaret Thatcher set about "lancing the boil" of devolution? And Annabel Goldie "enthusiastically endorses" the work of the Calman Commission. None of this indicates to me that Conservative thinking on the government of Scotland has changed at all since 1968. They would still abolish the Scottish Parliament and Government if they could, and the Calman Commission is only grasping at straws in a futile attempt to put the brakes on a movement that it is now impossible to stop.


 

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