LABOUR SECRETS REVEALED

It's unlike the Scotsman to throw-up aything of actual news value but a story the other day proved this rule wrong: "A DEVOLVED Scotland would become a left-wing, one-party state, the Scottish Office warned ministers 30 years ago."

The story goes on: "Secret papers released yesterday showed civil servants in Harold Wilson’s Labour government also feared that devolution would entail "considerable dangers" for the Union and lead to "political abrasiveness" between Westminster and Edinburgh."

The report is great as its further evidence against one of the great shibboleths of our time, namely that Labour 'delivered' devolution to Scotland and Wales. The truth is very different. Labour (new and old) were forced again and again to make concession to the emerging consesus for home rule. Theirs was an act of self-preservation not visionary constitutional radicalism.

The report continues...

The warnings, revealed in National Archives of Scotland documents, followed the Kilbrandon Report of 1973 which recommended devolution for Scotland and Wales.

The fear of a devolved Scotland is disclosed in a report for Scottish Office ministers, marked "confidential", on the "major political, constitutional and administrative implications" of devolution and is dated 17 April, 1974.

The authors warn: "As far as can be foreseen, Scotland and Wales would be likely either to be ‘one-party states’ or, at any rate, to have permanent ‘left-wing governments’."

A hand has scribbled in the margin: "Not true."

A separate report from the Kilbrandon Unit’s Trade and Industry Group, dated 30 April, 1974, warned: "If its (the devolved assembly) actual powers to influence and regulate trade and industry were limited there would be either political abrasiveness between Westminster on the one hand and Edinburgh or Cardiff on the other, or concessions by the United Kingdom government.

"It seems unlikely that any concession would satisfy the discontents without bringing problems of equal or greater magnitude.

"In these circumstances, a growing cynicism about devolution and disillusion about its supposed benefit could lead to greater pressure for separatism, especially since oil discoveries have made separatism more attractive to many from a material viewpoint, than devolution."

The reports were written amid concerns from pro-Union MPs over the Scottish National Party’s gain of seven seats in the general election of February 1974. But a memo in April that year from the Department of Industry’s Scottish Industrial Development Office played down nationalist successes.

A civil servant wrote: "It is of course important to avoid over-dramatising the growing nationalism in Scotland, and it could well be that the 22 per cent SNP vote at the general election represented the crest of a wave."

The Kilbrandon Report was published in 1973 and recommended the setting-up of elected assemblies in Cardiff and Edinburgh for a four-year fixed term.