TOMMY Sheppard MP makes a spirited, and on the whole accurate, defence of the SNP’s decision to vote for a motion of no confidence against the 1974/79 Labour government, following the craven failure of that government to deliver a Scottish Assembly despite 51.6% of the people voting for it (Sheppard hits back over claims SNP helped usher in Tories, July 28). He also astutely reminds us all that when it suits Labour’s interests they have repeatedly voted with the Tories in the Commons without a blush.

My view of the SNP support for the no-confidence vote, then as a young SNP activist in 1979, and today as a non-SNP supporter of independence, is that the SNP MPs did the wrong thing, but for the right reasons, and that it was a tactical mistake.

Mr Sheppard begins his article by rightly reminding us all that “the Callaghan government was on its last legs by March 1979”, exactly so. Therefore would it not have been better for the SNP MPs to have offered Callaghan some political life support on the condition that the Assembly Bill was pushed through in line with the democratic will of the Scottish people?

If this had been the case then recalcitrant Labour No campaigners like Robin Cook and Tam Dayell would have been exposed as the ones that chose electoral defeat over the delivery of a Scottish Assembly. As it was, the Labour spin machine from the Daily Record downwards went into overdrive and the SNP MPs were lambasted simply for seeking to stand up for Scottish democracy.

What is also unfortunate is that much of the personal hard work which the 1974/79 SNP MPs put into individual pieces of legislation as parliamentarians, such as George Reid on homelessness legislation and Gordon Wilson on the nationalisation of shipyards, was always forgotten after the no-confidence vote. And in mitigation the SNP itself as a party was split from top to bottom on tactics after the March 1 devolution referendum. The SNP National Executive was against a no-confidence vote whilst the 11 SNP MPs were split seven to four, and the SNP’s policy- making National Council sanctioned the MPs to vote for a no-confidence motion.

MPs George Reid and Hamish Watt were particularly critical of SNP support for the no-confidence vote and certainly the political fallout from the vote, both inside and outwith the SNP, saw the party go into a period of internal soul-searching that it would never fully emerge from until the 1988 Govan by-election victory of Jim Sillars.

Cllr Andy Doig (Independent)
Renfrewshire Council

READ MORE: Tommy Sheppard hits back over claims SNP helped usher in Tories​

I’M delighted to see Hamish MacPherson debunking the old Labour claim that what ushered in 18 years of untrammelled Tory rule in 1979 was “the SNP voting with the Tories” (Sorry Scottish Labour, this is the truth about who ushered in Thatcher ..., July 27). This assertion is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.

The no-confidence motion was initiated by the Liberals, but no-one ever mentions this fact.

The SNP had been urging the Labour government to make some move towards implementing their own Devolution Bill which the Scots had voted for in the referendum. All their entreaties had fallen on deaf ears. So they played the only card left to them and threatened that unless the government honoured the Yes vote, they would support the no-confidence motion.

If you present an ultimatum you have to be prepared to carry it out.

At the time, partly thanks to Unionist control of the media, the SNP had carried the blame for the failure of the devolution project and were low in the polls. So in bringing on the General Election the 11 SNP MPs were fully aware that they were “turkeys voting for Christmas”. The Labour government was at the fag end of its term. So the no-confidence vote made little difference, only bringing forward the inevitable by three months. On the other hand, had Labour fulfilled their promises and set up the devolved parliament, Scotland would have been largely protected from the 18 years of Tory destruction which followed.

In rewriting history and continuing to repeat these lies for nearly 40 years, Labour has taken full advantage of its control over most of the Scottish media. As people turn to alternative sources of information perhaps this myth may be debunked.

Another myth ripe for exposure is that it was the obscure George Cunningham who initiated the infamous 40% rule. According to Tam Dalyell, Robin Cook came up with the idea and then, aware of the harm which scuppering a major Labour bill might inflict on his own promising career, persuaded Cunningham to take the credit.

Mary McCabe
Glasgow

READ MORE: Sorry Scottish Labour, this is the truth about who ushered in Thatcher ...​

IN his article about the Callaghan years in Saturday’s National, Tommy Sheppard is absolutely right to state that it’s a bit rich for Labour to accuse the SNP of supporting the Tories, when in fact it is the other way round.

In his memoirs, Time and Chance, Jim Callaghan noted: “The difficulty within the (Labour) Party was much greater than any from the Scottish National Party, and the whip’s judgement was that the government could not rely on the votes of Labour members from the north if we moved to reject the Repeal Order ... we could lose the vote.”

Furthermore, according to Patrick Cosgrove’s book The Lives of Enoch Powell, “confidential exchanges took place between Thatcher’s aides and a number of Labour backbenchers hostile to devolution”.

The survival of the Labour government was therefore in the hands of its own MPs.

In short, Labour backbenchers, including Neil Kinnock, Brian Wilson et al, preferred not just to see, but to participate in, the demise of their own government, rather than honour Labour’s manifesto commitment to the Scottish people by establishing the Assembly which Scots had already voted “yes” for in the referendum.

David McCann
Alloa