THE Labour Party and its press acolytes are never slow when it comes to rewriting history, especially when it involves their own miserable failures in dealing with the most formidable political force of the second half of the 20th century, namely Thatcherism.
SNP MP Tommy Sheppard has come under fire for saying that he would have done the same thing as 11 SNP MPs in 1979 and voted to withhold confidence from Jim Callaghan’s government. Typically, Labour MP Ian Murray twisted things by saying the SNP MPs “voted with the Conservatives to bring in 18 years of Conservative government that decimated Scotland.”
READ MORE: This is the truth about how Thatcher devastated Scotland
What an outrageous and oft-repeated lie. Those of us who lived through the period have a very clear recollection of the events that led to the fall of the Callaghan government, and no amount of Labour lies can alter the facts.
Jim Callaghan replaced Harold Wilson as Prime Minister in April, 1976. Due to by-election defeats and defections, Callaghan had to do a deal with the Liberals, forming the Lib-Lab pact to stay in power, but the Liberals ended it in July, 1978, and said they wanted a General Election.
In September that year, Callaghan was strongly urged to call a General Election as Labour were ahead in the polls. He dithered and chickened out. Then came the Winter of Discontent and Labour failure to control inflation, end the Troubles in Ulster, secure arrangements with the common market and solve industrial strife.
All the while in the background there was the long and tortuous process of delivering devolution as had been promised by Wilson after the Kilbrandon Commission report in 1973 had recommended Scottish and Welsh assemblies.
The SNP had won 30% of the popular vote In Scotland and 11 seats in the Commons in October, 1974. Devolution was demanded daily. Callaghan dithered again but eventually brought forward what became the Scotland Act of 1978, which set up the devolution referendum of March 1979.
READ MORE: Documents reveal Thatcher had secret 'blacklist' of Scottish nationalists
During its passage an unforgivable act of Labour treachery happened when Fife-born George Cunningham, the Labour MP for Islington South, successfully proposed that devolution would only take place if 40% of the Scottish electorate voted Yes. It’s worth noting that if the same model had applied to the EU referendum two years ago, Brexit would not be happening.
This totally anti-democratic move meant that even though the referendum was won with 51.6% of voters backing devolution, the Labour government decided not to implement it. Margaret Thatcher as leader of the opposition saw her opportunity and called the vote of confidence which even then Callaghan could have won if he had made concessions to the Ulster Unionists and the SNP just as he did to Plaid Cymru, whose trio voted with the Government.
It was Labour’s litany of failure and their MPs’ betrayal of devolution that brought in Thatcher. Read the history.
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