The most dramatic and far-reaching aspect of the Bill is the proposal for an elected Assembly, the first for 260 years. It was the success of industrialisation at home and bloody imperialism overseas which cemented together the two nations of England and Scotland, despite the diversity of their education, legal system, national churches. Today, military plunder in the colonies is only a distant memory, and Britain spins nearer an cconomic nolocaust. the United Kingdom is disintegrating.
The spectacular growth of the SNP, the noisy pressure extended by the trade unions on an initially anti-devolution Labour Party, even the public split in the Tory Party demonstrate all too clearly the depth of support for an Assembly in Democracy is at the root of this demand, whatever its confused and contradictory expression. Faced with a choice between that demand for democracy on one side "inalienable rights' of Westminster on the other, we have to give total support to the setting up of an elected Assembly. That means support, no matter how critical, for the Devolution Bill.
INADEQUACIES Despite all its gross bureaucratic inadequacies, it is a crucial first step towards the essential point right of the Scottish and Welsh people to express in elections what type and form of government they want.
But democracy does not stop with the printing of the ballot papers for the first Assembly élection. The two-party system of "first past the post' should be scrapped and proportional representation introduced. The opportunity should be taken to lower the voting age to the real age of maturity, which is 16.
The clause in the Bill for a fixed tour vears term tor the Assembly should be thrown out as well, and a provision introduced for an immediate election if demanded by 10 per cent of the population. These could mark a start at least in making the Assembly accountable to the people who elected it.
Government, of course, is vehemently opposed to any such accountability. Built into the Government's Bill are clear veto powers vested in the safe hands of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which can be relied upon to look after the broader interests of the British ruling class.
POWERS AS THE DEVOLUTION LEGISLATION winds its way through the corridors of Westminster, a much more important debate will be taking place elsewhere. All over Scotland, in factories, homes and trade union branches, working people will be arguing the provisions of the Bill. It is the importance of this debate, not the niceties of the United Kingdom's constitution, which demands a clear answer from socialists to the Government's proposed legislation.
tatives to the Assembly on the basis of their policies, are the only forces capable of making that decision.
The first meeting of an elected Assembly in Bilbao or in Barcelona would be in itself a massive gain for democratic rights against the Spanish ruling class, as the culmination of and general strikes, a generation of polWICE itical prisoners ana a struggle reaching back through a civil war. On the contrary, Scotland has not seen any examples, in even the most limited form, self-organisation and social conflict around the national question.
OIL and Both the Scottish National Party and the most intelligent representatives of the British ruling class are anxious to avoid any such conflict arising in the future.
The potential blow-up over respective shares in the oil revenue has also been thought out with Professor Simpson, a nationalist producing a scheme for 'oil-pound' account to be held with the Bank of England. This solution to a potentiallv dangerous issue now has the endorsement of The Times, often In line in shrewd bourgeois thinking.
For these reasons no blank cheque can be given to this new Assembly. It may well be democratic' for the Assembly to continue (or even extend) the anti-homosexual laws in Scotland, or to maintain the cancer of separate religious schools, both of which are distinct features of Scottish political life, but would still have to be fought tooth and nail on both sides of the border.
With an SNP Executive in Edinburgh and a Labour Government real possibility from Edinburgh.
VISION systematic of such mass nationally, socialists would be weaving their own noose if they automatically supported the Assembly in every conflict with Westminster. The that the Assembly could actually bolster up some of the most reactionary and parochial aspects of Scottish social and political life should warn socialists against any impressionist notions of some revolutionary dynamic' being unleashed But among the mass of the Scottish working people it is precisely this vision of radical change, no matter FRANKLIN how contused or retormist its ex pression, which motivates the clamthough for change, It is not just the left which is thrown into confusion by the devolution proposals The Sun cartoonist chooses to play on the threat which devolution might pose to the integrity of the 'United Kingdom'.
ANOTHER FOOT HORROR PRODUCTION!!!
A NATION CUT IN THREE!!
MUTILATION GORE GALORE!! CRITICS ALL AGREE: