BACK TO HARD CAMPAIGNING

So, back again after a holiday visiting family abroad.

And how things change.  I had been hoping for a couple of quiet winter months, sitting at home with a good book or watching some relaxing TV programme.

Then, in furthest Thailand, I get a mobile phone message from SNP activist Ruth Marr telling me to get out and campaign for the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election.

So that has been my life for the past couple of weeks.

I am delighted that the lessons of the much smaller Loanhead local by-election have been learned, when the SNP scored a great triumph.  (For discussion of that campaign, see Flags for 2005, 21 October, 18th and 25th November.) 

But a word of warning.  While in Loanhead we had eight weeks to cover 3,200 electors, this time we have less that five weeks to cover about 72,000 electors.

In Loanhead, we were able to catch the other parties napping and had a two week free run at the electorate.

To carry out a canvass as we did in Loanhead is impossible, and the other parties have piled in right from the start - the LibDems even bringing people up from London.

In Loanhead, we had a small band of activists who had learned exactly what to do and carried it out to the letter.

In Dunfermline, even to train canvassers and other party activists properly has proved impossible, given the short time we have had.  And of course, some canvass forms have been returned using old jargon, making analysis difficult if not impossible.

In spite of all that, I think that the SNP will make a huge advance in Dunfermline, and the result will be close.

Of course, the Labour party is so keen to limit democratic debate to the shortest time possible, that they have gone for the shortest campaign that they legally can.  (As they did in Cathcart last year.)

Labour has also been bringing MPs up from Westminster - anything between 10 and 20 at a time.  But they got their just deserts when the absence of their MPs led to them being defeated twice in the House of  Commons last week.

The Liberals pipped us for second place in 2003.  I do not expect them to do so again, in spite of a massive barrage of leaflets declaring that the election is between them and Labour.

The latest leaflet from them saw showed them two points behind Labour, 40% to 38%, with the SNP apparently showing the SNP and Tories on about 16% and 15%.  Yes folks, that does add up to 109%!   Incredibly, this graph is headlined:  It¹s official!  And there is tons more than that I shall tell you about next time!

For comment on this type of deceitful technique aimed at conning the voters, see Flag for 25 November, 2005).

Here is the result for 5 May 2005:

DUNFERMLINE AND WEST FIFE RESULT
9 FEBRUARY 2006

Immediate reaction

Well, there you have it folks.  Labour ended up more unpopular than I and most people had thought they were.  There were certainly local issues that hit them very badly, and clearly much of their old vote stayed at home.

The LibDems capitalised very well on their previous second position, and they certainly blanketed the constituency with leaflets.  But I must reiterate - as a former Liberal myself brought into politics by the great Jo Grimond - their current election tactics I find contemptible.

For the SNP, this is a disappointing result.  I believe that the organisation of our campaign was completely on the right lines, but we just did not have the time to implement it - I reckon we really needed about ten weeks instead of under five.

Repercussions for the parties

I believe that life that life just got harder for Gordon Brown.  There are elements in the London press who are determinedly anti-Scottish and will take delight in suggesting that Brown cannot even help hold the constituency he lives in, so what kind of a leader would he be for a British party?

The Conservatives remain marginalised in Scottish politics.  I wonder how things will work out when they become the London government again.

The LibDems are cock-a-hoop at the moment, but whether they will be able to retain the seat (as they do in Scottish rural constituencies) is another matter.

For the SSP the result is poor, in spite of having ex-Labour MP John MacAllion as their candidate.  Their future is very problematic.

As I have said, the result for the SNP is disappointing.  The press will criticise Alex Salmond as leader and will say he should go.  All infantile nonsense, of course, but that is the kind of comment you can expect from an infantile press  The SNP will continue to have its ups and downs of course, but I expect it in the long-run to continue the progress it has made over the last four decades.

ANOTHER FASCINATING LETTER

Readers may remember that some time ago I copied a letter to the Herald newspaper from a former chairman of the Scottish Liberals, showing how pro-Scottish in sentiment he had become (20 August 2004).

Well, I have another of equal interest, this time commenting on the deceit of the Labour government of the 1970s.  (See article below.)

This letter is again to the Herald, and is from David Purdie of Loanhead, the brother of Dr Bob Purdie of Ruskin College, Oxford, who also writes to our newspapers, but in favour of independence.

Anyway, I have met David Purdie once, and he is a very decent and pleasant man, who has written over the years many letters to the local and national press, but in favour of the Labour party and its policies.

Now comes this bombshell.  The Herald entitled it Labour's brazen lack of regret for deceit.

Is it possible, wrote Mr Purdie, to have one's vote changed retrospectively?  For years I trotted along to the polls and voted Labour, thinking it was a bit like a benevolent uncle and on the side of the angels.  I now find out that this party is more like a greedy guardian intent on bilking me and my compatriots of our inheritance.

The most disturbing thing is its brazen lack of regret for its dishonesty over Scottish oil.  What a poor opinion of Scotland it had then and still seems to have.    So sure was it that we could not be trusted with this unexpected boon, all it could think of was how to hide the truth.  If it really thinks we are so venal and grasping, now that our oil has been plundered to fund half-witted wars and right-wing policies by both Labour and Tory governments, is it not time to cut us adrift and let us get on with it?  If there is any justice in the world, the SNP deserves to reap a rich harvest.

David Purdie writes an excellent letter, whatever view he is expressing.  I hope that he will continue to contribute many letters, but now in favour of independence.  We need his gifts.

OIL REVISITED WITH LORD HEALEY

Well, what a to-do following the BBC Radio 4 programme on how Westminster in the 1970s swindled the Scots out of billions of pounds worth of oil revenues.

The lying, the deceptions, the misinformation, the undermining of Scotland - all was revealed.

The whole episode is a disgrace, of course, but what I found really revealing were some of the comments from Dennis Healey, Labour chancellor at the time.

Lord Healey, as he now is, was so pleased that the Labour party had had such stalwarts as John Smith, Donald Dewar and Helen Liddell around at the time, for they were able to keep the rest of the party in Scotland on side - i.e. the London side.

Healey also suggested that these politicians recognised that their own careers  would be much more important as representatives of Great Britain than they could possibly be as representatives of tiny Scotland.

The cost, of course, was the sell-out of the oil to London.

So for the personal ambitions of a few Labour politicians, Scotland lost the oil and with it the chance to transform our nation.  We could have been another Norway, now the richest country in Europe, if not the world, which has used part its oil revenues to create a new transport infrastructure and an oil fund for future generations.

Our oil was squandered in the in the 1970s by an incompetent Labour government determined to use the bonanza to get it out of its economic black hole, squandered in the 1980s by the Conservatives on unemployment benefit for the unemployed created by Mrs Thatcher's policies, and squandered since 1997 by Labour¹s vainglorious foreign interventions and wars under Tony Blair.

When challenged about all the disinformation that had gone on, Healey's comment was:  It was possible for intelligent Scots to work it all out for themselves and not depend on the British Civil Service.

What cynicism!  What hypocrisy!

Many intelligent Scots had worked it out for themselves, but they were a small voice when ranged against government propaganda and the so-called Scottish media, especially the likes of the Daily Record.  How could ordinary Scots find things out for themselves when our highest-selling newspaper was regurgitating government propaganda?