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The election campaign
has barely got under way and is enthralling really only to those who
are active participants in parties’ efforts. Yet, by the time you read
the words of this month’s contributors, almost all minds will have
been made up. We wish we could do more to help. What we can do is try
to kindle spirits; to encourage one another to keep the faith, taking
pride in what together we have done, and helping to strengthen
resolve.
We have in Scotland
quite a number of scholar-journalists who can analyse as well as
report, and whose work over the past four years has gone a long way to
keep Scotland well informed. These writers have responded well to the
presence of a political focus back in Scotland, and have done much to
bring a swift measure of maturity to the new-fangled body.
The one serious
reproach that might be offered is that they have not placed blame
where it belongs, going along with the widely held, or at least widely
spoken, belief that the Holyrood Parliament has proved itself a dud.
Quite often a corrective pen has noted that the defects under attack
have not been those of the Parliament as such; that the faults have
lain not in the new system but in the inadequacies of some of its
members.
Let us thank Robert
McNeil for his recent report card. Our own, retiring, Duncan Hamilton
brought upon himself a pursuit of such fury as no man had faced since
Tam o’ Shanter, when he commented critically upon the contribution of
the women elected as Labour members by the gender gerrymandering which
the party must surely now regret. Duncan can take some pride in the
fact that Mr McNeil has quoted fifteen names in proof of the Hamilton
thesis. The bad news is that when we look at the list of nominees for
May 1st these ladies are all there again.
Let’s hope that those
reporting on events of the coming four years will be franker in
explaining that it is Labour’s puddens who have invited derision and
embarrassment, not the institution itself.
Now that the first
Parliament has passed into history, let us take pride in the
fact that our members have not brought ridicule or contempt upon the
Parliament or upon the Party which sent them there. In particular, and
in contrast to Labour’s monstrous regiment, our women members have
performed with especial distinction. We offer to them all, men and
women, our thanks for their work and for keeping the reputation of our
Party high at all times.
Let us end with our
particular tribute to our Party’s President, politician and
representative incomparable, remarkable pioneer and our own dear
friend Winnie Ewing.
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