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"ON 28 March 1979, SNP votes helped bring down a minority Labour government in a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons."

Callaghan lost by one vote. Followed by 18 years of Thatcher / tories, death of old labour, the Major years, the birth of new labour, Blair etc... Gordon Brown... Cameron... yeah its been a great outcome.

This was an interesting recap...

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/789/march-1979-what-really-happened-when-the-snp-brought-down-a-minority-labour-government

Edited by thplinth
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10 minutes ago, thplinth said:

"ON 28 March 1979, SNP votes helped bring down a minority Labour government in a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons."

Callaghan lost by one vote. Followed by 18 years of Thatcher / tories, death of old labour, the Major years, the birth of new labour, Blair etc... Gordon Brown... Cameron... yeah its been a great outcome.

This was an interesting recap...

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/789/march-1979-what-really-happened-when-the-snp-brought-down-a-minority-labour-government

FORTY years ago.

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7 minutes ago, weekevie04 said:

FORTY years ago.

... is how long it has been since a labour government. Blair was not labour but a neo liberal tory lite and after him just blah blah the same.

Corbyn might get in but until he does it is FORTY years and counting.

That link is quite generous to the SNP's thinking but still...it was a monumental mistake and given a time machine I don't think they would do it twice..

Pushing for things like indyref2 without clear support in the polls is more of the same. That could set us back another 30-40 years.

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Supreme Court Verdict on UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill
Question 1 - The Bill does not relate to reserved matters; it is in the province of the Scottish Parliament.
Question 2 - Section 17 of the Bill is deemed invalid - as it would prevent the UK Parliament from legislating within Scotland.
Question 3 - No idea what the answer meant.
Question 4 - The Bill does not conflict with EU law, due to the law only going into affect following the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

After taking into account that the UK Act has been passed since.
Question 5 - The UK Act supersedes the Scottish Act in certain areas; various sections are not in the legislative powers of the Scottish Parliament, all other sections (most of the bill) is.

Edited by Clyde1998
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10 hours ago, thplinth said:

... is how long it has been since a labour government. Blair was not labour but a neo liberal tory lite and after him just blah blah the same.

Corbyn might get in but until he does it is FORTY years and counting.

That link is quite generous to the SNP's thinking but still...it was a monumental mistake and given a time machine I don't think they would do it twice..

Pushing for things like indyref2 without clear support in the polls is more of the same. That could set us back another 30-40 years.

The thing a lot of people forget is that an election had to be held by October 1979 anyway, the last one had been in October 1974.

It's highly doubtful whether Mr Callaghan could have turned the tide back in his favour with a few extra months in government. The result would probably have been just the same.

Whilst the SNP did lose nine seats at the 1979 election, several of those seats were only just narrowly lost.

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What is the expression - a week is a long time in politics? Well coming out of the winter of discontent a few extra months might have helped. Overall however Labours number was on the wall, it was palpable at the time even to me as a kid... And I agree with the view that Labour fucked themselves (just as they did all the way through the Thatcher years). That said with hindsight it was a mistake to support it. 

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48 minutes ago, ErsatzThistle said:

The thing a lot of people forget is that an election had to be held by October 1979 anyway, the last one had been in October 1974.

It's highly doubtful whether Mr Callaghan could have turned the tide back in his favour with a few extra months in government. The result would probably have been just the same.

Whilst the SNP did lose nine seats at the 1979 election, several of those seats were only just narrowly lost.

Interestingly, the polls at the time don't really point to the no confidence vote being the reason as to why the SNP seat numbers fell: http://www.scottishgovernmentyearbooks.ed.ac.uk/record/22817/1/1980_ref_1_summaryofScottishopinionpolls.pdf; http://www.scottishgovernmentyearbooks.ed.ac.uk/record/22790/1/1979_refsec2_summaryofScottishoptionpolls.pdf

The SNP had been polling below 20% since 1978; while the vote may have had a small impact (~5%), the SNP were always going to go backwards anyway. Interestingly, there's a huge spike in the Liberal vote share in April 1979 - mainly at the expense of Labour. The Liberals also voted against the government.

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I believe that by the time of the 1979 confidence vote, Callaghan had had enough. He knew that he was going to lose the next election whether it happened in May or October. 

It's easy to think that the reason that the SNP voted against Callaghan was that Labour had reneged on their promise to set up a Devolved Assembly, but I think it was more complicated than that. Although the SNP were quite rightly furious about that betrayal, their leadership was savvy enough to realise that that battle was lost but there was still a chance to get something out of the last days of a failed Labour government. They wanted some concession in return for their support. Callaghan offered nothing. The idea of an investment bank to support Scottish industry was one of the "inducements" talked about. This wouldn't have cost that much to set up but Callaghan refused to even contemplate it. 

Callaghan called the SNPs bluff, knowing that all he had to lose was another 6 months in power, at a time when he really didn't have the stomach for it. It wouldn't have taken much to "buy" a few SNP votes. In the end he would only have needed one vote. If he had offered anything to the SNP I am convinced that Gordon Wilson would have given him at least that one vote and probably more.

Folk who blame the SNP for giving us 18 years of Thatcher would be as well blaming Galtieri or Jim Callaghan himself.

 

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13 hours ago, Dave78 said:

"1979 No Confidence vote and death

On 28 March 1979 the government faced a knife-edge vote of no confidence when Broughton was on his death bed. Broughton's doctors were extremely concerned for him and strongly advised him not to travel. Although he was willing to come down to vote, Prime Minister James Callaghan decided it would be obscene to ask him to do so, in case he died during the ambulance journey. In the event, the government lost by one vote; had Broughton been present, it would have survived. Broughton died five days later, aged 76."

 

 

Imagine if the poor bastard had died in the HoC. Would have brought a whole new meaning to the terms 'die in a ditch' or 'die on a hill' for a cause.

If he had I suspect they'd have shuffled him through the voting lobby with a colleague at either side, Weekend at Bernie's style...

Interestingly Mike Pence was compared to a corpse/Weekend at Bernie's when he sat in on Trump's White House meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer yesterday. 

Edited by neilser
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So let me get this right... knowing you would lose 9 out of 11 MPs and bring Margaret Thatcher to power you would do exactly the same thing again. Wow, that is more interesting. :huh:

The strikes abated end of Feb, lost the no confidence vote end of march, election start of May. So the winter of discontent was extremely fresh in the memory... who knows how it would have gone 6 months later but it has to be worth a punt versus what happened.

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7 minutes ago, thplinth said:

So let me get this right... knowing you would lose 9 out of 11 MPs and bring Margaret Thatcher to power you would do exactly the same thing again. Wow, that is more interesting. :huh:

The strikes abated end of Feb, lost the no confidence vote end of march, election start of May. So the winter of discontent was extremely fresh in the memory... who knows how it would have gone 6 months later but it has to be worth a punt versus what happened.

To be fair though, at that time, it was Labour stabbing Scotland in the back and how were the SNP (at that time) to know how Margaret Thatcher was to turn out? The SNP had to react then to what they knew/fealt and that was blatant betrayal by Labour.

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You are missing the point... by asking yourself now with perfect hindsight if you would do the same thing again that is how you know if it was a mistake. 

Callaghan in that wings article makes the same point but talking about the 34 rebel Labour MPs who helped forced the 40% rule through...

Quote

 

*These are Callaghan’s comments on the 40% rule:

Quote

 

“[The rule] was instigated by another Labour sceptic, George Cunninghame [sic], with the support of Labour and Conservative opponents. He proposed that if the consultative referendum contained in the bill resulted in less than 40 per cent of the total electorate voting in favour of Devolution, then the Secretary of State for Scotland would be required to lay an Order before Parliament, wiping out the whole Act.

This provision was carried by a majority of fifteen, with as many as thirty-four Labour Members voting against the Government. On the other hand a small number of Conservatives and the Liberal Party supported us.

I have since wondered whether those thirty-four Labour Members would have voted as they did if they had been able to foresee that their votes on that evening would precipitate a General Election in 1979, at the least favourable time for their Government.”

 

That’s 34 Labour MPs [EDIT: list below] voting with the Tories in order to cheat the people of Scotland by setting an impossible target for a Yes vote – more than three times as many as the 11 SNP MPs who voted against the government in the vote of no confidence. You don’t hear so much about those 34, do you?

Fun trivia fact: if the 40% rule had been in place for the independence referendum, and ABSOLUTELY NOBODY in Scotland had voted No, the Yes vote of 1.62 million still wouldn’t have been enough to win under Cunningham’s rule, representing as it did just 38% of the entire registered electorate. That’s how crooked it was.

Labour Ayes for 40% rule amendment (bold: Scottish constituencies)

Leo Abse (Pontypool)
Sydney Bidwell (Southall)
Betty Boothroyd (West Bromwich)
Lewis Carter-Jones (Eccles)
Maureen Colquhoun (Northampton North)
George Cunningham (Islington South)
Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)
Joseph Dean (Leeds West)
Peter Doig (Dundee West)
Bruce Douglas-Mann (Mitcham and Morden)
Ioan Evans (Aberdare)
Martin Flannery (Sheffield Hillsborough)
Ted Fletcher (Darlington)
Ted Garrett (Wallsend)
Helene Hayman (Welwyn and Hatfield)
Eric Heffer (Liverpool Walton)
Robert Hughes (Aberdeen North)
Adam Hunter (Dunfermline)
Alexander Lyon (York)
Joan Maynard (Sheffield Brightside)
John Mendelson (Penistone)
Eric Moonman (Basildon)
Stanley Newens (Harlow)
Eric Ogden (Liverpool West Derby)
Arthur Palmer (Bristol North East)
John Parker (Barking Dagenham)
Josephine Richardson (Barking)
Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West)
George Rodgers (Chorley)
Renee Short (Wolverhampton North East)
Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
Leslie Spriggs (St Helens)
Ronald Thomas (Bristol North West)
Audrey Wise (Coventry South West)

 

So it was not even Callaghan who 'betrayed' the SNP.

If the 34 labour mps would change their mind if they could foresee the future then so would the SNP MPs. They got near wiped out.

Plus the small matter of bringing Thatcher to power... that may have happened anyway but we will never know that one way or another as they did what they did with the consequences it had.

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The SNP didn't bring Thatcher in. LABOUR did that by being a shower of clueless, useless, incompetent bastards who'd made a mess of everything. Thatcher was always on her way and, just like Brexit, the English wanted her so we were getting her too. And once the bitch was in there was no shifting her with her unassailable majority. Folk up here kept loyally voting Labour though cos the Daily Record kept telling them to "send her a message".  A lot of good it done us as well.

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7 minutes ago, Clyde1998 said:

Sky News getting smacked down by Mike Russell: https://www.facebook.com/groups/237578533089567/permalink/1124841804363231/

It just shows up these news agencies for what they are. As I understand it there were six parts to this bill and the Supreme Court found technicalities with one part whilst Westminster had problems with the whole of it. But what the heck to Sky it is a slap down even though Westminster so to speak lost 5-1.

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1 hour ago, thplinth said:

So let me get this right... knowing you would lose 9 out of 11 MPs and bring Margaret Thatcher to power you would do exactly the same thing again. Wow, that is more interesting. :huh:

The strikes abated end of Feb, lost the no confidence vote end of march, election start of May. So the winter of discontent was extremely fresh in the memory... who knows how it would have gone 6 months later but it has to be worth a punt versus what happened.

On the positive side, it could be argued that the major setback in 1979 made it possible for a younger more radical group of folk to start to get more control of the SNP. That setback was a big blow to the old guard, many of whom would have been quite happy to see Salmond and co booted out of the party altogether. Our former TAMB friend being one of them.

I think there is a good chance that if the SNP hadn't been in such turmoil at the time Salmond might not have been allowed back into the party and he could have been lost to the SNP and maybe politics altogether. I know a lot of folk would have been quite happy about that, but I'm not one of them. It's all guesswork on my part though.

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1 minute ago, Caledonian Craig said:

It just shows up these news agencies for what they are. As I understand it there were six parts to this bill and the Supreme Court found technicalities with one part whilst Westminster had problems with the whole of it. But what the heck to Sky it is a slap down even though Westminster so to speak lost 5-1.

Aye. I think the one problem was that there was a paragraph that implied that Westminster couldn't take powers from the Scottish Parliament - which wouldn't be in the remit of the Scottish Parliament. Various sections have been superseded by the Westminster bill and wouldn't be enforceable now in separate Scottish legislation, but that bill hadn't passed when the Scottish bill passed.

I bet the Welsh are angry that their government decided to repeal their version of this bill.

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1 hour ago, Clyde1998 said:

Aye. I think the one problem was that there was a paragraph that implied that Westminster couldn't take powers from the Scottish Parliament - which wouldn't be in the remit of the Scottish Parliament. Various sections have been superseded by the Westminster bill and wouldn't be enforceable now in separate Scottish legislation, but that bill hadn't passed when the Scottish bill passed.

I bet the Welsh are angry that their government decided to repeal their version of this bill.

The UK Supreme Court found that with the exception of one clause, the bill *when it passed* was within Holyrood's competence.  UK Government lawyers tried to argue that the whole bill was incompetent but this was rejected by the court.

As every good schoolboy knows, the devolution model is that all powers are devolved unless they are reserved under the Scotland 1998 Act.   

What the UK government did was - once the HR Continuity bill was passed, was to wait until the last minute to object and refer it to the Supreme Court, essentially stopping the bill from gaining Royal Assent.  They then, late in the day and in the House of Lords, introduced a series of "complex and technical" amendments which had the effect of amending the Scotland Act and making these reserved powers and because that bill passed into law makes the original bill from Holyrood invalid and has the impact of re-reserving powers from Holyrood to Westminster.

And that Ladies and Gentlemen is exactly how the power grab works in practice.

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4 hours ago, daviebee said:

The SNP didn't bring Thatcher in. LABOUR did that by being a shower of clueless, useless, incompetent bastards who'd made a mess of everything. Thatcher was always on her way and, just like Brexit, the English wanted her so we were getting her too. And once the bitch was in there was no shifting her with her unassailable majority. Folk up here kept loyally voting Labour though cos the Daily Record kept telling them to "send her a message".  A lot of good it done us as well.

In the short term the SNP are clearly partly responsible for the no confidence vote which led directly to the GE and Thatcher (at a minimum sooner rather than later but there is chance rather than never) attaining power. The SNP are no more responsible than anyone else who voted that way but they are for their share of it responsible. 

In the longer term are the SNP responsible for people turning to the Tories in 79 after Labour and the Trade Unions gradually destroyed themselves in the 70's and well into the 80's (even out of power)  instead of working together to improve things given the rare chance they had. No. Clearly not. But that does not change the fact the SNP fucked up in 79. 

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3 hours ago, Orraloon said:

On the positive side, it could be argued that the major setback in 1979 made it possible for a younger more radical group of folk to start to get more control of the SNP. That setback was a big blow to the old guard, many of whom would have been quite happy to see Salmond and co booted out of the party altogether. Our former TAMB friend being one of them.

I think there is a good chance that if the SNP hadn't been in such turmoil at the time Salmond might not have been allowed back into the party and he could have been lost to the SNP and maybe politics altogether. I know a lot of folk would have been quite happy about that, but I'm not one of them. It's all guesswork on my part though.

The Phoenix option. Burn everything to the ground to encourage a rebirth, green shoots, new ideas, new approach (mixing metaphors here but you get the idea). It is sort of burning down your house in the hope a new one will then manifest. Tactically it is like calling in an airstrike on your own position as you are being overrun. So I am not sure it could ever be described as a positive, intended or otherwise... Whatever emerges is naturally quite thin, flimsy in comparison.

Salmond is gone and I think we lack any real depth to the SNP bench despite all the MPs now.  In fact worse he may have left latent 79 group ideas unbridled in charge. i.e. 'Lets tack left to gain votes...' I think this is Nicola's natural inclination every time.

 

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