LABOUR ARE STILL PUSHING THE LIE THEY SET UP THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT! THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW ON DEMOCRACY FORCED UK GOVERNMENT INTO DEVOLUTION NOT BECAUSE LABOUR OR WESTMINSTER WANTED TO! The Council of Europe issued a statement making it pointedly clear that failure to abide by the international norms of pluralist democracy “would be incompatible with membership of the Council.” The Tories had stubbornly dragged their feet over the UK’s accession to the Charter of Local Self-Government, but then, in March 1997, a few weeks before the election that brought Blair’s Labour government to power, the Council of Europe pointedly spelled out the sanctions that would be applied, in a series of escalating steps, to any European state that did not “fully and swiftly comply with the basic democratic principles that are at the heart of the European Ideal.” In plain language, get Scotland, Wales, etc. sorted out or be expelled from the Council of Europe in the most humiliatingly public manner – a step that would have had devastating international consequences, especially just a few weeks before the UK presidency of the European Union. Total capitulation followed. With the entire international diplomatic corps breathing down its neck, the new UK government signed the Charter on 3 June 1997 (the last one in Europe to do so) and brought in bills for devolution to Scotland and Wales – to written approval by Strasbourg, but described by Blair as “a damnable nuisance.” The fulfilment of this foreign policy obligation was therefore a diplomatic and not a political decision. Tony Blair and the remaining Labour leadership ostentatiously boycotted the opening of the Scottish Parliament and later the Holyrood building in order to show what they thought of the whole business – an attitude later confirmed in Blair’s memoirs. And folk wonder why Scottish Labour’s devolution commission additional powers for the Scottish Parliament were the weakest of the 3 Unionist Parties! newsnetscotland.scot/index.php/scottish-opinion/4367-scottish-devolution-and-the-labour-myth
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 00:23:12 +0000
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