Brian Wilson

Apart from independence, the SNP stands for nothing

The deposed Scottish Nationalist MP for East Lothian, George Kerevan, found solace this week in the words of a distinguished former editor of The Spectator. Kerevan tweeted:

‘I believe every Scotsman should be a Scottish nationalist’, John Buchan, House of Commons, 24 November, 1932.’

Hundreds of disconsolate Nationalists took to their keyboards to embrace Buchan’s validation of their core belief. A retweet by my own MP, Angus MacNeil, whose devotion to Twitter greatly outweighs his capacity for research, caught my attention. The obvious conclusion was that none of them had actually read what Buchan said in his contribution to the debate on the Queen’s Speech, all those years ago. Anyone who did would have been reaching for their delete icons, since Buchan’s speech was not only hostile to their cause but also highly pertinent in today’s circumstances.

Buchan did indeed say that ‘every Scotsman should be a Scottish nationalist’ and also that if ‘a Scottish Parliament were desirable…Scotsmen should support it’. So far, so good for Kerevan. Buchan went on to outline reasons that the independence movement was enjoying some modest growth and his own belief that ‘something must be done, and done soon, if Scotland is not to lose its historic individuality’.

Buchan was the son of a Free Church manse and I doubt if SNP supporters would have been anxious to endorse his explanation of the problem:

‘Our population is declining; we are losing some of the best of our race stock by migration and their place is being taken by those who, whatever their merits, are not Scottish. I understand that every fifth child born now in Scotland is an Irish Roman Catholic’.

Having got that off his chest, Buchan noted that the driving force in the Nationalist movement was cultural. He responded:

‘I am afraid that people in cultural movements are always apt to run to machinery for a solution.

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