FROM THE LONDON END them in the third by-election result Regional Feelings Prevail in Nuneaton, near Birmingham. Here the young Labour successor to the IN A remarkable analogy to recent ment's economic and industrial pro- former Labour Minister and leader trends in India, this week's "mini- gramme for the regional develop- of the left wing Transport Workers election" in Britain has shown ment areas to reverse this trend. Union, Frank Cousins, managed to strong support for regionalism. The The fact now is that no seat in hold the seat with a majority re- Wilson Government will now have either Scotland or Wales is now safe duced from 11,000 to 4,000. to seriously consider decentralising from Nationalist raiding parties. In The Liberals polled a respectable Government within the United terms of the United Kingdom Par- 7,600 votes—an increase on their Kingdom if it is to withstand the liament this represents a serious showing in the 1966 general election. rising tide of nationalist opinion in threat to Labour's majority which It seems where there are no region- Scotland and Wales. is heavily dependent on Scottish al or nationalist elements at work and Welsh seats. and where there is no recognised It is fashionable to attribute the left alternative for frustrated Labour Labour Party's failure in the Glas- It must also be said, however, that voters, the Liberals can still make gow, Pollock election and the heavy the Scottish and Welsh nationalist ground. They recognise, however, drop in vote in the former Labour manifestations are not identical. It that much of this sort of support is stronghold at Rhondda West to more is true that the Welsh Nationalists as fickle as was the temporary sup- mid-term protest voting. There was stand clearly to the left of their port they received from wayward clearly an element of protest by Welsh compatriots in social and eco- Tories in the last days of the Mac- disaffected Labour voters but it was nomic policy. The Scottish National Millan Conservative Government. surprising that in neither case the Party's economic policy is if any- Communist candidates did well, thing to the right of their great ri- Both the Conservatives and Lab- since they were campaigning on vals, the Liberals, and has earned our face some soul-searching. The the revulsion felt by section of Lab- them the nickname of Tartan Conservatives can still point to no our support for "Wilson's abandon- Tories' in the left wing circles. Really positive swing in their direc- ment of socialism". The Plaid on the other hand has tion in spite of two years of econo- A big factor in the swing to both inherited some of the neo-Marxist mic crisis under the Labour Govern- Plaid Cwymru and the Scottish Na- and Libertarian traditions of an ment. Labour, on the other hand, tional Party has been the continuing older generation of Welsh working must feel that the allegations of its discrepency in the economic for- class socialism. It is a fact that the left critics that if it loses its soul, tunes of the midlands and the south Plaid's industrial policy was actual- it is in danger of losing some of its of England on the one hand and the ly written by a group of sympathe- traditional support may be being outer British provinces on the other. tic English anarcho-syndicalists borne out. One serious facet of this Unemployment in the Rhondda has although this clearly has had less development is the dangerous loss been running close to 10 per cent vote drawing power than the party's of morale among Labour activities, under the Wilson Government and appeals to Welsh Nationhood especially the younger generation. the local nationalist candidate made ("there are 30 nations smaller in This has developed particularly since much derisory play with the fact size and population than Wales re- the recent defence row in the Par- that Labour's much vaunted econo- presented at the United Nations.") liamentary Labour Party and the mic aid for Wales has produced a Both nationalist parties are more consequent rebuke delivered by Wil- negligible increase in employment. than vague about the form and son to the left abstentionist MPs that "dogs may be allowed one bite Voters were clearly thinking on degree of "independence" which only". much the same lines in Glasgow they seek. Wilson may take comfort from the where the effects of the economic The effect of the two by-elections fact, however, that this disillusion- credit squeeze have been more was also markedly different. In ment on the left still can find no harshly felt than in England. And Glasgow nationalist intervention al- permanently satisfactory berth in- also the wage freeze has been ap- lowed the Conservative to reclaim dependent of the Labour Party. If plied with a rigour which the na- the seat, while in Rhonnda the Plaid one does emerge the Wilson leader- tionalists have claimed amounts to not only slashed the hitherto im- ship will have serious cause for discrimination as in the case of the pregnable Labour majority but also alarm. refusal of a pay claim by Scottish buried the Conservative candidates. local Government officers. He polled a mere thousand votes, smallest recorded for a Conservative The feeling which has been large- NOTICE candidate since 1945, and well below ly dormant beneath the political the Communist's vote. Readers are requested to in- surface in both Scotland and Wales form the Circulation Manager for some years, that London-based If the nationalists also seem to put of non-receipt of copies. Unless economic power can never bring pay to the aspirations of the Liberals prompt intimation is given it to be recognised as the automatic them parity of treatment with Eng- may not be possible to replace protest vote against the Labour/ land, has now burst into life. It will missing copies free of cost. take much more than increased pro- Tory hegemony in Scotland and paganda for the Wilson Govern- Wales, there was some comfort for 552 .