the general POLLING day is approaching Party. quietly in Scotland. The heal even seems to hure gone out of in toc the devolution issue.
Unless the parties give the proposed Scottish Assembly a radical programme to tackle unemployment, poverty, and had housing. voters are bound to be more concerned with the for between Labour and Tories.
Under no pressure from the left, either inside or outside the Labour Party, Labour MPs are campaigning defending the recund, They DraUSe TH ment's sepposed protection of the attempts to make students COCEETIES working class policies. choice on the basis of government's governThe already johs, even though unemployment in Scotland approached support. 200.000 during Labour's time in office. But its regional development grants and direct Intervention at Chrysler and Marathon Shipyards allow the SUCHENE portray Labour as a lesser evil' LOTION "Tune-duck More promises are in store. timid The powers of the Scottish Scottish Development Agency (SDA) are to be increased and its funding raised from £300 to E850 million a year. The many which the Labour government has used to disguise the length of the dole queues will be maintained. minimum"
weak manifestor walers down the 1974 proposals for increased government control of the economy, The Scottish Tories are only ment. slightly less complacent than populist the Labour Party. Since 1974, when the SNP ousted them a Scolland's second puris, the Conservatives have wanted to use this eiection to re-assemble their middle class and rural They wheel out the familiar Tory policies: increase punishment for offenders, weaken crease the stock of publicly owned housing through give away' sales, and decrease the powers of the SDA.
They have even dropped the 1974 proposals for a Development Fund financed by oil revenues. And they don't even gemufleet in the direction of un Assembly which they supported in 1974.
The SAP has retreated from its emphasis on an independent Scotland und is pursuing programme setting up the Assembly, Increasing resonal soendan: from oil revenues, and support- SNP ing policies to cur unemployThey are running campaign against foreign ownership of Scottist land, but this Includes only OUR CRAS BURNTE English absentee lundlords cun con tinge to.sleep easily!
How will the major pursies fare on polling day? When the nationalists trooped into the House of Commons lobby with the Tories in support of their "no confidence" motion, Callaghan likened them to turkers coling for an carly Christmas. This comparison still seems apt.
Unless the SNP can reverse the 1978 by-clection results, HAET seat's une vulnerabile. Many of their traditional supporters voted "no" in the reierendum which could endunger at least five of their eleven seats.
Labour will lacrease their representation at Westminster. It will try to hold both working class "yes" and "no" voters ane win back supporters from th The Tones should als record increases. They would n't need much to Improse on their terrible 1974 perfor mance, and their stand on the assembly will win them buck nural and middle-cluss voters fed up with the SNP.