Bruton and company will turn and show their teeth one day soon. The sooner we get away from them and into independence the better.We should be agreeing, as is repeatedly said at the dispatch box and elsewhere, that the economy is growing, the unemployment figures are coming down, the export trade is increasing, the inflation figures are being held, and all the rest. Even Ireland, whose memories go back far beyond Cromwell to the more recent Black and Tans. We urged that we should go into Europe at the time of the Treaty of Rome, and help to shape it.

Instead, the UK backed away and when, at last, the British wanted in, they wanted the rules altered to suit them, whereas the thing was by this time a going concern And the Tories are still at it, trying for late changes. For myself I have now gone far beyond the modest devolution case, and am for independence or nothing.For the present, we want clear of England. The English have stirred up animosity for themselves everywhere. They have offended and oppressed most of the countries of the world and especially those of Europe Their enemies are now closing in. The Spanish fishing menace is one of the most recent; the beef threat is another Germany and France are both out to clobber them.

Edward Heath seems to have sulked out of British politics, but his considerable contribution as our only major constitutional reformer of the 20th century is still to be assessed.My paper, The Scotsman, was the first to promote devolution - which all Scottish papers have since taken up. Heath also, in discussion with some of us, formulated the ideal of a separate legislative and parliamentary assembly for Scotland which his party adopted and then mutilated. When Britain eventually decided to join, they thought the rules should be changed to accommodate them, although the thing was already a going concern. In any proper system of government in the small British Islands, they would be natural and friendly allies and we could do great things together. But when the Act of Union comes at last to be rewritten, it will have to be a cautious and safeguarded partnership, for they take their own world with them wherever they go and their own set of rules which they want others to adhere to, no matter what has gone before.This must have greatly puzzled Edward Heath, who, in the first, abortive attempt to enter the Common market, was supported by The Scotsman, which pushed hard for a European presence in the EEC, campaigning to have Britain in at the time the Treaty of Rome was being written. But if anything ever comes up that they have decided is their right, they will not yield. One of the great attitudes of mind, which has prevented Scotland for 1,000 years from being utterly engulfed by their flood is this: that the Scots are the only people in the world who have never underrated the English.