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READER and veteran SNP activist Hamish MacQueen was mildly criticised by two readers (September 1) for mildly criticising Carolyn Leckies fine article on the NHS. Actually, he merely added an addendum, by saying that the welfare state was more or less instigated by Lord Beveridge, a Liberal, and not a socialist. Whether Bevan or Viscount Earl Atlee or any Labourite was or is a socialist is a different debate and a matter of political opinion. We have had six Labour governments but never had socialism.

What happened to Keir Hardies ILP membership card demanding home rule, abolition of the House of Lords, etc? Ramsay Mac was a great republican socialist in opposition. When he became the PM of a Unionist coalition, he actually said the ladies would be kissing his hand in the morning and Labour have been kissing Anglo-capitalist, monarchist and imperialist warmongers backsides ever since.

READ MORE:Carolyn Leckie: The bold ideas we need to make the Yes movement unstoppable

Sir Winston Churchill, who was no socialist, delivered free milk as a Liberal Home Secretary. This was mainly to enable the British soldier to compete with the German soldier, who was taller, fitter and better educated. He stood on a home rule ticket in Dundee, to be beaten by a temperance home ruler.

England did not receive universal education till the late 1870s due to Church of England dominance. The English Queen is still head of the C of E, making her a god. Scotland had free education since the Reformation. Ireland was not allowed any kind of working-class education, leading to the illegal growth of hedgerow priests. The Liberals split over home rule and all the yoon parties still unite against Scotlands slightest interests or Scottish democracy.

The first welfare state in an industrial society was introduced by the anti-socialist Iron Chancellor of a united Germany, Lord Bismarck in the 1870s. He imprisoned, exiled and executed thousands of socialists. German socialist Car Liebknecht faced the firing squad singing, a mans man for a that. The Chancellors reforms were intended to make Germany a super race. By the Second World War, the GB wartime national coalition also realised that the British sojer was still behind the German super sojer in fitness and education and agreed on a comprehensive, cradle to the grave welfare state, with minor differences. Lord Beveridge resigned in disgust at Lord Viscount Earl Atlees failure to go far enough and Labour has been attacking the welfare state ever since.

One of the criticising readers also mentioned the Highland Free Health Service during the war and Tom Johnston, of Dover House, also hailed as the best Prime Minister Scotland never had. In fact, he was hailed as the precursor of harnessing Scotlands abundance of water to create the hydroelectric schemes. It was due to Winston Churchills desire to create plutonium for the atom bomb that was really responsible.

Tom Johnston was an ILP Scottish Republican who later reversed his position. He was also a millionaire publisher and pulped and withdrew his own excellent books on Our Noble Families and Histories of the Scottish Working Classes.

Hamish MacQueen, who served in Word World Two, is old enough to remember all this from personal experience. As someone who is about ten years younger, I am he was old enough to have fought against Lords Wilson and Callaghans anti-socialist austerity cuts and pay freezes, as a shop steward fighting their pay freezes through unofficial strikes.

They closed the Pilkington Fibreglass factory in Possil, where I worked, after a six-week anti-pay-freeze strike, whilst round the corner in the GKN nut and bolt factory in Mitre Street, Lord Martin of Springburn was also a shop steward, engaged in defending Labour and keeping his workers in.

Carolyn Leckie was a fine MSP who fought Lord McConnells class traitors in the devolved Scottish Parliament, so no criticism of her or the two National readers is intended.

Donald AndersonGlasgow

Read more from the original source:
We've had six Labour governments but never had socialism - The National