SCOTLAND DRAINED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 March 1939, Page 6

SCOTLAND DRAINED

LOSSES BY EMIGRATION. ■ NEW PROPOSALS. VIE WED WITH DISTRUST. "We reject this new attempt to drain Scotland of her racial stock! We say that Scotland/ a small nation, ‘which has lost through emigration the unexampled number of 1,400.000 people in the last 70 years, has good reason to. distrust now emigration proposals.” These words appear in a manifesto issued by the Scottish National Party on Scotland and Empire development, says the “Manchester Guardian.” Natural emigration from Scotland to the Dominions overseas having dried up with the decline in the birth rate, it is stated, the Scottish people were faced with an attempt to create “as-sisted"—-that is, artificial—emigration. Constant propaganda with this object in view was carried on by organisations which appeared to ignore the welfare of Scotland as a unit of the British Commonwealth of Nations. "Scotland is still.regarded through Victorian spectacles as a mere reservoir of population,” the manifesto adds, "although she is herself about to enter a period in which she will no longer maintain by natural processes the numbers of her people. While a new organised emigration is contemplated, other emigrations are actually going on. The public do not seem to realise that Scotland is losing to England approximately 10,000 workers a year, and that there is in addition an organised removal of young people to England by the Ministry of Labour under iheir transference scheme. An ugly aspect of all emigration schemes is that they mean the loss to this country of pioneer types, of men. and women or youths with initiative, who can ill be spared.” TIME FOR A HALT. The time had come to call a halt to anti-national policies masquerading as imperial projects. The time had come to say that their contribution to the wealth and security of the Commonwealth must now lie in the development of Scotland and the welfare of her people. Their large under-popu-lated and under-developed spaces mattered to them at least as much as the empty spaces of Canada and Australia: they wanted more people in their rural areas not more emigrants from them. In time they might even want to call on some of their emigrants to return. To secure this result there must be: “A development of lighter industries, in the country, not only in the special areas, to correct their disturbed industrial balance; a determined and well-considered project of rural colonisation for the purpose of giving new i life to the deserted glens; a speeding |up of afforestation and the development of allied industries; a- national policy

for the reconstruction of their decayed fishing industry, one of the best nurseries of a hardy population; a planned decentralisation of industry to check ■unwholesome tendencies, and a steady effort to overtake the shocking lag in rehousing both the rural and urban population." -Such a programme." the manifesto concludes, "obviously goes far beyond lhe intentions or capacity of any Government sitting at Westminster. It involves, in our judgment, a Government in Scotland equipped with powers to discharge its responsibilities to the Scottish people. It means financial autonomy,”