Labout allowed the SNP to claim the Saltire
From the Times Online, where you will find the whole article
Labour made the mistake in the Nineties of allowing the SNP to “monopolise” the saltire, the Scottish Secretary admittd yesterday.
“We allowed our national symbol - the St Andrew’s Cross - to be co-opted as an image of nationalism,” Jim Murphy said.
In doing so, Labour repeated its mistake of the 1980s when it had allowed Margaret Thatcher to “claim the mantle of patriotism” and wrap herself in the Union flag, he added.
Mr Murphy’s comments came as a poll found that fewer than a third of voters in Scotland want independence.
Twenty eight per cent of those questioned by ICM for BBC Scotland said they wanted to break away from the rest of the UK, compared to 47 per cent who want to remain within the Union but with Holyrood being given enhanced powers, and 22 per cent who want to stay within the UK but with Westminster retaining control of tax and spending.
In his speech yesterday, Mr Murphy sought to reclaim the saltire and to argue there was no contradiction between Scottish and British identities. It has has long been a view held in private by many in Labour circles.
But a leading politics expert dismissed the comments as “irrelevant to contemporary Scotland”.
Professor James Mitchell, of Strathclyde University, said: “Scottish politics has moved well beyond flags. What Labour needs to do is decide what it believes in, not which flag it should be waving.”
He attacked the claim that Labour had abandoned the saltire, saying that it was much used by the party during the 1997 devolution referendum campaign.
Since becoming Scottish Secretary, Mr Murphy has been keen to shed Labour’s image as a London-dominated party - the reason blamed by some for the loss of the Holyrood election in 2007.
His speech on Britishness, a favourite theme of Gordon Brown, is part of Labour’s fightback as it continues to trail the SNP in the polls.
