From the archive: Call for end to Scots apathy - 8 April, 1950

“Much of the discussion which is now going on about the Covenant deals with the question as to whether Scotland can pay her own way,” said Mr JM MacCormick, convener of the National Covenant Committee, at a meeting in the Dalrymple Hall in Fraserburgh last night.

“I wonder if the people who are telling us it would be economically dangerous for us to govern ourselves realise their assertions can be rewarded like this: we are taking money out of the pockets of the people of England for which we give no return and we had better not disturb a system which thus enables us to live like parasites on other people’s wealth. It displays a spineless complacency about a situation which, if it did indeed exist, would be almost as immoral as plain theft. For such people the national arms should be not the Lion Rampant but a sodden sponge upon a field of gold, enclosed within festoons of dry rot fungus.”