Susannes Folksong-Notizen
[1980:] [Lord Home] became, in the course of an eventful political career, Earl of Home (fourteenth); Sir Alec Douglas-Home and, finally, Lord Home of the Hirsel. He was also Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister.
The Homes are an ancient family of the Scottish Borders, famous in the old days as keepers, or breakers, of the peace and, later, as farmers, sportsmen and fishermen. [...] Lord Home (born 1903) [then still Lord Dunglass] stood for Parliament in 1929 for Coatbridge and was rejected. Two years later he was elected for South Lanark. [...] The death of his father in [1951] ended (as it seemed), or interrupted (as it turned out), his career in the House of Commons. [...] In the autumn of 1963, [Prime Minister Harold] Macmillan was compelled by a breakdown in health to give up the leadership of the Tory Party. [...] Home was approached to be the successor, and with many misgivings agreed to surrender his peerage and fight a by-election so that he could sit in the Commons. He became MP for Kinross and West Perthshire and, as Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was Prime Minister. [...] When Home lost the general election in the following year by a small margin, he resigned with all the cheerfulness in the world. [...] Home was Foreign Secretary until 1974, in which year he was created a life peer. (Thomson, The Prime Ministers p 239 ff.)
[1990:] I'd forgotten that The Scottish MP was Jim's song till researching for this book. It is of course very unfair and inaccurate. (MPs get titles, not medals.) (McVicar, One Singer One Song 72)
[1997:] The Tories and Scottish Nationalists yesterday accused Labour of 'breathtaking hypocrisy and double standards' after it was revealed that only a handful of Scottish Labour MPs and parliamentary candidates would stand for election to Tony Blair's proposed Scottish assembly. An 'Observer' survey found that only seven of Labour's 43 Scottish MPs from the last Parliament who are standing again would give up Westminster for Edinburgh [...]. Only 13 [Labour candidates out of 72] said they would stand for an Edinburgh parliament. [...] It is an open secret north of the border that, although Labour MPs such as [the Shadow Scottish Secretary George] Robertson pay lip service to devolution, few are prepared to swap the privileges of life at Westminster for a new career on Edinburgh's Calton Hill. (John Arlidge, Observer, 20 April)
[1999:] A journalist had given me his opinion that the reason so many Scottish MPs did not want to stand as MSPs was that up here, their foibles and peccadilloes would be uncovered in double-quick time. (Ian Rankin, Observer, 11 Apr)
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