LABOUR'S leading Home Rule rebel yesterday put his future in the party on the line when he backed the SNP's idea of a referendum on independence.

In an interview with The Herald, Dundee MP John McAllion also called into question Donald Dewar's strategy of resisting a referendum. ''If there was an independence referendum and the SNP won it - that would not be a disaster. I don't believe anyone believes that any more,'' he said. ''It would be the democratic decision of the Scottish people and Donald should respect it because he is a democrat.''

His remarks came only a couple of hours after Mr Dewar issued yet another statement resisting the SNP's call for a referendum, and claiming the Nationalists were diehard separatists who would turn the Scottish Parliament into a Trojan horse for independence.

Mr McAllion said in a BBC television interview that he believed the Scottish people would reject independence and embrace the devolution settlement in a referendum. Such a result would ''box in the SNP for many years'', he suggested.

But then he went farther than ever in his defiance of the party line when he told The Herald: ''Donald can only argue what he is saying if he believes the Scottish people really would vote for independence. And if that is what he believes, he is not being a true democrat. Of course all this should be put to a democratic vote. Why not?''

Mr McAllion also gave The Herald his first public comments on the fate of his three Westminster colleagues, including fellow veteran Home Rule campaigner Dennis Canavan, MP for Falkirk West, who have been rejected along with Mr Dewar's special adviser, Murray Elder, by the party's selection panel which is vetting aspiring MSPs.

He stoked the anger inside the Scottish party by praising Mr Canavan's ''great contribution over the years'' and expressing his anger at the treatment of him and others who were regarded, he said, as ''good enough to be Westminster MPs but not good enough to be Members of the Scottish Parliament''.

Calling the bluff of the leadership, which has been suspected of wishing to exclude him from the list of approved candidates in favour of Blairite clones, Mr McAllion said he was still waiting for an interview.

''I will not be intimidated. It is not very nice to have this hanging over me for this amount of time but I will not just sit back and wait to be picked off. If they decide they don't want me, that is too bad.''

Mr McAllion resigned from Labour's Scottish front bench in protest at Tony Blair's decision to call a referendum on devolution and is increasingly seen as a loose cannon on the Home Rule issue.

But his argument that Labour is needlessly playing into the SNP's hands by its resistance to a referendum - what he calls ''the final constitutional issue still to be settled in Scotland'' - will strike a chord with many Labour voters.

His comments brought immediate reaction from Brian Wilson, the Scottish Industry Minister, in his role as Labour's chief anti-SNP propagandist.

''We don't believe it would be in the interests of the Scottish people,'' he said of an independence referendum.

''The people have spoken both in the devolution referendum and, before that, in the General Election. They have made it clear that they don't want independence and that they do want the Scottish Parliament to work.

''Labour will deliver a Parliament which does work for Scotland. The SNP only want a Parliament which works for them.''

Mr Dewar and Mr Wilson are said to believe that the escalating debate on independence can still be turned to Labour's advantage.

''Once the people see there is a choice - a Parliament which works under Labour or produces continuing constitutional chaos under the SNP - we will be the winners of this argument. This debate can be quite useful for us in crystallising the issues,'' a spokesman said.

SNP leader Alex Salmond called Mr McAllion's remarks a ''huge embarrassment'' for Mr Dewar. ''Labour's former constitutional affairs spokesman, a Lib-Dem MP, other senior members of the Labour and Lib-Dem parties, and even some Tories agree with the concept of an independence referendum as a mechanism for consulting Scots on the country's constitutional future, without necessarily being in favour of independence.

''Yet only last year Donald Dewar agreed with the SNP - and John McAllion - that the way to settle the issue of independence was by referendum, and even urged the SNP to offer this policy.''

The SNP has refused to back down from its commitment to hold a referendum on independence in the lifetime of the first Scottish Parliament - assuming it wins power next May - or to drop its demand for a referendum as a condition of forming a coalition.

As the Devolution Bill completed its Commons stages last night, Linlithgow MP Tam Dalyell - a long-standing critic of devolution - warned that an independence referendum was inevitable and insisted: ''We ought to clear up who has the power of initiating it.''

Tory constitutional affairs spokesman Michael Ancram called on the Government to clarify whether a Scottish Parliament could unilaterally decide to hold a referendum on independence.

He said: ''There might be an occasion when the Scottish Parliament could hold a referendum under its auspices - but it should only be able to do so with the consent of both Houses of this Parliament. If these matters themselves are left uncertain, then they will become focuses for further resentment and anger between an Edinburgh Parliament and a Westminster Parliament, which can only at the end of the day feed the flames of nationalism.''

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