AUGUST 1970. That year’s general election has come and gone, but the SNP, and the Welsh national party, Plaid Cymru, are far from happy. Now they decide to join forces in a bid to secure what they describe as a “fairer allocation” of broadcasting time on radio and television.
The decision followed a meeting (above) at the SNP’s Glasgow city centre offices between the SNP chairman William Wolfe and former Hamilton MP Winnie Ewing, and Plaid Cymru president Gwynfor Evans and his wife Rhiannon. The Evanses had just ended a 10-day holiday on Islay.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Mr Evans said: “We are aiming at the BBC in London –that is where the control is.
“Our difficulties are exactly those of the SNP. During the general election [held in June] the national parties of Wales and Scotland were given five minutes’ broadcasting time; the other parties had four hours.”
Moreover, the national parties’ time had been confined to Scotland and Wales. The rest of the country ought to have some knowledge of what they were proposing, he added.
It was “even more serious” that on the national news bulletins there was not one item about the SNP or Plaid Cymru. Coverage was confined to the three main parties,
Mr Wolfe, for his part, added: “In our view, television is the most important single weapon which the Labour and Tory parties are using to destroy the national parties of Wales and Scotland.
“We are united in our resolve to keep on demanding a reasonable allocation of party political broadcasting time”.
The general election had resulted in a decisive victory for Ted Heath over Labour’s Harold Wilson.
The SNP had one MP in the new parliament at Westminster – Stornoway’s provost, Donald Stewart, had taken the Labour stronghold of the Western Isles with a majority of 726 votes.
Winnie Ewing herself lost Hamilton, the seat she had famously won in a landmark 1967 by-election, to Labour.
Read more: Herald Diary
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