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Now for 50 maiden speeches from SNP MPs

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The convention at Westminster is that that maiden speeches by newly elected MPs should be relatively uncontroversial, often being little more than a general statement on the background of the individual MP; and not a partisan comment on any issue of current concern.

This convention has not always been observed – as with, in 1969, the then third youngest MP, 21 year old student Bernadette Devlin, a leading figure in the People’s Democracy [PD] Civil Rights movement – a genuine agent of positive transformation.

Devlin had been one of 60 PD members, mostly students, on a march to Derry who were viciously ambushed by loyalists at Burntollet Bridge on 1st January 1069, with the complicity of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. She went on to stand that year as an  independent Unity candidate in 1969  – a period Europe-wide of youth-driven disaffection.

Ms Devlin won the seat of Mid-Ulster in Northern Ireland from the embedded Ulster Unionists.

She went on to ignore the convention of maiden speeches and educated most of the chamber on 22 April 1969 with a confident, articulate and passionate address described by leading Conservative MP, Norman St John Stevas, as ‘electrifying’. [The Hansard record of her speech is here.]

This response – which was pretty universal across the chamber – and  part of this was due to the exoticism of the real – represents the admirable capacity of the English to be genuinely admiring of genuine ability and to accept a powerful argument, even where it is scouring.

At the same time, it represents a curious and continuingly observable characteristic of their ruling elite – in parliament and in the media – the craving for a good spanking.

This worship of the dominatrix is, of course, playing very much to the benefit of Scotland’s First Minister, Nicols Sturgeon in the breathless – hyperventiliating – responses she has received to her signally dominating performances during and since the recent election campaign.

We will all have to see what the whistle of the whip does for the 591 MPs in the House of Commons, excluding the nine other Scottish MPs who will have heard it all before – when the maiden speeches of the pumped up 50 new SNP MPs serially take to the microphones over the green benches.


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