Labour press conference
 | 'The SNP will not go away. They will wreck this new parliament for Scotland if they get the opportunity. Their agenda is seperatism - driving Scotland down a dark alley with no guaranteed end in sight. They will promise the earth but deliver a big, black hole. They will exploit every individual discontent and worry. They will abuse and distort our plans, our actions and our history. They must not be allowed to succeed. Labour are now the real national party of Scotland.'
Jack McConnell, retiring Scottish General Secretary of the Labour Party, at the Scottish Labour Party Conference, 6 th March 1998. |  |
The Scotsman
SNP catches McConnell in its web
Internet: Nationalist' pages showing Labour landslide written by unknown French-based doctor
By Peter MacMahon, Scottish Political Editor
The Scottish National Party and Labour were embroiled in a war of the web last night as the political battle north of the Border gathered speed on the information superhighway and eventually became lost in cyberspace.
The SNP's chief executive, Michael Russell (an experienced net 'surfer'), branded his opposite number, Jack McConnell (who admitted to having only a working knowledge of e-mail), a laughing stock after Labour attacked the Nationalists over their home pages on the Internet.
Mr McConnell 'revealed' that the SNP's pages on the worldwide web contained a prediction that Labour would increase its seats at the next general election and that the Nationalists had given up hope of winning in their key target constituencies.
Mr Russell, after a bit of net surfing from his home in Argyll to check the facts, counter-attacked, delivering a 'back to college, Jack' message suggesting that 'new' Labour's Scottish general secretary's lack of knowledge warranted some remedial education.
It had all started so well. Labour held a press conference to unveil what it said was embarrassing information that would be devastating for the SNP. Bash the Nats on the net. Good sport for the political close season.
Journalists were taken to an Internet cafe near Labour's headquarters in Glasgow to see a variety of graphs and brightly coloured maps, apparently from the SNP's home page, predicting a Labour landslide.
According to the SNP's surfing psephologist, Labour claimed, the Nationalists would do well, but Labour would do even better than it did at the last election, winning a predicted 51 seats north of the Border.
Mr McConnell claimed it showed that the SNP had given up hope on Kilmarnock & Loudoun, Tweedale, Ettrick & Lauderdale and Airdrie & Shotts.
'This is an astonishing own goal from the SNP,' he said. 'Their local candidates will be shattered. To admit defeat in the key seats may be very honest, but this document blows a hole in their campaign hype and proved that even they believe they will lose heavily.'
Mr McConnell said that candidates like Alex Neil, the SNP's vice-convenor for policy, who is standing against the sitting Labour MP in Kilmarnock, Willie McKelvie, would be devastated.
Alas, it was not quite like that. The predictions had been made by a French-based academic, Dr Iain Old, who nobody seemed to know anything about, but who was not officially connected to the SNP.
Mr Neil said of Dr Old 'I've never heard of him. Perhaps he is a member of the Labour Party. I think these predictions are a load of rubbish from someone who has obviously never been to Kilmarnock and Loudoun. I am not going to lose any sleep over his prediction.
'I will treat this prediction with humour and remember the old football adage: it's what happens on the night that counts and I am sure we are going to win on the night,' said Mr Neil.
After hearing of the SNP attack which appeared to be supported by a variety of said surfers consulted by The Scotsman, Mr McConnell was unabashed.
He said 'If the SNP do not agree with the prediction made in their official web site, then there should have been a statement on that site disclaiming responsibility. At the time we found these pages, there was no disclaimer.
Mr Russell, never one to pass up a Nationalist opportunity said 'It is revealing that, in order to show the supposed gaffe, McConnell had to take journalists to the local Internet cafe.
'There is no Internet access at labour's Scottish HQ, unlike at the SNP HQ, where half a dozen staff regularly use the Internet from their desks for research and communication.' Mr Russell said.
For those who are not surfing the superhighway, Dr Old's predictions of the number of seats for each party after the next election (with the 1992 figure in brackets) are: Labour 51 (49), SNP 11 (3), Lib Dem 9 (9), Tories 1 (11).
Return to home page
