Region seeks buy-out in 'fight to the death'

SCOTLAND could be plunging towards a constitutional crisis if British

Steel is allowed to continue dismantling the Scottish steel industry.

This was the feeling among leading Labour and Liberal Democrat

councillors in Strathclyde yesterday as they contemplated the unfolding

of an economic disaster for Scottish manufacturing industry in the wake

of the Ravenscraig announcement.

And by an overwhelming majority, the Labour-controlled council pledged

to fight the strip mill closure, as well as adopting the Liberal

Democrat idea of pressing for the establishment of a separate Scottish

steel-making company that would buy out the present assets of British

Steel in Scotland.

A furious Labour leader, Councillor Charles Gray, set the ball rolling

on the constitutional issue when he told the council's first

post-election meeting: ''This is a fight to the death. It's as simple as

that. This is the first of the firm bricks being removed from our whole

economy.

''If we lose this one, more will follow and Scotland will become a

nation of forelock-pulling peasants. And then we will need, not an

Assembly, but a Parliament.''

Later Councillor Gray confirmed his view that the total run-down of

the Scottish steel industry posed a major threat to the United Kingdom.

People would be asking questions about the governance of Scotland. And

he added: ''They're pushing us down a road from which there might be no

return.''

The constitutional theme was developed by equally angry Liberal

Democrats who also bemoaned the influence the so-called Welsh mafia

seemed able to bring to bear on the operations of British Steel.

Group leader Dr Christopher Mason forecast that if the Government

allowed this catastrophy to befall the Scottish economy then the balance

of opinion in the Labour Party and in Scotland as a whole would shift

almost overnight.

Should the steel industry, which was vital to Scotland's economic

growth in the twenty-first century, be sold down the river, then people

were going to look at the Union and ask what it was for.

Referring to Government claims that home rule for Scotland would

result in firms vanishing overnight, Dr Mason declared: ''Well, we've

got the Union, and we've got British Steel leaving over the New year. It

is the Union which is allowing industry and industrial control to go out

of Scotland.

''Unless those who control the Union are prepared to address that

issue and do something about it, then people will begin to ask: 'What

are we trying to save with the Union? What's in it for us?' ''

His Liberal Democrat colleague, Councillor James Bannerman, said there

was a strong case for developing Hunterston on the Ayrshire coast as a

steel-making plant since it had sea approaches unmatched anywhere else

in the UK.