But, having voted for Robert McIntyre, strangely this was no guarantee that he would be able to speak for his electorate in the Westminster House of Commons. What the Speaker did then makes it quite clear that the House of Commons is not a UK Parliament but an English Parliament carrying on the procedures and precedents of that institution. Against some protest, the Speaker conceded that it would be in order to make such a notice and George Buchanan, the Labour Member for Gorbals eventually was able to get the issue discussed. The ensuing debate shows the House of Commons in all its absurd pomposity. Here it is, in the closing stages of the War, discussing whether or not to keep up a practice which was designed to prevent impostors sitting in the place 300 years before, and the Prime Minister of the day took time off pursuing his battle with Hitler and the Japanese to use all his oratorical gifts to advise the House of Commons to keep to its ancient traditions.
Reasons coming from other MPs give a deal of insight into their difficulties.
Notwithstanding such persuasion, the vote went against Motherwell s MP by 273 votes to 74, with both Attlee and Churchill voting against. Self-government for Scotland was the chief issue which was put before the electors. He saw the problem of party difficulties for any MP who acted as a sponsor. If resolutions of the old English Parliament are binding to the Parliament now at Westminster, then it would appear that the present Parliament is merely a continuation of the old English Parliament and is not a united Parliament based on the Treaty of Union. He had hardly stepped off the night train from Edinburgh when he had been confronted with the House of Commons in its most overbearing mode and insisting on a stance which had little real or practical meaning.