George Cunningham

Civil servant and politician; Born: June 10 1931

Died: July 27 2018 GEORGE Cunningham, who has died aged 87, was a civil servant and politician who earned himself an infamous footnote in Scottish political history on Burns Night 1978.

The Scotland Bill was then working its way through Parliament, and Cunningham, a Scots-born MP with a London constituency, was a sceptic. The law – to establish a devolved Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh – had already been amended to require a referendum, and what became known as the “Cunningham Amendment” introduced another hurdle, the “40 per cent rule”.

This stipulated 40% of the total Scottish electorate had to endorse the plans. If this threshold wasn’t met, the Secretary of State for Scotland would be compelled to lay a repeal order before Parliament. As Cunningham later wrote, the amendment did not “decide whether devolution takes place or not, but only whether the matter goes back before Parliament in the event of an inconclusive referendum result”.

With support from dissident Labour MPS and several Conservatives, Cunningham’s amendment was carried on January 25 1978 by 166 votes to 151. The government attempted to remove the amendment at the Bill’s Report Stage, but the Tories turned out in force to support it.

The rest of the story is well known. On March 1 1979 a majority of Scots voted Yes to devolution, but not enough given a turnout of only 62.9%.

The resulting no-confidence motions from the SNP and Conservatives brought down an already weakened Labour government, and following Mrs Thatcher’s victory the following May, a repeal order was laid and the Scotland Act 1978 removed from the statute book. Vernon Bogdanor, the constitutional historian, believed the Cunningham amendment had a claim to being “the most important back-bench initiative in British politics since the war”.

George Cunningham was born in Dunfermline on June 10 1931, the son of hotelier Harry and Christina Cunningham. He was educated at Dunfermline High School, Blackpool Grammar and the universities of Manchester and London.

Following two years’ National Service, he joined the Commonwealth Relations Office, later moving to the British High Commission in Ottawa.

In 1963, Cunningham left the Foreign Service to work as the Labour Party’s Commonwealth Officer.

He was then on the staff of the Ministry of Overseas Development and Overseas Development Institute, during which he was involved in attempts to prevent a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia.

Having unsuccessfully contested Henley in 1966 Cunningham was comfortably elected MP for Islington South-west four years later. He was re-elected in 1974 for Islington South and Finsbury.

Following the 1979 election, Cunningham served as Labour’s Home Affairs spokesman before leaving to join the pro-devolution SDP in 1982. From 1984 to 1992 Cunningham was chief executive of the Library Association. In 1997, he re-voiced his skepticism ahead of the devolution referendum, warning the existence of a Scottish Parliament would lead to independence. His wife, Mavis Walton, predeceased him, and he is survived by their son and daughter, Andrew and Helen.