Former First Minister, Alex Salmond, has said that independence should not be debated in a “constitutional vacuum” and called instead for “the articulation of the Scottish Government’s strategy to either bend Westminster to the will of the Scottish Parliament or to spell out another way of asserting the sovereignty of the Scottish people”
He said;
Everyone across the YES movement is galvanised by the fact that the starting gun has been fired on another independence test.
It is welcome to see Government documents proclaiming the case for independence but it is also crucial that the SNP/Green coalition articulate a clear pathway and timetable towards that day of decision.
The energy of the independence debate of 2014 came from the setting of the date of the 18th September. The SNP/Green coalition have promised another referendum in 2023 with “no ifs or buts”.
The Yes movement will take them at their word, and they therefore should also explain the strategy by which they intend to bend Westminster to the will of the Scottish Parliament to agree a referendum or indeed spell out another way of asserting the sovereignty of the Scottish people.
Without that we run the risk of conducting a debate in a constitutional vacuum. Instead we need Scotland’s Claim of Right to resound far and wide.”
The SNP/Scottish government must cease being constantly on the back foot when it comes to independence. Force the issue at all times. England’s difficulty is Scotland’s opportunity.
Yes, at last! Let’s, however, proclaim all our constitutional tools. Do the constitutional groups have an easy-to-follow set of all of them? This is where we need to concentrate our efforts, because most people in Scotland simply have no knowledge or even idea that they exist. I tried to help branch members understand the constitutional positions several years back when I was education officer for my local SNP branch. This is one way of doing it if the ALBA branches are up and running. If not, in every local authority area, public meetings are another way to disseminate this information to the wider public.
Most people will have heard of the Treaty of Union, and I believe it, too, is full of discrepancies that people should know about so that they understand why the constitutional tools are another way of reaching independence. Too many just accept the Westminster narrative about our place in the Union; they really need to know that Scotland has its own narrative, based on fact and truth, not self-serving distortions that have been misrepresented, and misinterpreted in law (very much like the ‘trans’ issue today) and require to be challenged in law – both domestic and international.
Absolutely. Folk think that because the new parliament of GB was created that it must follow that a unitary government was also created. That however is not the case. The two governments remained separate though sitting within the state parliament and for obvious reasons. The constitutions and governing systems of the signatory states were and are diametrically opposed. Nor did the queen’s commissioners have the authority to bring either country under the others rule. Nowhere within the treaty is there a government of GB nor numerous other aspects such as parliamentary sovereignty. Folk need to learn what is specifically in the treaty as well as omitted and why. If folk are to be educated on it then it must be brought back to the basics in laymen’s terms. Folk usually won’t do the research so keeping it simple is a must. Look at the politicians who claim Scots are sovereign yet need a foreign country’s governmental approval or claim that Scotland is not a state when both states are in a dormant stasis due to the creation of the union. It is infuriating that those who should know better are peddling the English government and its establishment narrative.
The words of a natural leader leave Sturgeon stuttering behind him. Alex Salmond is Scotland’s true leader. No wonder she tried to imprison him! She’s a “nothing” in comparison. Time to bin the poor copy.
I agree 100% Jan, and I have nothing further to add.
“Exercising my claim of right” … were the precise words chosen to open the first paragraph of … “The Declaration of a Sovereign Scot” … initiative started well over a year ago.
Over that year increasing numbers of individuals from all over Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paisley, Kirkcaldy, as far north as Golspie and as far south as Dumfries), have of their own volition signed their individual Declaration, with the opening paragraphs reading in full:
“Exercising my Claim Of Right as a Sovereign Scot, I declare:
I do not consent to the terms of, nor the continuation of, the Treaty of Union established through the Acts of Union in 1707.”
In batches, as they are signed, those individual Declarations have been lodged with the Secretary General of the United Nations in New York, so that in a subsequent Stage in the initiative, they are available to all 193 Members of the United Nations.
That later Stage in this initiative relates to a Resolution passed, without dissent, by the General Assembly of the UN in 1960, which contained, inter alia, these words:
“All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
We celebrate and commenorate the Declaration of Arbroath, designated by UNESCO as a “Memory of the World”
As a “Message to the World” … each individual Declaration is scanned and copied before lodging at the UN, and in due course will be compiled into one document as the “Declarations of Sovereign Scots”, for future generations to see and recognise as part of an independent Scotland’s history.
If Sturgeon is serious on Scottish indy and that’s far from certain, only time will tell, and the UK government challenges the right to hold another indyref, and it ends up in the Supreme court, I’m wondering how that will pan out for the Supreme court is an English construct enacted in 2007 when Gordon Brown was PM, to try and counter the HoC. I’m thinking this court has no power over the sovereign people of Scotland’s will to hold an indyref via the mandate we’ve given our government, and a negative judgement against Scotland holding a indyref will cut across the sovereignty of the Scottish people, as Brexit did, that was pointed out by the ex-Welsh FM Carwyn Jones, but completely ignored by our own supposedly Scottish independence minded government.