From risible to inevitable
Do you think Professor Richard Murphy is being melodramatic when he says he can “now see no reason” why making support for Scotland’s independence an “illegal political act” will not happen? Perhaps you also thought it ridiculous to suggest that the President of the United States of America would threaten to annexe Greenland. Maybe you scoffed at the idea of a US Government agent executing a woman in broad daylight and with numerous cameras pointing at him.
You might not have been quite so dismissive of speculation that Israel would embark on a military operation which has all the appearance of an attempt to eradicate the Palestinian population. But you would surely have mocked the idea of Police Scotland arresting dozens of people protesting this genocidal inhumanity while wearing T-shirts or carrying placards that mentioned the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Action’.
There is a distinct sense that the relatively ordered world of the second half of the 20th century is falling apart.
My point, and Richard Murphy’s, is that things are now happening daily that would have been unthinkable the day before. Or maybe the week or month before. It feels like we are sliding backwards a hundred years or more in the history of human affairs to a time when the world was a much darker place. There is a distinct sense that the relatively ordered world of the second half of the 20th century is falling apart. The rules that created that tenuous order are being shredded as we watch, to be replaced by the brutally simple doctrine that might is right.
If you follow the news, you will surely have gained the impression that the world is being carved up by three great powers, wary of confronting each other but prepared ruthlessly to crush any people or nation which stands between them and their portion. The world is a giant Dundee cake, and America, Russia, and China are frantically trying to lay claim to a sizeable chunk so they can gouge out all the fruit and nuts for the enrichment of their elites, leaving the rest of humanity to squabble over the crumbs that each of these powers tells its people the other powers are trying to steal.
We are not just entering a new Age of Empires; we are already deep within it. So deep it seems there is no way out. No way to avoid the Earth-ravaging savagery of all-consuming avarice, and the bloody conflicts this inevitably entails.
All of this induces a claustrophobic feeling of powerlessness. The activities of ICE agents in the US are evidently less to do with finding and detaining illegal immigrants and much more to do with intimidating the general population. To protest injustice is to be met with overwhelming force, apparently answerable to no authority and subject to no law.
To protest injustice is to be met with overwhelming force, apparently answerable to no authority and subject to no law.
When our governments respond to blatant breaches of international law with mumbled platitudes and openly collude in brutal genocide, where can we turn for redress? When the law works only until it is broken by those with no need to fear consequences, there is no law. If there is no law, there is no society, no civilisation.
There is no doubt that Scotland’s independence movement is a ‘nuisance’ to the British state. England-as-Britain has always regarded Scotland with suspicion and envy. Why would we not suppose that Richard Murphy is correct? Why would we not assume that the British ruling elite would seize any opportunity to finally and forever solve the Scottish problem? When the greater bully acts with impunity, lesser bullies are given licence.
When the greater bully acts with impunity, lesser bullies are given licence.
Do you really suppose the UK Government would find any difficulty rationalising the proscription of some part of the independence movement? Can you not all too easily imagine them framing this proscription in such a vague and ambivalent way that enforcement effectively covered the whole of the independence movement? As we have seen with the proscription of Palestine Action, when the police are unsure of what constitutes an illegal act, they will tend towards the interpretation which seems to involve the least possibility of being accused of dereliction.
Do you really suppose the UK Government would find any difficulty rationalising the proscription of some part of the independence movement?
It wouldn’t have to be an outright ban of the entire independence movement. It would only have to be a restriction so loosely defined that people became unsure of whether what they intended to do or say could get them arrested and perhaps detained for months or even years awaiting trial. Fear would do the rest.
If you think this is idle fearmongering, wait until you see tomorrow’s newspapers.
I have been saying this and believing this for a long long time , WM lords have been debating for decades the best way to SILENCE Scots looking for a means to independence , engerland did it with the HR devolution vote and the franchise vote for independence , YET people still cannot see it , it is ALL about controlling and fixing the narrative
The engerlish establishment KNOW that we only need to win ONCE for Scotland and Scots to reassert our INDEPENDENCE , THEY have to win every time , and when enough snp apologists and sycophants REALISE that the snp are NOT a real party of independence but a unionist devolutionist party determined to REMAIN part of this accursed vile union , who considers party more important than COUNTRY then we will win
If you interpret and analyse things correctly you will realise that Reform is a spearhead for engerlish exceptionalism and have already made mutterings of destroying and removing HR and the devolution settlement or the grandiose barnett formula to ensure Scotland and Scots are even more dependent on the generosity and benevolence of the WM establishment
What is defeating our efforts to achieve independence is that there are too many individuals and political parties unwilling to agree to unite for independence , they ALL have their RED LINES and their demands that things must be done THEIR WAY instead of FIGHTING for the REAL PRIZE of independence , UNTIL we all agree on a way forward ENGERLAND wins
Yip, we've entered Ingsoc now, so it does feel very dark, and it IS a very dark place. I suppose in pre-enlightenment days we had no light with which to form a contrast with the dark, therefore the darkness was all we knew.
I couldn't read Murphy's article in The National as it's behind a paywall/subscription sign-in, but going on the headline alone, and going on what you have written, I don't think it is being melodramatic. I think we have to be open to all possibilities, and not rule out the worst.
Anything can happen, anything at all.
With regards to rationalising a proscription, it'll be the usual gibberish (e.g. keeping the population safe from radicalisation and liberated from extremism) that says the opposite of what is actually intended (further ideological enslavement and adherence to group-think).
It's been refreshing reading your articles over the last few weeks. Honesty and realism is always a breath of fresh air.