The triad of doom

Hamish Morrison writes in The National today (Pro-independence MSPs respond to ‘decolonise Scotland’ letter),

Liberate Scotland wrote to all 73 pro-independence Holyrood representatives to make them aware of its efforts to achieve Scottish independence through appeals to the United Nations.

Firstly, the name of the organisation is Liberation Scotland. Liberate Scotland is a totally different entity. It is the original name of the political party which contested the 2026 Scottish general election as Alliance to Liberate Scotland.

Secondly, Liberation Scotland’s UN initiative is not intended to “achieve Scottish independence through appeals to the United Nations”. The UN cannot restore Scotland’s independence. Only the people of Scotland can do that. And only when we secure the means and opportunity to fully and freely exercise our right of self-determination.

The object of the Liberation Scotland UN initiative is to have Scotland’s status as a territory annexed by England-as-Britain recognised. The evidence supporting this claim is very substantial. Liberation Scotland has done a tremendous amount of research and compiled a case sufficient to persuade no less a legal academic than Robert Black KC, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh. But success for this initiative will not in itself restore Scotland’s independence. In fact, having Scotland added to the UN list of non-self-governing territories (NSGT) would have no immediate or direct impact on the constitutional issue. At best, it might augment the internal (to Scotland) party-political and parliamentary process which will restore our independence. If only such a process were in place or in prospect.

Hamish Morrison’s errors are readily explained by the fact that The National tends to conflate independence with the SNP. It has little or no interest in that part of the independence movement which dissents from the orthodoxies of what I have termed the independence industry. A term which includes The National along with the SNP, Believe in Scotland and others.

The attitude of the SNP is perfectly illustrated by Alyn “Never Closer” Smith, MSP for Stirling, who, commenting on a communication he claimed he hadn’t received, said,

I obviously wish them well and take a ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ attitude to the wider Yes movement, if they turn up something we’ve missed I’ll be the first to applaud.

But, I disagree with their interpretation and do not see any useful outcomes from their approach.

I’m tempted to call this guy a dullard, but he’s smart enough to keep getting himself aboard the elected office gravy train. So, maybe not so stupid, after all. It would not be at all surprising if Smith were commenting from the vantage point of profound ignorance. I know from personal experience just how frantically averse the SNP is to anything that is not approved by the party’s leadership. I have tried to engage them in a conversation about alternative approaches to the constitutional issue, and the reaction is a blank refusal to even listen. They stop just short of sticking their fingers in their ears and loudly singing la-la-la.

The spokesbladder for the SNP is no better.

Last month, voters across Scotland made their voices heard loud and clear by electing more pro-independence MSPs than at any time in the history of the Scottish Parliament.

We now have first ministers in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland all committed to fundamental constitutional change showing that people across these isles are fed up with the broken Westminster system which doesn’t work for them.

Within the first month of the new Scottish Parliament, MSPs voted for the powers to hold a referendum on Scottish independence to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Whoever has the keys to Number 10 next can’t carry on ignoring the will of the Scottish people to decide on their own future.

This reply doesn’t begin to address Liberation Scotland’s open letter. It seems the spokesbladder is also ignorant of the content of the communication. The response merely reiterates the SNP leadership’s ‘strategy’ of granting the British state a veto over the will of Scotland’s people. It’s almost as if they are proud of this treachery. The final sentence encapsulates the idiocy of the SNP’s approach to the constitutional issue. It seems they genuinely imagine that the British state “can’t carry on ignoring the will of the Scottish people to decide on their own future“. Yes, they fucking well can, you cretin!. As long as the SNP Scottish Government persists in granting the British state a veto over the will of Scotland’s people, the British state will continue to use that veto to defend their precious Union.

It is clear that the SNP leadership no more understands the nature of the British state than it does the nature of the constitutional issue. As far as we can tell, John Swinney genuinely believes that he is wearing down the British state’s resistance to a new referendum. He really imagines they will relent. Just as he imagines a Section 30 referendum is a route to independence, never mind the only such route. How can Swinney possibly know that his is the only route when he has never so much as glanced at alternatives, far less considered them?

In 2012, when the Edinburgh Agreement was signed, it was generally believed that restoring Scotland’s independence was simply a matter of getting a ‘Yes’ vote in a referendum held using powers temporarily and conditionally transferred to the Scottish Parliament from Westminster. Looking back, it is hard to credit that we could be so naive. I started to have serious doubts about the Section 30 process some time before the vote. I don’t imagine I was alone in this. For obvious reasons, I chose to keep my own counsel on the matter. We had to push for a ‘Yes’ vote anyway, so there was no point in saying anything about how flawed the whole affair was.

After the vote in September 2014, the self-imposed embargo on criticism of the Section 30 process was lifted. Over the next few years, new thinking on the constitutional issue developed in the ‘intellectual wing’ of the independence movement. This new thinking was informed by the work of Liberation Scotland and a host of other organisations, groups, and individuals—including myself. It was a comprehensive reframing of the entire constitutional issue which, in my own case, led to development of the #ScottishUDI strategy.

The SNP did not participate in the development of this new thinking. The SNP leadership, from Nicola Sturgeon onwards, did everything it could to suppress discussion within the party of anything which departed from the party line laid down by the party leader. We now have an SNP leader and First Minister whose thinking on the constitutional issue is more than a decade out of date. He evidently continues to believe that there is a route to independence through a legal and constitutional framework which developed over decades and centuries in the context of an imperative to preserve the Union.

Swinney continues to believe it possible for Westminster to transfer powers that supersede its own, giving the people of Scotland the final say and not the parliament of England-as-Britain.

He continues to insist that an “agreed referendum” is the only way and that the UK government will eventually agree if we, the people of Scotland, just keep on voting for his party.

He holds fast to the notion that, uniquely to Scotland, the ‘administering power’ has a rightful, necessary, and controlling role in the process by which independence is restored.

This is the ‘thinking’ of a very thoroughly colonised mind which does not question a ‘natural order’ that ranks Scotland subordinate to England-as-Britain. We have a First Minister and a Scottish Government paralysed by the conviction that they can only act to restore Scotland’s independence with the consent and cooperation of those who are most determinedly opposed to the restoration of Scotland’s independence.

When the colonised mind considers the constitutional issue, Westminster is at the centre. When that mind is decolonised, the people of Scotland take their rightful place at the centre of all thinking on the constitutional issue. Scotland’s fight to restore our independence is being led and managed by people who have not yet begun to decolonise their own minds. What possible hope is there for Scotland’s cause so long as this is the case?

The Scottish National Party, The National newspaper, and Believe in Scotland—this is the triad of the independence industry. A triad which is mired in the orthodoxy of the Sturgeon doctrine, which we might now call the Swinney doctrine. Until the new thinking penetrates this triad, Scotland’s cause will remain stuck fast in a superannuated framing of the constitutional issue which makes progress impossible. I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that the rather slapdash nature of Hamish Morrison’s report on Liberation Scotland’s open letter to MSPs testifies to a cold disdain for the part of the independence movement which has learnt to think outside the stultifying bounds of the British box.