Michael Russell: Some choices about our future are for after independence

They see the process as being one that will increase support for independence by visualising the better state we can achieve while others believe it will be a means of ensuring the SNP keep their promises. That is completely understandable but Colley’s radical analysis of the making of constitutions from the 18th century to the early part of the 20th presents the process in a different light.

Not only does she make clear the connection between warfare, political upheaval and the expansion and guarantee of domestic rights (what she calls lawfare), she also explodes the myth that constitutions were always visionary and campaigning expressions of a desire for a more perfect and inclusive governance – templates for the way that nations should move forward.

Certainly they were often aspirational, but they were also fluid, at times grounded in prejudice, could be authoritarian and sometimes were never implemented, including many of those which stemmed, in whole or in part, from what was virtually a constitution factory run by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham from his house in London.

What Colley succeeds in doing, as all great historians do, is to make us question our supposed knowledge of the past in order to think more carefully about our present and future. Some of her conclusions are not incompatible with the arguments of Dr Elliot Bulmer from Dundee University, who has been keen to see progress made with on a new Scottish constitution. In a paper last year for the International Political Science Review he contended that an interim Scottish constitution should be, in a sense, defensive – what he described as “an exercise in codifying and entrenching – and thereby protecting from unilateral change – the institutions and rights that currently exist in Scotland by statute”.

Such a constitution would ensure Scotland’s transition to independence did not put in jeopardy – by accident or design – any of the rights and obligations we presently have as Scottish citizens, nor weaken any of the institutions established by law.

He is also right to argue that a final constitution should be one that engages the widest support and participation from across the political and indeed societal spectrum in order to produce the greatest possible degree of consensus. How we in the end choose to be governed and protected by our laws must be informed by the views of all those who choose to live in an independent Scotland, even if they have not supported statehood.

But we should also always be mindful of the difference between the underpinning statutes that guarantee our freedoms and a merely political prospectus, no matter which set of politicians is in power or for how long. That difference was recognised a long time ago by the current government, which has done a significant amount of work on these matters.

Not only did the SNP produce a proposed approach to a constitution in 2002, that was in itself based on work undertaken by, among others, the inspirational Sir Neil McCormick, who had been publishing on the issue for a long time.

Then in June 2014, as the campaign for the independence referendum got into full swing, Nicola Sturgeon as deputy first minister launched a draft bill for an interim constitution which, inter alia, focused on human rights, climate change and the removal of Trident nuclear weapons. Moreover – and all nationalists should be able to agree on this – on the first page it declares, unequivocally, that: “In Scotland, the people are sovereign.”

That bill delivered on a policy commitment made by the then First Minister Alex Salmond more than a year earlier when in January 2013 he told the Foreign Press Association in London that if the Yes proposition won the referendum there would be just such an interim constitution quickly put in place, securing the way forward, accompanied by an amended Scotland Act. After independence, then scheduled for March 2016, there would be a type of Citizens’ Assembly process (not clearly defined at that stage, but for which there is now experience in the government and country) which would draw up the final constitution, seeking to involve all the people of Scotland in that task.

Consequently, there is already material in existence which could form the basis for discussing and settling on an interim constitution, and given the increased interest in this from a range of other players across the Yes movement, and the changed world we now live in, it would be appropriate for further broadly based and inclusive work to be done on the matter so that it is in the armoury when the referendum takes place.

This interim constitution would, if you like, form the well-lit democratic bridge across which the country could travel to a post-independence process of final constitution making.

What we should avoid, however, is having all the arguments about all the possible types of society we can envisage before the people have themselves decided that they do indeed want to walk into a new world.

In the 1970s when the issue of independence first hotted up, there was a syndrome called “designing the epaulets on the uniforms” in which enthusiasts obsessed about the details of the post-independence world, instead of undertaking the actual task of getting there.

Let’s not repeat that error and put the cart of nation-building perfection before the horse of progress at the ballot box.

Independence is about allowing choices, not closing them down. Refreshing and coming to an agreement about what is needed now will help us to step across the independence threshold after a successful referendum campaign.

Once in that invigorating place we will be able to choose, in fine detail and in an atmosphere of positive unity and goodwill, just how we want to live there.