Is Scotland a country, or is the UK the country and Scotland only a part of it?

People know I like to answer questions sent in by National readers and just last week, I had a lulu of an email asking me if I could prove that Scotland is a nation and a country in its own right so that the sender could tackle her Unionist friends when they say the UK is the country and Scotland only a part of it.

It was one of those disturbing messages I occasionally get, and I’ve thought of little else since I received it, for the question strikes at the very heart of the matter of regaining Scottish independence. So today I am going to try to answer it in my own manner.

You might say it is self-evident that Scotland is a country, a nation, and I would agree with you. Proving it is a different matter, however, not least because there are far too many Scots who cling to the Union and the United Kingdom as their country, their nation. For the sake of clarity and concision, I’ll call them Unionists.

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It is not for a mere history writer to prove those Unionists wrong. That’s the job of every independence campaigner. Furthermore, I entirely accept those Unionists’ right to believe they are British subjects first and Scottish citizens second. It’s just that, knowing the history of Scotland as I do, I think they are wrong.

To sum up what I am trying to achieve today, I am borrowing a word that is most usually used in medicine and science – I am going to show from history the specificity of Scotland. Specificity is usually defined as the quality of being specific, and I interpret it as showing what makes something unique. And Scotland is most definitely specific and unique.

Let’s start with a fairly recent development which sums up a lot of what I feel. Back in July, the Scottish Government brought out the second of the documents that make the case for independence. It is entitled Renewing Democracy Through Independence, and I swear I almost wept for joy at seeing how the civil servants had brilliantly put together an argument for statehood for Scotland – I would make it compulsory reading for all Scots.

One of my favourite quotes of all time was included. It stated: “As a nation, [the Scots] have an undoubted right to national self-determination; thus far, they have exercised that right by joining and remaining in the Union. Should they determine on independence, no English party or politician would stand in their way.”

The author of that quote – and it was something which she sincerely believed – was Margaret Thatcher. Yes, Mr Sunak, Ms Braverman and all the rest of you Tory right-wingers in thrall to the Great Leaderene, Thatcher herself accepted that the Scottish nation had an “undoubted right to self-determination”. So why deny us that right, especially as the Scottish Government has a mandate for exercising it, especially after Brexit?

The July document goes on to say: “The status of Scotland as a nation is established through historical developments and reflected in current realities. Scotland is a recognised political and territorial entity with its own legal and education systems; and sporting, religious and cultural institutions.

“Many of these aspects of Scotland’s distinct national status were deliberately retained within the Treaties of Union as conditions of Scotland’s entry into that Union and remain in effect today.”

So let me start this historical exposition with the founding legislation of the British state, the Acts of Union as passed by the English and Scottish Parliaments in 1706 and 1707.

As I have shown in previous columns, the Union was predicated on the formation of a new state joining together the governments of England and Scotland to create a new government at Westminster.

The fact that the new government mostly retained English practices and laws was not considered a problem by the parcel of rogues who brought about the Union, though within a few years, they had become so disenchanted that the Union only survived by four votes in after a House of Lords debate.

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The first sentence of the Act of Union as passed by the Scottish Parliament is the foundation doctrine of the new entity: “That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England shall upon the first day of May next ensuing the date hereof and forever after be United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain.”

So a new state was created, and whether we like it or not, many international bodies – such as the United Nations, the European Union and International Olympic Committee – consider that state of the UK to be the country, the nation.

The drafters of the Treaty of Union meant it to be eternally binding – “forever after”. Unlike so many treaties and contracts, there was no clause stating how either country could resile. There still isn’t. However, it cannot be argued that the act was inviolable, as several sections have been deleted by various Statute Law Revision Acts over the years.

We all know that the act was deeply unpopular in Scotland and not much more popular in England. Yet the nobility were determined to push it through, not least because they wanted to ensure a Protestant successor to Queen Anne (below) – section two banning “papists” from the throne is still in force.

In order to get the Union together, the English had to concede that Scotland could keep its own legal and education systems and, most importantly of all, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland remained intact and unanswerable to any English church or politician. So even within the formation of the Union itself, the specificity of Scotland was recognised.

Scotland’s uniqueness as a nation had been in place since the merger of the Picts and Scots in the ninth century, about 100 years before England emerged from the morass of the constant wars between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes and Vikings.

The long line of the kings of Scots showed that Scotland had a monarchy, and thus statehood, from the kingship of Kenneth MacAlpin that began in 843 AD. Despite interference from England, that kingdom survived and became internationally recognised as a nation-state in its own right. We know that King Macbeth, for example, visited both Paris and Rome and was hailed as Scotland’s king in his year of pilgrimage in 1050.

This shows that the specificity of Scotland was accepted and indeed guaranteed by other nations such as France and, very importantly, by numerous Popes who in those times held the ultimate office of power. For convenience’s sake, the papacy decreed the Scottish church should come under the control of the Diocese of York, but even that changed in 1192 when Pope Celestine III issued the papal bull Cum universi.

One of the most important documents in Scottish history, the bull confirmed that the Scottish church was the “special daughter” of the church, independent and answerable only to the papacy.

The bull also confirmed that disputes within Scotland should be resolved within the realm, with the sole right of appeal going directly to Rome.

A century later, in 1295, even as Scotland was under threat from England’s King Edward I, the then king of Scots, John Balliol, signed a treaty with France’s King Philip IV that became known as the Auld Alliance. I have seen the original treaty document on vellum in the National Archives in Paris, and it is a thing of beauty as well as a confirmation of Scotland’s uniqueness.

It was one of the world’s oldest mutual defence pacts, specifically aimed against England, which was continually at war with its neighbours. Edward Longshanks claimed overlordship of Scotland and in 1298, conquered this country, only for Robert the Bruce to arise and assert Scotland’s independence with the victory at Bannockburn – an achievement that resounded across Europe.

But would kings and the Pope accept the Bruce as Scotland’s king and thus confirm the nationhood of Scotland? France did, but Pope John XXII did not, possibly because he was afraid of angering England.

The Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 defined Scotland’s unique “popular sovereignty” and was eventually accepted by the papacy as a Declaration of Independence. Pope John XXII may have been lukewarm in his response, but he did try to make peace between Robert the Bruce and Edward II and seems to have accepted the Bruce’s kingship by 1324.

The specificity of Scotland was also confirmed in the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328 – I will quote the relevant section that Scotland as defined by the agreed border “shall belong to our dearest ally and friend, the magnificent prince Lord Robert, by God’s grace illustrious King of Scotland, and to his heirs and successors, separate in all things from the kingdom of England, whole, free, and undisturbed in perpetuity, without any kind of subjection, service, claim or demand”.

Pope John XXII confirmed the treaty and in 1329, the year of Bruce’s death, issued an edict that the Bishop of St Andrews could anoint the new King of Scots – the highest authority in the world was finally accepting the specificity of Scotland as a nation-state. It took the English five years to break the terms of the treaty, proving yet again the perfidy of that nation’s rulers.

Scotland fought and won a second war of independence and once again renewed the Auld Alliance, with no one disputing the right of Scotland to make its own treaties and trade with any country it liked. Obviously, England was not a trading partner, but the Dutch, Scandinavians, French and the Hanseatic League of ports were all happy to trade with Scotland.

Scotland also exported its people, many of them soldiers, and their nationality was never questioned on the continent. No one then thought of Scots as British because Britain as an entity did not exist until the 1707 Union.

In the century or so prior to that Union, there were many events which proved Scotland was indeed a nation with its own specificity, and that included the King of Scotland, James VI (below), succeeding Elizabeth as the King of England in 1603.

His personal Union of the Crowns presaged an attempt to unify the governments of Scotland and England, but the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the middle of the 17th century proved categorically that Scotland was no mere appendage of England – except in the 1650s when Oliver Cromwell conquered Scotland and incorporated this nation into his Commonwealth. That all ended with the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, and even then, King Charles II realised his two kingdoms should be treated as separate entities.

So it continued until the Union of 1707, and then came the gradual growth of the British Empire. I will not argue that Scotland did not play a huge part in the imperial project that made the United Kingdom the most powerful state on Earth, but even as the empire expanded, there was still recognition of Scotland as a nation, as shown by the growth of the Home Rule movement in the 19th and early 20th century.

Oh, and the British Empire is dead and gone.

In short, no one should be in any doubt that Scotland is a specific and unique nation and country. We now just need to regain our statehood.