I AM 84 years old, and have been politically active since I was 15 when I first joined the NUM (the miners’ union) back in 1953. As far back as I can remember I have supported Scottish independence. However, in those times support for an independent Scotland was not great amongst the Scottish people, and from what I observe of opinion polls today, the majority of Scots in my age group are still not convinced that Scotland needs to be independent.

Fortunately, however, the younger Scots are much wiser; for them the picture is dramatically different. A clear and increasing majority of Scots have now recognised that Scottish independence is vital for our freedom and economic survival.

In my younger days I could never have imagined a situation where a majority of Scottish people were in favour of independence but were too timid to take it, because a court established by the Westminster Parliament, which did not even exist for most of my adult life, told them that to hold a referendum on this subject would be “illegal” even if our elected Scottish Parliament decided to do it.

I would not have believed it, because it is so utterly incredible that the Scottish people, and their political leaders, could be expected to believe such nonsense in the 21st century.

What the new English Supreme Court wants us to believe is that 600 MPs have sole sovereignty over the British people, including more than five million Scots, and we can’t do anything about it, because it would be “illegal” to challenge this. This is utter nonsense, and has absolutely no basis in Scotland’s constitutional history.

The SNP leadership say that the SNP members “respect” this judgment. Well I do not believe that for one minute. My wife and many of my family are members of the SNP, I have many SNP friends and I support and work for the SNP in elections, and I don’t know of one single member of the SNP who would respect the announcement that the Scottish people have lost their historic and human right to their own sovereignty and that this is now in the hands of a bunch of corrupt politicians in London.

It may be that some people in the SNP leadership have fallen for this political trap, because it was wrapped up in legal terminology, by men with expensive robes and silly wigs, but the Scottish people in the main have not.

The important question now for the Scottish people is not how to run a “legal” referendum – the outcome of which is irrelevant, because it can “legally” be ignored by of a bunch of corrupt politicians in Westminster. It is to challenge this “legal trap” and firmly establish our sovereignty by applying it and demonstrating it.

If the Supreme Court says we can’t have a referendum on October 19 as our First Minister has said, we should not play their game and get involved in a legal process. We should simply hold a Good Government Survey on the day asking the Scottish electorate some simple questions, one of which could be “Who has sovereignty over the Scottish Parliament – the Scottish electorate, or Westminster MPs?” If we did that, there is little doubt what the result would be.

The duty of the Scottish Government would then be to follow the expressed wishes of the Scottish people, which we consider to be sovereign, and ignore any English court which tried to challenge this sovereignty. If Westminster does not like that, and if they are not too busy defending corrupt government ministers, they can take the issue to the international court.

They can explain to the international court how an archaic English law from feudal times – which takes no account of the people, English or Scots, whom it considers to be mere “subjects” of the Crown – should be applied to Scottish people in the 21st century ignoring their human and civil rights.

Andy Anderson
Ardrossan